Advocate, October 2014

vol. 21 no. 3 • November 2014 • www.nteu.org.au • ISSN 1329-7295

Advocate

• JCU cleaners win court case • $100,000 degrees no fantasy • Community forums for education • Saving USyd library jobs • Feeling the love at SCU & UniMelb

• Vale Gough Whitlam • ANU divestment drama • Insecure Work Conference • Coping with redundancy • Coalition opening science to business

• Defence Trade Controls changes • The rights of academic writers • National Council 2014 • Life Members • ... and much more.

How would Australia look under Pyne’s plan?

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 21 no. 3 • November 2014 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 1

Contents 2 NTEU stand up for unis while VCs

whimper Editorial, Jeannie Rea

3 2014 in review From the General Secretary

UPDATE

4 Success in protected action ballot at UNSW

NTEU defeats JCU after it tries to take staff to the cleaners

5 Read all about it in The unAustralian

6 Bargaining State of Play, Nov 2014

7 Over 1500 university jobs lost in 2014

Saving USyd library jobs

8 We love SCU – and the community does, too

9 Heart of the University

Vale Gough Whitlam

10 ACT VCs spar over deregulation

11 ANU divestment yields dramatic results

NTEU sponsors ATEM award for community engagement

12 Expert Seminar Series: Off Track

National Council stands in solidarity

13 NTEU women cross the line for Bluestocking Week 2014

14 Conference on insecure work

UNICASUAL NEWS

15 Super justice for casuals

15 Casual Online Teaching Survey

A&TSI NEWS

16 A&TSI replaces Indigenous

New Policy Committee

A&TSI staff numbers rising

17 Batchelor’s first PhD graduate

The Forrest Review: Advantage or assimilation

COLUMNS

36 TV or not TV News from the Net, by Pat Wright

37 TamU celebrates deregulation Lowering the Boom, by Ian Lowe

38 A tribute to Gough Whitlam in 4 parts Thesis Whisperer, Inger Mewburn

39 Making a dollar Letter from NZ, Lesley Francey, TEU

YOUR UNION

40 National Council 2014

44 Life Members

49 Merit Awards

50 New Qld Division Secretary

51 Former member survey

Advocate ISSN 1321-8476Published by National Tertiary Education Union ABN 38 579 396 344Publisher Grahame McCulloch Editor Jeannie ReaProduction Paul Clifton Editorial Assistance Anastasia KotaidisFeedback, advertising and other enquiries: [email protected] text and images © NTEU 2014 unless otherwise stated.

FEATURES

18 $100,000 degrees are no fantasyIt is no longer ‘scaremongering’ to declare that some degrees will cost $100,000 if the Higher Education and Research Reform Amendment (HERRA) Bill 2014 goes through.

19 NTEU Opening Statement to the Senate Committee Inquiry into HERRA Bill 2014

20 Contradictions, confusions and concessions in Pyne’s higher ed policiesEvidence from all quarters confirms that higher education is far too important to be left to the market.

22 Big cuts = little future Community forums for education, organised in partnership with the AEU and United Voice, were held in Penrith, Launceston and Towns-ville in September.

25 CAPA goes in to bat for research & PhDsCAPA’s statement to the Senate Committee Inquiry into HERRA Bill 2014 focussed on the RTS, higher fees and indexation of HELP.

26 Redundancy: When work doesn’t work anymoreIt’s not like Rosaria Burchielli didn’t know that jobs were going to go. But there was no reason to think that her job was in any danger.

28 For the public goodNTEU members Dr Elizabeth Coleman and Dr Emma Robertson reports from the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS) conference which explored the theme of the Humanities, Social Sciences and the Public Good.

30 Opening science to businessThe Coalition’s Industry, Innovation and Competitiveness Agenda is to open science up for business.

32 A polemic option in the world of scholarly publishingIan Dobson outlines the wealth of great content in the upcoming issue of Australian Universities’ Review, vol. 56, no.1.

33 Changes to Defence Trade ControlsChanges to the Defence Trade Controls Act are coming. Recently, the NTEU has been actively engaging with the Departments of Industry and Defence to get the word out to members.

34 The rights of academic writersWhatever form of writing an academic does, what is produced automatically accrues impor-tant rights that shouldn’t be ignored.

Cover image: Handing out the NTEU’s spoof newspaper, The UnAustralian in Adelaide on the morning of 22 October.Photo by Patrick O’Sullivan

NTEU National Office, PO Box 1323, Sth Melbourne VIC 32051st floor, 120 Clarendon St, Sth Melbourne VIC phone (03) 9254 1910 fax (03) 9254 1915 email [email protected] Offices www.nteu.org.au/divisionsBranch Offices www.nteu.org.au/branches

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• NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 21 no. 3 • November 2014 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate

Jeannie Rea, National President

Editorial

NTEU members should be mighty proud of themselves as advocates for higher education speaking out against the plans of the Federal Government to wreak havoc upon our public and accessible higher education system.

