Chart: The Australia Institute Source: Department of Education, Parliament of Australia and Australian Bureau of Statistics; Staff-Student ratios: Department of Education (for 2009-2023), ABC (2013) National Tertiary Education Union correct on university class sizes (for 1990-2008, ABC analysis of figures from Universities Australia) Get the data Created with Datawrapper

35 years after the HECS/HELP system began, university students now pay much more for much less.

Getting a university education in Australia has gone from being a modest expense to something that is now much more costly than was envisioned when HECS was introduced in 1989. Fees for degrees such as Law and Society and Culture are over 700% higher than they were in 1990 – far more expensive than if fees had risen with inflation.

While you might expect to get a better education for more money, that isn’t the case.  Across the sector, staff-student ratios – a key measure of quality – have gone from under 1:13 in 1990 to over 1:22 today – a 42% decrease in the number of academic staff per student.

The changes that started the upwards trajectory of university fees were justified in part by the idea that teaching costs were increasing. Since then, the actual number of staff that universities employ to teach students has shrunk.

Under the original 1989 HECS system, student contributions were modest: only $1,800 per year, no matter what the student was studying. These contributions increased annually in line with rising costs for the university. The system was partially deregulated in 1996 by the Howard Government and different courses were priced differently, a decision justified on the basis of:

• The cost of teaching (for example, teaching dentistry is more expensive than teaching history).
• The graduate’s expected earnings (for example, graduates in fields such as law and business tend to earn more than those in creative arts and social sciences).

Continued deregulation and price-hikes, most recently the Morrison government’s Job-Ready Graduates scheme which lowered contributions for some courses while raising them in many others, have seen the cost of university education skyrocket. The current degree structure has little to do with either the cost of teaching of the graduates expected earnings. Worse while fees have risen the number of teaching staff per student has fallen

Fewer staff means larger tutorials, fewer contact hours and much less feedback provided on assignments.

The high price of higher education means that Australians who want to study have to be willing to take on  potentially life-long debts, all for a worsening university experience.

Skye Predavec

Anne Kantor Fellow

After the 2010 election, independent crossbenchers negotiated for 17 days with Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott to decide who to support.

The careful deliberation would pay off: despite the slow start, the Gillard minority government would go on to pass legislation at a higher daily rate than any other Australian government.

17 days is far from the longest wait: after the 1922 election, it took 53 days of negotiations for the Nationalist and Country parties to agree to form coalition government.

The deal proved enduring; the coalition between these parties, or their respective iterations, has survived for over 100 years with only brief interruptions.

In fact, a wait of a couple of weeks or more is typical even in modern times.

The Australia Institute has compiled details of the 25 power sharing parliaments elected since 1989 at the federal, state and territory levels.

Most negotiations took 15 days or more. Last year, the Tasmanian Liberal Government took 32 days to strike an agreement with independents.

Australia’s post-election negotiations are short compared to many other countries. While Gillard and Abbott were negotiating back in 2010, Belgium was on its third month of a record 541 days of government negotiations. This is unusually long, but months-long government formations are the norm in many developed countries.

The last Spanish government negotiations took almost four months.

In 2021 it took 71 days from the German election for parties to strike a coalition agreement, and negotiations following the election in February of this year took 45 days, concluding only a few weeks ago.

AAP did what I just couldn’t bring myself to do this morning – listen to Michaelia Cash.

Here is their latest report on Schrodinger’s Trump phone calls:

The US president has confirmed he’s aware the federal government has been trying to get in touch to reach a trade deal, after Australia was slapped with 10 per cent tariffs on goods exports to America.

“They are calling and I will be talking to (Mr Albanese), yes,” Mr Trump told reporters at the White House overnight.

The prime minister said Mr Trump’s remark was a “throwaway comment” but indicated he would aim for a phone conversation, depending on the outcome of the federal vote.

“I’m not staying up at night trying to ring anyone at the moment, I’m in an election campaign,” he told ABC Radio on Wednesday.

“I’m sure if we are successful we will have a discussion after Saturday.”

