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Thinking Smart

Interview with Peter Lewis

With education a key priority, Labor's spokesman Michael Lee will emerge as a key player in the upcoming campaign.

	Michael Lee

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You are charged with implementing Kim Beazley's Knowledge Nation. What does it mean to you?

Education covers a very broad range of activities and our intention to make Australia a Knowledge Nation - everything from improving the quality of early childhood education; ensuring that our primary and secondary schools are providing a better start in life for young Australians; making sure that apprentices receive high quality training; making sure that existing workers have better access to opportunities to improve their skills; and also making sure that Australians have a chance to study and carry out research at university; and also having access to adult and community education opportunities.

Education covers such a broad area, there are many competing priorities but we will be making a number of commitments to demonstrate our intention to increase federal government investment in education and training and research over a decade, to really turn Australia into a Knowledge Nation.

What is the single, biggest challenge you think you face if you move into the Education portfolio?

There has been a lot of debate about school funding, and that has flared again in the last few days. The Labor Party is certainly determined to ensure that we make the Howard Government's school funding formula fairer by re-directing more than $100 million away from those very wealthy Category One schools, to capital works in public schools, and also improving the quality of teaching.

In some ways I think developing strategies that we can implement in cooperation with State Labor governments to improve the quality of teaching, is probably one of our highest priorities.

We are currently proposing to fund 1,000 new teacher scholarships each year to try to attract the best Year 12 students to a vocation of teaching. We are going to forgive the HECS payments that each of those scholarship holders would normally pay. A typical education graduate repays about $15,000 over ten years, so basically we will be forgiving the HECS debts for scholarship holders as long as they stay in the teaching profession. As long as they teach at a government or a non-government school. And that is one way that we are trying to attract the best people into teaching.

Every Year 12 student who goes on through with these scholarships to become an excellent teacher, it means that we will be providing the highest possible standard of education to kids in their classrooms for a 30 year period. It makes a tremendous difference - for every excellent teacher that enters a classroom.

We also intend to fund 10,000 development partnerships for existing teachers. It is not just about attracting the best new teachers, it is about also ensuring that we are investing in updating the professional skills of existing teachers.

When we put computers in cars we all knew we had to re-train the motor mechanics. When we put computers in classrooms we all thought - or all too often we assume that teachers will know by osmosis that just because you have a computer in the classroom teachers know automatically the best way to use those computers to improve the learning that is taking place in their classrooms. We need to be investing more through things like our professional development partnerships - make sure that our existing teachers have the opportunity to update their professional skills so that they have the opportunity to improve the learning experiences of their students.

Just on the funding formula, you have copped some flak for actually allowing the existing formula to go through the Senate. What is your defence of that decision?

In some ways we bogged down* on that one. But the short answer to that is that we sent requests from the Senate back to the House of Representatives on that Bill on more occasions than any other Bill since 1912. We did our best working with many of the public education lobby groups to put maximum pressure on the government to amend their Bill, but they didn't.

The reason they didn't was that they knew if no Bill passed then there would be no Federal government funding for any government or any non-government school in the country, and the Labor Party is in the business of doing the Education equivalent of blocking supply from the Federal government to not just Catholic schools; not just some of the smaller independent schools that don't have a lot of resources behind them. It would have also blocked the Federal government funding going to public schools, and that was something that no responsible Opposition could allow to take place.

We certainly made it clear at the time that we intended to, in government, address the massive increases that are flowing to the 58 Category One schools. They were the focus of our amendments in the Senate last year, and we committed last year, that in government we would re-direct that money, and we have re-affirmed that on many occasions during this year.

A Beazley Labor Government will re-direct those funding increases away from the Category One private schools into areas where we can make a much bigger difference. Into funding those new teacher scholarships, the professional development partnerships to re-skill existing teachers, and also to fund a $100 million capital works programme in public schools. We believe that is a much better way to spend those dollars, than to allow the more that $1 million a year per school funding increases to schools like Kings and Geelong Grammar.

In terms of tertiary education, one of the hallmarks of the Paul Keating era was the creation of new universities across the country. The other side of that coin of course is the TAFE system. What is your vision for reinvigorating TAFE?

Cheryl Kernot and I have had many discussions with people who are very concerned about the pressures that not just TAFE colleges, but some of the private sector providers have been placed under in recent days. The latest ANTA agreement - the latest funding agreement between the Federal government and the States, puts back some, but not all of the money that the Howard government has cut from investing in the national training system.

If Australia is to make sure that our people are properly trained to get the jobs of the future, we will be needing to invest more in training and re-training. We will not only need to make sure that apprentices have the opportunities to obtain a secure, high quality job, but there are many existing workers who know that the best way to ensure that their job is secure is to update their skills - is to do extra training. The way the world is changing these days because of globalisation and the information revolution, the best insurance policy that any company or that any worker has, is to make sure that their skills are regularly updated by our community investing in training.

