News & Views item - November 2005

 

 

Dr Nelson Serves Up the First Course of a Dog's Breakfast to Make Voluntary Student Unionism More Palatable. (November 14, 2005)

    It worked to get the Australian Democrats to vote for a mongrelled GST whereby a taxation scheme that was to be introduced to simplify the taxation of goods and services and reduce illegal tax avoidance would pass the Senate. The result was a bastardised tax scheme far more complex than it ought to be but which the government could call a GST.

 

Now the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Brendan Nelson, is going down a similar path. According to a report in today's Australian, "Under the plans being considered within the Department of Education, apprentice mechanics and others would be able to sign up for a 'sporting package' to use the university gyms, sporting fields and swimming pools," thereby apprentices and TAFE students could access university sporting facilities cheaply, while the fees charged would offset the falls in union fees (estimated by the universities to be $160 million per annum) when these are no longer compulsory.

 

Dr Nelson told The Australian he believed universities could make up for the expected losses in student union payments by throwing open membership for various "packages" to apprentices and TAFE students. "There are 400,000 apprentices in training and 1.2 million TAFE students. Given that there are 715,000 university students, that means they could double the potential market for the use of university facilities."

 

How much deep thought has gone into this suggestion is debatable, or if any modelling has been done to determine how much additional revenue would be raised and what additional cost would be incurred in implementing Dr Nelson's revenue scheme starting with building expanded facilities or an expected differential effect on the universities, just for openers.

 

Of course one might suggest that the proposal put forward by the universities to have a specified services fee would be far more sensible. But that's too simple, and besides those despicable universities might funnel the money into schemes to overthrow the government of the day.

 

Come to think of it how do we know monies prised out of the apprentices and TAFE students wouldn't find their way into nefarious schemes.