Still no explanation for abolishing the ALTC

25/02/11

The Labor government is still unable to explain its decision to abolish the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC), thus making its recent partial back-flip seem even more absurd and ill-thought out, according to Senator Brett Mason, Shadow Minister for Universities and Research.

“At last night’s Estimates hearings, I extensively questioned Dr Carol Nicholl, CEO of ALTC, Tertiary Education Minister Senator Evans, and Department of Education officials – and no one has had anything but compliments to say about the ALTC’s mission and performance,” said Senator Mason.

“There simply are no valid reasons to abolish this valuable body that promotes world-class teaching.”

Under the deals with the Greens and Mr Wilkie to secure the passage of the flood relief package, Julia Gillard belatedly agreed to restore $50 million of funding for the Department of Education to undertake some of the functions of the ALTC.

“This is very poor policy making.  Initially the government was seeking to ‘save’ $88 million over 4 years by abolishing the ALTC.  Now, having restored $50 million, the government is only ‘saving’ $38 million, or $9.5 million a year,” said Senator Mason.

“So for a saving of under $10 million a year, which is not enormous in terms of the overall budget and the flood relief package, the government has abolished an institution which everyone in the higher education sector regards as virtually indispensable, only to transfer some of its functions to the Education Department which does not have the corporate expertise and experience to perform these functions properly.

“This is a completely false economy.  The decision to abolish the ALTC seems to have been made by the government on-the-run without any regard for the value and contribution made by the ALTC.  The Council’s work is widely recognised and praised across the university sector, and it’s delivering tangible and measurable results in improving the quality of university teaching for students.

“The ALTC better directs the expenditure of billions of taxpayer’s dollars currently spent on teaching and learning,” said Senator Mason.

“Furthermore, the Department admitted that the ALTC had not been reviewed since the Bradley Review, either internally at the Departmental level nor by an external consultant, that would have shown the Council was underperforming and therefore disposable. It’s a bad process and unsurprisingly it’s led to a bad decision.

“This is a very bad outcome for the higher education sector which increasingly feels that this Government has let it fall off the radar.

“Given the Minister himself admitted that the reaction of the sector had been far more vociferous than he had expected, and was ‘interested himself in the disparity of the reaction’ in relation to the $88 million cuts to the ALTC cut compared to the over $300 million cut to the Capital Development Pool, this clearly shows that the Minister still refuses to listen to the sector,” said Senator Mason.

“It is still unclear exactly what the Government intends to ‘replace’ the ALTC with.  Minister Evans said it would be something that required a ‘new architecture’, but it’s pretty apparent that once again there is simply no plan.  The government keeps making it up as they go along.  With its poor policy-making process, the Gillard government is not looking much better than the failed Rudd Government, which even its own members concluded had lost its way.”