Outspoken
Barnaby Joyce Swats Liberal Party Zealots Over
Insistence on Voluntary Student Unionism. (September 19, 2005)
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News & Views item - September 2005 |
Outspoken
Barnaby Joyce Swats Liberal Party Zealots Over
Insistence on Voluntary Student Unionism. (September 19, 2005)
Both The Australian and The Sydney Morning Herald report that Queensland National Senator Barnaby Joyce has flung down the gauntlet to those in the Liberal Party that give the impression of wanting nothing less than total removal of the funding the universities obtain from the compulsory fees collected from students additional to course fees. That the services dependent on the funds collected, and which have nothing to do with political activism (the vast majority) would be significantly adversely affected, is utterly disregarded. That does lead to the question as to whether the proponents of VSU are as much out to strike at the universities per se as to thwart the puny political activism currently on campuses. There has been little to suggest that since the Liberal/National Coalition came to power in 1996 that they were bent on improving the university sector so as to improve its research and learning capacities; rather they seem far more interested in turning them into advanced vocational institutions.
In any case according to The Australian's
Senator Joyce
has this to say on the matter.
The Liberal Party has designed a revolution where it tells a university where it can and can't spend its money. We're cutting off a cashflow and causing collateral damage.
We need to make sure we don't cause collateral damage in following some philosophical zealotry.
If the Government puts the VSU legislation in the current form... [t]hen we [Nationals] can cross the floor and now I've got a federal resolution to back me.
And as for the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Brendan Nelson's suggestion of a sunset clause allowing for a review of the impact of the legislation on universities, Senator Joyce wasn't buying it. "I don't want to review it in a year. I'm a sick of these reviews. We need to change the legislation. There are a lot of people in the Liberal Party who are just having a philosophical fight and they don't really care about the consequences."
Perhaps Senator Joyce was recalling Dr Nelson's promise to the Australian Democrats to get them to vote for the Higher Education Support Act of 2003 that he would review the case for indexation of university block grants. Gavin Moodie of Queensland's Griffith University observed when Dr Nelson announced the decision not to adjust indexation:
The indexation review was conducted by the Department of Education, Science and Training in co-operation with the Department of Finance and Administration, and in consultation with the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and the Treasury. It seeks to justify the Government's indexation policy and is a combination of half-truths and tendentious assertions. It typifies a government that no longer sees the need to persuade those outside its favoured circle.
