Page 1054 - Week 06 - Thursday, 27 July 1989
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Now, I have been helped to that position because I think all of us have a strong interest in and commitment to higher education in this Territory. Dr Kinloch's interest obviously was as a former academic at that institution; mine as a graduate at the ANU; and Mr Wood's as a teacher. I cannot speak for the others, but for me there are two principal reasons why in my view the two main institutions we are talking about, the ANU and the CCAE, should move to some closer form of union.
The first, I think, is the realities created by the Dawkins white paper on education. The important point about that paper is not so much what is says or does not say about education but rather that it does create, by force of the fact that it is now established as a feature of Australian tertiary education, a new environment for education in Australia.
The Minister believes, for better or worse, that bigger is better. He believes that economies of scale will flow naturally from tying institutions together, even though in my view there is much evidence to suggest that in fact some small institutions can be just as efficient as, or even more efficient than, larger universities and colleges.
He has set down the requirement that institutions, universities and colleges with fewer than 8,000 full-time equivalent students will suffer some financial penalties and that institutions with fewer than 2,000 such students will suffer severe financial penalties. I want to quote from remarks by Senator Baden Teague in the Senate. Senator Teague is the Opposition chairman of the education committee. He said about these plans for new numbers in higher education:
These "black-magic" numbers of 8,000 and 2,000 have no meaning and justification. They are entirely arbitrary and as far as I can see have no sound economic...foundation.
I think that that is true and I think that the important thing is that, before our committee, there really was not a very strong effort made on the part of many of the witnesses, or perhaps any witnesses, to justify the rationale for that, and in particular to justify the rationale in respect of Canberra. No work seems to have been done that I can see on the rationale for the white paper's application to Canberra's institutions.
But that of course, Mr Speaker, is not the point. The point is, as I said, that a new environment has been created for education in the whole of Australia and we cannot pretend that that environment does not exist. Of course it exists. We have to do our best as an institution responsible for the ACT to ensure that that new environment does not prejudice the ANU and the CCAE in particular because they have not been provided with the means to cope with that new environment.
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