Melbourne’s CBD turned red today as tens of thousands of Victorian public school teachers and support staff walked off the job in the first statewide teacher strike in more than a decade. Police estimated around 35,000 people rallied from Trades Hall to Parliament House, with more than 500 schools across the state either closed or heavily disrupted.
The action comes after the Australian Education Union (AEU) rejected the Allan government’s pay offer, arguing it does not fix workloads, staff shortages or stagnant conditions in public schools.
One primary school teacher with three decades in the system told PEDESTRIAN.TV the dispute has been brewing for years as each new agreement chips away at their standard of living.
“Most people leave the profession within the first five years,” Michael Cosmano said. After 30 years in leadership and a master’s degree, they pointed out that “the graduate’s in New South Wales and my pay’s difference is $18,000”, and said there is “no prospect of owning a home or even being able to save a deposit”.
They described daily class splits, a chronic shortage of casual relief teachers and mounting admin on top of after-school meetings, saying, “What happens is it’s a massive distraction from what we’re meant to do, and that’s teach the kids and care for them like parents want us to”.
At the rally, Natalie, a primary school teacher, said the latest offer from the government has landed badly in staffrooms. “The government has offered us [17 to] 18.5 per cent over the next four years, and that is frankly insulting,” she said, adding that workload is about more than what happens between the first and last bell.
“On average, teachers are working 12.5 extra unpaid hours per week. This includes all of the admin we have to do before and after school to do our job.”
Another teacher, who is also a parent, said they were there because “teachers do a wonderful job uh with our kids and in our community” and that “it’s an absolute privilege” to do the work, but “it’s time for better conditions and better pay for us”. They described their staff as “very supportive, collaborative” and said, “We love it, but we just think that it could be better for the hard work that we do”.
On the steps of Parliament, AEU Victorian branch president Justin Mullaly focused his fire on what he described as broken promises on funding. He told the crowd he was “not going to talk about the promise that the Premier made back in January last year to fully fund our schools” or “the $2.4 billion cut”, before asking, “Does that feel like ‘the education state’ to you”?
The crowd roared back “NO!” as he answered his own question: “It bloody well doesn’t, because it certainly isn’t the education state and it’s not good enough.”
He criticised delays to delivering full funding, asking, “What kind of government would promise full funding and not deliver a ‘brass razoo’ until 2031?” and linked funding shortfalls to what’s happening inside classrooms.
“What kind of government says that our students can ‘make do’ with the resources they’ve got, when we know deeply that they have more need?”
He also called out unaddressed “workplace violence” and “gendered violence”, arguing, “If we’re not supported, then how can the children and young people that we educate be properly supported?”
Deputy Premier and Education Minister Ben Carroll said earlier that the government’s pay proposal was all they could do by the strike date. “You’ve got to understand that we did everything we can to avoid today, we did everything we can to get the offer on the table as soon as possible,” he said this morning.
He urged the union to prioritise keeping students in classrooms and insisted the government was working to secure an agreement. But with AEU members already warning that “another day like today is not off the table” if there is no movement, today’s strike feels, for many educators, less like a one-off and more like a line in the sand about the future of public schooling in Victoria.
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