This being the week that the coalition took control of the Senate, it was inevitable media attention would focus on anything that could threaten their unity. In coming months the sale of Telstra will dominate Liberal/ Nationals relations.
But in the past few days the flashpoint has been the government's proposed legislation to ban universities from imposing compulsory fees on students to pay for campus services such as sporting facilities, welfare and counselling assistance, and political advocacy.
That students should be free to join or not join student associations, and that they should be able to choose which activities they support financially, are the twin ideas behind the campaign for voluntary student unionism.
The idea of VSU has long been an article of faith for Liberal politicians, who argue for it as a matter of principle. Opponents of VSU include, naturally enough, representatives from student organisations, the Labor Party, and unfortunately, but perhaps not surprisingly, some in the Nationals party.
The junior coalition partner has at times revealed itself to be not immune to the appeal of forced collectivisation, and this is no exception. The Nationals maintain that regional universities will be less equipped than those in metropolitan areas to deal with any reduction in income from student fees.
The debate over VSU is interesting not only because of its immediate political consequences.
The stance taken on the issue by university vice-chancellors demonstrates everything that is wrong with Australia's tertiary sector. The mindset of the country's university administrators, as revealed in their attitude to VSU, reveals why our universities struggle to be world class.
According to the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee the lobby group representing the nation's 37 public universities VSU would devastate universities. The AVCC assumes that students would choose not to spend their own money on services they don't use and that therefore such services would cease to exist.
Any business operating in a free market facing the loss of its guaranteed customers would seek to provide better services to maintain and grow its client base. But universities and their student organisations, in common with many other sectors of the Australian economy, shirk from the challenge when confronted with the prospect of competition. Instead, they rely on governments to legislate to ensure their protected position.
The AVCC says the problem with allowing students choice is that they do not have an understanding of the impact of their decisions on the provision of campus services.
It is almost breathtaking that the vice-chancellors could furthermore make the statement, as they did last year, that the AVCC believes representative student organisations work best when membership is universal. According to the AVCC, if students don't want to join a student organisation they must make a case in writing which is acceptable to the university. Such a view has more in common with unreconstructed bolshevism than with modern Australia. (Of course, some would say that the whole problem with the tertiary sector is that it is the last bastion of unreconstructed bolshevism).
The value of fees compulsorily acquired from students represents around 1 per cent of total university income. If the universities genuinely believe that student services are so important, but that students won't pay for them themselves, then there should be more than enough capacity in the other 99 per cent of university budgets to fund those services.
In 2004, a survey by Shanghai Jiao Tong University to find the world's top 500 universities (by academic outcomes) found that no Australian university was in the top 50. Australia did have two universities in the top 100. But this is scant consolation given that Switzerland, a country with one-third our population, had three universities in the top 100.
The leaders of our universities have no understanding that their antagonism to VSU is untenable in principle and in practice. Similarly, with a few notable exceptions, they don't appreciate that their resistance to deregulation of the tertiary sector could consign their institutions to international irrelevance.
If the AVCC won't even accommodate the basic right of students to not join a student association, then there's not much chance they'll be able to deal with the rigours of competition from the worldwide market in higher education.
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