Hawke government also severely fucked up the universities by converting them from free to HECS in 1989, with the bullshit justification at the time that the new funding model was good because "everyone can now go to university".

The problem with that concept is that if everyone can go then all the courses have to be dumbed down to a difficulty level that "everyone" can pass.

So that inevitably converted uni's from a place where you send only your bright students so that they aren't held back by the rest, instead becoming just another 4 years of pointless school catering for slightly below average to ensure that everyone passes.

Which became even worse when they became group-project visa-scam factories full of international payers and run by managers not researchers. Which was even more stupid and never sustainable anyway, because international graduates will inevitably start up universities in their home countries.

Uni's now bear no resemblance to the places of higher learning that they should be, which they were at their peak in Australia in the 1970-1980s post Gough.