Author: Andrew Norton

Are we in a Rudd political bubble?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 28 Comments

Ruddmania may have worn off for RAAF flight crew, but not it seems for the Australian public. Last week’s Nielsen poll showed approval for Kevin Rudd’s performance as PM at 74%, only one percentage point behind Bob Hawke at his peak. Newspoll’s respondents, reported in today’s Australian, are not quite so effusive, but at 68% satisfaction this is still higher than any other PM has received in the 22 years Newspoll has been asking the question.

Newspoll’s survey of leadership characteristics finds that he has the highest ever ratings (since 1992, when the question began) on the characteristic of ‘likeable’, higher even than Kim Beazley, who really was likeable. He’s off his peak for trustworthy, but it was 10 percentage points higher than anyone else had ever received (also since 1992). Though off his peak as well for cares for people, he is still very high on that, though not as high as obvious softy Kim Beazley.

I don’t think it is just my own political biases that prevent me from seeing what so many voters are seeing. He has none of Hawke’s charisma, none of Keating’s style and wit, none (OK, little) of Howard’s Australian everyman persona. He is our first nerd Prime Minister. I’ve got nothing against nerds. I am one. But I’m amazed that 74% of the Australian public approve of a man who must remind them of the annoying kid in grade 4 who answered all the teacher’s questions.
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The ATO and social solidarity

~ Andrew Norton ~ 22 Comments

Jessica Gilbey, a 25-year-old PHD student, won’t see a cent of the payments even though she lives on a piecemeal casual income that is often less than $100 a week. Technically, she did not pay any tax in 2007-08 so she will not receive the payment.

“I was completely devastated,” she said. “You feel left out, you feel like you’re not a citizen.”

– SMH, 6 April 2009

Ms Gilbey strikes me as a truly pathetic individual if her sense of social solidarity and citizenship comes from whether the tax office sends her a handout, which is a symbol not of social membership but a once-off do something, anything response to a slowing economy.

And what is ‘technically’ paying no tax? I think what they mean is that ‘technically’ she did pay some small sums in 2007-08, but the ATO has already given it back to her, meaning that her net tax payment was zero.

I’ve heard quite a few complaints along these lines, none of which I have any sympathy for. It’s just an example of how the welfare state brings out the worst in people, encouraging them to whinge about not getting handouts instead of working.

Update: Jessica Gilbey says she was misquoted.

A voucher scheme without private providers?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 6 Comments

Today Julia Gillard put out a media release drawing attention to the release of the first semester 2008 enrolment numbers (it’s a disgrace that it has taken a year to get these statistics ready, but that’s another issue).

They show that there is strong growth in the private higher education sector, despite fees that are significantly higher for domestic students than in the public universities. Commencing Australian students were up 17% on 2008 in the private providers, but only 0.2% in public universities (in absolute terms, the public institutions still have 95% of the market). These numbers suggest that the FEE-HELP scheme, which enables students to borrow tuition fees, is having a large effect.

Yet though these market signals show increasing student interest in private higher education, Gillard’s voucher scheme is specifically restricted to public higher education providers. This significantly undermines the positive potential of student choice, since it restricts choice to institutions that by the history of the funding system tend to be alike: large, multi-faculty, bachelor-to-PhD level institutions, aiming (with widely varying degrees of success) to be research institutions. It’s Henry Ford’s Model T kind of diversity: you can have any colour as long as it is black.

No rationale has been given for excluding the private providers.
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What will happen if the overseas students stop coming (or Julia Gillard’s big policy gamble)

~ Andrew Norton ~ 15 Comments

A story in this morning’s Australian drew attention to this Access Economics report on international students, commissioned by the Australian Council for Private Education and Training, the largest peak body for private education providers.

Because they don’t take into account the paid work overseas students do while living in Australia, I think the Access report overstates their contribution to export earnings and understates their contribution to GDP. But the report does do a service in pointing to the consequences for the economy of a decline in demand from overseas students.

Of more pressing concern for those of us attending or employed by universities is what happens to us if the overseas student market goes into serious decline. Universities depend on international students for their survival.

Julia Gillard as Education Minister is also relying on a strong international student market. Her current policy approach is actually high-stakes politics, with her policies putting the higher education system at significant risk.
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The unpopularity of war

~ Andrew Norton ~ 10 Comments

With a new US strategy on Afghanistan set to be announced and a rising Australian death toll, three pollsters recently surveyed opinion on Australia’s troop deployment. Their results were consistently against expanding our troop commitment, and showed that about half of their respondents did not want our troops there at all.

ACNielsen found 51% of voters against the deployment, and two-thirds against sending more troops, with 30% in favour. Essential Media found 50% in favour of withdrawing and only 14% in favour of sending more troops. Newspoll also found two-thirds of its respondents against sending more troops and 28% in favour. The only real difference is opinon on sending more – this is probably a question effect, with Essential Media having an option of keeping the same number.