We are out there protecting the essence of our current system of public higher educa-tion despite the many problems stemming from public funding shortfalls and poor university management decisions.

Over 1500 of our colleagues have lost their jobs this year. If they are replaced, it will be with outsourced or precariously employed staff. One in two university positions (FTE) are now precarious. Over the last decade, three out of four new university jobs were either casual or fixed term. In the areas of strongest growth, teaching-only and research-only, over 80% of staff do not have employment security.

It is the NTEU that calls the universities and the Government to account for the impact of precarious staffing on the quality of our universities’ teaching, research and com-munity relationships. We speak out on the realities of working precariously. We support casual academics who, in effect, donate their labour to the university by marking and talking with students long after their paid hours have expired. We speak up for the researchers and others on ‘soft money’ who have no certainty to plan their lives because they are never sure whether there will be another job at the end of their current contract.

NTEU has a long history of industrial and political organising on insecure work and winning job security and improved con-ditions through the Commission and col-lective bargaining. But there is still much to be done as the situation worsens. This is the purpose of our National Insecure Work Conference in late November, where we will be exploring how we can better sus-tain organising on insecure work and with precariously employed staff. Find out more at www.nteu.org.au/insecurework2014.

While we have no expectations of our em-ployers to properly plan their workforce or show loyalty to the staff who demonstrate commitment every day to the university and students, we might have reasonably expected vice-chancellors to be out there advocating for their universities and defending the integrity of the Australian university system.

We are now in a bizarre situation where vice-chancellors and Universities Australia, who spent millions of dollars in militant opposition to the Gillard Government’s $2.3 billion cuts last year, are now, with one exception, conceding that there is no real alternative but to accept a cut of more than $5 billion from the Abbott Government. From a staff and student point of view it makes absolutely no sense for vice-chancellors to be endorsing fee deregulation to compensate for a 20% cut to government funding. While they are lobbying for amendments to the interest rate and a compensation package for regional universities, we need to ask why our vice-chancellors are not advocating for total rejection of the Government’s legislation.

In evidence to the recent Senate Commit-tee Inquiry into the Government’s higher education legislation, one after another leaders of our universities provided ex-amples of how the Government’s policies were unfair and unworkable especially for women, students from disadvantaged backgrounds and regional universities and their students. For example, Peter Lee representing the Regional Universities Network argued that mature-age students are more price sensitive and therefore less likely to enrol with higher fees. The vice-chancellors also revealed that Min-ister Pyne’s claims that he had consulted widely were highly disingenuous, with very few having been consulted before the Budget and few having been involved in direct conversations since.

Instead of insisting on genuine consulta-tion, it seems that many of our vice-chan-cellors have taken on the Government’s policies (with some amendments on inter-est rates and a regional support package) as a fait accompli and now just want the legislation to be passed with undue haste so they can get on with the job of securing their revenue sources through higher fees for domestic students.

The NTEU is sadly disappointed that our vice-chancellors are not the most vocal

advocates for Australia’s world renowned higher education system, where entry into a university is based on merit and not ca-pacity to pay. Instead, we have vice-chan-cellors who are, if not explicitly at least tacitly, buying into the Government’s free market propaganda about a need to set our universities free due to falling international standing. This is despite the Times Higher Education World University rankings highlighting the strength and depth of our public system and raising real questions about what impact the proposed deregulation would have on the overall quality of our system.

The Union’s disappointment in the public debate around these radical higher edu-cation policies is given weight by Hannah Forsyth (author of the recently published The making of the modern Australian uni-versity) in her observation that Australia’s vice-chancellors have lost their way when she said:

University staff are puzzled that senior university administrators are actively supporting a very unpopular set of reforms. The fact that they are doing so when their students and staff are largely persuaded that deregulation would be very bad indeed suggests that somewhere in our past the interests of vice-chancellors and the interests of the broader university community have diverged, perhaps irrevocably. The Australian, 1 Jan 2014

Throughout this campaign against the Abbott-Pyne ‘higher education reforms’, the NTEU has found many supporters including amongst students, unions, industry and the professions, as well the thousands of ordinary people who are thankful that this Union is standing up to and campaigning against a Government that wants to turn back the clock on high-er education participation. It is sad that our vice-chancellors do not feel the same way, but perhaps Hannah Forsyth got it absolutely right when she said:

Instead of being conscious of what uni-versities achieve for society, vice-chan-cellors are now beholden to their institution and its place in the market. This has shifted their focus from the public good to a fiduciary obligation to their employer.

