BY NICK FREDMAN
In the face of broad opposition to the attacks on higher education contained in last May's federal budget, education minister Brendan Nelson has announced numerous, if minor, concessions hoping to win over top university bureaucrats and the votes of independent senators crucial to passing the required legislation.
In his May Backing Australia's Future package, Nelson sought to address a long-term decline in real public funding to the universities by shifting further costs onto students and working-class families, eroding university staff wages and working conditions by breaking the power of education unions, and removing public funding from courses which do not seem to suit the interests of corporate employers.
The package would allow universities to increase the deferred HECS fee by up to 30% from 2005 (and possibly more in subsequent years); double the allowed number of upfront fee paying domestic students within courses to 50%; introduce a new loan with market interest rates to partially cover upfront fees; set strict guidelines on course completion times; give the minister complete control of institutional funding and course mixes; and make $404 million of funding conditional on universities adopting anti-union provisions and less democratic governing councils.
Since May, the federal Coalition government has faced two rounds of student protests and a nationwide strike of university staff on October 16. Most of the vice-chancellors of Australia's 38 public universities have supported fee deregulation but have not relished the prospect of heightened industrial conflict, do not want a fight with students over "voluntary student unionism" measures in the package and have strongly opposed government control over courses.
Some universities would lose out badly under new funding arrangements, with the Victorian College of the Arts facing a 35% cut and possible closure. The University of Western Sydney, servicing 10% of Australia's population in a heavily working-class region, says it would lose $8 million per year. The UWS vice-chancellor, student and staff unions, local government councils and the Penrith Panthers Leagues Club have united in a campaign against the Nelson attacks.
Even some right-wing commentators have attacked the government over the seemingly illogical linking of fee deregulation to much tighter government regulation of public funding and course mixes.
This broad opposition has strengthened the will of the non-government Senate majority to block the package. The non-government senators used a recently released report of a Senate inquiry into Nelson's proposed changes to highlight their differences with the government over higher education.
Labor in particular, unwilling to differentiate itself from the government's support for imperialist wars and its reactionary refugee policy, wants to shift the framework of public debate to health and education in the lead-up to next year's federal election.
The ALP-drafted Senate inquiry report, Hacking Australia's Future, calls for:
- no HECS increases;
- abolition of upfront fees for domestic undergraduate students;
- scrapping of all anti-union and anti-student organisation measures;
- a 20,000 increase in new undergraduate places;
- raising the HECS repayment income threshold from $30,000 to $35,000; and
- lowering of the eligibility age for independent rate Youth Allowance for students from 25 to 23.
The report also mentioned that the Greens and Democrats have called for the abolition of HECS and the lowering of independent Youth Allowance age to 18, and that the Greens demand 50,000 new student places.
With the ALP, Greens and Democrat senators clearly opposed, the government needs the votes of the two Tasmanian independents, One Nation's Len Harris and ex-Democrat Meg Lees, to get the legislation through the Senate this year so that the changes have time to be locked in for the 2005 academic year.
Despite a bribe in early November of a $7 million high-speed fibre-optic link for Tasmanian universities, the island state's independent senators seem to be holding out for more. Lees has demanded more time to discuss amendments and Harris seems influenced by the "old Labor" strands of One Nation right-wing populism in that he's strongly rejected the package.
In an apparent bid to pressure these senators, Nelson has turned to the weakest link in the forces arrayed against him, conceding some ground to the concerns of the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee (AVCC).
On November 17, Nelson agreed that 30% would be the highest allowable increase in HECS under the legislation, announced a decrease in the proposed penalties for over-enrollment of students, and agreed to reduce some of the new powers his department would have over courses and institutions.
Although it said it would prefer to see some further amendments, the AVCC obligingly insisted that the independent senators pass the legislation this year, arguing that some new funding measures for 2004 were at risk,
However, the main attacks in the package remain. Greens senator Kerry Nettle dismissed Nelson's concessions and insisted "the government can and should re-invest the billions of dollars it has cut from the sector over the past seven years. This investment should occur without strings attached."
It is a crucial time for supporters of public education, with inconsistent allies such as the AVCC and the independent senators lured by the amendments game. The student left can hopefully use an upcoming round of National Union of Students state and national meetings to plan for a strong campaign in the new year.
The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) has rejected the AVCC's fear-mongering about loss of funding for next year and called on all players to reject fee increases and anti-union measures. However, the union leadership has not yet followed the October 16 national strike with a strategy to mobilise the union's ranks and student and community supporters in a coordinated political and industrial campaign against the government, as discussed at the early October meeting of the union's national council.
The NTEU should call, now, for another national strike concurrent with the next round of student actions.
The government's stumbles in this area should be an opportunity for the left to press home an alternative vision for a higher education system that meets the needs of working people. After the last federal budget, the Greens made the good propaganda point that the miserable $4 a week tax cut could have paid for the abolition of HECS.
In addition, however, increased taxes on the super-rich owners of the big banks and corporations could pay for the abolition of all undergraduate and graduate fees, including for overseas students, and allow a massive increase in admissions.
The blatant unfairness of the government's attacks can also give the left the space to argue that much greater affirmative action measures are needed, as well as much more staff-student-community control of higher education institutions.
[Nick Fredman is an NTEU national councillor and a member of the Socialist Alliance.]
From Green Left Weekly, November 26, 2003.
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