The Government is systematically destroying its education department in retaliation for daring to tell it the truth about its higher education policy – that poorer and mature age students are being turned away.
The annihilation of truth – this time perpetrated in the name of education minister Brendan Nelson – has also exposed the new public service head and former education department head Dr Peter Shergold to the charge that he not only doctors reports he doesn’t think the minister wants to read, but shamelessly misleads the public with Orwellian assurances that the public service is strong, apolitical and fearless and the government likes it that way.
The children overboard affair raised deep suspicions that the public service was now reduced to yet another government spin machine, but the doctored report scandal confirms it in spades. It also confirms that yet another institutional check and balance on the abuse of government power is on the verge of destruction.
Today a timeline of the scandal, the latest Herald stories disclosing the censorship, the nonsensical letter from new department head Jeff Harmer trying to weasel the minister out of trouble, Shergold’s recent shameless eulogy to dead public service values and transcripts of Nelson’s point blank refusal to answer any questions on the scandal in Parliament. I have never seen a minister so brazenly hide under the skirts of his department head as Nelson did in Parliament today. The only reasonable conclusion is that the minister has something to hide.
The big question in my mind is: Does the government not want Australians to know the facts or is it that it doesn’t want to know itself? Is it so ideologically determined to privatise universities and make the user pay regardless of circumstances that it closes its own eyes to the truth? Is spin the only priority? Is the government so corrupt that it will only see facts which justify its pre-determined position? Does it care at all how its policies affect Australians?
The scandal has all the hallmarks of children overboard, down to the startling fact that Nelson’s media adviser, Ross Hampton, is the very same Ross Hampton who helped Peter Reith lie his way through the election campaign on children overboard. You’ve got “plausible deniability”, you’ve got advisers calling the shots and supposedly not telling ministers and you’ve got a public service which wants to tell the truth sat on and spat on by senior public servants whose chief loyalty is to the government, not to the truth and not to the Australian people who pay them.
The Herald will report the latest body blows to the department tomorrow. The Government is in the process of dismantling the department’s research section to ensure it doesn’t hear what it doesn’t want to hear again. Officials who tell the truth when asked, and write the truth when briefed, are on the run. Much better to employ consultants who know their job is to tell the government what it wants to hear and get paid handsomely to sell their souls.
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Table of contents:
1. Scandal timeline
2. SMH report yesterday
3. Brendan Nelson’s statement to Parliament yesterday
4. SMH report today
5. Nelson’s question time stonewall today
6. The report’s alleged censor, public service chief Peter Shergold, tells the people the public service is fearless and honest and ministers like it that way.
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ITEM 1 – Doctoring a report
May 10-August 27, 2001
The National Report on Australia’s Higher Education Sector 2001 and other reports commissioned by the Department of Education Science and Training.
March 2002
Draft chapters made available to external consultants and departmental officers and meetings held.
March 31, 2002
In-house work concluded.
April-May 2002
Report ready for publication; alert and briefing note to minister prepared; key sections pulled under instruction from the Secretary of Nelson’s department DEST Dr Peter Shergold, according to senior departmental officials.
19 March, 2003
Labor Senator Kim Carr puts a question on notice to Education Minister Brendan Nelson asking why the report had not been published and why the cost of the consultancies were not declared in the Department’s annual report as legally required.
June 5, 2003
Under questioning in Senate estimates on the suppressed report. Department officials say it has been with the Minister since the first quarter of 2003 and the other reports have been reclassified ‘for Minister’s eyes only’.
July 23, 2003
The National report, as doctored, is posted on Department website.
August 5, 2003
The Department issues a press release denying that parts of the report were deleted on political grounds.
August 8, 2003
Two more reports previously “for Minister’s eyes only” are posted on DEST website.
August 11, 2003
Brendan Nelson tables a letter in Federal Parliament from Department Secretary Jeff Harmer saying he (Harmer) had not ‘not formally’ briefed the Minister before 23 July 2003.
August 12
Nelson avoids all questions on the matter in Parliament.
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ITEM 2 – Sydney Morning Herald report yesterday
Nelson hid uni fee risks, say officials
by Aban Contractor
Sydney Morning Herald, 11-8-2003
The Federal Government hid from the public the adverse effects of raising university tuition fees, current and former Education Department officials said yesterday.
Reports prepared for the year-long debate on higher education were meant to be published at the same time as the Government’s first Crossroads discussion paper in April last year, they said. The reports were ready about then, they said.
A senior source, who asked not to be named, said they showed the risks of policy approaches, such as charging higher fees, on poorer students. “The Minister [Brendan Nelson] chose not to make it available for the public debate,” the source said.
