Month: May 2007

Are Australian values based on the ‘Judaeo-Christian tradition’?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 30 Comments

Irfan Yusuf points out that it isn’t just the whole idea of a citizenship test that is going to be controversial, it is also the questions and answers – in particular the answers.

Take question 15:

Australia’s values are based on the …

a. Teachings of the Koran

b. The Judaeo-Christian tradition

c. Catholicism

d. Secularism

Apparently ‘b’ is the correct answer if you want to pass the citizenship test. As Irfan says, the ‘Judaeo’ bit is stretching it. Judaism’s direct effect on Australian values is negligible. Only the long-ago influence of Judaism on Christianity (in the particular the Old Testament) can make any intellectual sense of this term; in reality Christianity has been the dominant faith in Australia and in Europe, from which most Australians came.

Ironically, in light of the choice against the Koran this question forces, the term ‘Judaeo-Christian’ was a 20th century effort to be more inclusive towards non-Christian religion rather than a serious description of religious or ‘values’ history.

But which Australian values are based on the ‘Judaeo-Christian tradition’? Not obviously those on offer in question 14:

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The folly of higher education price control, part #2

~ Andrew Norton ~ Leave a comment

The people Bruce Chapman thinks should be allowed to set prices for full-fee students put their latest effort into the Government Gazette today.

Today’s announcement – not unexpected, given the Budget numbers last week – was that the price universities will take for Commonwealth-supported students, which includes the Commonwealth and the student contributions, will be indexed by 2%. This comes a couple of days after the ABS labour price index showed public sector education labour costs increased by 4.3% in the year to March 2007. Labour costs are well over half of the total expenses of universities.

2% is also below the general inflation rate. How many people know that the Coalition actually cuts higher education charges to students in real terms most years? Cuts in 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007 and for 2008, increases in 1997 and 2005 (yes, students are paying more, but not as much more in real terms as they may think).

Only the 2005 increase was actually passed on to universities, but all the cuts were (via the operating grant) so overall universities are worse off and still going backwards. This is the reality of higher education price control – not protecting students from being ripped off, but preventing them from being able to buy better facilities and teachers.

Who should set prices for full-fee students?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 6 Comments

HECS architect Bruce Chapman has consistently opposed universities being free to set their own fees. An article published in this morning’s Australian Financial Review, co-authored by Chapman and ex-bureaucrat and now-consultant David Phillips, suggested that

there is a case to question whether publicly funded universities should be free to set whatever price they choose for this one group [ie full-fee] of Australian undergraduates.

They noted that it seemed to be ‘highly inequitable’ that full-fee and Commonwealth-supported students pay very different prices for the same course.

Chapman and Phillips go on:

As well, some universities have strong reputations as a result of over 100 years of public sector subsidies, and they don’t pay rent, both factors implying that allowing an uncapped [a reference to the proposed abolition of the 35% limit on Australian full-fee payers] number of full-fee paying students will deliver disproportionate benefits to a minority of universities with no corresponding implications for increased competition.

Chapman has been saying similar things for years. In this 2004 radio interview he remarked:

The basic problems are that the universities don’t pay rent so we don’t have a level playing field to begin with and also some institutions have had 150 years of public sector subsidies for their reputation. We are not starting here in a vacuum. … You basically are allowing, under this particular scheme, universities price discretion or the capacity to charge whatever they like, which has got very little to do with competition. The number of places is still restricted so there won’t be great competition coming from this. What there will be is the delivery of very large profits to some institutions from minority students.

In an article published in the Australian Economic Review in 2001 he elaborated slightly on his objection to ‘unfettered price setting’, noting that as well as not paying rent some universities have prime inner city real estate and that ‘playing field is not level’.

Unfortunately, Chapman has never explained at any length the logic of his position – not even in his recent book, which at US$145 certainly shows that there is no price control in the publishing industry. But let’s try to unpack the various points he seems to be making.
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Did the Budget really make people more inclined to vote Labor?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 6 Comments

Today’s Newspoll on the Budget response included the answers to the question:

Overall, would you say the Budget announcements have made you more likely to: vote for Labor/vote for the Coalition/neither?

