Question time goes OK

(1)

I’ve now asked Kevin Rudd three questions at press conferences, and on each occasion it’s gone a little better.

The first question I asked was on Monday, and the disastrous consequences of this question have already been outlined in this blog previously.

On Tuesday, I decided to try again. This time I managed to spit the question out without too much trouble. But I made the error of saying “Mr Howard” instead of “Mr Rudd” when yelling for Rudd’s attention.

I actually think this mistake was the only reason I got selected to ask a question. Rudd was so surprised to hear the Prime Minster’s name booming above the voices of all the other journalists that he looked at me in surprise – giving me an opening to talk.

Today, I went for my third attempt.

I wanted to ask Rudd for more specific details about his “education revolution”. All year he has condemned the Federal Government for failing to invest in Australia’s tertiary education. He says Australia was the only OECD country to reduce spending for universities in the last decade.

But Rudd’s “education revolution” – at least at the moment – doesn’t increase university capital spending. It doubles scholarship numbers. It reduces HECS fees for maths and science degrees. But what about lowering tutorial numbers? Increasing the number of academics? Investing in new infrastructure? Reducing the number of full-fee places?

The “education revolution” has left all of these issues behind.

So I decided to ask Rudd about this concern in the quickest and best formulated way I could think of at the time. It took me 20 minutes of yelling before I was noticed.

Here, I provide my question and Rudd’s answers in their entirety because I think it gives an interesting display of how Rudd avoids answering sticky questions:

Nick: “Mr Rudd, you keep saying that Mr Howard has disinvested in tertiary education. Apart from scholarships and halving HECS for science, what are you investing in tertiary education?”

(Note that I made a specific reference to the fact that I didn’t need outlines about scholarships or HECS in any answer).

Rudd: “Well if you look at the commitment we’ve made to maths and science – that’s a very expensive commitment. Halving HECS for those that study maths and science at university – the figure I have in mind is about $400 million – that’s not an inexpensive undertaking.”

“If you look at our commitment also when it comes to the doubling of the number of undergraduate scholarships to 88,000, and doubling the number of postgraduate scholarships to something around 10,000, and creating for the first time 1000 mid-career fellowships at about $140,000 each - these are big investments in themselves and contribute significantly to the investment that our universities need in the future.”

(Rudd then gives a little glimmer of hope that more might be done).

Rudd: “As I said in my speech yesterday, changing this government’s disinvestment in education over night is really hard. But I am determined to turn the corner, and those policies we put out yesterday, and we have put out previously when it comes to our universities, I believe, clearly signal the way we want to go….. and I’ve got to run.”

(With that, Rudd quickly left the press conference).

I don’t know what to make of Rudd’s answer. To me it suggests that there are no more promises in this election campaign for universities. But, once elected, perhaps there will be more funding in future budgets.

It would have been nice to get specifics though.