Budget fails education while addressing rural doctor crisis
9 May 2000
For the second year running the Government has indicated that they will produce an education friendly budget and for the second year running they have failed.
\"This budget does nothing to address the decline in priority attached to higher education in Australia\", said Dr Carolyn Allport, NTEU National President. \"Over the last decade higher education funding has fallen from 1.1% of GDP to just 0.8% of GDP. Addressing these problems requires a fundamental re-think of priorities, not just targeted Health initiatives and funding to prevent projected declines.
\"The only funding announcements for education in this budget either fill holes in the research forward estimates or are initiatives funded by the Health Department to address the shortage of doctors in regional Australia. The additional $62.9m over 3 years for the Strategic Partnerships with Industry Research and Training (SPIRT) does little more than avert the decline projected in the forward estimates. In reality, there is only $4m p/a in additional funds over and above existing levels. This is the money for the Research Infrastructure Equipment and Facilities (REIF) Scheme.
\"This budget does nothing to address the fundamental problems facing education at a time when everyone, including the Minister, agrees that something must be done. There are no winners from a budget which ignores the funding crisis in our universities and allows quality and access in our universities to further decline.
\"Only last October Minister Kemp went to Cabinet and explained that funding of universities was at crisis point. Seven months later the Treasurer has presented a budget which ignores the problem and allows the slide to continue.
\"Against any objective criteria this Budget must be failed. It does nothing to address the problems posed by repeated rounds of enterprise bargaining with diminishing productivities left to be wrung out of the system. It does nothing to address the critical problems caused by this Government’s savage cuts to higher education.
\"While the initiatives targeted at the crisis in supply of doctors to rural and regional Australia are welcomed, no one could realistically argue that they address the funding crisis articulated by the Minister in his leaked Cabinet submission last October.\"