The University of Tasmania has announced a plan for a STEM study centre on the Sandy Bay campus. It is the latest manoeuvre in a long-running dispute over where U Tas should teach.
It started a decade or so back and picked up in 2021, with a master plan to sell much or nearly all, (depending who was talking), of the existing campus for housing and relocating the university into the Hobart CBD. The idea was that it would reduce the two-bus commute for northern suburbs students, be a convenient place for international students to live and create a hip and happening image for the university overall.
There were, and still are, just two problems. One is the staff those who hated it from the start and those who have come to. The other is the community members who wanted to preserve suburban Sandy Bay as it is.
And they fought university management, survey by survey, plan by plan and election by election, turning the city move into a city and State issue. The original grand scheme is now long gone, but short of selling out of the CBD, the university has no choice but to move as much as it can into the city. It already has schmick new premises with more to come – the spectacular transformation of the old Forestry Building will be ready next year for HASS and business and economics classes and some professional staff. But the university still needs to sell at least some of Sandy Bay to pay for it.
Now the university has a plan the State Government will wear to stay in the city – sell some of Sandy Bay but also build a STEM teaching and research facility at Sandy Bay, with law, psychology and pharmacy to remain there. Opponents are not happy but it looks politically possible – the Labor Opposition has previously backed the city move, although Independents in the upper house are hard to predict.
There is just one problem – STEM at Sandy Bay is quoted as costing $500m and the university and State Government are looking to Canberra for cash. “We intend to strongly advocate to the Commonwealth to invest in Tasmanian’s STEM-led future. What message does it send to Tasmanians if the Commonwealth is unwilling to invest in this vital sector?” is the pitch from Minister and Local Member Madeleine Ogilvie.
But where would the money come from? Not from the Department of Education, unless a new Government changes things. The feds haven’t funded university capital works for a decade. Maybe from the Department of Transport and Infrastructure’s Regional Precincts; it stumped up $15m, a big amount for the program last month for the University of Newcastle to build the Future Industries Facility, (“two industrial scale collaborative technology demonstration spaces”).
But if Canberra does not come good with enough, or any, money the university and state government might have to decide, to sell more of Sandy Bay than they planned.
Which would be a smaller version of where this started.
