Amanda Vanstone, and saddle up, it's time to take the horse called Politics of Envy for a gallop ...

(Above: the good old days, found at the NMA's celebration of Australian cartoonists, here, as drawn by Mark Knight for the HUN in July 2006).

There's nothing like bloody minded vindictiveness to get the working week off to a good start,

so come on down Amanda Vanstone and Uni students get a free ride for too long with their HECS debt.

Ever since Gough Whitlam thought it wise to help out university students, especially poor ones like me - you know, search of the smart state, the clever country, the educated country and such like rhetorical blather, beloved of both sides of politics - and his grand plan dissolved into a welter of fear and loathing, and of abuse for tertiary educated elites ruining western civilisation, some conservative politicians have made hay by stirring up simple minded prejudices.

You know, university students ... free ride. Bludgers. Wankers. That sort of cheap minded, knee jerk, reflexive clap trap. Oh and did I mention tertiary educated elites?

Usually it's best done with a bit of manure of the forelock tugging kind, about how the lumpenproletariat are all fine and dandy and doing noble work by fixing things for the wealthy.

The usual line is bugger the university arts graduates, where can you find a decent plumber, and that usually involves what what we might now call the Vanstone Variation:

It's a sorry state of affairs when any secondary school student, in response to the question, ''What do you want to do when you leave school?'' starts the answer with a mumbled, ''Well, I won't go to university.'' In such a lucky, wealthy country, how did we end up with young Australians thinking they are somehow lesser because they are not going to university? How did we end up with any young Australians defining themselves in the first instance by a negative?

Yes shit carters wielding shovels in the horse stables of the nation, don't feel downsized as you go about your humble task. Shit shovelling is a noble profession. Where would we all be without the garbage men?

And what you might ask has this got to do with aspiring to a university education, while acknowledging that shit does stink, and someone has to take away the garbage, and thank the absent lord for that and pay them well while you're at it, unless a Liberal government gets in and tells the garbage collectors they have tickets on themselves?

Some might think three fifths of fuck all, but then you'd be admitting to knowing bugger all about the politics of envy:

In a society that all too often admires wealth over and above many admirable qualities, what else did we expect? If you value wealth over skill or decency or any number of other virtuous qualities, you must expect that those who get the ticket that sends them down the wealthier path, namely a degree, feel as though they are pretty special.

This from a card carrying member of the Liberal party, long a refuge for worshippers of wealth, and a politician who clearly thinks she's pretty special.

Of course Vanstone assumes a humble arts graduate, interested in literature or history, or even - gasp, poetry - (sssh, nobody mention those wastrel musicians) - is on the path to unseemly power, wealth and the envy of the world, as opposed to a job teaching or lurking somewhere in the bowels of the public service, or who knows, ending up as a lickspittle employee in the Murdoch empire.

It seems that Vanstone has returned from Rome with many homespun insights into the ways of the world, including lessons she first learned many years ago:

Thirty-something years ago, on my first overseas trip, an old man who made his living giving tourists horse-drawn buggy rides around Rome taught me a good lesson. My hotel, to suit my budget, was outside the walls. He was resting nearby and I flashed my student card to get a decent discount. Amazed and indignant, he refused. He had seen me come out from a reasonable, but certainly not flash, hotel and decided I did not need any discount.

I was annoyed and moved on to get a ride somewhere else. But I did not seek the discount a second time. That old guy, probably without much opportunity in his earlier life, stood up for the principle that if you do not need help, you should not get it.

What can possibly be said about such a stupid anecdote, or the stupid behaviour of the stupid teller of the anecdote, except that stupidity is not much of a basis for an insightful anecdote?

But it seems that stupidity grows aplenty in the world of the vituperative Vanstone:

More recently, Rome provided another lesson. I met a Filipina woman who had worked overseas for nine or more years. She sent every penny she could back home to her husband to help raise and educate their three boys. Her family could not give her an education and she will always be grateful to the Catholic nuns who provided her with schooling. She has made sure her boys get the very best she can. You would be lucky to find a more decent, hardworking, honest and principled person. She had the added bonus of commonsense, which is, after all, not that common.

Ah yes, that'd be when Vanstone was ambassador to Italy, a political appointment rewarding hackery of the first water, and with plenty of indolent time to spend wandering about glad handing and bludging on the taxpayer dollar, and meeting with noble Filipinas. Just one snag. Why did the Filipina bother with schooling at the hands of Catholic nuns? Where did she pick up the negative idea that she needed an education? Wouldn't she have been better off leaving after kindergarten, and not being a drain on the church?

Oh yes, it's just another smug, irrelevant anecdote, not a bad result for someone who collared a BA and an LLB and so is now finely placed to hector and lecture indolent students from a place of high righteousness ...

