What Dan Tehan did in the shadows

It's a game of "hang the culprit" that everyone can enjoyably play, because no guilty party will ever really be found. It's obvious that the bureaucrats who made the atrocious decisions were so junior, so far down the line that they didn't really count. Yes, they sat comfortably at their desks while things went on all around them, but no one was ever significant enough to make a difference.

However it's equally inappropriate - or so we are told, anyway - to blame those higher up the food chain. After all, you wouldn't expect the Prime Minister, or a state premier, or (apparently) even a health minister to be responsible for decisions that they supposedly had no part in at all. And that's how, despite the flood of recriminations and understandable demands for accountability, nothing is going to happen.

We've become paralysed - at the state and federal levels - by politicians and their apparatchiks gaming the system. Senior departmental officials rake in the money while pushing responsibility down, down, until it vanishes, caught up in a breath of hot air and innuendo so transient as to not affect anyone at all.

And that's why the media's left clamouring, again and again: "Whose fault is it? Who's to blame?"

There's a culprit for whatever political colour you happen to inhabit.

Maybe hapless Dan Andrews? The state's out-of-proportion death toll says all you need to know. He's surrounded by scandal for which he was, apparently, never ever responsible.

Or perhaps it's hapless Richard Colbeck. The federal minister presiding over the most vulnerable in our community, the very people suffering more than any group of individuals. Surrounded by scandal yet, apparently, never ever responsible.

In the meantime, elsewhere, out of the spotlight, things are happening and changes, sometimes drastic ones that would never be countenanced in normal times, are being made. Take education, where minister Dan Tehan is wading off into the deep without supervision. Just one recent media release offers a good flavour of the sort of competence evinced by his office.

It's dated 2019, but let's put that aside to consider what it announces. Headlined "Putting students' interests first", it details how students failing more than half their courses will be prevented from accessing HECS. Fair enough. This adds to a student's incentive to study hard but, like almost every measure emanating from Tehan's office, it's punitive in effect and is being implemented in what is (almost) an information vacuum.

It's just one of many sudden lurches, like the decision to hike fees for humanities degrees. Tehan was almost tripping over himself in excitement as he rushed to promulgate this edict in the absence of proper parliamentary scrutiny. Perhaps aware that huge holes in the reasoning behind the abrupt shift would become rapidly apparent if he ever had to defend the sudden introduction of such a massive change to the sector, Tehan has decided to simply rush ahead while he can and before the full ramifications become apparent. Labor's lost its voice, and the vice-chancellors aren't going to criticise him publicly.

They're well aware there are problems with the sector and that the current model is unsustainable. What's called for, of course, is a vision for the future. One where the tertiary sector fully differentiates its offerings to meet students' needs, as is beginning to occur naturally at the moment. Some universities will concentrate on producing people who are capable of the deepest, most groundbreaking research, while other institutions simply want to help people learn the basic skills so they can get out and on the job. The shift is on. A competent education minister would be channelling money to support the sector while it changes. Instead, we have Tehan.

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This government was never going to raid the budget to find ways to support foreign students. Again, that's fair enough because that's its ideology: get ahead or get left behind (sure, the PM puts it differently, suggesting it's up to everyone to "have a go to get a go", but we all know what he really means). But Tehan's ignoring the new reality of business.

The old days when you paid your money and received a product are long gone. Every company understands that any transaction is a two-way deal. Moral obligations and responsibilities are included as part of the purchase. The least Tehan could do is be out demonstrating he's looking out for those overseas students who are providing the critical funding that's keeping the sector going. Instead, there is silence.

This just isn't a good enough response from someone who should be carefully nurturing and supporting one of our biggest earners of export dollars. Some of the students he's turning a cold shoulder to will, eventually, return to their countries where they will become leaders in their turn. Don't be surprised if they choose not to buy Australian because they remember that time when nobody in government went out of their way to offer support - even just a few kind words.

Everyone has their own problems, and it's quite understandable that we're far more focused on our own issues than those of foreigners, even if they are over here as paying guests. Put it all together, though, and the picture isn't pretty. We need to stop looking for someone to blame and begin to fix what's going wrong.