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The Forum > Article Comments > Investing in ourselves > Comments

Investing in ourselves : Comments

By Sandra Haukka and Bruce Muirhead, published 19/9/2007

Governments need to encourage Australians to keep investing in their own education and training.

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Funnily enough there is a report released yesterday I think which demonstrates that this government, Howard's mob of cutthroats, have actually reedduced expenditure on education in our country. Reduced. Not in real terms or seasonally adjusted. Just reduced, for real.

Anyone want to buy one of the worl'ds dearest uni degrees? What is it for a medical degree now? About $300,000 isn't it? And we wonder why people don't sign up? WHo wants to start their working life with a debt over $100,000. From just educating yourself.

This is a government who have only one focus. Howard's comfort and King Johnnie's whims as told to him by big business. Lackey Howard. Spit and polish mate, get those shoes shiny or else!
Posted by RobbyH, Wednesday, 19 September 2007 8:53:03 AM
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This problem has been around for decades. I went to England in the 70's to do a specialist course at my own expense because I believed, wrongly, that it would be a good career move. I came back to Australia and was told that a University of London post graduate course could not be recognised here. This was the Whitlam years and education was supposed to be booming.
Such experiences, and there are many similar to mine, do not encourage people to continue their training. There is little point in investing in oneself when that investment is ignored.
In Australia there is still far too much insularity. It is not what you know that counts but who you know, especially in academia. We do have some world class academics and researchers. We do some damn good work - but we also do a lot of very mediocre work. Further education of all types needs to be more accountable, more flexible and more diverse. There needs to be less duplication and many courses should have much higher and more rigorous standards. Then we may start to really invest in ourselves and the future and people may find it more affordable.
Posted by Communicat, Wednesday, 19 September 2007 4:42:17 PM
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Federal and state Governments need to invest in Aussy citizens the way Scandinavian countries excel at. Especially in education. But they won't because they are investing in immigrants.

Why? Beacause its easy, it is a short-term, pats-on-the-back boost to the economy and it penalises existing voters who are considered too fickle to be worthy of government attention.

If we want governments to serve and educate us, we must stop immigration to Australia immediately.

Another reason to stop immigration is to NEGATE greedy Bank executives, economists like Ross Gittins and property developers spewing forth abject PROPAGANDA like this Ross Gittins article in todays's 17-SEP-2007 Sydney Morning Herald. Propaganda is the deathknell of FREEDOM and alarms should ring loud when we see this kind of nonsense in daily publications.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/09/18/1189881508793.html

Gittins balmes unaffordable house prices on 'oldies' to deflect attention away from IMMIGRATION of skilled property developer /workers. Skilled immigrant rules encourage workers who from the worsening shortage of doctors, dentists, plumbers, electricians and every other skills category are predominantly cashed up immigrants who are gorging themselves on property aquisitions and forcing housing costs through the roof.

Of course this benefits economists and investors like Gittins who stand to make a profit from further immigration pushing up their dividends and probably more to the point, their power over the community. No wonder they fraudulently blame 'oldies'. And the fact is that young people don't want to overthrow oldies perks because they will get them in due course and they don't want to stuff THAT up.

Continued..
Posted by KAEP, Wednesday, 19 September 2007 7:54:38 PM
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Continuing..

The fact is that Federal immigration rules are benefiting at best 10% of Australians and leaving the rest subject to megalomaniac ALP state governments like the Iemma government who relish building pretty ghettos for new migrants, surreptitiously eroding services, raising taxes and building pork-barrel, dead-end desalination and tollway types of infrastructure. These infrastructures are destined for future property inflating immigrants and NOT the voting public who have to pay for and be violently gridlocked into crappy public service regimes. They throw decent Australians to heartless private enterprise groups whose sole object is to make cities like Sydney so congested and unliveable that voters will have to pay for white elephant projects like desalination just to get some kind of change from the tedium.

