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Transcript
TRANSCRIPT OF DOORSTOP INTERVIEW,
ART GALLERY OF NEW SOUTH WALES,
SYDNEY
24 August 2005
E&OE:
DR NELSON:
Well the Labor Party and Mr Beazley have announced yet another backflip in terms of policy. Mr Beazley can’t seem to work out what policy he wants and when he wants it. But, as far as we are concerned, there will be a clear differentiation between the Howard Government and Mr Beazley when we go to the next federal election, and that is that Mr Beazley wants every student in the country, the richest or the poorest, to pay a compulsory flat tax when they turn up at university, whereas the Howard Government wants to give students choice. We believe this, that in the twenty-first century, that students ought to be free to decide what services they want to buy with their hard-earned money, what clubs they want to join, and also students these days are mature adults, they should be entitled to have every right to decide what they want to spend their money on.
Mr Beazley’s so-called new policy is nothing more than a mirage because I notice that one of the things that will still be funded by this compulsory student tax that you would pay under a Labor government when you turn up at university is that student representation and advocacy would be funded. We think that there are three reasons why students should have full voluntary membership of students unions when they turn up at university. The first is that they should be free to choose what organisation they will join and what services they will purchase. Secondly, we think that in this day and age there are a wide variety of businesses and other service providers who will be more than happy to provide services to students and staff at university campuses. And students are of course adults. They know exactly what they want to spend their money on and they shouldn’t be patronised, nor looked down on, whether by universities or Labor Party leaders.
JOURNALIST:
There’s no compromise as far as you are concerned? There is no way that the Government can compromise any way on it, wanting to get rid of the student unions?
DR NELSON:
Well, the Howard Government knows what it stands for and on three occasions we have presented legislation to the federal parliament that would allow Australian university students to make a choice as to whether they will join a student union, guild or association or not. We are determined to see this policy through. We think that students have a right to choose what they will spend their hard-earned money on, whether they want to join the beer drinking club, the toga club, political, cultural or sporting organisations. We also think that in the twenty-first century especially, whether they are in cities or in regional campuses, there are lots of services which can and will be provided, not only by students choosing to spend their money on them, but also by universities themselves supporting them.
Those who are arguing that Labor’s policy is in some way something to be supported need to answer one basic question. Why should a young bloke who is training to be a doctor, and playing rugby part-time, be supported with a scholarship, accommodation and a part-time job and be subsidised in the process by a single mother with two kids who is trying to get a university education. The Howard Government believes in choice. We don’t believe in flat taxes. People go to university to get an education. They shouldn’t be forced to pay up front fees for services and goods they neither want nor need.
JOURNALIST:
Just on that single mother with the two kids. Won’t child care suffer, particularly in regional unis, if there is no compulsory service fee?
DR NELSON:
Well, in fact, child care in Australian universities is subsidised by the union fee in only one quarter of cases, and in half of the cases where child care is subsidised it’s actually more expensive than un-subsidised child care. You only have to look, for example, in Sydney at the Magic Pudding Child Care Centre at UTS. The students are subsidising child care for staff to the tune of $3 a day, and further to that if you go around the corner to Ultimo you will pay the same price in an unsubsidised child care place, or you can get it cheaper at Darling Harbour. The reality is that what’s happening in child care on Australian university campuses is that up to 30,000 students apparently have to pay a compulsory up-front student fee, a flat tax, and then apparently the subsidised child care for staff as well as students, when in many cases the unsubsidised child care on-campus and off-campus is cheaper than that they are subsidising.
JOURNALIST:
So Brendan, what you are saying is that in universities subsidised child care is more expensive, yet Government subsidies for child care which are being announced by your Government don’t make child care more expensive?
DR NELSON:
We have a University of New South Wales study of child care of eight of the largest universities in Australia. We know from that study, in only one quarter of the cases is the child care is actually subsidised, and in half of the cases where it’s subsidised by union fees, the places are taken up by staff, and it’s actually dearer than unsubsidised child care. The Australian Government is providing several billion dollars in child care subsidies to working Australian right across the country. University students access those child care subsidies along with every other Australian, and in the twenty-first century, why should students pay federal taxes, state taxes, local government taxes, and then have to pay another tax when they turn up at university just because they want to get an education? Fifteen percent of Australian university students have to pay a compulsory up-front charge, which is also Mr Beazley’s plan, and yet they never set foot on the campus because they are studying by computers on distance learning.
JOURNALIST:
(Inaudible)
DR NELSON:
Well, the Australian Government announced last year a $30 million program for values to be formally taught in every Australian schools including the thirty Islamic schools throughout Australia. I have sent to every school in the country the National Values Framework and the nine key values: responsibility, care for one another, tolerance, understanding, fair go, doing your best – a whole range of values, and over the top of it I have superimposed Simpson and his Donkey as an example of what is at the heart of our national sense of emerging identity. We are also going to be providing funding to all Australian schools to actually sit down with their parents, their teachers and their broader community and talk about the values they teach, how are teachers going to actually reflect the values we want taught in Australian schools, and more specifically, I will be meeting very shortly the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils and I will be discussing with them how we can formally develop programs to ensure that not just in Islamic private schools, but also in government schools, we make sure that all children and Australian Islamic children fully understand Australian history, its culture, its values. We believe in giving every person a fair go. We don’t care where people come from; we don’t mind what religion they’ve got. But what we want them to do is to commit to the Australian Constitution, Australian rule of law, and basically if people don’t want to be Australians and they don’t want to live by Australian values and understand them, well they can basically clear off.
