Of all the sectors in which politicians and bureaucrats could choose for their most audacious and thoroughly planned scam, they picked education.
Oh, the irony.
The sector that was supposed to make Australia smarter is now focused mostly on making its gullible students stupider, itself richer and the government more powerful. This is, of course, by design. Or, as would be taught in literature classes if Shakespeare were still on the curriculum: “Thy sin’s not accidental, but a trade.”
We were reminded of the brazenness of this arrangement this week when federal Education Minister Jason Clare stood up in Parliament and boasted that he would use $16 billion of working people’s taxes to wipe 20 per cent off debts accrued by kids who thought a degree in transgender folk dancing would grant them access to the executive suite of an investment bank.
Clare even had the audacity to berate the Opposition for not endorsing this novel form of theft. It was like Jeffrey Dahmer inviting Mahatma Gandhi over for dinner and being offended when he declines a serve of home-cooked shepherds pie.
Most taxpayers are inured to this level of government malfeasance these days. I mean, what’s a lazy $16 billion compared to AUKUS ($368 billion on nuclear submarines that we don’t know when will be delivered, if ever) or the NDIS (predicted to hit $135 billion a year by 2034).
What anger the average punter can muster under such circumstances is usually of the forlornly familiar type. He or she exercises as much effort trying not to be depressed about the armageddon to which this financial self-destruction unavoidably steers us as getting angry about Clare’s pretentiously faux generosity.
If there is any energy to remain infuriated beyond that, it is spent focusing on the fact that such expenditure compounds inflation at a time when ordinary people are having more difficulty affording the basics than federal ministers are having snapping up multimillion-dollar mansions.
But, at the risk of being the bearer of even worse news, both of these points miss the bigger picture, which is how much Clare’s brilliant thought bubble benefits the university sector. The debt Clare has wiped off is money owed by young students for the cost of going to university, which was at the outset underwritten by the government. The money is owed to the government, so wiping it off has no initial bearing on university balance sheets. But it does help boost the universities’ trashed reputations for quality.
Clare isn’t questioning why graduates aren’t finding jobs with salaries sufficiently high to repay their student loans. After all, he’s only the Education Minister - why would he bother about something as trivial as the quality of education in Australia?
Rather than question the value of Australian university degrees, he is subsidising them.
This is a huge relief to the kids who haven’t yet finished their degrees, or are contemplating starting one. Some of them are too young to vote or drink, but are signing themselves up to six-figure debts on the vague hope that the whole deal will one day be profitable.
And just when it was becoming clear that it won’t, that young people would make more money selling ham sandwiches in Lakemba than paying off a $100k-plus debt as an intern for a public relations firm, along comes Clare to relieve the pressure and reassure them that they have made the right decisions in life.
It is a precedent that next year’s graduates will demand applies to them, and the ones after them, and the ones after them. Clare is not even slightly concerned that he has created yet another black hole into which the taxes of actual Australian workers will continue to disappear for the foreseeable future.
Which begs the question, why? What’s in it for the government? Two things: firstly, universities are churning out Labor voters faster than the Ukrainian government produces cannon fodder for the war against Russia.
Secondly, the government needs to keep increasing the Australian population so the national GDP doesn’t dip below recession levels, which it already has if you factor out the millions or people migrating to Australia.
Unfortunately, Labor’s preferred method of attracting foreigners - outsourcing the vetting process and transport logistics to Third World people smugglers - was kiboshed when Tony Abbott stopped the boats in 2015.
So the universities have stepped up and filled the gap. Universities are, for all intents and purposes, running a government-endorsed people-smuggling business.
They allow people who barely speak English into the country on the pretence that they are ambitious young engineers and doctors who will generate a net benefit for Australia. Then they give them preferential treatment, artificially boosting their marks as long as they keep paying their extortionate fees, or just let them drop out and re-emerge as Uber drivers.
Either way, before they submit their first ChatGPT-written essay or take their first fare in a hired Camry, these “students” have legally, with the federal government’s encouragement, brought their family to Australia to join them.
And if, heaven forbid, they ever go hungry, then free food programs supported by both the Victorian and NSW governments will deliver a care package, courtesy of the long-suffering taxpayer.
The housing crisis, which it exacerbates, gives politicians a fresh problem to solve, and they have pounced on it with gusto.
The effect all this has on our social fabric is disastrous. We are becoming dumber and having fewer kids while we import large families from countries that share few of our cultural habits. These “students” are not migrating here because they admire Ned Kelly, have read all of Patrick White’s novels or desperately want to be at the MCG when Carlton win their first flag since John Elliott was club president. They are here because it’s easier to feed a family in Australia than it is in almost any Third World shithole you care to name, but to which most of them mysteriously continue to retain a spiritual connection years after they’ve pulled their first dole cheque from Centrelink.
If you have any doubt that our leaders are wilfully destroying the country we inherited, then look at Britain now. That’s where we’ll be in a few years, and they know it.
This isn’t an accident. It’s the trade of politics.