Jeannie Rea, National [email protected]

NTEU stands up for unis while VCs whimper


Grahame McCulloch, General Secretary

From the General Secretary

NATIONAL EXECUTIVENational President Jeannie ReaVice-President (Academic) Andrew Bonnell Vice-President (General Staff) Michael Thomson

General Secretary Grahame McCullochNational Assistant Secretary Matthew McGowan

Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander (A&TSI) Policy Committee Chair Terry Mason

National Executive: Stuart Bunt, Carolyn Cope, Stephen Darwin, Gabe Gooding, Genevieve Kelly, Colin Long, Virginia Mansel Lees, Kelvin Michael, Michael McNally, Anne Price, Kevin Rouse, Cathy Rytmeister, John Sinclair, Ron Slee, Mel Slee, Lolita Wikander

NATIONAL OFFICE STAFFIndustrial Unit Coordinator Sarah RobertsNational Industrial Officers Linda Gale, Wayne Cupido, Susan Kenna, Elizabeth McGrath

Policy & Research Coordinator Paul KniestPolicy & Research Officers Jen Tsen Kwok, Terri MacDonald

National A&TSI Coordinator Adam FrogleyNational A&TSI Organiser Celeste Liddle

National Organiser Michael EvansNational Publications Coordinator Paul Clifton Media & Communications Officer Courtney Sloane National Membership Officer Melinda ValsordaEducation & Training Officers Ken McAlpine, Helena Spyrou

Executive Manager Peter SummersICT Network Engineer Tam VuongDatabase Programmer/Data Analyst Ray HooPayroll Officer Jo RileyExecutive Officer (Gen Sec & President) Anastasia KotaidisExecutive Officer (Administration) Tracey CosterAdmin Officer (Membership & Campaigns) Julie Ann VealAdministrative Officer (Resources) Renee VealReceptionist & Administrative Support Leanne Foote

Finance Manager Glenn OsmandSenior Finance Officer Gracia HoFinance Officers Alex Ghvaladze, Tamara Labadze, Lee Powell, Daphne Zhang

National Growth Organisers Gaurav Nanda, Rifai Abdul, Priya Nathan

Over the last twelve months the Union has faced the full force of the new Coalition Government’s economic and social policy.

The Pyne plan to deregulate university fees, subsidise private providers and cut government funding by more than 20% is the most radical change the sector has faced in more than 30 years. Amidst this policy turmoil, vice-chancellors have failed to develop a collective response and it has fallen to the Union to defend public investment in (and the public good role of ) our universities.

At the same time, NTEU members have confronted more industrially aggressive and litigious university managements with a flood of managing change, restructuring and downsizing initiatives, and a long drawn out bargaining process.

Against this back-drop the Union is rela-tively well positioned and has consolidat-ed its position over the last twelve months:

High bargaining outcomesAt the time of writing 34 out of 37 univer-sities had successfully concluded Round 6 Enterprise Agreements providing for minimum annual salary increases of 3.2%, academic workload caps, improved Pro-fessional Staff careers, binding Indigenous employment targets and around 1000 new permanent jobs to replace existing academic casual work. We can confidently anticipate that the Round will be conclud-ed by the end of this year.

Rising membershipUnion membership has continued to grow despite downsizing and accelerated retirements amongst university staff, with membership up by more than 3,400 since 2011.

Improved membership services2014 saw the introduction of free universal journey insurance for all NTEU members, and a continued broadening of our wider member services program.

Training and educationThe Union’s 2012 decision to re-establish NTEU national Union education moved into higher gear with an extensive new training curriculum and workshops across the full spectrum of Union work includ-ing bargaining and employment rights, implementing Collective Agreements, social media and campaigning, a major Organisers’ residential conference and the commencement of our expert seminar series.

A strong financial positionThe Union now has total assets of around $26 million (which includes a 2014 WA Di-vision property purchase of $1.9 million), annual revenues of around $22 million and no net debt. Although the Union ran a larger than expected operating deficit in the last financial year (- $ 0.37 million), most of this arose from lower than expect-ed membership wages growth. The com-ing 2014-15 financial year budget and the associated forward estimates anticipate a strong budget surplus in 2016-17.

Campaign against Pyne planAbly led by National President, Jeannie Rea, the Union’s policy and commu-

nications staff have run a high profile campaign against university deregulation. The slogan ‘A degree shouldn’t cost a mortgage’, inspired by National Assistant Secretary, Matt McGowan, has resonated with both politicians and the public.

