Some protection is essential

Neither is excessive vocational education. For example, pre-employment education for nursing is both excessive and probably counter-productive. Years ago, young people could start productive work as trainee nurses at aged seventeen and get adequate education in their duties throughout the next few years. I have no objection to some university education for experienced supervising nurses who have completed, say, three earlier years in a hospital. But, that time in the hospitals could have included about 200 days per year of useful work and regular days off for off-the-job education and training.

Teacher training for early school years suffers from a similar problem. Years ago, after leaving high school at 16-17 years of age, a person with two years of teacher training was considered fit to ease into full time teaching up to at least primary level. I was educated by such teachers and went on to become competently educated in my field of science and technology. Now such teachers have an extra year at high school followed by about 28 weeks per year of university education, for up to four years. They also end up with a substantial HECS account just at about the time they are contemplating marriage, possibly starting a family, and buying a home.

An educated citizen, and shouldn't all citizens have a sound basic education, needs a solid grounding in understanding maths, language, science and civic matters. They need to be able to competently develop their ability to collect and assess evidence and be able to think clearly.

Recently, Mike Carlton in his weekly Saturday Herald column drew attention to what happened to the citizens of Nauru once the only natural resource of their island was exhausted. There, the citizens have basically returned to subsistence. They had attempted to exchange their phosphate rock for holdings of foreign assets, but those assets have now disappeared. The situation would not be quite so bad for Australia, but near exhaustion of our non-agricultural resources will still be close to disastrous.

I recall hearing Sir James Killen, in the Whitlam era, being very critical of a proposal for a federal public interest committee/authority, to be charged with contemplating and reporting on future economic development possibilities. Sir James was witty then, but wrong, and we certainly need such an authority now.

I also recall writing nearly forty years ago, in a paper on tariffs and trade at the Australian Administrative Staff College, Mt Elisa, that many conservatives still believe that the proper role for the working class is, as "boundary riders on the squatters fences'," or as the downstairs servants in an upstairs/downstairs economy. They never seem to realise that without an educated, reasonably well-paid workforce, the market for their goods and services is seriously curtailed and the society is unjust and deficient. Wide income spreads have a similar effect.

The Australian Government needs to give much more thought to the probable future outcome of present mining and manufacturing policies.It urgently needs to educate citizens in the need for change, even as it sets about initiating it. To assume that completely free trade is feasible, and that protection is always undesirable, is to believe that all other governments and all manufacturers and agents in other countries are wedded to and willing to adhere to those concepts. They aren't, and never will be, so therefore the assumptions are asinine.