Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry) Share this | Hansard source

to impose these conditions upon the universities and to remove funding from the Capital Development Pool and the Research Infrastructure Block Grants to transfer, by way of substitution, these new arrangements and to make that funding available to an exclusive group of universities? Is it not the case that this program is all about ensuring the benefit for the Group of Eight universities at the expense of the regional universities? Is it not the case that that is what the $200 million program is all about? The structural adjustment program is an attempt to buy off those universities when the inevitable consequences of this program come to light. Is it not the case that in the Research Infrastructure Block Grants Scheme we have a program which means that this country has been left for dead by international comparisons? Is it not the case that in comparison to what other countries are spending on their universities that Australian universities are being left for dead? And you have done nothing about that.