"There's no "Bright Future" for university graduates burdened with student loans who can't find jobs," says Labour tertiary education spokesperson Steve Maharey.

"Scholarships are fine but the government should be opening career paths for scientists and the other highly skilled people a knowledge economy needs. Otherwise it's just investing in the education of people who can't find work opportunities in National's low-wage, low-skill New Zealand."

Max Bradford is getting a "task force" to give him a strategic vision for tertiary education because he hasn't got a vision of his own. He's getting another "task force" to tell him how to increase industry training because he's got no ideas about that either."

"In the meantime most of the Government's barmy far-right ideas in the Tertiary Review are on hold or down the gurgler. After nine years they still have no plan. They only discovered the knowledge economy a couple of months ago, and it shows."

"The new spending in this package is pathetic and the reshuffling of existing funds is badly misjudged. Looting the Public Good Science Fund to increase the New Economy Research Fund is picking one research pocket to fill another. This must be the only Government in the world that thinks scientists are stupid enough to fall for that."

The PGSF had to turn away 72% of applications last year because it lacked the funding for them.

"Labour's tertiary education policy will stop the Government's silly commercialisation of universities and focus on cutting the cost of education for students. Our industry training policy commits us to a modern apprenticeship scheme. Labour has the policies the Government is struggling to match."

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>