The not-quite-nothing higher education budget

~ Andrew Norton ~ 5 Comments

Last night’s budget is widely perceived as having delivered nothing for higher education. But if DEEWR’s portfolio budget statements are compared to last year’s, we can see that this isn’t quite true.

The relaxation of rules on how many students can be enrolled on full government funding rates is having more of an effect than the government anticipated last year. The extra students will cost the taxpayer $600 million more over the next three years than originally forecast. HELP lending will go up even more, with an extra $650 million in outlays if current predictions are right (this includes people borrowing full fees under FEE-HELP, as well as the HECS-HELP money associated with more Commonwealth-supported students).

Reaction has been neutral to negative because apart from full-fee students facilitated by FEE-HELP this money doesn’t solve the problems universities face of costs increasing more quickly than revenues. The would-be students who have missed out in the past due to quotas on university enrolments have never had much of a political voice, and so can neither praise nor condemn government policy on this matter. Continue reading “The not-quite-nothing higher education budget” →

Mixed views on mining taxes

~ Andrew Norton ~ 4 Comments

I had thought that the proposed resource super profits tax might be a political winner for the government, in a soak the rich sort of way. But this morning’s Nielsen poll reported in the Fairfax broadsheets suggested rather lukewarm support:

In a question which asked ‘Do you support or oppose a tax on the ‘super profits’ of mining companies?’, 47% were against and 44% were in favour. In this poll support for the ‘big new tax’ on shareholders in mining companies remains 14 percentage points behind support for the ‘big new new tax’ on people without dependent children and higher-income earners, aka the ETS. As is often the case, closely linking a tax to something the public supports helps it politically.

However Essential Research found another 8% of the electorate in favour of ‘higher taxes on the profits of large mining companies’, 52% approve, 34% disapprove, with a question that seems less framed to get a positive response than Nielsen’s (without the implication that there is something unfair about ‘super profits’). Perhaps a preceding statement about the Henry review gave the proposal some added credibility.

Political labels to love and hate

~ Andrew Norton ~ 12 Comments

The Pew Research Centre has conducted a survey on what the American public thinks of various labels.

37% negative reaction to the term ‘capitalism’ seems rather high for the US, even allowing for the current down in the US economy. But we should not forget the number one empirical finding of global public opinion research, that the public knows very little about politics: Continue reading “Political labels to love and hate” →

Greg Sheridan – Deakin lecture, University of Melbourne 19 May

~ Andrew Norton ~ 3 Comments

Somewhat ironically, given my views on the ‘Australian Settlement’, I am a member of the Alfred Deakin Lecture Trust.

This year the lecture is being given by The Australian‘s Greg Sheridan.

The title is ‘The Death of Multilateralism and the Crisis of Global Goverance’.

It’s free and open to the public.

Location: JH Mitchell Theatre,
Richard Berry Building,
University of Melbourne
(campus map here)
Date: Wednesday, 19 May 2010
Time: 6.30pm

ATO unable to HELP

~ Andrew Norton ~ 18 Comments

I’ve spent part of my long-service leave doing a subject through Open Universities Australia. But as well as learning more about statistics, I thought I could use my enrolment to make a point.

Though lending students money for their fees on an income-contingent basis is a good idea, as I have complained before the HELP scheme is now too complex, anomaly-ridden, and expensive for taxpayers.

The particular absurdity I wanted to highlight was that if you do a subject through Open Universities Australia, there is no charge to borrow money under FEE-HELP (students at private providers and TAFEs pay a 20% surcharge). But OUA students still get a 10% bonus on any repayments they make.

I thought I would be able to would be able to take out the FEE-HELP loan, and using the bonus clear my approximately $900 in debt for about $820. I’d then write a newspaper article criticising this free money scheme and call for it to be fixed.

As it turns out, I haven’t been able to do this. Continue reading “ATO unable to HELP” →

GST tax and spend

~ Andrew Norton ~ 13 Comments

On the day the ABS’s annual taxation statistics showed a rare drop in annual average tax paid, Essential Research released a survey which found that 61% of us think that Australians pay too much tax, while only 4% say we pay too little tax.

Tax surveys have a history of being sensitive to the question asked. Another question in this Essential Research survey asked if the respondents were prepared to pay more GST for a series of specific programs. The answers to this question contradicted the answers to the first.

