University of Australia Online

• Strengthening our manufacturing and service industries through the application of new technologies and the re-skilling of the workforce;
• Encouraging innovation in emerging fields such as biotechnology, information technology, and green technologies;
• Encouraging every school – public as well as private – to become a centre of excellence;
• Having a world-class university system that attracts the world's leading researchers and teachers;
• Establishing leading-edge telecommunications, transport and research infrastructure;
• And last, but by no means least, a Knowledge Nation will mean helping all of our citizens to improve their skills and gain a secure and well-paid job through properly-funded vocational education and lifelong-learning programs.

This last point is crucial.

The Knowledge Nation is not just about universities and lab coats, it is just as much about schools, apprenticeships and the factory floor. It is about the way we do business; address our environmental needs; respond to our social problems.

This is what Mr Howard just can't seem to grasp. He only sees the Knowledge Nation agenda as a political threat to be neutralised, not as I do as a fundamental re-orientation of national priorities.

In the Knowledge Nation, education will have to start earlier in life, continue throughout life, and be of a higher quality than ever before.

Of course Barry Jones recognised this 20 years ago in his prophetic bestseller, Sleepers Wake, when he wrote that Australia needed to "create an open university … in which people of all ages can study for degrees at home, in their own time, using television and other modern techniques". Today we can use the Internet and digital communications to make Barry's dream a reality.