Though only 12% of voters had rated the Budget as bad for the economy and just 14% of voters thought that they would be worse off as a result (that question is not in The Australian‘s tables, but you can get it from Newspoll’s website), 26% declared themselves more likely to vote Labor as a result, compared to only 19% of respondents who said that they were more likely to vote for the Coalition.

This does seem counter-intuitive and counter-other results. A Galaxy poll reported the previous day had found only 12% less inclined to vote for the Coalition as a result of the Budget and 16% more inclined. And both polls had the two-party preferred bouncing around in the margin of error (Newspoll putting Labor up, Galaxy down) rather than swinging decisively to Labor, as their 7 percentage point Newspoll-claimed premium won from the Budget would seem to indicate.

The trouble with these questions is that some poll respondents answer them strategically, intending to give the party they support anyway a boost. Unsurprisingly, when we look answers to these questions divided by ‘political support’, only 3% of Coalition voters say that the Budget was more likely to make them vote Labor and only 2% of Labor voters say that it was more likely to make them vote for the Coalition.

Newspoll’s ‘more likely to vote Labor/Coalition’ seems to prompt a partisan choice more than Galaxy’s ‘Has the federal Budget made you more or less inclined to vote for the Coalition’, perhaps because it expressly mentions Labor.

But either way I think the question is of little value, especially when it is asked of respondents who have already expressed a clear preference for one or other of the parties.

Libertarians for oppression?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 10 Comments

One for the beyond wrong file:

The libertarian logic is that, since personal freedom and the existence of free markets are inextricably intertwined, and since as [Robert H.] Bork puts it ‘vigorous’ economies are vulnerable to being ‘enfeebled’ by particular cultural practices, then the champions of personal freedom have a licence to police cultural practices – in the interests of freedom and economic vigour. Thus libertarians can reason that difference (for example multiculturalism, homosexuality) must be eliminated so that the economy can function better…

That’s from Christine Wallace’s ‘Libertarian nation by stealth’, in the latest Griffith Review. In the unlikely event that you want to read a dozen or so pages of ignorance and silliness, you can download it here. This is normally a reasonably good magazine, but Julianne Schultz must have been sleepediting when she approved this article for publication.

The government’s full-fee student policy

~ Andrew Norton ~ 6 Comments

The government’s policy on full-fee university students has received a lot of coverage this week, leading to some confusion on both sides of politics. First Kevin Rudd attracted headlines for showing some hesitation on Labor’s consistent opposition to them, which ended with more clarity than we have had in the decade that this has been their policy – full-fee undergraduate places will be phased out rather than abolished immediately.

On the Coalition side, they have been trying to deal with the possible scenario I outlined on Budget night, of universities handing back Commonwealth-supported places through the new flexibility proposed for their funding agreements with the government and replacing them with full-fee places. The government is backing away from this possibility, including this rather imaginative story in today’s Age suggesting that it threatens the University of Melbourne’s long-term plans.

That the government has gotten itself into this debate shows that despite the symbolic shrewdness of the Higher Education Endowment Fund it remains much better at Budget politics than at higher education politics. Though the 35% cap on full-fee students is arbitrary and silly, it also isn’t much of a practical problem. It affects a handful of courses only, since most people can get HECS places for the courses they want. Politically, it isn’t worth re-opening this issue to gain a minor policy advantage.

Indeed, the government could have abolished the full-fee undergraduate political problem entirely. If it had gone for a voucher system instead of the added bureaucratic flexibilty it chose instead, there would have been no need for the full-fee places. Universities could simply have offered whatever number of places they wanted to in each course, instead of being restrained by their funding agreements.
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The hoarded tax Labor won’t touch

~ Andrew Norton ~ 7 Comments

The $5 billion Higher Education Endowment Fund announced in last night’s Budget has given the government what it has long lacked in higher education – an iconic policy. University leaders have been fulsome in their praise, and the media coverage has been overwhelmingly positive.

It fits into a pattern I noted last month of some of the most attention-grabbing things in higher education happening almost by accident. I can’t now find his analysis on Crikey’s hard-to-navigate site, but I think Sinclair Davidson had it right this morning – the Higher Education Endowment Fund is less about a government change of heart on higher education than their desire to stash the proceeds of excessive taxation somewhere Labor won’t be able to get it without significant risk. Like an evacuating army, the Coalition is setting political booby traps in the edifices it might leave behind.
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Some perestroika in higher education

~ Andrew Norton ~ 17 Comments

On Monday in the AFR I was calling (again) for a more market-driven higher education system. In the Budget tonight the government is taking some very messy first steps in that direction.

