Page 346 - Week 03 - Thursday, 1 June 1989
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We have these problems. They cannot be ignored; they have to be considered. Indeed, the CAEs had to be re-evaluated. After some 20 or so years it was clear that their role had to be redefined. We knew some time ago that we needed them because the universities were not providing that high level of vocational training that the nation needed; they were not proving to be the best that we wanted.
I do not have research staff available to me. I learnt of this motion only this morning. I have a notion that we spend something like $3 billion a year on tertiary education. Does anybody want to say that the Government does not have the right to say to tertiary institutions that there are certain paths that they ought to be considering? Of course it does.
We allocate to our governments, along with all sorts of other matters, the right to assess national needs. Few national needs are more important than those surrounding the tertiary institutions. The Government has to guard its expenditure, and $3 billion a year is a big reason for action such as it took.
There are, of course, very sensitive and very critical questions to be answered because the tertiary institutions have valuable traditional roles. We must never get away from them, and there is a balance to be established. I do not know the clear answer to that - nobody ever will - but we have to be very careful about what we do with these very important institutions.
I will not go into any sort of examination of what tertiary institutions are about, other than to say three things. First and foremost, tertiary institutions are there for the students they serve and for the personal worth of education to the student. Always the primary factor behind any level of education is the personal worth of the education to the student. We also have to consider the staff and the quality of staff at a tertiary institution. It is the combination of staff and students that brings out the excellence in universities and their courses and the standard of the student body as it graduates. These are important factors; these are the critical factors in which I am sure Dr Kinloch is intimately knowledgeable.
In this Assembly I will address the matter very closely in relation to one issue because I have been elected to do that - that is, what is in it for the ACT community, as a body, and for the individuals whom we send to those institutions. That is now my role. If, in this proposed committee and subsequently, I concentrate on that issue I am sure people will understand that it is not because I am unaware of the very important features of universities but that I have been elected to this body to represent the interests of the ACT, and I will do that on this proposed committee. What is in it for us? That is the role that I will be taking on this proposed committee.
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