Immigration has had its run and as we approach PEAKOIL it is a failure in and a DANGER to Australia. It has been hijacked by corporations and government. In a conspiracy that transfers votes from ethnic electoral enclaves in return for more compatriot immigration and power, federal and state-ALP governments are gerrymandering our electoral system in a way that subverts true democracy. Already we are paying for, and losing our rights to immigrants before they even arrive and we no longer have a voting mechanism that effectively gives us an opportunity to boot little dictator politicians like Morris Iemma out into the street where they belong. Then we can safely set about educating Australians and raising our communities and standards of living out of the gridlock gutter where Howar, Iemma and co have booted them.

And remember a growing economy based on immigration is NOT wise. Think of the Titanic. As we sail towards the PEAKOIL iceberg, no amount of extra passengers ringing up more taxes, profits and economic figures will save us from the internecine violence associated with imminent energy shortages.
That Howard's policies will ram another 160,000 immigrants into our congested capital cities this coming year probably means Howard thinks Titanic is still afloat.
Posted by KAEP, Wednesday, 19 September 2007 8:08:07 PM
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The Reserve Bank pours cold water on Australians investing in their own education and training.

This SMH article
http://search.smh.com.au/click.ac?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.smh.com.au%2Fnews%2Fnational%2Freserve-destroys-the-myth-of-migrants-on-dole%2F2007%2F09%2F20%2F1189881683444.html&t=4&n=7&s=reserve+bank

has the Reserve Bank talking big on IMMIGRATION. In what amounts to more PROPAGANDA against improving community standards in Australia's congested Capital cities the RB praises the NEW migrant work participation rate. However they overlook the fact that the NEW participation is NOT solving the still chronic shortages of skilled labour in every field from Doctors and dentists to electricians and plumbers. Why? Because migrants are investing their skills and capital in their own community real estate development projects.

This is causing:

* Congestion and services gridlock in cities as immagraphantic state governments refuse to provide satisfactory commensurate increases in roads, transport, health and police to the high density developments that migrants favour.

* The economy to boom at the expense of gridlocked quality of life for existing residents of those cities. The Howard government and the Reserve Bank have no interest in educating or even caring about the wellbeing of existing citizens whilst their cash registers are turning over.

The short term problem is that vital education of existing Australians is considered unnecessary as migrants are deemed more worthy and their community vote has more power than a fragmented existing vote base. This is undemocratic gerrymandering and it makes the Federal and state governments pure DICTATORSHIPS.

The long term problem is that with PEAKOIL and congested populations colliding in such an unregulated fashion, an ultimate violent showdown will occur within a decade. As diminishing oil supplies are important to get police and army in to calm riots, the government will just stand back and watch the violence unfold. They will in short order lose control of this country in much the same way we have seen in Zimbabwe.
Posted by KAEP, Friday, 21 September 2007 11:23:14 AM
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Continuing..

Once again, I urge the Reserve Bank to consider the Titanic. It would have been of little use to bring on board more passengers to boost cash flow and cash reserves on that ship to protect against an imminent iceberg collision. It would just create more violence and confusion as people struggle to survive. So too it is with an Australian economy approaching an imminent collision with PEAKOIL and global energy shortages.

And in case Howard rebuts that nuclear and new coal technologies will save us? There is not enough time to develop such technologies. Further there is no incentive in developing them while Howard is lazily patting himself and business leaders on the back for their grand immigration based faux-economic success.
Posted by KAEP, Friday, 21 September 2007 11:26:54 AM
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What we need are less silly think tanks like EIDIOS.
Their seminars are famous for presenting no brainer topics.
The emergence of these types of companies is symptomatic of very problem they are ignorantly trying to identifying here.

None of them actually support or advocate fundamental issues of education inequality - they just want to focus on wishy washy free market theories will apparently save us all.

While they inhabit this space the real issues will never be heard.

Invest they say? Invest in them putting on never ending and mind numbingly a stupid forum is more like it.

It’s no wonder that government is one of their major sponsors.
Posted by Rainier, Sunday, 23 September 2007 1:58:02 PM
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