Hope in the Darkness

    Why is higher education on short financial rations? Because it seems to offer little to politicians. Fear will drive voters to support spending on health; similarly, fear will get the public nod for defence expenditure. But university education is an electoral also-ran. Great swathes of voters think of universities as technical schools where the young go for job tickets. If they think of universities at all. Little wonder that political parties and union movements pay little attention to the tertiary level. Two witnesses are Professors Judith Brett and Richard Sennett, speaking from opposite ends of the earth and from opposite ends of the political spectrum.

And yet . and yet .. we also hear from one politician who has seen a better tomorrow.

Professor Judith Brett teaches politics at La Trobe. She also teaches the public at large about Liberal people and Liberal doings through her books dealing with Menzies, the 'forgotten people', John Howard et al. Dr Brett will never make much money from her books because they do not offer scandal or political outrage.

It is a tad unfashionable but she seems to like her Libs: she is not blind, though, and notes their foolish failings and wrong turnings. She does her best to produce balanced, factual, reasonable accounts of Liberal affairs -- as a good academic should. This simply makes her a person worth hearing.

One day in March, Judith Brett was Margaret Throsby's mid morning interviewee on ABC Classic FM. They made for good listening. At Throsby's promptings Dr Brett gave her reasons for John Howard's ten years in office. She pointed out that his first term had been rather grim, as though he wanted nothing more than to keep the nation locked into a 1959 stance, that he could establish no rapport at all with voters in the street. She illustrated his gradual change toward presenting as a 'good bloke,' talking the talk of everyday vernacular -- mateship and all that caper. She touched on the Lib legacy of financial reform from Lab governments, Lib policies, Lib luck with rising foreign trade, the benefits of Lib economic management.

Deftly, Throsby guided Brett to a Howard downside. Specifics, please, of wrong turnings?

The honest academic came to the fore. Yes, she said. She regarded the Industrial Relations bill as a gross mistake driven by ideology. And she thought some institutions had been weakened. "Such as?" pressed Ms Throsby. "Well," said Dr Brett uncomfortably, "The universities."

Time was up. There was no exploration but the damaging assessment was out. John Howard and his government had weakened our universities -- a verdict not from a political rival but one from a dispassionate source.

Consider now Professor Richard Sennett who teaches sociology at the London School of Economics. He spoke on Radio National's Saturday Extra. Stephen Crittenden, sitting in for La Doogue, quizzed Sennett about his book Culture of the New Capitalism.

Sennett turned out to be an original thinker. No stuffy recounting of received wisdom for him. In a nutshell, he proposed that capitalists -- he meant the men and women who run large corporations -- have sniffed the wind of globalisation and are restless. No longer are they satisfied to set up a business and stick with it over long periods of time. Because of the ease of moving money around the world, the ease of finding ever cheaper supplies of labour, the ease of spotting new niches, new opportunities -- because of all these mobility factors, they are minded to move their businesses from place to place and from one field to another. (Macquarie Bank springs to mind.) It followed, said Professor Sennett, that successful staffers needed to be quick and flexible, not only to move from place to place but also from industry to industry. Jacks and Jills of the future need to be nimble and quick.

Crittenden asked how employee unions were coping with the new culture?

They were not, said Sennett. They had not grasped the implications of the new capitalist culture, a failure helping toward their decline.

"They always talk of old work," he said.

Sennett believed the unions should have re-cast their role from wage-rate defenders. His thrust was that the culture of new capitalism offered unions new opportunities -- to help their people take advantage of new work . set up as employment agents to point the way to new opportunities, to flag the need for working people to train and re-train, by assisting with financial and contract advice. They should look forward for their members, not backward at old conditions in old industries..

Professor Sennett might be a few steps ahead of reality but his direction seems fairly right. We have had some indicators with the introduction of the Industrial Relations law. Greg Combe, secretary of the ACTU, announced that his movement would "act to protect Australian workers." He was looking back not forward.

What has all this to do with tertiary eduction? Judith Brett showed that the political Right had weakened universities and the implication was that they could expect little from that side. Richard Sennett indicted that Left thinking has stalled. It is trailing reality.

Even if the Lib government gave way to a Lab government next year, universities could expect short rations -- as short as they are now.


The picture is not all black. From the west came a voice of hope. The premier of W.A., Alan Carpenter, told an audience that the future of his state would come not from the sale of uranium ore but from "science and innovation."

How wild! How hopeful!