Fed: Beazley says lack of knowledge nation behind dollar slide

AAP General News (Australia)
08-31-2000
Fed: Beazley says lack of knowledge nation behind dollar slide
PARLY 017

CANBERRA, Aug 31 AAP - The dollar was sliding because competitor nations judged Australia
as falling behind in its quest for the knowledge economy, Opposition Leader Kim Beazley
said today.

Mr Beazley said Prime Minister John Howard clearly saw national development in 1950s
terms of building infrastructure and monuments.

"There are many factors in the value of the dollar," he told parliament.

"One of the critical factors happens to be this - we are not perceived as at the leading
edge of the new economy on this globe .

"We are being judged on the old basis of Australian development.

"As other countries look to us and work out what the value of our currency ought to
be, at the back of their minds is this fear that we may well not be a successful or relevant
nation this century."

Mr Beazley said Australia needed to increase its national skills base and substantially
increase investment in science if it was to succeed as a knowledge nation.

He said that would be a key issue for the next election.

Education Minister David Kemp accused Mr Beazley of having the most abysmal record
of any education minister since the second world war when he held the post.

He quoted from Mr Beazley's biography in which the Labor leader reflected that as education
minister he had lost ambition.

"When he was minister for education himself he found it was a very uninteresting portfolio
and developed extraordinarily little interest in it," Dr Kemp told parliament.

AAP mb/sm/daw

KEYWORD: KNOWLEDGE

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