Just as well Prime Minister Tony Abbott pulled Christopher Pyne into order.

Christopher should grow up. He should leave behind the undergraduate battles of the University of Adelaide in the late 1980s. He has a more serious task of making the best of Australia’s universities.

The Liberal Party contains a swag of undergraduate ideologues of the mid- to late-1980s who saw the dreaded word “union” in the names of student organisations devoted to student welfare. Moreover, in those days, payment of “union” fees was compulsory. Students had to pay for a range of collective services. Like we pay for roads and defence. In the 1980s one could understand the ire of many students as to how these fees were spent. Student unions scattered quite a lot of money at various left-wing causes that should have gone to student welfare. Forget about saving gay, indigenous whales, what about services for students.

The Howard Government abolished student “union” dues. Labor then allowed the universities to levy students for a range of services. But the ideological wars continue. Pyne wants to continue the undergraduate fight and win. They are dreadful “unions”, after all. If only the student organisations had been called “associations” or “clubs” or “administrative bodies” or anything but “unions”.

Pyne is showing his petulant, petty, ideological obsession by making the abolition of “compulsory unionism” on campus a central issue of his tertiary-education reforms. Surely, it matters little whether universities compulsorily levy a fee for student-supporting services. Of course, they should, especially in rural and regional areas where the Coalition normally pays greater attention. But, in government it appears that the Coalition will not let good policy get in the way of ideology. The 30-year obsession with student “unions” bespeaks smallness of mind. Reform of Australia’s tertiary-education system is much broader than this. The sector employs 250,000 people in 41 universities. It earns $5 billion a year in foreign exchange – 12% of the worldwide trade in English-language education.

Aside from “union” fees, Pyne also wants to end Labor’s target of 40 per cent of 25 to 34-year-olds to have degrees. Pity, given that 65 per cent of South Korean youth can expect to be university educated. He also wants the government to set the number of university places, rather than allow universities to determine which students qualify for a place if they want it. Pyne is right in at least this respect – university education needs a shake-up. But if anything, that shake-up will reveal that more money needs to be spent, not less. Australian universities are still slowly responding to the internet. The pre-1995 model of a weekly lecture and a tutorial is still ingrained in many courses.

Our universities are awash with empty lecture halls and cavernous corridors of empty rooms dubiously assigned to but not occupied by employees (casual, part-time, permanent or semi-retired) who work elsewhere, connected nonetheless by the internet as if they were on campus. Moreover, these empty rooms and lecture halls are utterly deserted for a dozen weeks or more during university holidays and for 16 hours a day in term time. Pyne needs to address the under-use of capital in our universities not the over-use of unions.

In the internet age, a mediocre lecturer at the Billabong University cannot compete. Why provide a lecture hall for her or him? But that same person in a class of 10 can help profoundly. Better still, if that teacher has three or four students online or in a room. The internet opens a tertiary world for rural and regional students, even with a castrated-by-the-Coalition NBN. And aside from delivery, the curriculum itself begs for review. Secondary students usually can grasp some of the basics of mathematics, geometry and English expression. But the fundamentals of logic, philosophy, statistics and scientific method are beyond most in Year 12. These should be bound into the undergraduate degree. Without them, the most sophisticated vocational degree is at naught.

Of equal importance is improving the quality of teaching. Good researchers do not necessarily make good teachers. Yet, much university funding is based on research grants, not the quality and quantity of teaching. Much of this is better done by the universities themselves rather than having another round of government interference and artificially set quotas.

We should be giving tertiary education to as many students as are willing and able to undertake it. Tertiary education should not be seen as some sort of burden on the Budget, but as an investment in the human capital of the nation.

A Cairns couple I have run into are fighting the federal bureaucracy over the early release of their superannuation in order to save the family home from a forced sale.

Alas, the provisions on saving the family home are restricted to cases where the lender is going to foreclose or the council is going to force a sale for non-payment of rates. There is no provision for early release of superannuation in the case of a creditor sending someone into bankruptcy, at which point the family home would be immediately lost to the trustee in bankruptcy who would sell it for the benefit of creditors.

People can face bankruptcy through no fault of their own. Businesses go sour. They often owe tax and the ATO is noted for bankrupting people, as it should, to collect tax. This has happened in this case. These people want to use their superannuation money to pay the ATO so they can keep their house.

There is a catch-all provision for other cases, but the bureaucrats so far are refusing to apply it, despite detailed pleas from these people’s lawyer. If the general aim of the provisions for early release of superannuation is to prevent people from being evicted from the family home, surely they should apply equally to cases of bankruptcy as foreclosure. These people cannot even write to the bank saying they will not pay any more and please foreclose immediately. If they do that the super money will pay down the mortgage and they will still have the ATO chasing them.

There must be many others in the same boat.

Perhaps the new Minister in charge of superannuation (yet to be specifically allocated) should have a look at it and tell his bureaucrats to apply the spirit of the law, not just its letter.

crispin.hull@rubyreef.com.au