Ian Lowe: McDonaldisation of higher education

By Paul Clifton. We all knew what to expect from the Budget: a whole heap of pre-election assurances turn out to have been ‘non-core promises’, that outrageous phrase the Coalition introduced to politics. Tony Abbott famously explained his past barefaced lies to Kerry O’Brien by saying that only his written statements could be ‘taken as gospel’, so we should not have been surprised when his pre-election promises turned out to be dishonest.
It takes real chutzpah to look straight at the camera and give the sort of assurances Abbott gave before the election about education, health care, pensions and funding of the ABC. As Woody Allen said, ‘The most important things in politics are sincerity and integrity. Once you can fake those, you’ve got it made!’ More...