Is 'Following Close Behind' a policy that's really good enough?

The Senate committee tells us our universities are in crisis. "Rubbish," replies the Government, "your report is politically motivated as well as being un-Australian."

Our universities do graduate men and women of marked potential in research and academe. They invariably go overseas to further their training. The best will be offered positions at outstanding overseas institutions not to return. Were they to do so they would be faced with poor funding, inadequate facilities and at best a marginally stimulating intellectual climate.

Is this then the environment that is to produce the individuals who will create Australia's innovative culture and industries? Not very likely. Is this the environment that is to attract and keep the best of overseas intellects to assist in furthering Australia's future? Not too likely.

Who then are to be those individuals who will have the ability to comprehensively utilise the science and technologies to fuel our exports so that we can pay for those imports? And what will we provide in order to keep and attract them?

As competitors we have nations that are trade rivals because they produce goods and services more cheaply through using cheap labour.

As competitors we have nations that are trade rivals because they produce goods and services more cheaply through the use of highly efficient methods of production.

And finally there are nations which produce goods and services with which we cannot compete because we do not have the expertise.

One of the most important reasons we have remained internationally competitive is (1), i.e. the value of the Australian dollar has dropped significantly since 1996. The critical comparison is the Trade Weighted Index and which gives the lie to the assertion that the devaluation of the Australian dollar is merely the high US dollar.

Value of the Australian dollar versus the US$__ and the
Trade Weighted Index (TWI) __ since it was floated.
(Taken from the Reserve Bank's Nov. 2000 Report)

In certain primary industries Australia is an efficient producer. However, maintaining such efficiency requires increasingly more sophisticated technology which Australia must import to a major extent. As the dollar cheapens, that costs us more. And that is a downward spiral waiting to happen.

To implement productive efficiency (2) and to develop means to produce competitive technologically advanced goods and services (3) requires an educational infrastructure of top world standard, the point Professor Anderson made when promulgating the Australian Academy's recommendations prior to the Federal election in November. "Australia needs to invest in something it can be confident will build a better nation. Education means jobs for young people in knowledge-based industries. Science means innovation for those industries." All the Governmental protestations and obfuscations are not going to change that.

Were the Government to heed the call of the Australian Academy of Science and its fellow organisations immediately it would take us until 2008 at the earliest to catch up to the OECD mean. So far the government has paid scant heed and despite Rupert Murdoch's rapid-fire high-altitude strafing in October, the media have been markedly ho-hum. Over the past decades we've seen our waterways become increasingly polluted and overtaxed. The proportion of our arable land suffering increasing salinity is accelerating. Yet only recently has there been a glimmer of awareness by media, public and government that these are matters of serious national concern. Just how degraded do our universities need to become before the problem is recognised as having dire consequences for the nation. On the other hand, were it a matter of the petrol excise ...