We have maintained high visibility in both mainstream and social media, and are continuing to vigorously lobby the Senate cross bench in a bid to kill the Govern-ment’s package.

International workThe Union made direct representations to governments in Colombia, Iraq, Mozam-bique, Iran, USA, Egypt, Sudan, Thailand, Ukraine, Russia, Tajikistan, Australia and Ethiopia on breaches of human, trade union and academic freedom rights. I have continued to serve as a member of the Education International Executive Board.

Priorities for 2015Our key areas of focus over coming year will include:

• Defeat of the Government’s higher education program.

• Strong workplace based campaigns to fully implement our Enterprise Agree-ment provisions.

• A major conference on Insecure Work.

• A residential training program for Branch and Division Elected Officers, and the commencement of our Aborig-inal and Torres Strait Islander cultural competency program for officers and staff.

Grahame McCulloch, General [email protected]

2014 in review


Update Success in protected action ballot at UNSWThe University of New South Wales (UNSW) Branch has been busy in the last few months preparing for a protected action ballot. Open from August 14 to September 5, the ballot was a great success.

With high participation and all forms of potential industrial actions receiving overwhelming endorsement: from email signatures to rolling strikes. This sends a strong message to UNSW management that our members are paying attention, and are prepared to exercise their rights in support of the bargaining team and the Branch’s log of claims.

Our claims address important workplace issues, including:

• Introducing fair flexi-time arrangements for Professional staff.

• Improved job security, better pay and conditions for all casuals.

• A fair and decent pay rise.

• Improved access to parental leave.

• Improved career opportunities for con-tract research staff.

• Improved protections against excessive workload.

• Protection against bullying and for a safe workplace.

• Increased Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander employment.

• Establishment of a Professional Staff Development Fund, and much more.

We have received some positive ‘without prejudice’ opening offers from manage-ment regarding: increases to severance payment entitlements to contract research staff; allowing research staff access to con-vert to continuing contingent positions at 3 years, down from 5 years; exploring primary carer access to paid parental leave provisions; improving performance man-agement procedures; and an improved right to request flexible work clause.

However, after 12 months of negotiations, there has been no agreement on substan-tive matters including pay, workloads, job security, parental leave, flex-time, profes-sional development, Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander employment and workplace protections against bullying.

Following the successful ballot, NTEU members resolved on 17 September to launch a campaign of industrial action in support of these outstanding claims. This includes an email signature campaign and a stop work action and rally on 20 Octo-ber to coincide with the UNSW Council meeting and possible further strike action continuing into next year.

We look forward to exercising our in-dustrial muscle in order to improve our Agreement and close bargaining in the near future.

Joanne Faulkner, UNSW Vice-President (Academic)

Below: UNSW members post the ballot. Photo by Kiraz Janicke.

NTEU defeats JCU after it tries to take staff to the cleanersNTEU has defeated an application in the Federal Court by James Cook University (JCU) that sought to unilaterally change the wording in the Agreement to enshrine management’s interpretation which would disadvantage part-time staff and discriminate against women and people with care of children responsibilities. Justice Logan declared that management’s interpretation made ‘no industrial or commercial sense’ and that he preferred ‘the construction promoted by the Union’.

JCU management has spent tens of thousands of dollars on lawyers and barristers fighting to shave the final redundancy payments of their lowest-paid workers. One of those, Marie Zielke, was in court to hear the judgement; the amount of money owed to her is just over half the Vice-Chancellor’s salary package for one week.

The case was bought by the University in a bid to avoid a dispute in the Fair Work Commission (FWC) resulting from the outsourcing of cleaners. Like many universi-ties, JCU has been slowly replacing its cleaning workforce with contractors. Staff that were working part-time received reduced payouts because the University applied their part-time status twice, by reducing their length of service to what it would have been if they worked full time, but still paying them out on that service at the part-time rate. Marie Zielke was underpaid $9,706.

NTEU immediately notified a dispute and took the matter to the FWC. Management avoided resolving the matter in the FWC by going to the Federal Court. One would have to wonder why JCU management would waste so much public money on lawyers when the sums are so small (and it is so clear that the Union is right and they are wrong!). The reason probably lies in the massive restructure afoot at JCU which is likely to result in many redundancies towards the end of 2014. The staff affected at this point are principally professional and technical staff and many of them are part time. A complete review of academic offerings and staffing will occur in 2015.

In the end their tactic of sidestepping the Commission and going to the court back-fired as Justice Logan elected to not only reject their application which effectively applied a ‘fraction of a fraction’, but to make a determination that means the clause unambiguously means what we said it does.

