Writer
Roger Scott
Roger Scott has lived in Queensland since 1977, apart from time out establishing the University of Canberra. In Brisbane, he has been a professor of public administration at the University of Queensland, a director-general of the state department of education and a dean of arts at QUT. He was the founding Executive Director of the TJ Ryan Foundation.
-
Old dogs can learn new tricks
QUIZ QUESTION: What does an aged public administration academic do when he is at a loss for words about Australian politics? Continue reading »
-
Difference between state and federal ALP in Queensland.
After the unexpectedly strong showing by the State ALP, this question has been posed: “Why is there such a dramatic difference between federal and state election results?” Continue reading »
-
Queensland votes: North-south split tightens race, with LNP’s ‘wooden spoon’ tag wide of the mark
For city folk in the south-east, the pandemic has narrowed the focus from Labor’s five years in power to its performance in 2020, even though border controls matter less in the northern seats linked to the mining industries. Continue reading »
-
Queensland votes Part 1: Marching to the beat of a different drum
Queensland elections are always different from other states in that regional issues often take pride of place, and personalities often seem more important than policy differences between the parties. Continue reading »
-
ROGER SCOTT. Queensland votes despite the virus: results predictable, process chaotic
Two by-elections and the state-wide local government elections went ahead last month with outcomes that returned most major party candidates but encouraged only the Greens and One Nation. The process was abysmally managed, with chaos and uncertainty on the day and results still not finalised. Continue reading »
-
ROGER SCOTT. Queensland by-elections: Tale of Two Cities
There is so much else happening, Queenslanders and the media can be excused for being uninterested in two by-elections which are scheduled to be held alongside state-wide local government elections on March 28. But the future of both major party groupings could be dramatically affected if there is a viral-like surge of opinion away from Continue reading »
-
The marketing of Australian universities
There seems to have been a long period of quiescence in higher education, with the interests of the top end of the university sector (identified as the G8) coinciding with the desire of successive governments to shift costs away from their regular budgets and on to overseas consumers. But some chickens have come home to Continue reading »
-
Roger Scott. A Response to ‘Trust Me, I’m an Expert’
The podcast ‘Trust Me, I’m An Expert’ (10 September) is one of The Conversation’s rare forays into Queensland politics. It is a podcast from a much-valued series of gatherings held regularly at the Avid Reader bookshop in Brisbane’s West End. Continue reading »
-
ROGER SCOTT. Writing from the ‘Blue Ribbon’ north.
Queensland has delivered a killer punch to the Australian body politic, not for the first time. Continue reading »
-
ROGER SCOTT. Queenslanders being different again?
David Solomon and others have correctly identified the coming election as a simple moral choice about the role of government. Queensland voters face the same challenge, but the perspective varies as widely as the character of the state. My wife and I are working in the trenches in the leafy electorate of Ryan. This ought Continue reading »
-
ROGER SCOTT. Universities and the competition for international students
Compared to Britain, Australia has been highly successful in its venture into international education over the past decade but a number of writers have raised concerns over the continuing viability of depending on this source of funding into the future. Continue reading »
-
ROGER SCOTT. All creatures great and small: parity or esteem?
The festive campaigning season is upon us and the federal Minister for Education wishes to bring gifts to those small tertiary institutions located in sensitive rural constituencies. Unfortunately for those who live in the greater (ie research-intensive) metropolitan institutions the Minister seems to have been told that the load capacity of Santa’s sleigh is finite. Continue reading »
-
ROGER SCOTT. Wentworth byelection – tale of two (other) cities.
Events in Canberra over the past weeks call into question the quality of governance which Australians can reasonably expect from our politicians. By contrast the Queensland political system and its parliamentary processes can be seen to offer the Westminster model functioning in optimal fashion. Could this be attributed to the relative significance of female politicians Continue reading »
-
STAN GRANT. Which idea of conservatism will Prime Minister Scott Morrison embrace?
