Only days after the education reform bill was defeated in the Senate, the government has launched what it describes as an “information” campaign, funded by tax payers, that claims to educate the public about the failed proposed reforms to higher education.
The campaign to promote understanding of the failed bill is funded by taxpayers. The Abbott government justifies this by claiming the campaign meets all necessary guide-lines to qualify not as political advertising, but as information that is in the public interest. Obviously, the campaign was prepared in anticipation of a Senate defeat.
Shadow Education Minister Kim Carr claimed this morning on ABC Radio National’s early AM program that the advertising is deliberately misleading, and falsely claims that the government will pay “around half of your undergraduate degree.” Carr has fact checked this claim with universities in Western Australia and Queensland and depending on the discipline, students will pay between 57% and 88% of the costs of their degrees.
This is a job for the ABC’s Fact Check unit, if it still exists.
The government’s goal is to create a narrative in which the LNP is struggling to introduce reforms that are positive for students financially (good) and is being thwarted in its efforts by an uncooperative opposition and minor parties (bad). In other words, the Abbott government is striving to gives us what’s best for us against a relentless opposition that doesn’t care about us.
Their goal, I imagine, is to ignite resentment and discontent in the electorate towards an obstructionist ALP and minor parties, a narrative we can expect to see strengthen in the next two years as we approach the next election.
The fact that this is a dud reform quite rightly prevented from realisation is irrelevant. There is also no mention of proposed cuts to universities in the campaign.
Tony Abbott, his ministers and backbenchers take every opportunity to persuade us that all their troubles are the responsibility of the previous Labor government. There is only so long a government can use this tactic to distract from its own incompetence. I’d suggest the Abbott government has long since passed that time limit.
The government is engaged in an ongoing election battle that began years ago when Abbott became LOTO. This most recent taxpayer-funded “information campaign” is yet another sign that Abbott is not so much concerned with good governance as he is with winning the next election. The education reform bill advertising is long-game propaganda, and contributes to Abbott’s over-arching narrative of governmental good intentions thwarted both by Labor’s legacy, and its alleged ongoing obstruction.
No Place For Sheep 
All I can think of when faced with a Liberal narrative of “these other players in Government are being deliberately uncooperative” is basically, “well, you’d know what that looks like”.
After all, having spent the three years between 2010 and 2013 determined to neither fish nor cut bait, but rather throw rocks in the lake to ruin the fishing for everyone else, the Liberals could probably write seminars on the whole process. They could write an under-graduate course on “how to be a wrecker”. What they can’t do, and what we’re discovering on a regular basis they’re unable to do, is actually build anything. They’re great at tearing things down, though.
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Tax payer funded propaganda. The best kind.
http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/abbott-government-launches-taxpayerfunded-university-advertising-campaign-20141208-122epa.html
Link to the website, here:
http://www.highered.gov.au/#homepage-video
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There’s a lot of things they “just don’t get” when it comes to education within Australia.
Education is how Australia develops its greatest asset, our children. By applying financial constraints, we are limiting the development of this asset, and Australia will be worst off for it.
Free education will maximise this asset’s potential, giving Australia its best opportunity in becoming a world leader in so many fields.
But no, they want tie our hands behind our backs and make it hard for everybody but the rich end of town.
And now they’ve started their advertising campaign. Have they no shame !!!!
A cartoon on the topic . . .
Cheers
Mick
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Ah, they get it all right, They are aligned with Donnelly and the Christian Right to ensure that the kiddies don’t get too much learnin’ cos that there Univarsity’s where them kiddies learn about . . . history!
and socialism! and hoomin rights! and evo-lution!
No good Christian kiddie should ever learn about that stuff, It gives ’em ideas!
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The barking out of orders and rules is one way they demoralise us. They are not asking us, they are telling us. We are not to ask questions and be greatful we are tolerated, but is this really the way things should be and who says so? Sorry, I’m not buying it either.
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