Push to scrap free uni rejected in 1979

THE Fraser government flirted with reversing Gough Whitlam's abolition of university fees.

THE Fraser government flirted with reversing Gough Whitlam's abolition of university fees.

It was unfair that ordinary taxpayers had to subsidise students who would go on to command good incomes, federal officials argued in a memo that went to cabinet in May 1979.

Go to our 1979 Cabinet papers special section.

Another argument put by officials was that tuition fees might make would-be students "think harder" about whether they should go to university and what course they should choose.

The memo also pointed out that a return to fees would be an unpopular breach of a 1977 election promise, and the idea went no further.

In 1974, the Whitlam government abolished university fees, saying this reform would open campuses to groups excluded from elite education. Commonwealth scholarships also went and student assistance grants were brought in.

Five years later, the Fraser administration was looking for ways to offset the cost. In May 1979, cabinet considered but rejected a student loans scheme.

John Carrick, education minister at the time, recalled the dilemma facing the government. "The abolition of fees seemed to me, whilst superficially very attractive . . . impossible in the end to continue with, because (students) would be putting more and more burdens on the taxpayer," he told The Australian.

"The Whitlam government made a splurge on education in its first two or three years and then cut back. The last budget I inherited from Whitlam showed a reduction - minor but nevertheless a reduction - in total education (spending). It would have been implicit in my thinking that more money would have to go into the show."

Sir John did not recall the 1979 proposals about fees and a loan scheme, and suspects this was because nothing came of either idea.

In 1989 it was the Hawke Government that massively expanded university education and re-introduced fees in the form of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme, a clever income contingent loan system since adopted around the world.

Studies of HECS suggest that fees have not discouraged students from disadvantaged backgrounds and that money is less of a barrier to equity in education than was believed in the Whitlam era.