“We have a relationship. We’ve already had a couple of phone calls, but I assure you that my campaign is front and centre.”

Mr Albanese said while a phone call with Mr Trump was not a guarantee, a conversation with world leaders such as the US president was likely after the election, should he win a second term.

At the final leaders’ debate of the campaign on Sunday, Mr Albanese said he wasn’t sure if the US president had a mobile when asked if he had his number, before adding that such matters were usually conducted on a more official basis.

Liberal senator Michaelia Cash said the fact that Mr Albanese hadn’t been able to get another one-on-one call with Mr Trump showed there was no relationship with the Australian ally under Labor.

“The previous coalition government – which, because of the nature of the relationship that we had – we were successful in getting the exemption from the steel and aluminium tariffs (under the previous Trump administration).

“So after this election we look forward – if we are elected – to speaking with our greatest ally, the United States of America.”

Australia’s bloated universities are plagued with scandal and struggling under the weight of their own poor governance and financial mismanagement. 

A new Discussion Paper by The Australia Institute concludes it’s time for a major shake-up in the way they are run.

Australian universities are overseen by Vice-Chancellors who are paid vast sums of money, yet they are presiding over a sector which is failing staff, students and the broader community.

Australian uni students are paying more than ever for degrees while staff-to-student ratios are soaring.

For example, degrees in areas like Law, Society and Culture are 700% more expensive than they were in 1990 (the year after the HECS/HELP scheme was introduced), while staff-to-student ratios have gone from 1-to13 in 1990 to more than 1-to-22 today.

Professor John Quiggin, Professor of Economics at the University of Queensland, suggests seven key reforms:

• Creating a national system of university education managed by the federal government
• Ending the corporate model of governance and refocusing on education/research
• Guaranteeing access to university education
• Promoting co-operation, not competition
• Federal control over international student admissions
• Returning to the collegial model of academic governance
• Creating a central system of sector-wide bargaining for the university sector

“Australia’s universities are plagued with scandal and failing dismally,” said Professor John Quiggin, Professor of Economics at The University of Queensland and author of the report. 

“Under the current governance structure, neither the federal nor state governments are properly accountable for Australia’s tertiary sector.

“Universities are treated as a disjointed set of quasi-private enterprises expected to compete against one another in a ‘market’ for higher education. Universities are not businesses and should not be treated as such. 

“The entire sector is in a governance crisis, fuelled by a lack of accountability to staff, students and government. 

“But, taking the right lessons from international experience, Australia can build an equitable university sector that treats education and research as a public good.”

We are working on a different comment solution, but we just wanted to have some direct contact with you all and we are truly appreciating everyone who is writing in (and thank you for the compliments – I love being back with you all and will be also blogging parliament, so don’t worry about that!) This blog has only been alive for about 50 days or so all up, so to have so many of you already regularly tuning in to us is absolutely humbling and I promise you, I do not take a single one of you for granted.

Here is some of what you have had to say so far.

Greg says:

About Trump not answering the calls being made from Australia, I wonder whether Trump was caught on the hop about the calls from Australia that didn’t end with “Call me, call me now.” (lol)

The thought bubble about nuclear came from the Nationals who then got Ted O’Brien on board. That nuclear bubble was blown up and now is exploding in the face of Dutton. What a clever way to organise a coup, and a coup de grâce for Peter Dutton. (Actually O’Brien has been pushing for this since the Morrison years and was actually involved in an inquiry the Morrison government undertook looking at its feasibility. It was shelved under Morrison because it came back as you guess it – not feasible economically. It’s also, at least according to policy polling I’ve seen, the least popular policy of this election (of the ones people know about)

Angus Taylor is quick to claim friendship with the re-elected PM of Canada, Mark Carney (a progressive) saying they studied economics together. Will Carney ring Naomi Wolf asking how to get this no name to stop claiming friendship? (We love a long memory. IFKYK)

On that topic, Peter says:

So if Ted has aspirations to be Opposition Leader do we need to start the #TemuScoMo hashtag? I mean he has the same overinflated air of confidence not backed up by actual capability

As the originator of the Temu Trump label (it was a social media post that kinda took off with a life of its own) I say apply what fits, where it fits. (Ted O’Brien has always looked like someone drew Scott Morrison from memory to me)

Oliver says:

We’ve heard a lot about the ‘key seats’ this election, but given current polling indicates there is a drop in the Coalition’s primary vote (YouGov last reported they’re national primary vote was at 31% down from 35.70% at the last election), does this have the potential to put other seats in play?