Conservatives in Australia are up for a fight. They are determined to recapture their heartland, reclaim the political right from the progressive interlopers: they are marking out their territory and it is as much about identity as ideology. Continue reading »
-
ROGER SCOTT. Withering Australian Political Science
There are two explanations for the withering of Australian Political Science: the increasing shift in domestic student preferences away from studying local issues and towards International Studies, and the impact of universities maximising the economic benefits to be derived from recruiting international students. Continue reading »
-
ROGER SCOTT. Whither Political Science 2: A parochial perspective
The World Congress of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) was held jointly with the annual conference of the Australian Political Studies Association (AuPSA) in Brisbane in July 2018. The papers on Australia provided a snapshot of the breadth of scholarship and also underlying attitudes among political scientists towards the political system within which Australian Continue reading »
-
ROGER SCOTT. “WHITHER POLITICAL SCIENCE? – An International Perspective”
Fundamental questions are starting to be asked by governments everywhere about the value-for-money of tertiary education in general and about various components of the humanities and social sciences in particular. A world congress of political scientists meeting in Brisbane confronted this topic from a number of different perspectives and noted growing expectations that political scientist Continue reading »
-
ROGER SCOTT. The morning after in Longman
Many Brisbanites even mildly interested in national politics woke 0n Sunday morning with a sense of satisfaction that the PM had not been rewarded for his guttersnipe tactics. As Greg Jericho pointed out on Sunday, “he may not be as vulgar as Trump but Turnbull uses the same playbook.” (Jericho G, The Guardian, 29.7.18) His Continue reading »
-
ROGER SCOTT. “Paying the piper but hating the tune”
The ANU has touched off a debate which has ramifications across the whole university system, or at least that section of it with prestige high enough to attract philanthropists with deep pockets. Continue reading »
-
ROGER SCOTT. The prominence of women in Queensland politics.
Until this week, JANE PRENTICE was not on the roll of women prominent in Queensland politics, a short list which includes two ALP Premiers but also a number of women of alternative political persuasions, starting with Lady Flo and including two current party leaders. Continue reading »
-
ROGER SCOTT. Postscript on Australian universities: ‘are we near the Kodak moment’? Part 3
In March 2017, under a headline ‘Digital disruption lowers costs of pricy masters degrees’ the Australian Financial Review reported: A round of price-cutting has broken out in the market for high-priced masters degrees with four Australian universities offering students a pathway to complete part of their degree online at a steep discount. [Tim Dodd, AFR Continue reading »
-
ROGER SCOTT. Response to Gittins on higher education – Part 1.
‘Ross Gittins says We’ve turned our unis into aimless, money-grubbing exploiters of students (Canberra Times, 17 September 2017] What is there to say about Gittins’ comments, I was asked by John Menadue. How valid are his general contentions and how valid are his criticisms? Like the curate’s egg (and the university system as a whole) it is Continue reading »
-
ROGER SCOTT. 1987 and the “Dawkins Revolution”.
This is part 2 of my response to an invitation to share my memories linked to the release of Cabinet papers from 1987. Here I will focus on the tertiary education reforms instituted by federal Education Minister John Dawkins. Continue reading »
-
ROGER SCOTT. Joh Bjelke-Petersen – 1987 in retrospect.
This is the season for personal nostalgia. In my case, personal perspectives inevitably shade into the political. On 1 January Queensland Cabinet papers from 1987 were released; and as a further reminder of that era, on 4 January a state funeral was held for Lady Flo Bjelke-Petersen who had died shortly before Christmas. Continue reading »
-
ROGER SCOTT. Carpet-baggers and sand-baggers: life Inside a marginal Brisbane electorate
The Scotts live in an affluent electorate where the longer-established residents have consistently manifested Liberal tendencies, occasionally tinged with green because of the presence of a university. A recent redistribution has expanded its boundaries, adding middle-class voters less enamoured of conservatives and suddenly our long-serving Liberal incumbent is looking decidedly shaky. Continue reading »
-
ROGER SCOTT. With Friends Like These …
If Week 2 of the Queensland election campaign was dominated by parochialism and regional development, Week 3 was about statewide preference deals and the price to be paid by the LNP as it seeks to bolster its sagging fortunes by agreeing to a list of One Nation demands. In addition, one or two of the Continue reading »
-
ROGER SCOTT: Insularity and Environmentalism – The Queensland election campaign
The Queensland election could be occurring on another planet, as far as the locals are concerned. Pauline Hanson’s One Nation may exercise a morbid fascination but the bigger current issue is the link between the infrastructure proposed for the Adani Carmichael mine and the railway which would link it from the middle of nowhere to Continue reading »
-
ROGER SCOTT. Personalities and Millstones in Queensland
Personalities are increasingly significant in political contests, particularly as voters in all countries are abandoning the dominant parties. Politics in most Australian states are firmly controlled by capital city interests. Queensland has been slightly different, in this as in so many other ways. Continue reading »