On Friday the Department of Education, Science and Training posted two of the reports on its website. One looked at the impact of increasing Higher Education Contribution Scheme fees. The other examined student access and quality. Each page is stamped “Draft”.
A media release says Dr Nelson wanted them published because “it is in the public interest”.
This followed last month’s release of another report, The National Report on Australia’s Higher Education Sector 2001, which was dubbed for the Minister’s eyes only, after it was written. It was published on the website after politically sensitive sections were deleted.
Another senior Department of Education, Science and Training official suggested the research was flawed and should be used with caution. This angered many in the department, especially because some of the authors have been cited in respected international journals.
Labor’s public service spokesman, Kim Carr, said the department’s research and evaluation branch had a reputation for quality research and the reports were always intended for publication.
“The branch has now been broken up, its funding cut back and its research capacity crippled,” Senator Carr said.
“We are entitled to know who ordered the reclassification of this research and on what date, and what was the involvement of the Minister and his office.”
HECS and Opportunities in Higher Education found that changes introduced in 1996 reduced the number of older people applying to study at university by about 17,000 a year. The number of school leaver applicants fell about 9000 a year.
It also showed that a person on an annual income of $30,000 paying off a HECS debt lost about $15 a week in disposable income. That increased to about $50 a week for those earning $50,000.
Dropping the HECS repayment threshold from $28,495 to $20,701 caused particular harm, and was more likely to have deterred people from combining work and part-time study.
“Persons within this income range experienced falls in disposable incomes of between $12 and $24 per week,” the report said.
The number of men from poorer families studying in the most expensive courses such as law, medicine, dentistry and veterinary science had dropped significantly, by 38 per cent.
“The lesson from this study is that any future changes to HECS arrangements would need careful design to minimise their impact, particularly among groups more sensitive to student charges,” the report said. Newcastle University said yesterday that one of 15 international students accused of plagiarism had graduated and could not be disciplined.
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ITEM 3 – Statement to Parliament yesterday by Brendan Nelson, and the letter he tabled.
The Sydney Morning Herald today imputes that I or my office has withheld and/or amended reports produced within my department in relation to reports that have been examining, in particular, the impact of HECS on student participation in higher education. By way of clarifying these issues and explaining why I have in fact been misrepresented, I table a letter dated 8 August 2003 which sets out all of these issues from the Secretary of the Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training. (Margo: Note he says nothing in his own defence, or in defence of his office, and instead hides behind the letter of his department head.)
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Hon Dr Brendan Nelson,
Minister for Education, Science and Training,
Parliament House,
CANBERRA 2600.
Dear Minister,
I am writing in the context of recent media reports about the publication of the National Report on Higher Education 2001. The purpose of this letter is to provide you with an accurate account of the circumstances relating to the preparation and publication of the report.
In early 2001 the Department decided to begin preparation of such a national report as a retrospective look at policy developments and other changes in the higher education sector during the decades 1992 to 2001. The report was intended to be a companion volume to the 1993 National Report on Australia’s Higher Education Sector which examined the decade 1982 to 1991.
The Department subsequently commissioned a number of contributions from people in the sector including recently retired vice-chancellors and researchers with particular expertise. The report also drew on a wide range of internal Departmental material, both published and unpublished. Numerous Departmental officers were involved in drafting and editing various parts of the draft report.
A number of drafts of the national report were compiled between 2001 and the publication date of the final report on 23 July 2003. In around April 2002 work such as professional editing, formating and indexing was begun in preparation for the publication of the national report.
In November 2002, or thereabouts, the Department took the decision to remove material regarding HECS that has recently become the subject of media reporting. This decision was made because of the Department’s concerns in relation to the methodological difficulties inherent in analysis of this kind and the incompleteness and inconclusiveness of some of the findings which meant that it did not have a valid place in the report.
The Department’s concerns relate to the small size of the effects observed in the analysis, the difficulty of disaggregating other factors from any HECS-related factors and our inability to quantify the likely impact of statistical changes over the period studied. The Department’s reluctance to use the above material in the context of the national report was strengthened by the fact that the analysis had not been published, nor subject to wider scrutiny or review by experts in the field.
An interim draft of the national report was provided to the Higher Education Adviser in your office in late December 2002 for information and comment. I would stress that the Department had already taken the decision to remove all material relating to unpublished internal Departmental analysis before that draft was provided to your Higher Education Adviser. The material relating to the impact of HECS was edited out of this and subsequent versions by the Department. The Department received no feedback from your office on that draft. Revised drafts were handed to your Higher Education Adviser progressively from March 2003 onwards. Between March and July 2003 your Higher Education Adviser suggested some minor changes, largely of a stylistic or grammatical nature.
