Parties ignore education inequity in marginal seats at MPs’ peril

Those in marginal seats are hurt most by the funding freeze.

Labor candidate Susan Lamb in Longman contends with a 58 per cent lag in degree attainment. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

Political courage is one thing. Sheer abandon at the razor’s edge is something else.

You’d expect a government on a one-seat majority to be forensic on the impact of its policies in marginal electorates. Same goes for the opposition in its retorts.

How is it, then, that both sides missed the implosion of the “ideas boom” in Australia’s battleground electorates?

The government’s freeze on funding in December last year for increased university enrolments has entrenched astounding levels of educational inequity in eight of the nation’s 10 most marginal electorates.

If you live in the north Queensland seat of Herbert, you are 30 per cent less likely to have a university degree than the national average. This is an electorate Labor’s Cathy O’Toole holds by a two-party-preferred margin of just 0.02 per cent (37 votes).

In the Liberal National Party seat of Capricornia, just 11.3 per cent of its mid-north Queensland constituents hold a bachelor-level qualification, compared with 22 per cent of people Australia-wide.

The Coalition clearly thinks this shortfall poses no threat to the 0.63 per cent margin of sitting Nationals member Michelle Landry.

South of Brisbane in Forde, the degree gap and electoral margin aren’t much different for Liberal Bert van Manen.

And the news isn’t any better for Labor candidate Susan Lamb in Longman who contends with a whopping 58 per cent lag in degree attainment.

It’s a similar story in balance-of-power seats such as Lindsay in outer western Sydney, Robertson on the NSW central coast and Gilmore to the south. The imbalance is extraordinary.

In fact, university qualification rates across eight of the nation’s most contestable electorates trail the national norm by an average of 42 per cent. Are campaign strategists assuming voters these electorates aren’t sufficiently educated to notice?

If a government introduced measures that locked in a comparable level of inequity in healthcare, they’d be thrown out of office. Likewise, a 42 per cent gulf in primary or secondary education outcomes would obliterate any government’s chance of re-election. An opposition that ignored it wouldn’t fare any better.

Even if the question of equity is removed from this issue, the political logic doesn’t stack up. What kind of government would promise “knowledge jobs” so boldly while sabotaging the best chance of delivering them in the regions where they’re most needed? More compelling, what kind of voter would buy such a pledge, particularly when it has been so brazenly discarded?

That question will be resolved at the next election.

At the 2016 census, 15 to 19-year-olds numbered just under 98,000 across the 10 most marginal electorates. A large proportion of them will be entering the polling booth for the first time this year or early next year. If merely 38 votes can swing Australia’s most marginal seat, it doesn’t take a genius to work out what nearly 100,000 could do.

Andy Marks is assistant vice-chancellor at Western Sydney University.