JOURNALIST:
(Inaudible)
DR NELSON:
As far as I am concerned, I think that the average Australian welcomes people who come from all countries throughout the world. In doing so, we don’t mind where people come from; we don’t mind what their religion is or what their particular view of the world is. But if you want to be an Australian, if you want to raise your children in Australia, we fully expect those children to be taught and to accept Australian values and beliefs. We want them to understand our history and our culture, the extent to which we believe in mateship and giving another person a hand up and a fair go, and basically if people don’t want to support and accept and adopt and teach Australian values then they should clear off.
JOURNALIST:
How much of an impact on values can Muslim schools have? For example, the mosques that they attend and obviously not all Muslims would go to Islamic schools.
DR NELSON:
Well, all schools are about teaching children how to read, write, count and communicate and teaching kids how to learn. But education is also about building character, and the virtues that inform character must be taught in all Australian schools. They need to be explicit. It is a requirement of the Australian Government funding that not only will every school fly the Australian flag, but it will prominently display the National Framework for Values Education, superimposed over which is a silhouette of Simpson and his Donkey, which is at the heart of our sense of national emerging identity. And what’s important in the end is that we all love people that are talented, it doesn’t matter what school our kids go to, but in the end it is character that really counts. And the Islamic Council and the Islamic schools have been working very hard to teach very good values for their children. We want to make sure that not just those schools, but all schools that educate Australian children including Islamic children are focused on Australian values to make sure that – it’s not just the students but also the teachers – fully understand our values, our belief and the way they relate to one another and see our place in the world.
JOURNALIST:
(Inaudible)
DR NELSON:
Well in fact Simpson, which is part myth and part truth, is about an unarmed man with a donkey who over some days rescued a number of injured and wounded men. He was unarmed and he represents everything at the heart of what it means to be Australian. Simpson was a man who was prepared to put the interests and welfare of other human beings ahead of his own at the risk of his own life, which ultimately he lost. That it occurred in a war context is less important than the fact that, in the end, all of the major religions throughout the world, and certainly the Australian ethos is all about helping your mate, helping another person, being prepared to take a risk, even if that risk extends to your own life. And I would like to think that in every school in Australia that every day that Australian children are being taught, as they are at home, about the importance of helping other people. Because if we lose sight of what Simpson and his Donkey represent then we will lose the direction of the country, and I make no apology for making sure that over the top of the National Values Framework and the nine key values that will be taught in Australian schools, that we have Simpson and his Donkey.
JOURNALIST:
Just in regard to the Victorian Premier saying that he won’t rank students against their class mates when implementing the new plain language reports, will that jeopardise their access to the funding?
DR NELSON:
Well the Victorian Government is putting at risk $600 million a year of Australian Government funding for its schools. We made it very clear almost two years ago, we put in the legislation late last year, that every school that receives funding from the Australian Government will report to parents in plain language – A,B,C,D and E - and in addition to that, as parents, we want to know how our kids are going, not only compared to the national benchmark, or indeed how they are going across the state, we want know how our kids are going in relation to other kids in the class. To use the modern educational jargon, Steve Bracks is ‘working towards’ the right type of report card. He’s going to allow parents to be told whether their kids are ranked A,B,C,D or E, and the Victorian Government needs to know that it will tell parents how there children are going in relation to other children, both across the state and relation to their own class.
In the end someone has got to be in the bottom 25 percent of the class, but if my son is there he is more likely to be there because he’s got a problem, and as a parent I want to know about it. We are saying to parents that if you don’t want to receive a plain language report card about your child’s progress, you can sign an exemption form and you don’t have to be told how your child is going in relation to other kids in the class. But we are sick and tired of meaningless, jargonistic, language-neutered reports that tell us absolutely nothing about the real progress of our children in schooling. Most parents do want to know how their kids are going in relation to other kids in the class and I think that we say to the Victorian Government, put it into the public arena in Victoria, let’s find what parents across the state of Victoria actually think and what they want.
I am quite confident that most parents want some idea how their kids are going in relation to other kids in the class. This is a condition of school funding. It’s legislated. We are determined to drive national consistency, higher standards, particularly in literacy and numeracy, and plain language reporting to parents about how their kids are going. Mr Bracks is currently at a C+. He is giving us A,B,C,D and E. If he wants to be an A and get the full marks from the Australian Government, he will tell parents how their kids in Victoria are going in relation to other kids in the rest of the class. The real world is about people knowing how they are going in relation to others. Why should schools be protected from what is happening in everyday life?
[ends]
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