On all five items suggested more than 4% impliedly said we paid too little tax, given that 42% would pay more GST if the money was spent on health and hospitals, 38% said yes to aged pensions, 28% to infrastructure such as roads and railways, 20% to paying off the national debt, and 11% to create a foreign investment fund. And so much for the idea that the GST is to fund the states, too. Continue reading “GST tax and spend” →

Classical liberalism and bills of rights

~ Andrew Norton ~ 24 Comments

Andrew Carr asks why, as a classical liberal, I do not support a bill of rights. My political identity survey last year found that among classical liberals only about a third supported a bill of rights, so on this I am not an outlier.

The apparent incongruity is that classical liberals support individual freedom, but oppose a measure that could protect freedom from ‘big government’ or the ‘tyranny of the majority’.

Part of the answer is that virtually all classical liberals believe in democracy as well. Though much has been made of the ‘tensions’ between liberalism and democracy, which obviously can occur, there are also many parallels.

Both give significant weight to the preferences and knowledge of ordinary individual citizens, who ajudicate on the choices offered to them – by parties and candidates in the political sphere, by firms in the economic sphere, and by varying traditions and associations in the cultural sphere. Continue reading “Classical liberalism and bills of rights” →

Academics in politics

~ Andrew Norton ~ 40 Comments

Andrew Leigh has announced that he has won pre-selection for the safe Labor seat of Fraser. He’ll be in the House of Representatives before Christmas.

Of course Andrew is an outstanding candidate, but this is a big loss to Australian social science. He’s always been exceptionally productive, and in his late thirties has a publication record that most academics would be happy to retire with. Perhaps that’s why he is moving on to something new, but it’s hard to imagine that the steady stream of interesting papers and articles was about to hit an intellectual drought.

I can well understand the temptations of politics. While I think a fair assessment is that Australian politicians have done reasonably well by world standards, there is so much that could be done so much better. The kind of empirical social science Andrew has done in his academic career can tell us a lot about what policies are likely to work, and which are likely to fail or achieve too little at too high a cost. Someone with Andrew’s background can provide valuable input into the policy process.

The question is whether someone like Andrew, whose demonstrated major skills are academic research and analysis, can do more good inside or outside of party politics. Continue reading “Academics in politics” →

Constitutional rights and ‘divisive’ issues

~ Andrew Norton ~ 13 Comments

Some bloggers were unimpressed with this justification from Attorney-General Robert McClelland for not proposing a charter of rights:

Let me say at the outset, that a legislative charter of rights is not included in the Framework as the Government believes that the enhancement of human rights should be done in a way that, as far as possible, unites rather than divides our community. [emphasis added]

Guy Beres thought that the ‘absence of any legal bedrock on human rights in Australia is a fairly considerable source of division and uncertainty’. Kim at LR agreed.

The charter itself would have been within the usual range of ‘divisive’ issues, ie those issues on which significant opposing groups both feel strongly. It would have flared for a while, but probably not have entrenched significant on-going conflicts or resentments. The losing side would have had a chance to present its full case, and would have been left with an opportunity to raise the issue again in the future.

But presuming that the charter was just the first step (or the first part of the slide down the slippery slope, depending on your perspective) towards constitutional rights protection then I do think it has significant implications for the way we handle ‘divisive’ issues. Continue reading “Constitutional rights and ‘divisive’ issues” →

Are your uni days the best of your life?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 7 Comments

The SMH yesterday wrote up this report which, as many other analyses have, finds graduates are not happier than other people (though the research is mixed on this; some studies do find a benefit, and in the 2007 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes sample graduates are happier).

Education and happiness in the school-to-work transition by Curtin University’s Michael Dockery is especially interesting on the question of graduates and happiness because it uses the the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY), which tracks the same individuals over time. They start when the respondents are in Year 9 and finish when they are in their mid-20s. This lets us see happiness over time and the possible effects of changing circumstances.

Happiness relative to mean, by educational attainment

Source: Figure 2(b) in Education and happiness in the school-to-work transition, published by NCVER

What this shows is that people who will eventually get undergraduate degrees start out with above average happiness and end up with slightly below average happiness. People who will eventually get postgraduate degrees are the happiest in 1997, but only average in 2006. By contrast, those who destined for lower qualifications are relatively unhappy in 1997 but happier (relatively, and in asbolute terms) in 2006.

Continue reading “Are your uni days the best of your life?” →