SCIENCE SLASHED AGAIN BY LABOR
29-November-2011
Despite an alarming decline in the number of Australian tertiary student enrolments in science and mathematics, the Gillard Government has arrogantly rammed through HECS increases which will only add to lower student demand for these critical disciplines.
Today’s changes represent yet more broken promises to Australia’s science community from a Government that has utterly lost its way.
Commitments to slash university fees for science students and to boost participation to address what it described as a “chronic shortage” featured repeatedly as key planks of Labor policy on its election to government. But they have now simply been dumped, and dropped like a hot potato in the lap of the Chief Scientist to fix instead.
The announcement by the Minister for Tertiary Education, Chris Evans, today was that the Government would be reinstating Band 2 HECS fees from 1 January 2013. This flies in the face of findings made earlier in the year by the Group of Eight universities (Go8) which identified maths and science enrolments as being dangerously low.
It’s clearer by the day that Labor does not have any serious interest in Australian science.
Under Kim Carr’s total lack of direction, Labor’s history of decision-making in this area of his portfolio has already included:
· shunning (and the early resignation) of a Chief Scientist;
· censorship of a CSIRO scientist’s research on emissions trading;
· the attempted Ministerial vetting of media releases of science agencies such as CSIRO, ANSTO and AIMS;
· termination of the decade-long International Science Linkages program (even though he farcically attempted to deny this at a Senate Estimates hearing);
· tens of millions of dollars of cuts to Australia’s Cooperative Research Centres; and
· abolition of a number of science education programs, followed by further threats to future funding of other school programs – including the Australian Mathematics and Science Olympiads and International Informatics Olympiad.
After today’s announcement, it’s obvious that a terrible situation is only getting worse.