Uncapped university places an election-winning policy for Labor

The problem with party policies is they are much like Eurovision song finalists. Once you’ve heard one, you’ve heard them all.

You know the deal. “I’ll cut taxes.” “No, I’ll cut taxes more.” “OK, I’ll throw cash from tall buildings.” Between Malcolm Shorten and Bill Turnbull, the constant challenge is differentiation.

This is why Labor is on a winner with its promise to uncap university places. It is good policy, but just as importantly, it distin­guishes Labor from the Coalition on a vote-turning issue.

The Liberals have been tone-deaf here. When they recapped universities last December, they seemed unaware of the repercussions. What did it matter if fewer kids from northwest Sydney or far-north Queensland went to university? Problem is, it matters deeply to those kids, their parents and extended families and their entire regions. They know that ­access to university is the keystone to the great Australian promise: that your kids will have a better life than you.

Think of the ambitious young woman from Blacktown who under Labor’s uncapped system will study to be an accountant. Under the Coalition’s herniated formula, she can anticipate moving from job to job in casual retail.

This is the stark policy difference between Labor and the ­Coalition on university entry: one of opportunity versus lifelong ­disadvantage.

The fascinating thing is to compare the impact of tax cuts, however generous, to this type of educational opportunity. Tax cuts will deliver a few hundred, a few thousand, dripped from the largesse of government.

A university education, as a pathway to accountancy, nursing, teaching or dozens of other professions, will produce an entire working life of enhanced income, prosperity and quality of life, with all the benefits these involve.

University education is not some mere tax cut: it is a lifetime bonus.

And it makes economic sense. Over long years of earning, a university-educated professional is going to return far more in tax than a relatively unskilled worker. Educational productivity is a long-term fiscal winner.

The Liberals just do not get the electoral danger here. There are numerous parts of Australia — ­regional and outer-metropolitan — where the government literally has chosen to lock large numbers of people out of university. If Labor can play on this, the consequences for the Coalition will be dire.

It’s not just potential students in play. These people have parents, siblings and grandparents. Mature-age students have partners and children. From Armidale to Launceston, they will bitterly resent any government that ­rations them out of education.

Worst of all for the Coalition, there is a positively menacing correlation between marginal seats and the increase in numbers of university students during the ­period of uncapped entry.

Take the country’s most marginal seat, Herbert in Queensland. The margin is 32 votes. The number of additional university students enrolled since 2008 is 1793.

Or the runner-up, Forde, also in Queensland, where the margin is outnumbered by new students 1062 to 1458.

Or Cowan in far-off Western Australia, where the margin is 1140 and the enrolment of new students 1175.

In fact, in all five of the most marginal seats in Australia, the number of additional students ­enrolled since 2008 is greater than or dangerously close to the electoral margin.

And remember, these are only the extra students enrolled over the past decade. In reality, the capping of university places by the Coalition is a direct threat to every person in an electorate who hopes to go to university.

Worse, this threat will be most severe wherever social or other reasons typically depress educational opportunity and participation rates are already low: much of western Sydney, northwest Melbourne and almost all of Australia’s regions.

If Labor can mobilise even part of this prodigious force, then Malcolm Turnbull will have an ­additional problem to proving that his tax cuts are bigger than Bill Shorten’s. He will need to ­explain to parents in, say, Wyong why their kid just isn’t worth a university education.

Mind you, even this challenge pales against the horror faced by on-the-ground Coalition members holding socially and politi­cally marginal electorates, let alone a member whose seat ­includes a regional university, desperate to build its enrolments by offering opportunity to underprivileged students but whose pipeline has recently been turned off by the government.

So if Labor runs hard on educational opportunity, Liberal and National members will find themselves running even harder uphill in the opposite direction.

Because counter-arguments are as thin on the ground as uncut diamonds. Open university entry has delivered massive equity gains. It has produced a clever workforce capable of matching our international competitors. That same workforce receives better pay and conditions than those without university education, and is best placed to face a disruptive workforce future.

And Labor only has to ask: which side of this debate would you like your child to be on?

Greg Craven is vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University