How it is with Conferences of the Post Primary Teacher’s Association is this: there are Conference Papers, and the Conference Papers have recommendations at the end of them, and everybody votes whether to implement the recommendations, then they go home. Altogether, it takes about half an hour. Or it would if it wasn’t more complicated than that.
Because not everybody is going to agree on all the recommendations. So the people who wrote the Papers give a little speech for each recommendation. And then people who disagree with the recommendations make little speeches about what’s wrong with them. And then everybody votes according to how people in their part of the country wanted them to vote and they go home. Only it’s more complicated than that.
Because if somebody kind of likes one of the recommendations but they think it could be better, they can move that it be modified. They do this by talking to the people who wrote the Papers, and if they’re lucky they will agree that the modification improves their Paper and they’ll change it straight away. But if the people who wrote the Papers don’t agree the people with the modification can wait until everybody starts making speeches and then move that the modification be made. And people have to vote on whether to make the modification. And when that’s all done they can go home. Only it’s more complicated than that.
Because sometimes a whole lot of people want to make more or less the same modification, only they all have slightly different ways to say it. So before anything else happens, the people all go to workshops and tell each other what modifications they’d like to make, and if a lot of them are more or less the same all those people consult together until they have just as many modifications as they need. This was apparently an innovation for this year and it’s rather good because it makes things easier when you get to the voting part. So on the face of it that would make things less complicated, and hasten the time when everybody can go home. Only it’s more complicated than that.
Because some of the recommendations are constitutional ones which require a two-thirds majority, and the others are regular recommendations which require a simple majority. And people can make procedural motions to do things like going into Committee, or disagree with whether or not the President understand how complicated things are really supposed to be, or make everyone stop talking so that they can vote on whether everybody should stop talking and vote. That last one is called “Moving that the Motion be Put” and it is why I didn’t end up making a speech about the faulty logic in one of the Papers. And after all the speeches have been made and the motions been moved, everyone can go home. Only it’s more complicated than that.
Because a bunch of people come to give special speeches about how the Council of Trade Unions supports the PPTA a great deal, or about how people in unions in Australia have a lot in common with people in unions in New Zealand in that none of them like John Howard very much, or about how they’ve written a good book about the history of the PPTA or about how they’re the Minister of Education and they think there won’t have to be as many arguments with the PPTA next year as there were last year and what if there was a special test to see whether some of the teachers deserve the money that everybody agreed they deserved until last year when the Ministry suddenly changed its mind. And since all these people have come to give special speeches, there has to be a special dinner with a big pavlova for dessert, and dancing afterwards to a lot of music that was written before I was born.
And that is why PPTA conferences are so much fun. You should go to teacher’s college and become a high school teacher and join the PPTA and get elected as a delegate so that you too can have that much fun.
Oh, and there are free mints. And they give you free pens and paper so that you can draw pictures during the speeches.