Dingo bytes
The Howard Government is up and running, opening the door to the complete privatisation of Australia's university system. Federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson has told the vice-chancellors of the country's 38 publicly-funded unis that the protocols under which universities were established are to be changed. This is to make it easier for a "diverse" range of universities to be established — diverse meaning private. Under the proposed changes these new unis would not have to conduct research. The National Tertiary Education Union warned that the move spells the beginning of the end of a comprehensive curriculum "driven by a strong relationship" between teaching and research. "To be a university you must undertake research", said the union's Carolyn Allport. "That is the distinguishing feature."* * * The successful scare campaigns run by the Howard Government have had the desired knock-on effect. Last week a unionist travelling by plane from Melbourne to Sydney was escorted off it by Federal Police for making a joke about a bomb. Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union organiser Maurice Addison was stunned when, after making the joke on the plane, which was on the tarmac in Melbourne, the aircraft's captain informed him his comments were against the law and ordered him to leave. When he refused the pilot called the Federal Police.* * * And while on terrorism, High Court judge Justice Michael Kirby has warned of the increasing dangers of terror laws. He put it like this: "There is a tendency in this area to give legislation stirring names in the hope of rendering exceptions to civil liberties more palatable and opposition to such laws more difficult."* * * "US wants Australian role in N Korea" ran a headline in The Australian newspaper last week. The article was about how the US administration intends to use Australia to interfere in the internal affairs of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, vis à vis its nuclear program. The last time Australia headed into Korea on behalf of the USA, in the early 1950s when the US began the war that resulted in the division of Korea into north and south. Australia contributed military backing and aided the US in its stated intention to bomb the north "back to the stone age".* * * CAPITALIST HOG OF THE WEEK: is the Archbishop of Sydney George Pell, who is in the US promoting conservative Christian values as a counter to what he claims is the "emerging alternative world view" of Islam. He attacked "secular liberal democracy" as being empty and selfish. Curiously he claimed that it was communism that had exposed the "emptiness of the secular approach". He correctly observed that communism provided an alternative for those who are alienated and embittered and sought order and justice. Of course, his speech doesn't mention the word "capitalism", the root of alienation and injustice.