hooman posted:

Bogan King posted:

https://twitter.com/workmanalice/status/849403115057106944

Bogan King posted:

I'm not bolding any of that, it's all stupid false equivalence bullshit. If you're so worried about people up there not getting money give them yours you piece of poo poo.

Bogan King posted:

QM is a Greens councillor, it's who I thought of first.

TheHeadSage posted:

I might actually go to the next Vic Young Greens meeting just so I can laugh at them. Might be more entertaining than the local branch meetings.

Freudian Slip posted:

Welcome back to the thread QM

Haught posted:

I'm an active member of VYG and it's fine enough, people have a wide range of views and disagreements. I think the comparison to young Labor is pretty dumb and is just the same tired NSW vs VIC stuff that is universally loving terrible no matter which side it's coming from. The more salient warning would be to not expect that much from youth politics because youth politics.

Periphery posted:

A few pages old but:


You are right that the Greens need to reorient themselves and those are all good policies. But trying to sell them by talking about smashing capitalism or whole sale economic system change is doomed to fail in my opinion. It'll scare people off without them engaging with the policy. Just talk about why they are good policies, what they are fixing, and just leave the end goal (smashing capitalism) out of it.

You don't start off a convo with people in your local area by saying "Hey, what do you think about the idea of smashing capitalism?" do you?

I would blow Dane Cook posted:

Mods please change my name to attractive young brunette intern from Campelltown

Quantum Mechanic posted:

I object to my fair city being smeared with loving Latham, he pissed off to Camden the moment he stopped being the member for Werriwa.

Halo14 posted:

Serious question, what does Tony actually do? What is he being paid for?

Halo14 posted:

Thanks, would be nice to see some sort of accountability. How can he go to the gym or ride multiple times a day. Geeze.

Also....

Brown Paper Bag posted:

Well Lionhelm has been elected twice now, and an LDP guy just got elected to the WA Legislative Council due to...

Anidav posted:

Crikey leaked policy documents that show that the Government plans to repeal and replace Medicare. Can someone post it, this is insane.

starkebn posted:

Who do you think ends up running for council government

The Arsetralian posted:

Students will be hit with higher fees and cuts to university funding will be scrapped in a contentious revamp of the Abbott government’s higher education package, to be included in the budget.

The broad outline of the new funding formula, which could see student fees rising by a minimum of 25 per cent, is to be unveiled to vice-chancellors who have been summoned to Canberra on Monday for a briefing.

Education Minister Simon Birmingham is expected to defend the ­proposed changes in an address to the National Press Club next Thursday, following an announcement early next week.

The new plan will increase the share of university costs to be borne by students from the current 40 per cent, while requiring students to start repaying their higher education loans earlier by lowering the salary threshold for repayments to commence. Students will also be charged a loan fee at the start of their studies.

Although universities will be spared the 20 per cent cut in their funding imposed in the Abbott government’s first budget, they are expected to be hit with an annual efficiency dividend.

The government will justify the changes by highlighting that tertiary education delivers graduates a significant private benefit in the form of higher incomes.

The Grattan Institute’s Andrew Norton, who was on a ministerial working party advising Senator Birmingham on implementation of his reforms, said: “Students haven’t really taken any cuts in recent years. Most students have not contributed anything to budget repair.”

However, rising unemployment rates among university graduates guarantee that the plan to make students bear more of the funding burden for their education will meet stiff political resistance. New figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show 4.1 per cent of recent university graduates were unemployed early this year, compared with 1.9 per cent a year ago.

Ian Li, a workforce and labour economist from the University of Western Australia, said: “The graduate degree premium has been eroding for some time. Private returns to higher education are still positive but they are no longer what they once were.”

Senator Birmingham has been working on a package of reforms for a full year, with the aim of reining in costs while maintaining an uncapped enrolment system that has seen the number of domestic students balloon from 800,000 in 2009 to 1.1 million last year.

In the Abbott government’s first budget in 2014, the then education minister Christopher Pyne sought to implement a radical package that cut government funding of universities by 20 per cent while deregulating student fees, allowing universities to recoup their costs from students.

This package never gained sufficient support in the Senate to be implemented, despite several modifications to limit the impact on students. Labor gained political traction with its claim that it would result in $100,000 degrees.

The university sector has endured three years without any clear guidelines about its funding future. Over that period, rapid growth in university funding that followed the Labor government’s removal of caps on the number of student places, has eased.

An ABS report on Thursday showed that while the federal government’s spending on universities leapt by 26 per cent ­between 2008-09 and 2010-11, growth in 2015-16 was only 2.3 per cent, which was no more than the overall rate of inflation.

National Tertiary Education Union analysis shows lifting students’ share of university funding costs from 40 to 50 per cent would require an increase in university fees of at least 25 per cent. However, the government will also change the formulas by which it calculates per-student funding for different disciplines. Current formulas have long been considered irrational and bear little relationship to the actual costs of teaching.

On top of higher fees and a newly engineered discipline funding system, the government will also lower the salary threshold before student loans have to start being repaid which will sweep many more students into the net.

Modelling by The Weekend Australian shows that 90,000 students would be required to start repaying their debts if the threshold fell from the current level of $54,869 to $50,000; 180,000 more students would repay if it fell to $42,000. Total student debt held by the government reached $47.9bn in mid-2016.

There are already concerns that collateral damage of fee increases and loan reform will be felt by the lowly paid and women, particularly those coming from disadvantaged backgrounds — the very people the uncapped enrolment system is supposed to be helping.

“Disadvantaged students have the most to lose if fees increase,” Dr Li said.

“Our research shows that the primary reason disadvantaged students consider dropping out of university is financial. Fee increases could exacerbate that further.”

There is also widespread sector concern the government will once again make cuts to its flagship ­equity program, the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships program, which has been hit by successive funding cuts in recent years. Others, however, suggest a small increase to HEPP funding might be a sop to the sector over equity concerns.

In a discussion paper released last May, Senator Birmingham explained the need for reform: “Funding of university students has grown at twice the rate of the economy. Similarly, the debt held under our income contingent student loans scheme, one of the most generous in the world, has grown to over $40 billion, with an annual expense of $2.6bn.”

Gavin Moodie, an adjunct professor of higher education with RMIT, said the Higher Education Loans Program was well designed to cope with higher fees, because it did not require students to repay until they had reached a reasonable return on their higher education investment.

“The political issue is not whether fees should rise when demand for graduates is low, but rather a question about the size and shape of higher education in Australia,” he said. “While the value of education is high on average, there will be some fields of student that will suffer more than others and there will ­inevitably be the challenge of having a buyers’ market for graduate labour.”

Dr Moodie said the responsibility should rest with institutions, not government, to ensure graduates were “match ready”.

Group of Eight chief executive Vicki Thomson said universities would be “wedged” on student fee increases. “Students should not have to bear the brunt of budget cuts,” she said.

quote:

The Grattan Institute’s Andrew Norton, who was on a ministerial working party advising Senator Birmingham on implementation of his reforms, said: “Students haven’t really taken any cuts in recent years. Most students have not contributed anything to budget repair.”

Federal Liberal Senator and Resources Minister Matt Canavan posted:

a few people angrily turned up to dinner that Westpac held and apparently they changed the world