Jason Clare brilliantly played the higher education politics in his first term. His second term challenge is to hand-pass the hard stuff and stick to productivity policy. He won’t achieve it.
Mr Clare made universities a non-issue in the first term of the Albanese Government. He utterly discredited many university lobbyists by hammering away at their members’ failings to protect students from harassers on campus and pay staff what they are owed. He starved the Greens of oxygen by talking up increasing low-SES access to study, and by cutting graduate debt. And he occupied the high ground on everything from anti-Semitism on campus to teacher education, reducing the Opposition to culture-warring appeals to its base.
Above all, he sold education as a generator of social mobility and an engine of economic growth which would fire up once his answer to all policy problems, the Australian Tertiary Education Commission, was operating.
Which is about to happen. ATEC’s interim (likely to be permanent) leadership is in-place, its original report provided a ready-to-go workplan. Empowering legislation has to happen soon, so it can start, as intended in July.
There is a heap for ATEC to do. The university funding model the government inherited from the Liberals is way more of a mess than charging arts undergraduates top whack for fees. Even there, finding ways to reducing fees for overtaxed humanities courses without adding to the deficit and upsetting other discipline lobbies will be a huge political problem.
ATEC needs to address allocating EFTSL across the system through negotiations with each university, which the disgruntled will find proxies to politicise.
Above all the Commission needs a teaching model that breaks down the barriers between training and higher education. This is good policy but it will quickly become political when universities finally realise their turf is being occupied.
And when ATEC can’t keep the arguments in-house, Mr Clare will have to get involved and involved and involved.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers signals that improving national productivity is on the government’s second-term agenda, which is a natural for Mr Clare who is great at painting optimistic big-pictures – he could spend three years working on schools, where a bunch of productivity-cutting skills problems start. He is going to struggle to find the time.
But there is one policy area which should not delay him. Ironically, it is just about the only portfolio area where he lost last term – international education. The bureaucracy let him down badly on ways to cut student numbers, giving universities a case to complain. And the government seemed surprised when the Opposition did what Oppositions do by blocking a quota system the electorate would wear.
It will not happen this time, now Mr Clare has expert advice in-house, with the appointment of Julian Hill as assistant minister for international education.
Mr Hill is an industry expert, head of the Victorian Government’s policy team before entering parliament. He knows the policy and the politics of the industry backwards, demonstrated by his performance on the recent parliamentary inquiry on tourism and international education. He need take no nonsense from industry lobbies and he will create time for Mr Clare to focus on the big policy picture – or be bogged down in arguments with university lobbies. Which it is will depend on ATEC.
Meanwhile, Andrew Giles will have comparatively plain sailing in the TAFE-sphere, with a wallet full of fee-free course vouchers and years of work expected to begin to get VET and HE to play nicely together (or ‘harmonise’ to use the Accord’s preferred euphemism).
