In breaking news, the CSIRO reports “snails like red (as in the colour), dislike garlic.”
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Brendan O’Connor is returning to the back bench and will leave Parliament at the next election. The PM will announce the next Skills and Training Minister (assuming the portfolio stay the same) on Sunday.
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A truth universally not acknowledged is that university enterprise agreements can be so complicated that the people who negotiate them, are not entirely clear on content. The Fair Work Commission has just approved variations to the University of Melbourne agreement signed this year, requested by management and unions. “I am satisfied that the Agreement contains obvious errors and that it is appropriate to correct them,” Deputy President Coleman states. The agreement runs to 129 pages.
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The Productivity Commission reports the deductible gift recipient system is not fit for purpose, including tax deductibility for donations to private schools, which can keep fees down. But public universities, TAFE and “approved higher education institutions” should stay within the DGR. The Commission suggest institutions are of a size that a donation cannot benefit individual(s) as can occur with schools, plus it does not want to change support for research and “information to the general public.”
Good-o but residential colleges at very old, very rich universities also have tax deductible funds
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The Fair Work Commission is interested in how working from home rights could be included in industrial agreements (Future Campus, March 19) and so it is developing a term, suited to the clerk industrial award, which covers people likely to use such and which could be used in other awards. Such as that applying to higher education professional staff – it would be a useful base to build-on for the next round of enterprise bargaining.
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Aya Mousa (Monash U) and colleagues are worried that there are no research integrity processes for assessing studies that can inform patient care guidelines. Existing best-practice models, “rely on authors and their institutions to respond to queries, where there is little incentive to do so,” they warn. So they created RIGID (for “research integrity in guidelines and evidence”), “a consistent and standardised approach” (that) “can be integrated with existing evidence synthesis tools and processes in determining the inclusion of evidence that will inform findings and subsequent recommendations for research and practice.”
Medical treatment by the book won’t be great if some of the research it’s based on is bodgy.
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Management and union reps are deep in the industrial law weeds, searching for a way to apply the new(ish) law that requires employers to offer continuing employment to people they want to keep after two consecutive fixed term contracts. The problem is adding the requirement to immensely complicated enterprise agreements without unintended consequences and the parties are now in their second six month extension. But it appears that if they don’t find a solution soon one may be found for them. The Fair Work Commission announces it will get involved, in September.
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Finally, allies are emerging as Uni Tasmania faces the threat of State Parliament vetoing the sale of its Sandy Bay campus, to fund the already-underway relocation to the CBD. Last week, Opposition Leader Dean Winter (Labor) backed the university move, “builds world-class facilities in a more accessible location.” And now Sue Hickey, a veteran State and Local Government politician and current Mayor of suburban Glenorchy, agrees.
And from the north, friends of the university point to the relocation of its Launceston campus to CBD fringe Inveresk, which is generally considered a smart switch.
Plus there is a YIMBY push (as in “yes, in my backyard”) that thinks a housing development at Sandy Bay is a splendid idea, stating “moving the university will also make it easier for people from Hobart’s northern and eastern suburbs to get to school via public and active transport, reducing congestion and improving accessibility for people who don’t own a car.”
The Hobart move is long and loudly opposed by many Sandy Bay residents, who oppose the idea of new housing development next door and by numerous university staff who want it to stay in the suburb. The Bill to require Parliamentary approval of the sale is sponsored by Madeleine Ogilvie, minister for a bunch of things, but not education, in the minority Liberal Government and a member for the State seat that includes Sandy Bay.
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In Adelaide the campaign to save the Crown and Anchor pub kicks-on. The loved, live-music “Cranker” will go if a plan for a student-accommodation tower block on its site is approved, which a well-organised campaign is working to stop. And now it has a beer of its own, “Save the Cranker Draught” from SA brewing-icon, Coopers. If the development fails international students will have somewhere to soak up the Adelaide atmosphere but they might be short somewhere to live. The city is equal first local government area in the country for the proportion of renters who are international students.
