The Australian minister for education Dan Tehan’s recent proposed changes to tertiary funding are, quite frankly, the stupidist policy move that Australia has made since it’s overenthusiastic approach to invading Iraq in 2003.
I typically live and let live in terms of policy but when something this stupid is actually suggested, I like to make a point of making as public statement about it as possible, so that history recognises that I was not stupid enough to believe in these things. I’ve been having it out with my local MP and I will also take this up with various senators as the reform bill moves through parliament.
The reason I oppose the reforms so strongly is not simply because I disagree with them – I do – but I also disagree with a lot of what the government is doing and yet let them get on with things.
The reason I oppose this bill is because it is stupid, it makes no sense, it is unjust and even if it overcame these impediments to achieve its goals (which it won’t) that would still only produce something worse. (Does that sound a little bit like John Howard’s prompting for the US to invade Iraq)?
Just for context, the new legislation will open an extra 38000 places for university students across Australia, with no extra funding provided for those places. So the take away here is that the tertiary education sector is getting less money per student than before.
That’s in the context of the sector currently suffering from a profound COVID-induced crisis. Tehan’s announcement has already seen major lay offs, such as UNSW’s recent cut of almost 500 jobs. For some reason (the Morrison government has given none), employees in the sector were not allowed job keeper or job seeker during the COVID crisis, singled out as pretty much the only industry that did not.
And let’s be clear, while Tehan and Morrison have failed to find any money to save those jobs, they have earmarked $270 billion MORE dollars for defense over the next 10 years. So they do have money for some things (killing, hostility, hatred, the ex-minister for defense industry’s military aircraft company), but not others (education, progress, critical thinking, Australia’s third biggest export industry).
Abandoning the world leading Australian tertiary sector now, at it’s time of greatest historical need and peculiar COVID inspired weakness is – in all ways – a stupid policy.