The principal beneficial legacy of the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) was the provision of state aid to non-government schools. The benefits of this policy outcome have been profoundly positive because private education became affordable to millions of Australians and pressure was therefore was taken off the state schools sector because government resources could consequently be more efficiently allocated to it.
Ironically a negative aspect of the Split was that the Australian Labor Party (ALP), which had been the great advocate of non-government funding for reasons of socio-economic equity, shifted with elements within that party becoming strident opponents. As is usually the case when the left of the ALP have ascendancy in relation to social policy, the Liberals move into the void by appropriating traditional Labor policy to reap the electoral benefits.
The Hawke ALP federal government (1983 to 1991) demonstrated its maturity and probable longevity in office when Prime Minister Hawke courageously stared down an early attempt following his election to office by the Socialist Left (SL) of the ALP to introduce a ‘hit list’ for the top Australian private schools. The ‘hit list’ targeted private schools which were to have government funding cut. The Hawke government rejected this specific policy as the politics of class envy.
The fact that a class approach to education is still to be fully excised from the ALP was demonstrated by the ill-fated Mark Latham. As federal ALP leader (2003 to 2005) Latham revived a ‘hit list approach’ to education by again targeting private schools which would have their funding cut even though there was no discernable benefit to the state school sector.
The new Rudd-led federal ALP was able to distinguish itself from the Howard coalition government by promising during the 2007 election campaign that every secondary school would have computers installed and there would be increased focus on improving the quality of education through increased resource allocation. From a social democratic perspective, a stronger government focus on improving education is to be welcomed and the new federal education minister and SL Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard is to be given the benefit of the doubt.
However the SL in Victoria in the late 1980s wreaked havoc on secondary education in the state of Victoria. Under Joan Kirner, the SL Minister for Education (1988 to 1990) and Victorian Premier (1990 to 1992), a system of senior secondary education was devised called the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE). Under the VCE, students were entitled to pass on the basis that they had merely submitted work! The VCE rejected the inherent value of academic grading on the basis that it was hierarchical. The ALP on its return to office in Victoria in 1999 did not attempt to revive the discredited VCE in its previous form.
Social Action Australia’s focus on education will not be confined to primary and secondary education. Government policies in relation to Higher Education will also be scrutinized. The previous ALP federal government’s university policies between 1983 and 1996 were a mixed bag. The centralization of education under the ALP and the move toward a user pays system of education threatened the academic independence of universities.
During this period smaller higher education institutions were encouraged to amalgamate with larger institutions under the Dawkins Plan. Prescriptive guidelines were also put in place concerning education benchmarks which had to be achieved. A Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) was introduced in 1989 which stipulated that university graduates would have to contribute to pay for the cost of their education when they reached a certain tax threshold.
A cynical perspective developed that an objective of the university amalgamation process was to expand the reach of HECS as a revenue raising exercise. However, the expansion of the university sector did open up opportunities for thousands of Australian students to enter the higher education sector and to expand higher research in Australia. There were new universities which made a positive contribution to research in Australia that might not otherwise have been made. A prime example of this was the advances in bio-technology made by the Werribee campus of the Victoria University of Technology (VUT) in the 1990s.
In relation to industry training apprenticeships the influence of former communists within the Australian union movement on federal government policy concerning technical education was detrimental. Laurie Carmichael, a one time CPA stalwart and a senior official in the 1980s with the Australian Council of Trade Union (ACTU) used his influence with the ALP federal government to help formulate an approach to apprentice training called ‘competencies’.
The so-called competencies approach focused on providing training to apprentices on a generalized level at the expense of specific craft skill formation. The competencies approach was supportive of the union amalgamation policy because there was a focus on Australian employment being organised along industry lines. The upshot of the move away from a craft approach to technical training is the serious skill shortage in the trades sector of the Australian economy. This current skills shortage has been due to Technical and Further Education (TAFE) colleges being inadequately resourced and training programmes not being structured to provide a craft-centred approach to apprenticeship training.
The undermining of the TAFE education sector was also reflective of the expansion of higher education in Australia because university education was opened up to students who might otherwise have gone into the TAFE sector. The expansion of Australia’s higher education sector also enabled thousands of fee paying overseas students to receive an education and expand the revenue base of the higher education system. An interesting outcome of this development in terms of campus student politics has been the struggle between the National Liaison Committee (NLC) and the National Overseas Students Council of Australia (NOSCA) to represent the interests of overseas students. The NLC is orientated toward securing improved services and representation for overseas students. NOSCA by contrast has adopted a more ideological approach toward issues in the Australian higher education system.
The divide between the NLC and NOSCA is a subset of Australian student campus politics. There a myriad of student political factions in Australia with the extremes encompassing Marxist groups on the Left and Liberal Party students on the Right advocating the effective abolition of student representation though a policy called Voluntary Student Unionism (VSU). Under VSU, student associations are denied the right to receive money from student levies.
Despite denials of the previous Liberal Party governments, VSU was probably aimed at denying left-wing students the capacity to utilize resources and gain valuable training. While this objective may have its laudable aspects, it has also had the impact of undercutting vital student services and representation while denying students of the opportunity to partake in extra curricular activities such as clubs and societies. Furthermore VSU has ironically denied the Liberal Party a generation of able activists because they have eschewed positive involvement in student representation.
The tragedy of foregone political student skill is an outcome which social democrats should avoid. It is often forgotten that far left wing students such as Albert Langer at Melbourne’s Monash University were courageously and effectively opposed by the student wing of the DLP. The eventual successor to the DLP student clubs, the Democratic Clubs, also fulfilled a vital role in fighting the anti-Semitic extremism of the Australian Union of Students (AUS), a student umbrella organisation, in the 1980s.
The DLP/Democratic Clubs also fulfilled a stellar role in defending academic freedom and helping to facilitate social democratic political formation on the part of students belonging to the right of the ALP. Australia’s foremost social democratic philosopher was Dr. Frank Knopfelmacher (1923 to 1995) who was a lecturer at Melbourne University. Dr. Knopfelmacher’s discipline was psychology but he also provided hundreds of students who joined the social democratic Melbourne Labor University Club with political formation in how to effectively combat ideologies which underpin totalitarianism.
If social democracy is to survive in Australia, then the university sector as an arena for education and political formation must not be abandoned. The onset of trade union amalgamation has probably extinguished the potential for social democratic formation by running election tickets to contest union elections, but this is not the case in regard to university campuses. For the sake of undertaking social action to serve the interests of students and academic freedom, social democratic formation amongst university students must not be abandoned.