15/10/2026
When does school autonomy matter, and when doesn't it?
I can’t help but notice the contrast between what is happening now with Christmas celebrations in Tasmanian public schools and what happened to Tasmania’s laser tag industry when Jeremy Rockliff was the Education Minister.
In 2019, when the laser tag industry asked then Minister Jeremy Rockliff to intervene in restrictions preventing public school students from participating in laser tag, we were effectively told that decisions about school activities were best left to school communities and their associations.
Mr Rockliff even publicly acknowledged that he had enjoyed playing laser tag with his own children on weekends. His position was that laser tag might be fine outside school hours, but it was a different matter during school time.
We were expected to accept that school communities were best placed to make decisions for their own schools.
Yet now, as Premier, Mr Rockliff is asking the Education Department Secretary to intervene because one school has changed the name of a fundraising event from Christmas on the Hill to End of Year Extravaganza.
The irony is that the school's newsletter still included Christmas carols and a Christmas celebration.
The consequences of the laser tag restrictions were far more significant than a change to an event name.
An entire industry was affected. Fixed venue operators left the industry, businesses lost access to an important market, and livelihoods were impacted. All the previous operators of fixed laser tag venues left the industry. Today, Tasmania has just two permanent commercial laser tag venues and one not for profit venue.
These were real consequences for Tasmanian small businesses and the communities they served.
If school communities are considered capable of making decisions about activities such as laser tag, why are they not equally capable of deciding how to name their own end of year celebrations?
Tasmanian schools, their staff and their communities deserve the same respect and trust, regardless of whether their decisions happen to align with the Premier's personal preferences.
The Tasmanian premier asked the education department secretary to intervene after a school renamed its end-of-year celebration to remove the word "Christmas". He then posted about the issue on social media.
In the ensuing social media storm, the education union called his public post "reprehensible" and damaging to the school and staff: https://ab.co/3TACRcw