Some of your adviser’s suggestions, along with other further edits initiated by the Department, were incorporated in the final version of the national report in July 2003. On 23 July 2003 we provided advice to you that the national report had been published on the Department’s website. You issued a media statement on the same day announcing the publication of the report.
I would like to make it clear that the report was purely an initiative of the Department and was not begun or prepared with any consultation with you or your office with the exception of the relatively late and minor input from your adviser as noted above. I can confirm that you were not formally briefed on the report by the Department at any time before 23 July 2003.
I trust this information clarifies this matter.
Yours sincerely,
Jeff Harmer
Secretary
8/8/03
My comment: Harmer’s reasons for deleting the offending material is classic Sir Humphrey-speak. Don’t like want a report says? Question its “methodology”. Note the statement that “the Department had already taken the decision to remove all material relating to unpublished internal Departmental analysis before that draft was provided to your Higher Education adviser.” This says nothing about any phone calls between the department and the adviser or the minister before the draft was sent. Note the wording “The Department received no feedback from your office on that draft.” Harmer does not rule out “feedback” prior to “that draft”, and fudges the question of what Nelson’s adviser asked to be changed. Note the use of the phrase “formally briefed”. This is classic public service speak – it does not address the question of INFORMAL briefings. Formal briefings are the ones in writing, signed off and recorded. As we learned in the children overboard inquiry, this government doesn’t like formal briefings – it much prefers phone calls or other unrecorded contact.
Why didn’t Nelson issue his own statement setting out HIS version of what he knew when, and what his office knew when, and what he or his office did or didn’t do about the embarrassing report findings? Why has he hidden between a diabolically carefully worded statement from his department? What has he got to hide?
The Opposition wondered the same thing. But the Herald had more…
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ITEM 4 – Sydney Morning Herald report today
PM’s man once doctored uni report
by Aban Contractor and Gerard Noonan
Sydney Morning Herald, 12-8-2003
The head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Peter Shergold, intervened to have politically sensitive material cut from an official report on universities when he headed the federal Education Department.
The action to suppress the material before an intense debate on the future of higher education has caused deep divisions in the department.
Senior Education Department officials have said the National Report on Australia’s Higher Education Sector 2001 was completed and ready for printing just before Easter last year, but Dr Shergold insisted that key parts be rewritten or removed.
Current and former departmental officials said Dr Shergold claimed inclusion of the sections would jeopardise the Federal Government’s position that no one would be worse off if it were to introduce new fees under proposed changes to university entry.
The deleted material included figures showing that applications for university entry had fallen since the Government raised fees in 1997, particularly from poorer and older students.
A Senate committee examining the Government’s higher education restructuring plans will begin hearings next month.
Dr Shergold said he could not remember telling anyone to take anything out of the report.
“I certainly don’t have any memory of that.”
Dr Shergold discussed the matter yesterday with the current head of the Department of Education, Jeff Harmer. A spokesman for the department said it was not prepared to speak on Dr Shergold’s behalf.
“The minister has tabled a letter on the matter and we don’t want to make any further comment,” the spokesman said.
The Minister for Education, Brendan Nelson, told Parliament yesterday that the letter he received from Dr Harmer showed he had not seen the report before it was published.
The letter outlined the way the department removed material from the report, saying the research “did not have a valid place in the report”.
Dr Harmer included a timeline showing the department’s actions and its links with the minister’s office.
“I can confirm that you were not formally briefed on the report by the department at any time before 23 July 2003,” the letter said. Parts of the timeline contradict information obtained by the Herald from senior departmental sources and evidence given to a Senate committee in June.
Labor’s research and public service spokesman, Kim Carr, said the officials responsible for the research always believed the material would be made public.
“This is the politicisation process at work where officers are punished for telling Government things they don’t want to hear,” he said.
“These reports were reclassified as advice to the minister in an inept attempt to deny the Senate and the taxpaying public this information.”
Dr Shergold was secretary of the Department for Education between December 2001 and February this year, before he was appointed to his current post, replacing Max Moore-Wilton.
The sections deleted from the report included assessments of data showing a significant drop in the number of poorer students applying to study courses such as law, medicine, dentistry and veterinary science after the Government raised fees in 1997.
The data also showed that since then the number of older people applying to study at university had dropped by about 17,000 a year.
Dr Nelson’s office responded to questions from the Herald yesterday by saying: “The minister has today tabled a letter from the departmental secretary which covers all the substantive aspects of this matter. He has nothing to add to that.”