Michael McNally, Queensland Division Secretary


Update Read all about it in The unAustralian On 21 October, the NTEU launched The UnAustralian – a satirical newspaper designed to show what a future Australia could look like if Christopher Pyne’s unfair higher education changes pass the Senate.

Stories focussing on spiralling student debt, the impact on regional universities, and the effect on staff workloads were off-set by more humorous articles imagining Christopher Pyne to be sorry for his dis-astrous policies, and banners advertising legal advice from ‘George’ for bigots who found themselves in trouble.

The paper was based on The Australian in order to ensure recognition across every state and territory.

Thousands of copies were distributed by members and activists at metro transport hubs, like train stations, bus stops and tram stops, as well as on university cam-puses and busy public thoroughfares.

While our newspaper distributors busied themselves on foot, the Union drummed up interest on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook with thousands engaging with the online content.

As well as highlighting the possible rami-fications of the Higher Education and Re-search Reform Amendment Bill 2014, The UnAustralian encouraged readers to enrol to vote so as to have their say on these changes come the next Federal election.

The NTEU will continue to campaign against the Abbott Government’s higher education changes as long as they under-mine our public universities and exclude access to education for women, students from poorer backgrounds, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.

Courtney Sloane, National Media OfficerMissed out on your copy? Read it online

www.theunaustralian.org

Pictured: NTEU members handing out The UnAustralian to ealry morning commuters in (clockwise from top left) Sydney, Perth, Toowoomba and Melbourne.


Update

Round 6 Bargaining – State of Play November 2014

University

Casual academics

Academic workloads

General Staff Claims Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Employment

Expiry Date Annual wage growth (expiry to expiry)

More secure positions

Hours-based cap on teaching

Enforceable classifications

Development or mobility

Employment strategy / targets

Monitoring Committee

Curtin 30/06/16 4.25% ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

CQU 30/06/16 4.30% n/a ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

ECU 30/06/16 4.25% ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

Sydney 1/03/17 3.20% ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

Deakin 30/06/16 3.50% ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

JCU 30/06/16 3.15% ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

CSU 31/12/16 2.75% ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✘ ✘

ANU 30/06/16 3.15% n/a ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

UCAN 1/06/15 3.30% ✔ ✔ ✔ ✘ ✘ ✔

Griffith (Aca) 30/09/16 3.15% ✔ ✔ n/a n/a ✔ ✔

Griffith (Gen) 30/09/16 3.15% n/a n/a ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

VU 31/12/17 3.20% ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

CDU 30/12/16 3.15% n/a ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

UTAS 30/06/16 3.15% n/a ✔ ✔ ✘ ✔ ✔

Melbourne 30/06/17 3.20% ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

RMIT 30/06/16 3.15% ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

ACU 30/06/17 3.15% ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

Murdoch 30/06/16 3.15% ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

UniSA 9/06/18 3.40% ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

La Trobe 1/01/17 3.15% ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

QUT (Aca) 1/03/17 3.00% ✘ ✘ n/a n/a ✔ ✔

QUT (Gen) 1/03/17 3.00% n/a n/a ✔ ✘ ✔ ✔

UWS (Aca) 31/01/17 3.20% ✔ ✔ n/a n/a ✔ ✔

UWS (Gen) 31/01/17 3.20% n/a n/a ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

UNE (Gen) 1/10/17 3.25% n/a n/a ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

UWA (Aca) 30/09/16 3.15% n/a ✔ n/a n/a ✘ ✘

UWA (Gen) 30/09/16 3.15% n/a n/a ✔ ✔ ✘ ✘

UQ 30/04/17 3.30% ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

Flinders 30/06/17 3.15% ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✘ ✔

MQ (Aca) 30/06/17 3.15% ✔ ✔ n/a n/a ✔ ✔

UNE (Aca) 1/10/17 3.25% ✘ ✔ n/a n/a ✔ ✔

Monash 30/06/17 3.20% ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

UTS (Gen) 2/05/17 3.20% n/a n/a ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

Adelaide 31/03/17 3.15% ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

UTS (Aca) 2/05/17 3.20% ✔ ✔ n/a n/a ✔ ✔

Newc (Gen) 30/06/17 3.15% n/a n/a ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

Newc (Aca) 30/06/17 3.15% ✔ ✔ n/a n/a ✔ ✔

USQ 30/06/17 3.20% n/a ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

Bargaining State of Play, Nov 2014The past few months have seen the Union deliver salary increases of between 3.15% and

3.25% at 6 more Universities, as well as securing good outcomes on our key claims.

