Australian Financial Review | 16 April 2013
Swinburne University of Technology chancellor Bill Scales has condemned the federal government’s decision to make universities pay for 
higher school funding while spending billions propping up the car manufacturing industry.
Scales, who was one of six members of the Gonski review panel into education, a member of the Bradley review of higher education panel and head of the Automotive Industry Authority which restructured the car industry in the 1980s, said $2.3 billion in cuts to higher education could harm longer-term economic growth. He has also been chairman and CEO of the Industry/Productivity Commission. Scales told the AFR:
On the face of it, this budgetary approach makes the government’s education policy look not only incoherent but schizophrenic. It looks like they have picked an easy target. The tough targets like the auto industry seem to have escaped the requirements to reduce their demands on the public purse.
It’s hard to argue on the one hand that we want to adequately fund the education of students in primary and secondary schools so they have the best opportunity at tertiary education and at the same time undermine the providers of the tertiary education you’re asking these same students to seriously consider.
Scales’ comments are particularly damaging for the government because he was responsible for implementing the Button Car Plan under Labor prime minister Bob Hawke which was meant to prepare the car industry to survive without subsidies.
