Federation Fellow, Economist John Quiggin Addresses the Spectre of Howardian Antipathy to Academe. (July 28, 2010)

While the popular media obsesses as to whether a barren-unwed-avowed-non-militant atheist should occupy the Australian Prime-Ministerial residence (The Lodge) with her partner, ARC Federation Fellow, University of Queensland economist John Quiggin, notes that to date there is no indication that the Coalition has lost any of it penchant for "neglect or antipathy" for universities.

He told The Australian's Guy Healy: "We need to avoid a repeat of 1996. If the Coalition is re-elected, they'll be looking for cuts, and anything not ruled out would be on the table."

Noting the $46.7 billion Coalition debt reduction program announced by Coalition Treasury spokesman Joe Hockey at the National Press Club in May Professor Quiggin says: "a lot of the savings appear difficult to achieve, meaning they'd have to look for additional cuts to reach the target".  And Mr Hockey is on record saying the Coalition's "long-term goal is to find a way for people to have a greater incentive to invest in themselves".

So, in Professor Quiggin's view "an obvious mechanism" would be constraining publicly subsidised domestic places, and calling on universities to fill the gap by re-introducing full-fee places for domestic students.

Furthermore, well into the second week of the five-week pre-election jousting the Coalition has not proclaimed policies with regard to higher education or research, innovation and development, and according to Mr Healy: "Opposition science spokeswoman Sophie Mirabella and health spokesman Peter Dutton declined to rule out cuts yesterday to the $6.4 billion in forward estimates for Australian Research Council and its medical counterpart. 'We will announce our policies later in the campaign,' a spokesman for Mr Dutton said".

Therefore, it would appear to be prudent to:

...keep a-hold of Nurse
For fear of finding something worse.
                                                    Hillaire Belloc,  More Beasts for Worse Children