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The National Institute of Circus Arts is leaving Swinburne U. and moving to Collarts (the Australian College of the Arts), also in inner-city Melbourne. The university’s PVC for VET Madelyn Bolch says the move “allows Swinburne to focus on areas where we are a global leader, like digital technology, space, health and sustainability.”
Which fits VC Pascale Quester’s plan, “my vision for Swinburne is that we need to differentiate from the pack and that our DNA at Swinburne is fundamentally STEM and technology and preparing the human capital required to make it sing,” she said when she started (Campus Morning Mail July 9 2020).
It’s also a win for Collarts CEO Sam Jacob, who is steadily building visibility and breadth for the 30 year-old private provider.
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The States have joined various university lobbies with special pleading submissions to the Senate Committee Inquiry into the Federal Government’s Bill to cap international student numbers. South Australia was quick off the mark weeks back, pointing out that international student growth is a significant reason for merging Uni Adelaide and Uni SA – curiously the submission does not mention that it is why Premier Malinauskas pushed the merger.
And now the Victorian State Government repeats the standard arguments about financial damage to research funding, favouring regional over metro campuses and so on but with a State rights twist, “Victoria does not have as many large regional education providers as New South Wales and Queensland.” And if that does not impress the committee, there is a substance-free plea. “Victoria would not be Victoria without its international students.”
The WA Government presents the same arguments as everybody else, the importance of international education, the slowness of recovery in student numbers and adds that the proposed policy is inconvenient. “A new Western Australian International Education Strategy is currently under development, intended to set a new pathway for the sector’s sustainable growth and expansion following the substantial work done in recovery.”
And the ACT Government pushes diversity. “International students contribute to the social fabric of Canberra, bringing diverse cultural perspectives, traditions and experiences to the community which fosters cultural awareness and appreciation.”
Will any of it get the States and Territory anywhere? Probably not.
As Universities Australia CEO Luke Sheehy points out, Government and Opposition are “openly targeting international students in their bid to slash migration” which is “short-sighted and politically expedient.”
And special interest claims from the States are not likely to change Minister’s minds, especially when their message is getting through. There was a story in The Australian, Tuesday, which started, “rental price growth has slowed amid a crackdown on international student numbers.”
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The Blackmore (as in health supplements) Family Foundation has kicked $10m into Southern Cross U’s tin, for “research and education in naturopathic medicine. No, this is not old news it’s a second $10m gift to SCU. The first was in 2018, to establish a Chair.
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The South Australian branch of the National Tertiary Education Union asked members at its three (for now) public universities how they feel about “psychosocial” working conditions. A thumping majority of the 960 responders are not happy. Close to all report “intense or sustained mental/physical/emotional effort,” nearly 60% have jobs that do not allow a “reasonable” work-life balance. And two-thirds have experienced or witnessed behaviour so unreasonable that it is a health and safety risk. There is much more along the same lines, including close to half believing their job is not secure for the foreseeable future. Whether most of these people come from soon to merge Uni Adelaide and Uni SA is not disclosed.
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There are universities with no fears of caps on international student numbers on metro campuses. Charles Sturt U has just taken a ten years lease on office space for teaching in as inner-urban is it gets in North Sydney. Uni Wollongong is moving its big-smoke premises from dead-centre Sydney at Circular Quay, but only a km or so, to Darling Harbour.
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ANU tells staff it underpaid some casuals between 2013, when it adopted on-line timesheets for them and the Fair Work Ombudsman getting in touch regarding an individual case. The university checked and found missed payments for casual professional and sessional staff “due to configuration error.” Some 2990 people are owed approximately $2m on present pay rates, excluding super or interest.
Management adds it has “identified” 130 staff who may not have been paid the correct amounts for the on-call allowance. ANU is paying the first group back and is “thoroughly investigating” to ensure remediation payments to those in the second.
The statement includes the standard guff about valuing staff and taking “proactive steps,” to correct things and the amounts involved are small beer, compared to the giant kegs of money staff at other universities were not properly paid when they should have been. But the quantum of cash, or apologies for mistakes are not the issue. As National Tertiary Education Union ANU branch president Milan Pintos-Lopez, puts it, “the bare minimum in terms of respect is paying workers for the work they do.”
