Month: October 2013

New book on the Dawkins higher education revolution

Andrew Norton2 Comments

Last night The Dawkins Revolution 25 Years On, which I co-edited with Simon Marginson, Julie Wells and Gwil Croucher, was launched by the Chief Scientist, Ian Chubb, with a right of reply by John Dawkins himself.

In my chapter on the Coalition, I described Dawkins as the most important education minister yet to hold office. Gillard’s combined tenures as education minister and then prime minister might yet see her take that title, but for now it is both the scale and durability of what Dawkins did that puts him in the top position.

These include:

* The mergers of many institutions and the transformations of former colleges of advanced education and institutes of technology into universities (discussed in chapters by Simon Marginson and Ian Marshman and Gavin Moodie).

* The introduction of HECS (discussed in a chapter by Bruce Chapman and Jane Nicholls).

* The introduction of a system of setting funding rates by discipline that is still the basis of today’s rates (discussed in a chapter by Ross Williams).

* A substantial expansion in student numbers (discussed in a chapter by Richard James, Tom Karmel and Emmaline Bexley).

* Increased the role of competitive grants in funding research (discussed in a chapter by Gwil Croucher and Frank Larkins).

* Contributed substantially to the opening up of Australian higher education to international students, including a prior period as trade minister (discussed in a chapter by Margaret Gardner).

* Started deregulation of postgraduate coursework markets.

Most reforms since then have built on the foundations of Dawkins. As I argue in my chapter, the 1999 Kemp reform proposals (which I worked on as his higher education adviser) were the only major attempt to over-turn Dawkins in favour of a more market-driven system.

Those reforms were destroyed after the Cabinet submission was leaked to Labor. Ironically, it was Labor ten years later that introduced a version of the ‘voucher’ system proposed in 1999.

Should the HELP debt be sold?

Andrew Norton2 Comments

The government is now hosing down yesterday’s speculation that the accumulated student HELP debt will be sold.

There are good financial reasons for not selling, as Matt Cowgill explained yesterday. Investors would only buy the HELP debt if they could get it for less than they thought it was worth, in which case the government should not sell unless it is desperate for cash. But for now at least financial markets are willing to lend to them at low interest rates.

I believe that there are also good political reasons not to sell now. HELP’s costs are very high, mostly at the moment due to a prediction that 19% of new loans will not be repaid (at p.93 of the portfolio budget papers). Due to the low interest rates government is paying at the moment that is not currently a big expense. But with total debt likely to be over $30 billion now, even small increases in government bond rates can translate into major additional outlays.

These costs need to be brought down. But rule changes to benefit investment banks will not be an easy political sell. It’s hard enough to sell public interest rule changes that help bring total government spending back down towards total government income.

Will the new Climate Council be pursued under campaign finance law?

Andrew Norton3 Comments

The new not-for-profit Climate Council, set up to replace the now-abolished taxpayer funded Climate Commission, has had a successful launch. According to The Age, it has received $900,000 in donations in its first week.

But like other new political organisations, they seem blissfully unaware that campaign finance law means red tape for political activists.

According to The Age article, the “new body was yet to decide if it would disclose the identity of large donors.” That’s reflected in their donations page, which has no warning that large donations might be disclosed.

But the Climate Council could well be obliged to disclose donations over $12,400 under federal law.

The third party disclosure rules are triggered by, among other things, spending more than $12,400 (same figure as the donations) on “public expression of views on an issue in an election by any means”. Normally this provision has serious rule of law issues: activists have to know this year what the issues will be in the 2016 election. But in this case we can be pretty confident that climate change will be an issue in the 2016 election.

In practice, the main uncertainty for the Climate Council will be whether the AEC decides to enforce the rules. In practice they have largely ignored academic forms of activism coming from universities and think-tanks. Only campaigining organisations using paid advertising have been disclosing their political expenditure and donations.

On the other hand, the current rules were put in place by the Howard government in a quite open attempt to harass their political opponents, as I documented in this 2009 paper. Perhaps this original intent will be pursued under the Abbott government. But perhaps the party’s general commitment to free speech after the various attempts to curtail it under Labor, will make them think twice before they do.