As this round of enterprise bargaining draws to a close, the Union will work to-wards finalising Agreements at the Univer-sity of the Sunshine Coast, the University

of Wollongong, Southern Cross University, the University of New South Wales and Federation University of Australia, by the end of this year.

www.universitybargaining.org.au


Update Saving USyd library jobs Over 300 staff, students and members of the community rallied outside Fisher Library at Sydney University in August to defend library services and jobs.

Earlier this year, Sydney University library management announced a major restruc-ture that would have serious implications for library users, education and our col-leagues, including the devastating poten-tial loss of up to 156 current library staff.

In response, NTEU library members organ-ised a workplace petition, appealing to the Vice Chancellor for detailed information about the proposed change and a solid assessment of whether or not the changes would prevent library services from effec-tively meeting the needs of users and the University.

Hearing about the proposed changes, the broader University community rallied behind library workers on Wednesday 13 August. The crowd heard from Sydney University NTEU and NUS Presidents, and esteemed guest speakers award winning novelist David Malouf, and writer and journalist Bob Ellis.

‘It’s very good to see that so many of you here are young – after all these changes are being made in your name. It’s not so easy for the authorities to dismiss your presence,’ said David Malouf.

‘These measures are presented by the managers of the University… as a re-sponse to the needs — and demands even of students. It is for you that the Fisher has, as they put it, been ‘improved’.

‘I just ask you to consider whether it really is your needs that are being served here.

Is it just a coincidence that these changes that you have ‘demanded’ also save the University a good deal of money?’

‘What they are largely about is the closing of spaces, libraries… the removal of ob-jects, books… and librarians who will no longer need to be paid.’

‘There was a time when the burning of books was frowned upon,’ said Bob Ellis. ‘No less damage is being done to this great convocation of knowledge, which formed my mind and made my soul between 1959 and 1964, by administrators who think they know what knowledge should be shaved away, exiled to another place.’

‘But they are unaware, it seems, of what university means. It is a study, without stint or border, of the universe and what is in it. And though they like the persecutors of Galileo would like to prescribe what should be known, and ban those books and excise those librarians who do not fit that prescription, they are wrong at their heart, wrong before the nation and the heavens.’

‘And like war criminals should be brought to trial for their assault on human memory and put away for 20 years.’

Michael Thomson, University of Sydney Branch PresidentYou can view a video of the speeches at:

www.nteu.org.au/sydney/libraryservices

Photos © Peter Boyd

Over 1500 university jobs lost in 2014This year has seen a wave of sackings across the higher education industry. Since the start of 2014 over 1500 jobs have been cut nationwide. Claiming funding pressures or just a preference for a different staff profile than they currently have, universities have been launching restructures at an unprecedented rate.

In most cases, they are not actual-ly cutting the number of jobs. Yet somehow senior managements justify to themselves directing millions of dollars in public education funding towards paying severance packages for staff who they will only have to replace. Arguably, the predominant motive is simply undermining job security, so that even staff with con-tinuing appointments feel constantly at risk.

At some universities the focus has been on general and professional staff, at others on academics. Aca-demics with low research outputs are particularly at risk of being targeted, regardless of what the reasons for their individual research output might be. Some universities have announced global job cuts, under slo-gans such as ‘Business Improvement’, ‘Academic Reshaping’, ‘EQUIP’ and ‘World Ready/Future Ready’. Others have imposed death by a thousand cuts, with smaller restructures im-posed in one organisational area after another.

Victoria has been particularly hard hit, with 540 staff to go at Melbourne Uni, 350 at La Trobe, 150 at RMIT, and 300 at VU. While in some cases job cuts are clearly the result of financial exigen-cy, at others the employer is simply seeking to remove staff who do not support the university’s ‘strategic objectives.’ NTEU is tackling these job cuts with a combination of industrial disputation and local campaigns, and will be looking to develop a nation-al strategy to combat the churn of employment in Australian universi-ties.


Update We love SCU – and the community does, tooNTEU loves SCU, and so do all the people we have talked to over the six weeks since we launched the ‘Save our Uni. Save our local jobs’ campaign.

NTEU members and supporters hit the corridors and streets to talk with staff, stu-dents and community groups about why SCU matters and why we need to protect local jobs. We have witnessed an extraor-dinary wave of support from people in our community. People love this university and believe in and value the staff.

NTEU membership and level of activism is at an all time high. Together we keep getting stronger, and we will continue the fight to save the Uni that we love.

Campaign genesisSCU management approved huge capital investments that required the University to take out massive loans and deplete its cash reserves. For example, they spent $50 million on a new Gold Coast building and started two new buildings in Lismore. According to management, the University is in an unprecedented financial crisis.

