Kim Beazley Makes General Commitments Regarding Secondary Public Schools, Decries State of Universities But Little Else. (September 30, 2005)

    Yesterday the leader of the Federal opposition, Labor's Kim Beazley addressed the Schooling for the 21st Century conference and told them that under a Labor Government The senior high schools would have "first-rate facilities" and train an extra 4000 school-based apprentices "to put a real dent in the skills shortage... The dusty and Dickensian workshops in many of our schools are turning our young students away from the trades". He also pledged that Labor would undertake to provide specialist mathematics and science schools which would be established on university campuses "such as the Australian Science and Mathematics School at Flinders University or the proposed new ANU College in Canberra".

He gave no details or costings in support of his broad picture.

In regard to Australia's tertiary education sector he told the conference,

At a time when China and India are producing 4 million graduates a year, John Howard has cut a staggering $5 billion from our universities since 1997.

 

Public investment in our universities and TAFEs has fallen 8 per cent since 1995. The OECD average is a 38 per cent increase. Australia was the only developed country to reduce its investment. The next worst performing country actually increased it's investment by 6 per cent.

 

Australia is now one of only three countries in the OECD where public expenditure accounts for less than half of all spending on universities and TAFEs. We are below the average among developed countries for public expenditure on education per student.

 

Australian students receive $4,000 less public support than students in the United States. A lack of funding means 20,000 eligible applicants are turned away from our universities every year and 34,000 from TAFE.

 

The Howard Government simply cannot be trusted with this critical component of our economic management. Since 1997 the proportion of young Australians who complete Year 12 and go on to university has dropped by 20 per cent and 14 per cent for TAFE.

 

 

Over the next two years I will steadily explain Labor's way forward. We'll start with our principles and priorities. We will progressively move to more detailed policies and plans as we move forward. I will have a lot more to say about schools, universities and TAFE. [our emphasis]

 

In particular I want to address further the giant burden HECS has become, the lack of growth in university places and the distortion of priorities in order to attract fee paying students from overseas.

So we shall have to wait and see. Unfortunately in the words of Yogi Berra, philosopher and former New York Yankee catcher, "It's deja vu all over again".

It's all too reminiscent of the period prior to the 2001 election when Labor decided to hold back its policy statements until the last moment.