Comments:
- Higher UNI fees do absolutely nothing to touch the educational standards in Australia. Increased funding to the Universities does. Is there a difference? Yes. If the Federal Government were to put more funding into universities, then an improvement in standards WITHOUT fee rises would occur.
- "with fees higher, the govt has more money to spend on security and defence, and after those tragic terrorists events, im certain you'll put a strong security system before that of urself getting through uni"
Firstly, the potential increases in fees are up to individual universities - if they decide to leave fees as is, then fees won't rise. Any such increase goes directly to the universities in any event, so the government doesn't get anything to increase money for security & defence out of it UNLESS they cut government funding to Universities because of the higher fees...
As far as security goes, I'm skeptical - the government subsidises a number of industries and has committed to eliminating those subsidies by 2010 through its obligations to the WTO, etc.
If it were to bring forward this elimination to today, it could save enough money to add to our security (e.g. by cutting the ethanol subsidy).
Further, the wonderful tax cut we got at the last Budget could have been put back into defence, education or even funding the government's superannuation liability (unfunded, and well into the billions, IIRC), and numerous opinion polls of the public have all indicated that the preferred option would be for the money to go into health and education.
This has already been discussed at length in post-Budget threads, though, I think. I'm probably going to leave it there...
fucken howard
