Dr WATSON(10.08) —Mr Speaker, I congratulate you on your election to high office. You can be assured that the authority of the Chair will always command my utmost respect. It is indeed a great honour for me to stand in what has become known as 'this place' and represent the people of Forde as their first member for the new Federal division of Forde. As honourable members are aware, the electorate of Forde is named in honour of the Right Honourable Francis Michael Forde, who served this place with distinction as the honourable member for Capricornia from 1922 to 1946. When the Right Honourable John Curtin died in 1945, Frank Forde, as Deputy Prime Minister, was automatically sworn in as Prime Minister. A week later, when the leadership was put to the vote in the Labor Caucus, he was narrowly defeated by the Right Honourable Ben Chifley and thus entered the history books as the shortest serving Prime Minister in Australian history. Frank Forde accepted defeat graciously, a quality which it seems is shared by other Australian Labor Party leaders of Queensland. It is a quality which some of their younger comrades have yet to acquire, but then again it has always been difficult for socialists to accept democracy.

My electorate of Forde contains a wide cross-section of constituents from different backgrounds. The established parts have a high proportion of older people either nearing their retirement or struggling to come to grips with the economic realities of leaving the work force. They are concerned at the Government's heavy tax on lump sum superannuation payments, the ever declining buying power of their pensions and the blatant attack on their savings by the assets test. My newer areas are characterised by families with children, including many who are first home buyers. They are struggling to repay their home loans and concerned by the likelihood of higher interest rates. They are worried that capital gains taxes and wealth taxes will destroy their ability to provide for their children. However, far and away the biggest problem in my newer residential areas is that of unemployment. Since the election I have been approached by numerous people of all ages who simply cannot find jobs. I do not need to remind the House that this situation is a catalyst for social problems such as drug and alcohol abuse, the breakdown of marriages and a general increase in the crime rate. These people are waiting for the Government to honour its commitment of creating jobs for everyone. Of course, jobs cannot be created if there is a lack of incentive. This brings me to the third section of my electorate which is concerned with light industry. Many factories and shops have closed, or at least wound down, in recent years. They are looking for incentives for investment and for relief from the heavy taxation burden.

It is becoming a little passe to note Australia's economic decline, a decline which has been steady for the past 80 years. It has already been noted by numerous economic commentators that Australia has fallen from being a country which before the First World War had the highest per capita income; now it is one of the poorer countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Unfortunately, that slide seems to be accelerating. One could attempt to examine the causes of this decline in a broad analysis, but I believe in the limited time available it is more instructive to examine one sector of the economy in detail. In doing this, I refer to His Excellency the Governor-General's Speech and, in particular, to his comments on education and industrial relations. I have chosen to comment on education not only because of my interest and background in that field but also because educational opportunities are a major concern to many of our children and their parents.

As the popular Press has noted over the last few weeks, Australian parents are deeply concerned about the quality and relevance of the education being received by our children. In Queensland they are concerned about the reduced opportunity for education beyond the secondary level. However, an equally important reason for examining education, particularly tertiary education, in Australia is that one can clearly see the perverse effects of this Government's interventionist policies and the fallacies underlying that intervention. This topic is also receiving attention in the media. The malaise which has settled on Australian education, and higher education in particular, has, as one of its root causes, the abolition of university fees by the Whitlam Labor Government. The socialist penchant for using the education system to redistribute wealth and to change our society in deceptive ways is also destroying our education system.

Four basic arguments are advanced for total government funding of education. First, it is argued that education is something special to which, prima facie, all members of the human race have a moral claim. The second is that free tuition provides educational opportunities to low income groups. The third is that cultural education, although not profitable in market terms, is, nevertheless, somehow desirable. Fourthly, perhaps a rather technical argument is that students will under-invest in education since they ignore the external gains indirectly conferred on other members of society. Given the recent statements by the Minister for Education (Senator Ryan) and the Minister for Finance (Senator Walsh) it seems an opportune time to examine the issues involved in the funding of education. In examining these previously mentioned arguments, I intend to draw liberally from excellent papers from my former colleagues, particularly Professors Bob Officer and Michael Porter at Monash University, George Fane and Frank Milne at the Australian National University and Armen Alchian of the University of California.

Firstly, even if the desirability, of providing everyone with the opportunity of obtaining some minimum level of education is accepted, the case for government rather than market provision of any particular commodity does not follow merely from the fact that everyone has a basic need for that commodity. For example, Government policies currently allow private markets to supply the demand for food, even though the need for minimum subsistence levels for food is more basic than the need for primary education, let alone tertiary education.

Debate interrupted.