Future Governments will have power to reframe the university sector as a result of sweeping powers accorded to the Government of the day in new ATEC legislation, Shadow Education Minister Julian Leeser has warned.
The latest of the Accord Bills is in the Reps, where the Coalition’s Julian Leeser used the opportunity to criticise just about everybody, without taking a final position on the legislation – he wants a Senate committee to have a look first.
It was a well-informed speech, setting out the power the Australian Tertiary Education Commission (ATEC) will wield, but only at the pleasure of the Minister, to recreate “Moscow on the Molonglo,” (economist Max Corden’s 2005 warning on what could occur in HE). Why did Vice-Chancellors sign up to ATEC, he wondered? “You told us you wanted managed growth. I'm surprised you don't also want your independence.”
And if they do, they need to speak-up now. “Ministerial control over the sector is embedded in every part of this Bill. You cannot remove it through keyhole surgery. If you do not like it and do not want to accept it, you will need to persuade both the Coalition and the Greens that the Bill should be opposed.”
Not, Mr Leeser warns, that there aren’t issues in universities that powers in the Bill could address. “From concerns about quality to how universities are grappling with the challenges of artificial intelligence, the shocking failures in relation to antisemitism, the problems around international students and a general slide in rankings, the problems of our higher education providers are manifold.”
And he warns HE that a future Coalition government could use the legislation, “to respond to broad societal changes in the national interest. Let me again say to the Vice-Chancellors: is this what you really want?”
Perhaps he will have an answer in submissions to the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee inquiry now underway.