Labor and Greens block $2.3 billion in university cuts

By Geoff Maslen. Australia's former Labor prime minister Julia Gillard created a storm of outrage across the university sector last April when she announced that spending on higher education would be slashed by A$2.3 billion, equivalent at the time to a cut of US$2.5 billion.
But this week, with Labor now in opposition and Gillard and many of her colleagues no longer in parliament, the new Labor leader Bill Shorten said the party would not back the conservative government’s plan to adopt the spending cuts. More...