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ITEM 5 – Brendan Nelson in Question Time Today
Question one
Ms Macklin: Why has the minister ignored his own department’s research which found the 1996 increases in HECS ‘reduced demand for higher education among school leaver applicants by around 9,000 students a year’ and ‘lowered demand for higher education among ‘mature age’ applicants by around 17,000 persons per year? Minister, isn’t it true that these damning findings were deleted from the national report on Australia’s higher education sector 2001 by Dr Shergold, the minister’s former departmental secretary and now the head of the Department of Prime Minister and cabinet, as reported by the Sydney Morning Herald today?
Dr Nelson: Whilst I thank the member for Jaga for the question, there are a number of quite false assertions in the question.Yesterday afternoon immediately after Question Time I tabled a letter from the Secretary of the Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and training addressed to me and dated 8 August. The letter said, in part:
I would stress that the Department had already taken the decision to remove all material relating to unpublished internal Departmental analysis before that draft was provided to your Higher Education adviser.
As the letter was tabled yesterday, I presume it has been read by the member for Jagajaga. The real question we seek to address in facing Australia’s future in higher education is … (he spoke at length statement on matters unrelated to the question.)
Ms Macklin: Was Dr Shergold responsible for deleting the findings referred to in the department’s letter that the minister tabled yesterday?
Dr Nelson: My answer again to the member for Jagajaga is that, firstly in terms of the references to editing in the secretary’s letter addressed to me dated 8 August, it is a matter for the department as to who within the department actually did that….(he continued on matters not related to the question.)
Ms Macklin: Minister, did not a departmental officer tell a Senate estimates committee on 5 June this year that a version of the national report on Australia’s higher education sector 2001 was sent to the minister in the first quarter of 2003 and that the department would require the minister’s approval to release the report? How does this fit with what the minister told a press conference on 23 July this year when he said that he had only seen the national report on Australia’s higher education sector that morning after it had appeared in the press? Is this ministerial incompetence or ministerial coverup?
Dr Nelson: This report, which seems to be occupying the attention of the ALP whilst this government is actually thinking about building Australia’s future, was initiated by the Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training and was produced by the department. Any alterations, as the secretary said, were made before it was sent to my office. It is a 500 page report and essentially the government has been working earnestly on building a foundation for Australia’s future. It was not up until that point a report which I had personally read. Can the Labor Party just get it into its mind that this is a report amongst many reports that the Commonwealth department is doing frequently on a whole variety of issues? As the secretary’s letter says, the report was sent to my office late last year. All I can say again to the member for Jagajaga is: read the secretary’s letter. It sets it all out …. (he proceeds to discuss matters not relevant to the question.)
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ITEM 6 – What Peter Shergold told the Australian people about the state of the public service
A mandarin’s rosy view of Australia
by Geoffrey Barker
Australian Financial Review, 31-7-2003
Don’t worry; be happy. Everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, and Australia’s national government is the best of all possible political and bureaucratic worlds.
Peter Shergold, head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, offered this Panglossian analysis of public service-federal government relations yesterday in an interview on ABC radio.
There was no softening of advice to ministers for political reasons; all advice was “robust, strong, well-argued and, hopefully, timely and accurate”; far from undermining the Westminster tradition, increasingly powerful ministerial advisers were complementing the role of public servants, Dr Shergold said.
Since taking over from Max “The Axe” Moore-Wilton as head of PM&C early this year, Dr Shergold, as titular head of the Federal Public Service, has sought to bring a less abrasive style to the job. But don’t think he’s a softie.
“Public policy is serious,” he said. “These are very profound issues, whether it’s the security of Australia or violence in indigenous communities.
“These are issues on which we should argue across government, within government and, of course, there should be arguments that take place between public servants, ministerial advisers and ministers.”
And don’t think that Dr Shergold would not do the government’s dirty work when necessary.
sure that political decisions taken by the government are being implemented in a committed way,” he said.
“You have to walk a border line. It is almost inevitable that at times you will come under criticism for doing it.
“I tend to speak with a certain amount of passion on issues. I am engaged by them. They interest me. That passion that I bring is often interpreted as being political. In fact, what I am speaking with passion about is the nature of public service, and how important it is to our democratic institutions.”
EARLIER HERALD REPORTS
Damaging uni reports were buried: Labor
by Aban Contractor
Sydney Morning Herald, 5-8-2003
The Federal Government is sitting on at least four more reports on the detrimental impact of increasing student fees, the Opposition said yesterday.
The reports, which are believed to show poorer people are finding it harder to get into university and meet study costs, were handed to the Government up to two years ago.
Yesterday the Opposition accused the Education Minister, Brendan Nelson, of doctoring critical data from publicly funded research in a bid to stymie debate. However, a spokesman for the Department of Education, Science and Training said the reports were in “the nature of internal policy advice prepared for the deliberative processes of Minister Nelson”.