Under the current system, each public university (plus a few private institutions) signs a funding agreement (read, ‘agreement’) with the Commonwealth. This sets out the number of Commonwealth-supported student places the university must provide, and in which disciplines. If universities enrol up to 5% more than the target number, they get to keep the student contribution, but get no Commonwealth money. If they enrol more than 5%, for the excess they must pay the student contributions to the Commonwealth. Clearly, this has been a strong disincentive to expand – even if student demand is high. Once all Commonwealth places in a course have been filled, universities are allowed to offer full-fee places up to 35% of domestic enrolments. In a small number of courses, this too has represented an artificial restraint on university expansion.

These restraints are now going to be relaxed. It sounds like the funding agreements will be more genuine negotiations – I infer this from the statement that the Commonwealth will continue to require universities to take Commonwealth-supported places in some fields, such as nursing, teaching and medicine, implying that they will not be forced to accept them in other areas. Universities will now be able to enrol 5% more than their target number and get full Commonwealth (and student, as before) funding for them. Beyond the 5%, they will get the student contribution amount only. This is an incentive to expand, for those universities that want to – a good thing.
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Are workers stranded in pre-backflip AWA jobs?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 8 Comments

The media will, naturally, find the bad news in every WorkChoices story. On the weekend, both the Fairfax broadsheets began their AWA back-flip stories with the losers that fit the narrative on the story – not employers whose bargaining options had been reduced, but the workers who had already signed AWAs. According to the SMH

HUNDREDS of thousands of workers will be left behind by the reintroduction of the “no disadvantage test” by the Federal Government.

And according to The Age

Tens of thousands of workers will be left stranded on work contracts that strip them of penalty rates, overtime and public holiday pay with no compensation, despite Prime Minister John Howard’s move to soften his controversial WorkChoices laws.

But there is more in this than just the journalist’s sense that the negative aspect is the news and that the seemingly weakest party must be in the right. It reflects the powerful legacy of the old IR system on the way people think about the issue, that the law alone protects wages and conditions. Little consideration is given to the way that employees take things into their own hands to improve their lot.
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Why ‘penalty’ rates?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 60 Comments

The government’s back-flip on AWAs, which will prevent ‘unfair’ loss of penalty rates, led to stories in the media about those who think they were hard-done-by under the previous WorkChoices rules, such as this one in The Age about about four schoolgirls who:

have worked for franchised food retailers in shopping malls, and all were signed up to WorkChoices agreements that stripped away penalty rates in return for small hourly pay increases

Politically, it no doubt makes sense to minimise the number of ‘losers’ in a reform. But as a matter of policy, it is far from clear why there should be mandated higher rates for particular hours of the day or days of the week. Google hasn’t been able to find me a history of penalty rates in Australia, but the standard argument for them is summarised in this speech to the NSW Parliament:

Shift loadings and penalty rates for work in ordinary time on weekends and work outside the normal span of hours are intended to compensate for the inconvenience associated with working unsociable hours. Work after 5.30 p.m. is generally regarded as being in unsociable hours, and has a negative impact on both personal and family wellbeing. …

Employees are less inclined to work on Saturdays and Sundays because they are dominant days for sport, leisure, community activities and religious celebrations. Time off during the week does not compensate for time lost on Saturdays and Sundays. This is the reason workplace arrangements have always recognised and endorsed penalty rates in the form of higher hourly payments for these days.

The very term ‘penalty rates’ is revealing. The higher wages are not to reward the employee for turning up at an inconvenient time, but to punish the employer for transgressing a prescriptive form of familism, which sets out what families must do at which times. This is an old-fashioned view of the family, the one found in the (in)famous Harvester Judgment of a man working full-time, with a wife at home to do all the cooking and shopping, minimising the need for paid workers to offer those services at ‘unsociable’ hours. It makes John Howard’s black and white TV era ideas seem modern.
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