kevin rudds attack on john howard, page-29

The mantra that educational excellence is Australia's great hope of a strong economic future, can only be maintained if one forgets that some of the world's best and brightest in science and technology are, for example, from India and China. Given that we have 20 million to their 2.5 billion it is a little foolish to think we are likely to do better technologically and scientifically than these countries. Good to have a well educated populace but that is a motherhood statement and what every nation aims at these days.

The advantage that populous countries have over Australia is that intelligence is normally distributed thus we are going to be behind the eight ball in the number of bright, highly educated persons from these burgeoning economies. That has implications for our industries and economy.

There has been a bit said about getting more people into the trades but modern technology has made a lot of skilled tradesmen, in manufacturing, more or less redundant so we are probably left with agriculture and the resources industries as the most competitive sectors of our economy.


That we punch above our weight in medical science probably indicates that this is an area where Howard and previous leaders haven't done a bad job in terms of education outcomes.

What needs to be spelled out is what sorts of education Rudd has in mind that will give our economy the "needed advantage" and presumably a new focus.