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Mr. Nash Supports Students

A Salient reporter recently obtained an interview with Mr. Walter Nash, and questioned him on his views on education and the recent student demonstrations for increased Government awareness of, and spending on, University education.

Mr. Nash has had a wide range of experience from which to assess what is best for the country. He sees the problems of higher education with a wider view than most of us.

I asked Mr. Nash to outline his ideas on higher education. He believes that everyone has a right to a free education as far as they are capable. This was part of his fundamental philosophy that mankind's progress up to now must be part of some plan and to advance mankind everybody should realise the capabilities of their minds to the fullest extent. Furthermore with regard to our duties towards foreign countries, our position as members of a materially privileged society should encourage us to do our best to help less fortunate countries; first to see the hungry fed, then that all people have an opportunity to live their lives to the full.

I suggested there might be a question of whether students' demands were excessive and whether (as the Prime Minister has more recently put it) we do not appreciate what we already have. Mr. Nash answered this question in the light of his long commitment to the socialist theory. In the first place was the principle that socialism should be operated by means of a fund into which everyone should put his share and which could then belong to everyone and be distributed in the most beneficial manner. Then there were the decisions of the Second International Congress of 1920 which Mr. Nash attended. There it was resolved that "First charge on all the wealth created should be the care of the aged, the care of the young, the care of the ailing, and the care of all those engaged in the production of essential utilities." This was not only the best order from the point of view of ethics, as Mr. Nash said, but was the most beneficial for the public good (the aged had brought up the new generation and deserved recompense, the young obviously could not do everything for themselves, if cured the ailing would cease to be liabilities and without the producers society would not exist). By inference, therefore, to say that students do not deserve the maximum aid possible is denying them what is theirs through the payment of income tax, and in doing this the state is denying itself the heritage of a fully educated youth.

As for the two thousand students who had visited parliament that afternoon, Mr. Nash did not know if he agreed with their way of going about the whole question, but there was no doubt he agreed with the general run of principles they put forward in their petition. Indeed, if anyone cared to look at his speech on the education bill of 1963 they would see that he advocated then what we at Victoria are asking for now.

—K.F.W.