Education Minister Christopher Pyne heads for brave new world
Professor Brian Schmidt has a Nobel Prize. Christopher Pyne does not. But in this crazy mixed-up world of ours, it's Viscount Christophe du Pyne who gets to decide whether Australia enters its future as a technologically advanced and scientifically literate nation, or whether we devolve into Aldous Huxley's half moronic mouth breathers. A class of stunted, low-caste simpletons good for grunt work, but even more useful, post mortem, as a crucial source of garden mulch.
The Viscount opts for garden mulch.
He is currently sitting, smirking, atop a budget of some umpty billion elephant bucks, refusing to toss a few battered coppers in the begging bowls of the sooty faced urchins in the scientific community because, as he puts it, "Mwahahahahaha!"
...No, this time Viscount Christophe is dangling a different 1700 very smart people over the whirring blades, these eggheads gathered up from 27 facilities conveniently grouped under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. NCRIS, for short.
du Pyne has tied the continued funding of their research to the passage of his higher education policy changes; "reforms" seeming to be not quite the right word for such regressive and punishing measures.
At stake, according to Professor Schmidt, are projects like the Integrated Marine Observing System, which "provides valuable observations used for predicting everything from where the wreckage of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 may have drifted", to crucial seasonal weather forecasts for Australia's farmers. Cochlear's implant technology, providing hearing to the deaf, the telescopes that support Schmidt's own Nobel-winning work, GPS enhancements for the military, super-microscopes to help Australian steelmakers maintain competitive advantage are all dangling over the drop.
"This is not the way a grown-up country behaves," Schmidt complained to Fran Kelly this week. "It's very childish and it's having a profound impact on something that is going to increase the productivity of the nation."
The Viscount pushed out his lower lip and held his breath until his face turned purple, whereupon he blurted out that it was all the fault of the Greens and the ALP, who would not give him what he wanted.
In scientific terms this is of course a load of old tosh. Canberra can fund anything it wants. A Knighthood for Prince Phil. Another spiffing military adventure in Mesopotamia. The $30,000 travel bill for Viscount du Pyne and his lovely wife when they graced the fine hotels of London and Rome in April of last year. (It is a lovely time to be in Rome, April.) Why, if the Education minister so willed it, he might even find a quarter of a billion dollars to pay for school chaplains rather than some silly old telescopes.
The stalemate in the Senate is not threatening the collapse and abandonment of NCRIS. Pyne is. He wants to lay all the blame on the ALP (who can certainly hang their heads in shame for de-funding NCRIS, a Julie Bishop program, during the chaos and madness of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years). But the Labor Party is not in government now, and linking the very existence of NCRIS to the higher education "'reforms" is hacking off the crossbenchers Pyne needs to pass his legislation.
He needs two more votes. Just two to get what he wants. Asked whether he'd consider separating the NCRIS funding from his stalled budget measures he was, for a politician, admirably succinct.
"No."
The Viscount should take a lead from his colleague at Treasury, Mr Hockey, who's found way to whip up a couple of million without selling any more scientists to Chinese billionaires in need of a spare kidney. You just shake down any Chinese billionaires you come across with a spare Harbour-front mansion. Force them to sell under FIRB rules and give them only 90 days to do it.
Huzzah, for Joe Hockey, I say, huzzah.
At last he's shown he understands the needs of ordinary, local people. I for one was bitterly disappointed when Villa del Mare at Point Piper was snapped up for a lazy $39 million by Xu Jiayin, China 15th richest person. Look at this guy, I thought, flying in here on his personal Airbus, buying up our mansions and stuff. I had a plan for that auction. I could have been a contender. All I needed was another interest rate cut and a loan for about $39 million dollars.
Of course the shonks and spivs in the house-flipping game are outraged, all of them worried their commissions are in danger. Prestige agents are reportedly shocked, shocked I tell you, believing the sale "did not require approval from the Foreign Investment Review Board because the purchase was in the name of an Australian company".
But for once the Tories have acted in the interests of the little people. Now any media proprietor, Westfield owner or heir to an enormous Aussie mining fortune can have a tilt at a super luxurious five-bedroom mansion with a lovely pool, a grand dining room, soaring spiral staircases in the polished marble foyer and, naturally, booming views across the water to the Bridge and the CBD. And they can do so in the knowledge that they won't be gazumped by some devious foreigner from overseas.
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/education-minister-christopher-pyne-heads-for-brave-new-world-20150306...
