Having handsomely retained their seats on primary votes, Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic and Education Minister Jason Clare now face a tighter count – the party’s decision to keep either/ both in cabinet. The national Right faction wants to swap one of its spots from NSW to Victoria – which would mean the back bench for one of Chris Bowen, Tony Burke, Clare or Husic.
It would be unfair to cancel Clare – he made education a positive for the government, reducing the Coalition’s Sarah Henderson and Greens Mehreen Faruqi to irrelevance. But when does fair ever apply in politics?
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IN 2016 the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (at Edith Cowan U), received an extraordinary gift of 130 “historically significant” pianos, from Sydney collector Stewart Symonds. In 2020 David Forward, from Adelaide, made a similar “gift.” Now ECU has significant philanthropy for a program of restoration, research and performance. The undisclosed amounts are from WA donors, the Wright Burt Foundation and the Feilman Foundation.
And next year ECU will have a flash new display space for its “flagship historic instruments,” the WAAPA piano salon, in ECU’s new Perth CBD campus. It’s very Edith Cowan U – an understated achievement.
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Harlene Hayne has a second term at Curtin U, through to 2031. She joined from Uni Otago in April 2021. Chancellor Vanessa Guthrie refers to the VC’s “exceptional values-led leadership,” in “challenging times.” Sufficiently challenging for the university to report a 0.7% operating margin for 2024 on $1.22bn in revenue.
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Way more VC’s than Rufus Black were watching the Tasmania senate count closely this week to see what happened to Jacqui Lambie, who remained short of a quota last night. If she does not get one, her Bill to cap VCs pay at the $440,000 or so the Federal Treasurer makes will likely disappear from the Senate with her.
It’s not the Bill that bothers them, it is the evidence to a committee inquiry into the legislation that would do the damage. As political theatre goes, it would be Titus Andronicus, but with more mayhem.
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UNSW is looking like a property developer with a side-hustle in education, (to quote the learned Damian Cahill). There is a new plan for a 11-storey “future-focused” teaching and learning spaces at the Kensington end of its Sydney campus.
Last September it won State Government planning approval for a huge development across the road from the western side of campus, including accommodation for 1,000 students (so much for the end of international education). The accommodation would be leased to a private provider.
That project was opposed long and hard by the council, the neighbouring National Institute of Dramatic Art and locals – there were 449 submissions opposing the plan.
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Stage two job cuts are close at Uni Wollongong. 90 academic positions went at the beginning of the year and now 180 professional staff roles in the library, research office, student services and faculty support will go in a restructure starting next month. If there are not enough volunteers, retrenchments will follow.
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And the winner in the sucking up stakes is lobby Science and Technology Australia. It congratulated the Government on its re-election on 11pm Saturday and suggested how it could build on its win with a “future powered by science and technology.”
Next on the dais was the Australian Technology Network which was out of the gates at 10am Sunday, to congratulate the Government and assure it that ATN is, “committed to working together to prepare all Australians for the jobs of tomorrow.”
The Cooperative Research Centres’ lobby was third, announcing lunch-time Sunday that, “we look forward to working with the Government and Parliament to grow Australia’s innovation ecosystem.”
The congrats from a big field of late runners continued all week, but the special pleading stayed the same.
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John Quiggin’s (Uni Queensland) new seven-point plan for universities is light on markets and big on state control. It includes:
- A national university system controlled by the federal government
- Ending corporate governance and focusing on education and research
- E “collegial model of academic governance”
- “Federal control” of international admissions (which sounds rather like what exists now).
All of which are on the way, or will be once ATEC is up and at ‘em.
But one is idea is unlikely, given it would upset a player more potent than ATEC will ever be, the National Tertiary Education Union. Professor Quiggin proposes a national enterprise agreement for all universities. This the NTEU will never agree to, given the profile that individual enterprise bargains create for officials and the boasting rights that follow every salary increase. The comrades could have had a go at deals covering similar universities under the existing rules for multi-employer agreements, but have not.
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The Australians Business Deans Council is working on a new edition of its’ journal ranking. Submissions are due by month-end and all appears to be proceeding peaceably. Unlike the last substantial change in 2019, which took two years and included arguments over a new super A** ranking (it did not happen) and linking the local league-table to the UK Chartered Association of Business Schools list, (that did not happen either).
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A restructure at Deakin U generated allegations that may or may not be true, but they are too good a promotional opportunity for the National Tertiary Education Union to ignore. The comrades claim whatever is, or isn’t going on at Deakin U adds to their evidence to the Senate committee inquiry into university governance. But for anybody who missed their performance there, the union also demands the State Government inquire into, “the systemic governance failures at Victorian universities that have led to skyrocketing executive salaries and millions of dollars in wage theft across the sector.”