Management’s plan to repair problems arising from their financial decisions has been to cut jobs, call for staff to increase workloads and expect staff to bear the full brunt of savings required. They did this without giving staff a real capacity to have input into these decisions.

As key stakeholders of SCU, NTEU mem-bers are deeply troubled by management’s approach to getting the budget back in the black. The Vice-Chancellor’s proposed strategy of cutting jobs, then looking for more jobs to cut, will damage SCU and quality education, and will have broader implications for the local communities around our campuses. Modelling prepared by Lismore City Council indicates that the loss of 50 jobs from SCU would result in a $12.55 million hit to the municipality’s economy. However, SCU senior manage-ment are proposing to cut up to 100 jobs.

NTEU members have consistently argued that job cuts should be a last resort, not a first, and we have repeatedly requested opportunities to participate in collabora-

tive discussions to explore alternatives, to no avail. Senior management have not provided staff with the information we have requested, or answered our questions about who bears responsibility for the financial decisions that created the current ‘crisis’.

We believe fixing this situation requires SCU management to be transparent in their dealings and accountable for their decisions. There appears to be a catalogue of poor management decisions leading to the current crisis that job cuts will do nothing to correct. It is in the public in-terest – for the good of SCU’s staff, stu-dents and regional communities – that we establish to what degree, if any, those in senior man-agement positions are responsible so that appropriate remedial action can be taken.

In the absence of any collaborative discussion facilitated by management, we thought it was time for NTEU members to engage the community (staff, students and locals) in a conversation about the future of SCU.

Petition & community assemblyWe started our campaign by talking with colleagues, friends, family and neighbours about the situation at the University, ask-ing them to sign a petition we hoped to table at University Council. Our belief was that saving our University required us to demonstrate the level of support for staff and our concerns.

Our request to table the petition at the University Council meeting was denied. However, the overwhelming support from the community gave us hope that the fight was not lost and we decided to call a community assembly on the day of the University Council meeting.

Over 200 staff, students and community members converged on the Lismore campus on Friday 12 September to show

their support and pass a unanimous resolution that called, among other things, on the University Council to accept the NTEU petition (which has now been signed by 1879 people).

After the assembly, a delegation of 20 representatives travelled up to Invercauld House to again request Council allow staff to deliver the petition. The Chancellor came out to speak with

staff and accepted the petition on behalf of Council. He thanked us for taking the trouble to bring the community view to their attention.

Our campaign has not reached its conclu-sion, but one thing is clear from both the petition and the community assembly. We will not let this happen on our watch! Our community wants a vibrant, healthy thriv-ing University in their region, and they are troubled by management’s decisions so far. They want to keep jobs at SCU.

Kate Mitchell, SCU Branch PresidentMore about the campaign and updates

www.nteu.org.au/scu


Update Heart of the UniversityThe University of Melbourne NTEU Branch has had strong membership growth and is now the largest Branch in the Union, thanks in great part to a year of campaigning against attacks on professional staff roles under the banner, ‘Professional Staff – Heart of the University’.

BIP attacks on general staff The University of Melbourne’s euphe-mistically-named Business Improvement Program (BIP) aims to slash $70 million from our annual spend by hacking at the services and facilities provided by general staff. Senior management justified this by claiming that it was about reducing dupli-cation, improving what we do, and saving money in an environment of budget cuts and uncertainty.

No one denies that there’s a need for positive changes – in fact, it’s often NTEU members and organisers who take the lead in identifying problems. Members care deeply about getting things right and making things better, and we know how, because it’s those of us on the ground who are the real experts in what we do. We were promised good engagement and genuine consultation.

Senior management, naturally, skipped all that in favour of hiring consultants who spent time only with management, and their eventual plan was to cut our professional staff from over 3,500 to just over 3,000. We expect to see an increase in workloads for those staff who remain, and the academics we work with, and a push to rely even more on the same online systems and outsourcing arrangements that our staff and students already strug-gle with.

Job losses were only part of the devasta-tion to staff – 1600 positions were spilled and filled, after many were downgraded at least one HEW level. All this, of course, has been happening under the shadow of de-regulation that promises that students can expect to pay more, while the University ensures that they’ll get fewer services and support structures for their money.

Heart campaignSo the ‘Heart of the University’ campaign was born. A succession of rallies were held on campus, including the Raise Your Voice rally that sang our message outside a meeting of senior management, and a visual representation on the lawn outside the Chancellery building of the more than 500 jobs disappearing. An intensive round of Know Your Rights seminars and mobile offices were held to ensure staff were not left relying on misinformation and poor advice from HR and their employer.

