Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I refer the minister to her announcement that Professor Denise Bradley has been appointed to head an Australian higher education review. I might say I have known Professor Denise Bradley for several years and find her to be an excellent choice by the minister because of her commitment to education. My question relates to a comment made in the publication Dialogue by Simon Marginson, Professor of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for the Study of Higher Education. He says:

Between 1997 and 2004 the immediate throughput of students from the final year of school to the next year in first year higher education dropped from 40 to 31 per cent.

He goes on to say:

The outcome of successive fiscal decisions under Howard was a sharp deterioration in the public funding level and in the teaching and research capacities of Australian higher education relative to most OECD nations and to the emerging Asian research and development (R&D) economies of China, Taiwan and Singapore. In the 1970s and 1980s Australia funded tertiary education at above the average OECD level of public investment as a proportion of GDP. In 2004 Australia spent 0.8 per cent of GDP in public investment in tertiary education compared to an OECD (and USA) average of 1.0 per cent. On this measure, Australia was 25th of the 29 OECD countries for which data are available.

My question is: when is Professor Denise Bradley’s inquiry likely to be completed and will the matters I have referred to be addressed in that inquiry?

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