News & Views item - November 2007

 

Gillard Gets Education, Carr Science and McKew is Rudd's Parliamentary Secretary. (November 29, 2007)

  Julia Gillard takes on education

     In announcing his first cabinet Prime Minister elect, Kevin Rudd has appointed his deputy Julia Gillard to implement his education revolution. She is to be in charge of the new super-ministry which includes education and her current portfolio of employment and workplace relations. As foreshadowed, this splits education from science which had been combined by the Coalition when Brendan Nelson was named minister for education, science and training in 2001.

 

Kim Carr will retain his shadow portfolios of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research and just how he and Ms Gillard will work together on revitalising the university sector should be interesting perhaps even entertaining.

 

One of the immediate matters that Senator Carr will be dealing with is what to do for and with the Research Quality Framework that Dr Nelson and Ms Bishop, newly appointed leader and deputy leader of the Liberal Party respectively, left as a poisoned challis for Australia's researchers.

 

There will also be the small matter of the next chief scientist. Labor has signalled it wants the position to be full time, and in fact Dr Peacock's term is to end in February of 2008.

 

And will the position be part of the science ministry or become part of the department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. And where will the Prime Minister's Science, Engineering and Innovation Council fit in (as matters stand it is due to meet in December).

 

Maxine McKew is all but certain to defeat John Howard for the seat of Bennelong. And Mr Rudd has awarded her the position of parliamentary secretary to the prime minister, with responsibility for early childhood education and childcare.

 

What remains unclear is just what is the Rudd government's concept of an education revolution. So far we have been promised technological improvements for primary and secondary pupils and increased scholarships for university places, but the fundamental and far more difficult matters of improving the competence of secondary and even primary school teachers, particularly in the sciences and mathematics, remains unaddressed, as does the matter of Universities in Crisis.

 

That was the title of a 400 page "Report on Higher Education" brought down in 2001 by the Senate Employment, Workplace Relations, Small Business and Education Reference Committee in which Labor and the Australian Democrats wrote the majority report. Senators Kim Carr and Natasha Stott Despoja were two of the committee members.

 

So six years later what are Senator Carr and his Labor colleagues gonna do about it. Or has that crisis suddenly -- on the 24th of November 2007 -- evaporated.

  

The president of the Federation of Scientific and Technological Societies (FASTS) Professor Ken Baldwin has said in a media release that it would be a matter of concern: "if science and research simply become subservient to industry policy. There is a strong view in the science and research sectors that public policy has been constrained by an over emphasis on short-term commercial outcomes. This was a key focus in the recent Productivity Commission report on science and innovation which advocated a greater focus on preparedness and risk minimisation as an outcome of science and innovation."