Anecdotal as it might be, my mother received a call yesterday from a staff member for the Liberal MP for Banks, David Coleman, asking if she’d be willing to help out on a polling booth for a few hours on election day handing out how-to-votes. She’s never been involved in the Liberal Party or been a party member, so it’s made me curious if they feel other seats might be in danger if they’re now calling on random members of the public to volunteer for their campaign?

It does, because truly – there is no such thing as a safe seat. And maybe the majors are working that out. It will depend on how strong the preference flow is in some of those seats (Hunter for instance is a (very) slim chance of a One Nation pick up if the Nats vote is on the floor, and there are others, like Flinders, McPherson and yes, Banks and Deakin which have the Coalition nervous. But there would need to be a swing not just in primary, but in preferences)

James says:

Either Trumpet ignores replies, or they have real people reading the messages. If the latter, have Trumpet put them in an unsafe work environment due to all the abuse they will be seeing?

The replies to these messages don’t send, so no one other than you will be viewing them. It’s not often I agree with Angus Taylor, but he is right – try and block the number or at the very least, delete and ignore if they are bothering you.

As we wait for the latest inflation figures to come out at 11:30, it is worth noting that a fair bit has changed since the last quarterly figures came out on 29 January.

Back then we were yet to see the RBA cut rates as they were still enjoying their 2 month Christmas holiday. After the December quarter figures showed CPI at 2.4% (ahh Peter Dutton, you won’t forget that number), investors were predicting a rate cut in the February meeting (they got that right) and then another two cuts by the end of the year.

Well since then, not only have we seen more monthly inflation figures and wages data, we have also seen the idiocy of Donald Trump in full force.

Now the market is estimating at least four cuts before the end of the year, and a very real chance of five.

We of course still have to wait till 20 May to find out what the RBA will do.

It wouldn’t be a modern Australian election (or indeed Australian politics) without allegations of Chinese spy involvement.

This time, it is aimed at Clare O’Neil. The Australian reported that a Chinese-Australian Labor party member ‘used an intermediary’ to gather volunteers for O’Neil’s campaign on election day. The ten volunteers allegedly have links to the Hubei Association which is in the news for its own alleged links to the Chinese Communist Party (which honestly, at this stage of the game, come on. Everything in China has links to the Chinese Communist Party. It is how they run government in China. Does that make every organisation a spy organisation? In Australia’s political climate yes, but in reality?)

O’Neil said that an offer was made to help on election day and it was ‘politely declined’. Jane Hume very much enjoyed it in her ‘debate’ with O’Neil on the Seven Network this morning.

The pair were discussing Peter Dutton’s (outdated) belief that as Australians “mature” they become a Liberal. Which is old fashion thinking from someone who grew up with something to conserve – the old theory going that people get more conservative as they age because they have individual assets and wealth they want to hold on to, and therefore become less about the collective, which younger voters promote because they don’t have that same asset wealth. But that was at at time when housing was fkn affordable and people had wage growth and public services actually took care of you. In reality, more Australians are turning to disruptors outside of the major parties with major parties lucky to have a primary vote with a 3 in front of it, while more people look to minor parties and independents.

Hume said of Dutton’s outdated characterisation: 

There is no doubt that as you get older and you have a family, for instance, that you start looking forward to what’s better economic management opportunities, what’s the future going to hold for the prosperity of our nation, not just for you, but for your kids as well. 

I’m sorry – who are these people? When I think about the future I don’t think about fricking economic management. I think about what the planet we are leaving kids is going to look like. What sort of country we are leaving them. I think about the prospect of a nuclear exchange and how we are sleepwalking towards a complete societal breakdown. I do not think who is going to get more fkn surpluses in a budget.

