www.ntnews.com.au Tuesday, August 13, 2013. NT NEWS. 5

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Sharon’s outof the houseSHARON is the first house-mate evicted on this year’sBig Brother.

The 41-year-old mother-of-three, pictured, hadbeen the bookies’ favouriteto get dumped from theChannel 9 reality show andthat is how it panned out.

The formercop and theoldest contest-ant on BigBrother was inthe firing linefor elimination

after Mikkayla was savedlast week. Only about 4 percent of viewers voted tosave Sharon.

The result is a slap in theface for the show’s pro-ducers who had been critic-ised for not having some ol-der housemates last year.

‘‘I’m disappointed, sad,annoyed and frustrated,’’Sharon said. ‘‘But I’m alsohappy in a way because I’llget to see my kids.’’

Education ministerbarred from schoolBy NICOLE MILLS

THE Federal Education Min-ister was refused entry to aDarwin public school afterthe NT Government used alittle-known convention tostop his visit.

Bill Shorten, pictured,had planned to hold a pressconference at CasuarinaSenior College but his re-quest was denied by the Ed-ucation Department.

The department’s chiefexecutive Ken Davies saidthe policy was in place toavoid the politicisation of

Territoryschools.

‘‘Consist-ent withconventionand proto-col appliedduringNorthern Territory elec-tions, NT schools and prem-ises are not used to convey ordisplay political material,’’he said.

‘‘Announcements of a pol-itical nature connected to anelection campaign are alsonot permitted.’’

Mr Davies said the policy

had been applied duringcaretaker periods in NT elec-tion campaigns and includeda ban on political functions.

He said the department didnot want to unreasonablydisrupt the normal schoolday routine.

An Education Departmentspokesman said the policywould be applied to all polit-ical parties.

But Mr Shorten said hehad never heard of the con-vention before.

‘‘Why wouldn’t you wantto have a federal educationminister see how successful

your schools are?’’ he said.‘‘What are they worriedabout? Are they worried thatI’ll tell parents and kids thatthe CLP Government hascost them millions?’’

Mr Shorten was forced torearrange he schedule yes-terday and instead visitedO’Loughlin Catholic College,in Darwin’s northern sub-urbs, where he slammed theNT Government’s decisionnot to sign up to the BetterSchools Plan.

He said he could not un-derstand why Chief MinisterAdam Giles had refused to

sign up to a plan that con-servative governments in ot-her states had accepted.

But Mr Giles said Mr Shor-ten should get out of theTerritory and maintainedthe NT Government hadbeen left with so much debtit could not afford to pay anextra $100 million over sixyears in return for $200 mill-ion Commonwealth funds.

Mr Giles has instead ac-cepted the Coalition’s ver-sion of the plan which wouldprovide about $150 millionover four years and wouldnot require Territory funds.

Tobias Blacombe-Ehlrich, 8, with one of the Picasso Cows at Parap Primary School yesterday Picture: DANIEL HARTLEY-ALLEN

Pupils arebeefing updairy nousBy AMY SPEAR

COWS have made their wayinto Darwin schools — thoughthese bovines are of the fibre-glass kind.

Eleven local schools have ta-ken part in Dairy Australia’sPicasso Cows program, aimingto teach kids about the dairy in-dustry and the importance ofdairy foods.

As part of the program, stud-ents decorate a life-size cow inone of three themes — Unbeat-able Bones, Fuel for Life orFarm to Plate.

Parap Primary School chosethe latter — as assistant princi-pal Yvonne Harding explained,students have no experiencewith dairies in the Territory.

Ms Harding said it’s a 10-weekunit of work looking at the dairyindustry, the history of farmingand cooking, eating and exper-imenting with dairy products.

They decorated their cowwith the theme ‘the old lady whoswallowed the NT’.

Students involved in theschool’s gifted education pro-gram, were involved.

The Picasso Cows program isnow in its fifth year.