Teachers have expressed outrage over comments made by former education minister Adrian Piccoli, who told them to "leave town" if they didn't like the Murrumbidgee Regional High School merger.
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One of them was former principal Kevin Farrell, who said the comments had created a wave of outrage among teachers and the community in general.
"Who the hell does Adrian Piccoli think he is to tell teachers who don't agree with him to get out of town?" Mr Farrell said.
"Adrian has never even said that to the mafia in Griffith - he's never had the guts to stand up in public and tell them to leave town."
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Mr Piccoli said there were a handful of teachers who "had an agenda to make the merger fail", and that they should either "put their personal views aside and do their job" or leave Griffith.
But Mr Farrell said the merger was "Adrian's mess in the first place", and he claimed Mr Piccoli was attempting to silence opposition as part of a "face-saving exercise".
Mr Farrell said the NSW Department of Education was equally culpable for shutting down a meeting between students, The Area News, and the Member for Murray Helen Dalton.
"This is Australia, we believe in freedom of speech. If the kids want to speak to Helen Dalton outside school grounds nobody can stop them," he said.
"In the NSW curriculum we teach students the rights of Australian citizens and the values we hold - among those values is the freedom to speak."
Mr Farrell attended a NSW Teachers Federation earlier this month, and he said morale in the room was low.
"One teacher was saying everybody's exhausted, everybody's tired, everybody is at each other's throats," Mr Farrell said.
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He said teachers felt too intimidated to publicly voice their concerns, and that even he himself worried about the potential backlash.
However Mr Farrell said he was a "cranky old bloke" with nothing to lose, and so he was willing to continue speaking his mind.
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Kenji Sato
Kenji Sato is a handsome journalist at The Daily Advertiser who enjoys writing flattering bios about himself in the third person. He can be contacted by email at kenji.sato@dailyadvertiser.com.au or by mobile on 0448 927 612.
Kenji Sato is a handsome journalist at The Daily Advertiser who enjoys writing flattering bios about himself in the third person. He can be contacted by email at kenji.sato@dailyadvertiser.com.au or by mobile on 0448 927 612.