O’Neil says:

I just…you know, it’s Peter Dutton’s “it’s not me, its you” moment. In my experience, that doesn’t work romantically and it’s certainly not going to work politically. Fancy coming in days away from an election and pointing at at entire generation of people and saying “You’re not voting for me because you’re not mature enough.” It’s offensive and ridiculous. The truth is that the Liberals have nothing to offer young people this election. They say massive HECS aren’t a problem. Labor will cut them on 1 June. This is a party that doesn’t support penalty rates or pay increases for low-paid workers. Peter Dutton can’t even acknowledge that climate change is real…

The pair have a back and forth over who is coping harder and then Hume says:

There might be Chinese spies handing out for you, but for us, there’s dozens, thousands, hundreds of young people handing out how-to- vote cards for the Liberal Party.

O’Neil says:

I think they’re getting a bit desperate. If I was in their position, perhaps I would be too.

Lisa asks:

With the high number of pre-polling and postal votes happening, is there a chance we won’t have a clear result on Saturday night?
ps… Im loving the blog and the incredible work you are all doing to make sure we are hearing the truth and know the facts – not like some of the half-arsed crap that’s coming out of politicians’ mouths!! (Thank you – and we will be doing the same when the parliament resumes)

In regards to your question, the count will start on the night as soon as booths close at 6pm and that will include pre-poll as well. The postal vote always is a bit delayed (because postals have longer to come in) and so whether or not there is a result depends on how many seats come down to the vote. So unlikely, but will depend on the night!

What does Angus Taylor think about the non-stop Crumpet of TinFoil Hat text messages voters are receiving?

(It truly says something about this election that the one thing that has managed to unite Australia is how pissed off we all are at being bombarded with TRUMPET! messages at all hours of the day. How to stop them is even the number one story on the Fin this morning. (Spoiler, you can’t there is no opt-out with these messages which will no doubt become an issue after the election)

Taylor tells ABC News Breakfast:

I understand people’s concerns. I would say – and I’ve seems those texts too, James! – do what I do if you’re not interested in them, just delete them. I don’t see them again.

Look, if political parties want to do this, the great thing about our democracy is you can just completely ignore it. Don’t ignore our messages or course, James. They are very important. That’s what we stand I must admit… Ultimately people get to choose. I went pre-poll and the message was block them all.

Q: Since you came into Parliament, people have branded you Liberal Party leadership material. If the polls are right and the Coalition doesn’t form government after Saturday, is – would you put up your hand to be the leader ever the Liberal Party?

Taylor:

You know, James, I’ve gone after one job, which is to be Treasurer of this great nation and that would be a great privilege. I want to see a stronger economy, more prosperity, Australians getting ahead, buying homes, starting small businesses. That’s what I stand for and that’s the job I’m going after. I think our Treasurer has been out of his depth and out of touch and I think we can do better.

That’s not a no. Deliberately so.

We are getting inflation data today (around 11.30 as with all ABS releases) and that has economists thinking about the next RBA meeting where another interest rate cut is predicted. (Depending on how much of a wave Trump’s chaos creates, the market is predicting up to five interest rate cuts over current months, as central banks look to starve off recession threats from the blow back)

Taylor doesn’t want to talk about the RBA CUTTING interest rates. And he also doesn’t want to talk about inflation being in the target band of 2-3% (which is the rate of acceptable inflation, according to the RBA)

Taylor:

I don’t get into commentary on the RBA, unlike some of my opponents. What I will say is that it’s a widespread view that inflation is going to go back up. The IMF, for instance, is predicting it will go up to 3%, well outside the target range, over the next little while. We have to be ready for the prospect of rising inflation, not falling.

If we look at history, very often a surge of inflation, if it fades away, you see another surge not long afterwards. We have to be on alert for this. We’re deeply concerned that we’re going into an era where not only will we see sluggish economic growth but we could see a resurgence of inflation, and that’s why boosting growth and investment and cutting red tape is so essential to making sure we finally beat inflation and get the growth we need after 21 consecutive months of GDP per capita going backwards.