While these are negative results for the Afghanistan commitment, there is little evidence that recent Australian deaths have hardened opinion. A Lowy Institute poll last year found 56% against Australia’s military involvement in Afghanistan, up from 46% in 2007. And these figures are not radically different from those recorded on Iraq – for example in 2005 a small majority opposed Australia’s continuing involvement in Iraq.

Generally, it is a good thing that the Australian public is reluctant to support war. But these figures do also give weight to the concerns of conservative pessimists that Western publics have the lost the will to fight for anything, and not just wars without (perhaps) sufficiently clear links to immediate security. If these wars are unpopular with minimal casualties, how unpopular would they be with a large number of deaths?

Australian political identity survey

~ Andrew Norton ~ 40 Comments

As a classical liberal, I am the kind of person people like Kevin Rudd or the academic left are talking about when they use the term ‘neoliberal’. However, their descriptions of ‘neoliberalism’ often seem to be, if not totally inaccurate, crude caricatures of what people like me actually believe.

My impression from years of talking policy and politics with a wide variety of people, and editing a classical liberal magazine, is that even among those willing to identify with a particular political philosophy their actual views are (depending on how you look at it) more complex or less consistent than simply following the logic of their philosophy wherever it might take them.

To try to see to what people with different intellectual political identities believe, and on what they agree and disagree, I have devised an online survey of about 40 questions. There is a question on party support near the end, but the main point of the survey is to see what people willing to identify as classical liberals, libertarians, conservatives, and social democrats believe, regardless of their party affiliations. I’ll publish the results over Easter.

Click here to take the political identity survey

Words Julia Gillard may regret

~ Andrew Norton ~ 6 Comments

After more than a decade of the Howard Government [universities] felt neglected, and they had been neglected because there hadn’t been the proper investments into our universities. But they also felt under siege. They were rolled up in red tape, they could hardly scratch themselves without having to send a piece of paper to Canberra and wait for it to come back out. They weren’t able to see what the Government’s vision for universities was for the next five or 10 or 15 years, other than more neglect and more micromanagement. (italics added)

– Julia Gillard speaking yesterday to Alan Jones.

Let’s be clear on Labor’s record so far. Though as part of its stimulus measures it has given universities some capital hand-outs, its 2008-09 budget imposed real cuts on recurrent university income for teaching Commonwealth-supported students, and its phasing out of domestic full-fee students further reduced recurrent university teaching income. By contrast, Coalition budgets delivered real increases in 2005, 2006, and 2007 for all disciplines, and in 2008 for some disciplines.

The Coalition’s higher education policy was a shambles. But at least over the last few years there was some recognition that it was irrational to cut annually in real terms government teaching subsidies and to regulate student contributions so that these were also cut in real terms. The lead story in today’s Australian about the razor gang getting to Gillard’s higher education spending looks like part of an on-going downgrading of expectations for the higher education sector. It is possible that on the key issue of recurrent funding this year’s budget may confirm Labor’s record as worse than the Coalition’s. Unfortunately, universities cannot spend education revolution rhetoric.
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A Mammon-solution to an Allah-problem

~ Andrew Norton ~ 11 Comments

Letter writers to The Age are not impressed with demands from Muslim students for dedicated prayer rooms at RMIT. Plausibly enough, some argue that a secular institution like RMIT should not favour one religious group over another.

It seems to me than an obvious solution is being overlooked. The University should provide a Muslims-only prayer room, but do so on a commercial basis. RMIT could either rent a room to a Muslim group, or operate the prayer room itself by issuing students with swipe cards in exchange for a fee. Maybe the very religious could get bulk discounts for using the room 5 times a day, or maybe it could be like a gym membership, in which the sunk cost encourages attendance from those whose desire to get fit or show faith is not always matched with action.

If RMIT charged too much, this would provide an incentive for other groups to offer cheaper prayer space. Indeed, particularly for RMIT’s city campus I imagine there is a good business opportunity in seeking custom from the many Muslims who now use Melbourne’s CBD.

Another win-win market solution.

Will uni students have to learn about Indigenous culture?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 16 Comments

One of the less remarked-on sections of the Bradley report claimed that

it is critical that Indigenous knowledge is recognised as an important, unique element of higher education, contributing economic productivity by equipping graduates with the capacity to work across Australian society and in particular with Indigenous communities.

Arguments for incorporation of Indigenous knowledge go beyond the provision of Indigenous-specific courses to embedding Indigenous cultural competency into the curriculum to ensure that all graduates have a good understanding of Indigenous culture.

As this was a ‘finding’ rather than a ‘recommendation’, most readers were probably content to take it as a necessary, but empty, gesture to the hurt felt by the Indigenous Australians. After all, only a tiny proportion of graduates will ever work in contexts where knowledge of Indigenous people – let alone ‘Indigenous knowledge’ – will be useful, and it would be far more efficient to pick it up as needed than to build it into unrelated courses.

But now the Indigenous Higher Education Advisory Council is, according to the SMH, taking it a step further and proposing that

ALL university students and staff will be required to learn about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture under proposals to be considered by the Federal Government.

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