One of the areas where there is a skills shortage is IT. One of the criticisms of the current training of IT is it tends to be proprietary based. Do you see a role in the State seizing that IT training agenda?

Some of the company-based IT training does lead to secure employment, but it is also important that young people have the opportunity to learn IT skills that would allow them the widest possible choice of employment in future years. We need to make sure that there is a balance in the training that young people are undertaking, so that yes, it does give them the chance to apply for the jobs that need specific skills, but that the curriculum is wide enough to ensure that future job opportunities are not restricted in an unfair way.

Can the Federal and State governments work better to ensure that we address the crisis that we have in IT skills in Australia? Absolutely. The first start is making sure that the Commonwealth government invests more in the national training system, and that is an area where we will be making announcements during the election campaign.

Are there specific initiatives linked at dealing with that company-based training that exists at the moment?

That is the sort of detail that will require us to work closely with the States and government. I know there has been some discussions about these and other matters. The Labor Party certainly has been raising some issues about the quality of training that some Australians are receiving and we need certainly to make that a high priority.

Let's talk about the university system. The Whitlam Government obviously is remembered for free education. The Hawke/Keating Government for introducing HECS. What would be the Beazley Government's legacy to tertiary education?

The first point to make about higher education is that it is under enormous pressure at the moment. We have had for the first time since the fifties a decline in the number of Australians studying at university - last year's figures. We have also had the Howard Government rip out about a million dollars or more in its own direct funding in higher education. That has meant that universities - especially those in regional Australia - the newer and smaller regional universities - they have been very hard hit by the cuts the Howard Government has made.

The Labor Party will be increasing the Commonwealth investment in higher education. The exact amount and the way we will do that will be outlined in coming weeks. We have already committed ourselves to increasing the number of research training spaces in regional universities by 400. We have also committed to help meet the higher communications costs that regional universities face as more and more students use online opportunities to improve their learning.

We have also announced our intention to establish the University of Australia Online, which will, with our plan, provide online undergraduate opportunities to 100,000 Australians by 2010, and it is our intention to offer extra funding to Australia's 38 public universities through the UAO, to allow them to accelerate the provision of online learning opportunities to undergraduate Australian students.

Finally, I guess that one of the key issues for a government is to support institutions that then also generate a culture of lifetime learning. How do you go about doing that?

The essential pre-condition for an Australian, having the opportunity to learn throughout their life and to train and re-train, update their skills regularly, is a solid foundation of learning opportunities at school, and one of our great concerns is that kids from disadvantaged backgrounds are the ones who are most likely to have a problem with literacy and numeracy. They are the kids who are most likely to leave school before they finish Year 12. They are the kids who are most likely to have difficulty finding secure, long term employment.

And that is why we are proposing something very radical. We are proposing several dozen education priority zones across the country. We are going to funnel substantial extra Federal resources into the schools in each of those zones, and our plan is to not have someone in a capital city or Canberra at a Federal or State Department of Education, to tell people what they need. We are going to work with local communities to draw up a plan that leads to the most important education and training priorities for that area - for that region. And that will ensure that the locals draw up the plan - one, it will be more likely to be relevant to their needs, but secondly, it will be more likely to succeed because it is something that they own - that they have developed.

Education priority zones might be things like establishmental programmes to encourage more of the students who are at risk of leaving Year 12 to stay on to get that Year 12 qualification. It might be investing more of the extra funding that we are going to be offering into remedial literacy and numeracy teachers. It is about the Federal government wanting to become an active partner with local communities to address real concerns, and that will be targeted at areas where educational and social disadvantage overlap - and that is probably going to be the most important way that we can try to ensure that Australians from disadvantaged backgrounds in future years do have access to lifelong learning opportunities.

* this has been changed from "bombed out" in our orginal posting due to a mistranscription

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  Issue 114 contents

»	Corporate IT Training in Labor's Sights
»	Ansett Battle Moves to Top End of Town
»	Ansett Families Jeer Howard The Saboteur
»	Ansett Workers Hit the Hustings
»	Email Bullies in Medibank Pay-Back
»	Unions to Campaign Against Workplace Racism
»	WorkCover's Adverts 'Devoid of Meaning'
»	Principals Warn Of Critical Shortage
»	Nurses Release Federal Policy Proposals
»	The Aged Care Monster
»	IT Workers Get Union Voice
»	New Partnership for Sustainable Energy Industry
»	One Hundred Strike Over Crane Accident
»	CEPU Official for Telstra Board
»	Qld Casual Workers Pay Increases
»	The Workers United, Need a New Slogan!
»	Activists Notebook
»	Vale: Frank Belan

»	The Soapbox
»	Sport
»	Trades Hall
»	Tool Shed

»	The President and the Terrorist
»	Confessions of a Grand Final Loser
»	A Plan for Australia
»	Sleeping on the Job

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