Kevin Rudd Gives Some Hints on Education Policy but the Detail Awaits Enunciation. (December 20, 2006)

Labor opposition leader, Kevin Rudd   Credit: Ray Strange

    In an opinion piece in today's Australian the leader of the Labor opposition, Kevin Rudd states a number of generalisations regarding where he stands on what he considers to be important issues facing the nation. Having defined himself as a social democrat. Here are some excerpts on his views on education:

We believe passionately in public goods such as education and health. We accept the reality of market failure, as we have seen most recently and most spectacularly with the failure to respond to global climate change.

 

The Prime Minister asks for evidence of his market fundamentalism... First, there is his Government's underlying belief that education is primarily a private market rather than a public good. This represents a substantial philosophical divide between the Liberals and Labor.

 

In the latest Organisation for Economic Co-operation Development data, Australia is the only one of 30 developed economies in the world that has gone backwards in its public investment in higher education during the past 10 years. Public investment in higher education per student is only 93per cent of what it was in 1995.

 

Our vision should be to turn Australia into the best educated work force, the best educated economy, the best educated country in the developed world... Social democrats believe this must be driven by government.

 

[The federal Coalition have] preside[d] over what has been the greatest disinvestment in higher education in this country since Gough Whitlam began the universities revolution in the 1970s. In doing so, they are undermining our ability to transform Australia into a vibrant knowledge economy of the 21^st century.

 

Gavin Moodie, a higher education policy analyst at Griffith University in the Higher Education Section of today's Australian makes the point that still

...unresolved is how many universities Australia wants in the world top 50, the distribution of university research capacity across Australia and the management of any redistribution of research capacity and opportunities. No government or Opposition has been frank with the sector on these questions since former Labor education minister John Dawkins established in 1988 what remains structurally the present policy.

This lack of resolution and the associated differential funding implications lie behind the tension over the research quality framework and the push from some universities to be allowed to use their market power to increase their income from domestic student fees.

As yet Kevin Rudd's appointed shadow minister for education and training, Steven Smith has been shy of making any public statements on education, higher or otherwise. The fact of the matter is that during its entire time in opposition, Labor's policies on science and higher education have been atrociously promulgated. If the Australian academic and scientific communities are to have faith in the future of their professions in Australia there must be change and that requires more than platitudes.