Labor’s education spokeswoman, Jenny Macklin, said the Government hoped to lift fees by another 30 per cent so it was not surprising data showing many people were being priced out of an education had been deleted.
Labor’s public service spokesman, Kim Carr, described the deletions as “further examples of the public service telling the Government things they don’t want to hear and, as a consequence, their reports are no longer for public release”.
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Ugly details cut from uni policy report
by Aban Contractor and Gerard Noonan
Sydney Morning Herald, 4-8-2003
Politically sensitive material showing that poor and older students have been hurt by the Federal Government’s higher education policies has been deleted from an official report.
Large sections were cut from the Department of Education document some time between it reaching the office of the Education Minister, Brendan Nelson, last year and being posted on the department website just over a week ago.
Chapter four of the now 380-page report titled Access and Equity has been particularly affected, with whole sections from the original document, including graphics, gone.
Twelve days ago the Herald quoted from the original, which revealed a fall in the proportion of school leavers applying to study at university.
It suggested the rise in Higher Education Contribution Scheme fees could be part of the reason. It also showed a fall in the proportion of older people applying to study, especially those who had not studied before. All of the quotes used have been cut from the version posted on the Department of Education, Science and Training website.
The original report also showed the number of less well-off students taking so-called Band 3 subjects such as law, medicine, dentistry and veterinary science fell sharply when the Government increased tuition fees seven years ago.
It said: “After the changes were introduced in 1997, not only did the numbers of students in Band 3 of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme decline but the proportion from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds was less than previously.” This has also been cut from the version on the website.
A spokesman for Dr Nelson, Ross Hampton, denied the minister had tampered with the report. “There’s been no dialogue, correspondence or any form of discussion between the minister or anyone in his office about the report,” Mr Hampton said.
The Herald was told by a senior government official that the deleted sections had since been deemed “internal research to inform the minister”. Subsequently, they were not for publication and removed from the report before it was given to Dr Nelson.
Current and former senior public servants said that before any report was published it had to go before the minister and the minister’s senior staff.
“Stuff is not published if the minister doesn’t want it published,” said one source, who declined to be named.
Another senior public servant said the snapshot of universities over the past decade, the National Report on Australia’s Higher Education Sector 2001, was completed about 12 months ago and should have been released during the Government’s year-long review of higher education.
Yesterday, Labor’s public service spokesman, Kim Carr, said the deletion of sections of the report was part of a pattern of deceit that began with the “children overboard saga” and continued with Government attempts to suppress a report on hepatitis. “The public service told the Government the truth but the Government sent it back for correction; this is the politicisation process at work,” Senator Carr said.
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The privilege of higher education
Herald editorial. August 5
Censorship is a harsh charge. Yet it is hard to see the deletion of sections of a politically sensitive Department of Education document – some time between its arrival on the desk of the federal Education Minister, Brendan Nelson, and its public release last month – as anything but political censorship. Material which showed poor and older tertiary students are being disadvantaged by rising university fees was belatedly deemed “internal research to inform the minister” after it was published in The Sydney Morning Herald. The finding itself is not surprising given the steady shift towards the user-pays principle in Australia’s universities since the tuition fee increases of 1997, and funding declines since. What is alarming is the selective suppression of research which might reflect unfavourably on the Federal Government’s higher education policies.
Good government demands open, informed and continual policy debate. Education and training is the key to Australia’s international competitiveness. One prominent British study concluded that about 80 per cent of future jobs will require skill levels equivalent to a university degree. Yet Australia’s universities and its students are under intense financial pressure, academic standards are under attack, classrooms are overcrowded and the personal debt burden of students and graduates has reached $9 billion.
The Federal Government is committed to ensuring tertiary students – who benefit financially when they enter the workforce – contribute partially or fully to the cost of their education. This is partly in response to the free university years of the 1970s and the rising cost to the public purse that followed. Despite the abolition of fees in 1974 in favour of access on academic merit, universities remained largely the domain of the middle class, and costly fee subsidies became an increasingly costly form of middle-class welfare.
The debate since has been about what is a fair balance between public subsidy and private contribution. The Department of Education’s finding that fee increases are now discouraging poorer and older students – especially away from expensive, high-status courses such as law and medicine – is a crucial part of this debate. Broad access to higher education protects social and economic mobility based on merit and effort – a concept deeply embedded in the Australian psyche. Within the existing user-pays model, barriers to entry to universities could be addressed through means-tested scholarships or fee relief, for example. No solution, however, can be formulated unless all the facts are on the table.