Why it even turns out that Vanstone's a splendid lyricist, just one of the many odd jobs she's been able to handle:

Free and friendly nation,
Born of our own hand,
Peace our greatest virtue,
Mighty southern land.

Valiant into battle,
Courage to the end,
Standing firm for freedom,
Loyal southern friend.

Oh for the love of the absent lord, enough already. Go here if you want more drivel, seemingly designed to make the current national anthem sound like a mix of T. S. Eliot and Shakespeare. What a pity doing an arts degree is now so fallen into disrepute ...

Sorry, time to get back to the abuse of university students:

At the same time, I have worked over many years with many people who did have a tertiary education, some of whom had picked up few, if any, of the abovementioned qualities.

Yes, but did they torture a nation with a hideous patriotic anthem, set to the tune of Pomp and Circumstance Marches by that well known dinky di dinkum Aussie composer, Edward Elgar?

Now how about a full hearted political cliche?

Science and research generally offer hope for the future. Without them we are doomed.

Yep, that's a pious platitude of the first water. Now mingle it with personal abuse:

But people with degrees are not in themselves more valuable. Without the qualities of my Filipina friend, they are just expensive pains in the neck.

Yes, but who apart from Vanstone, has asserted that university graduates are intrinsically more people as people than other people? On the other hand, is it wise to assert they're as expensive pains in the neck as junketing pain the neck ambassadors to Italy?

Okay, enough already, envelope opening time, and sting please:

I have no quibble with the investment we make in higher education or in students. I just think that, to be fair, they should have to start paying it back sooner.

Yep, it's bitchiness and the politics of envy dressed up as 'fairness' and never mind the way that students in these troubled times have to do substantial amounts of part time work, thereby reducing their effectiveness as students, and that some find it a struggle to repay their HECS debt.

No, instead let's just have a bunch of spectacular inter-generational platitudes and condescension from an old fart sticking it to the young.

You don't have to be much of a scholar to find out it's a bit tougher being a student these days than in my day. Talk to a couple of students, it isn't so hard, they generally don't bite.

Or just google stories like University students face life of debt, or Students struggle for study time, or the bundle of links provided here in Cost of Studying.

But before all that - and don't forget to footnote your sources, instead of just leading with stupid anecdotes - let's have one final fling at the politics of envy:

The full adult pension, including supplement, is about $19,000 a year. The minimum wage is just under $30,000. So why do we say to students, who get a massive loan at no real interest rate, that they do not have to pay back a cent until they are earning just under $45,000?

What's it all mean?

Has Vanstone done a study, assessed the capacity of students to pay? Has Vanstone studied the wealth of research material available regarding the current effectiveness and operation of the HECS scheme? Or did she just stuck a thumb in the air, get a couple of anecdotes off her chest, and think it passes for informed comment?

Well I have a couple of answers.

I'm really glad I did my university days way back when, and I'm really glad that the clueless Amanda Vanstone is no longer minister for employment, education, training and youth affairs.

Yep, on the basis of a couple of anecdotes derived from Rome, and a bit of prejudice and bile, Vanstone is gung ho to reform the HECS payment routine without demonstrating the first clue that she knows anything about it.

Well if she wants reforms, here's a few. How about HECS founder Bruce Chapman's proposal that HECS apply to TAFE institutions (Push to extend student loans scheme to TAFE)? Did that startle the Liberal punters in the Howard government or what.

But then Chapman is something of a fiend as he once proposed that athletes being given handouts should pay back some of the money they received from the Government while they're training (here). Hey he even thinks it can be applied to paid parental leave and drought relief (here). And how about a HECS system for pregnant mothers who want maternity leave? (here).

By golly, this politics of envy thing is pretty handy. Pretty soon the government should be able to get all its money back.

How about a HECS system for political hacks rewarded with junkets in Italy? You know, swanning about as useless ambassadors? How about they repay half their salary? With interest ...

Naturally when this sort of spiteful routine envy gets going, it's not too long before you find gherkins ready to dust off and drag out Monty Python's 'Four Yorkshiremen' routine:

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.

(and the rest of the sketch here, or to be found on YouTube here)

Yes, just try telling the young people of today.

Of course in my day, and Amanda Vanstone's day, life was a helluva lot easier than it is for students these days ... and for Bruce Chapman for that matter (yes, he had plenty of time to be a less than average spin bowler, or so I'm told by informed South Australian sources).

Still it's pleasing to see that Vanstone in the comments section is given a right royal bollocking, by well over a hundred generally irritated angry punters, and rising, not least including demands for late payment of her tertiary education costs, calculated at a mere 50k.

Me? I'm demanding emotional suffering payments for having her anthem inflicted on me. That should be worth a cool million ...

(Below: Amanda Vanstone showing how to pose to camera. Yet another skill to add to lyricist and tormentor of university students).