More than just a one-campaign message, the Heart of the University message is strong enough to take us through this outrageous restructure and well beyond, when members will need to stay strong while the dust settles. It’s there to remind everyone about the importance of our work and the place we occupy in the University community. And it’s proven popular with our members – our Heart of the University badges and stickers are proudly displayed on clothing or pinned up on office pinboards. You can spot that bold, red heart a mile off!

Importantly, it’s a message of positivity and strength – because while it’s often necessary for us as a Union to put our foot down and say ‘no’, it’s also important to celebrate what’s great. It’s a reminder that even when we’ve put up with over a year of turmoil and uncertainty, it is us and our work that remain here at the heart of this university, and we look forward to carrying it on into 2015 and beyond.

Raena Armitage, University of Melbourne Branch Secretary

www.nteu.org.au/melb Photo: Corey Oakley

Vale Gough WhitlamThe NTEU pays tribute to Gough Whitlam, the Prime Minister who dragged Australia into a new era of equality and opportunity.

The architect of free higher education, Whitlam had great faith in the future and the rights of youth in shaping that future. He reduced the voting age to 18, abolished tuition fees and introduced TEAS, a living allowance based on need. Importantly, his Government took higher education away from the States and invested heavily in expansion. Their changes gave hope to ordinary people, and spurred families on to supporting their children to finish school.

He championed women’s libera-tion, appointed a special advisor on women, encouraged feminists into public service and supported independent women’s organisations. His government had the first Minister for Multiculturalism, abolished the last legislative vestiges of the White Australia policy and passed the Racial Discrimination Act. Whitlam opened up the possibility of land rights when he symbolically handed soil back to Vincent Lingiari at Wave Hill in 1975.

Whitlam introduced universal health care, welfare for single mothers and the homeless, and established Legal Aid. He believed that government should intervene for the disadvan-taged and restore hope and dignity.

These ideas and policies have shaped Australia since the 1970s. At this time of neo-liberal dominance of public policy, Whitlam and his government should be remembered for their achievements, not by the circum-stances of their dismissal or just the critique of what they did not do.

Jeannie Rea, National PresidentSee also Inger Mewburn’s moving tribute to Gough Whitlam, p.38


Update ACT VCs spar over deregulationThe vice-chancellors of Canberra’s two universities have been high-profile advocates for opposite sides in the debate over the future of higher education funding.

In one corner Ian Young, Vice-Chancel-lor of the Australian National University (ANU) and current Chair of the Group of Eight, is the champion for universities’ support of deregulation. He has called it ‘a game-changer and a building block to making our universities brilliant’.

In the other corner, Stephen Parker, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Can-berra (UC), is the only university head in the country who has spoken out against the whole Federal Government Budget package of radical changes to higher education funding.

Amend the Federal Budget or reject it?Most vice-chancellors seem to have expected a kind of Santa Claus budget and have been surprised when their requested gift of deregulated fees was mixed with lumps of coal, in the form of a budgeted 20% course funding cut. Student fees would have to rise 30% just to make up for this cut, cramping the VCs’ abilities to realise their individual dreams for using deregulated fee proceeds.

There have been other funding losses too, along with changes to HECS/HELP that will make a university education so much more expensive that some potential students must be daunted.

These vice-chancellors have subsequently sought to suggest which bits the govern-ment should drop to make the package more palatable. Ian Young, fairly represent-atively, argues that the increased interest rate on HECS debts and the size of funding cuts should be reconsidered.

Stephen Parker, on the other hand, opposes the whole package, including fee deregulation. He says ‘these changes, tak-en together, are: unfair, unethical, reckless, poor economic policy, [and] contrary to the international evidence’.

He argues that over time fees will rise to levels that impose heavy debt burdens on all students: ‘universities will charge do-

mestic students what the market will bear in order to reduce backlog maintenance, support research and fund ‘strategy’. And the market will ‘bear’ quite a lot, I suspect [because] the HECS system dulls the price signal to the student...’.

Furthermore, those who earn least will accrue the highest levels of debt due to charging above-inflation interest rates on HECS debt, making the changes ‘particu-larly unfair on the disadvantaged [and] on women...’.

Views reflect interests of different kinds of institutionIan Young’s views express the goals of the elite Group of Eight universities, including his own. His National Press Club address in July focused on the benefits to elite in-stitutions of deregulating fees: being able to enrol smaller groups of students paying higher fees for the privilege of smaller classes and more access to ‘brilliant’ aca-demics who are active researchers. Those students’ fees will also subsidise the costs of that research.

His view of the current situation was dim: ‘The nature of our university system forces us to be average. We have very few terrible universities. But we also have no truly outstanding universities....We do need a good average standard of education and research. But to be brilliant, we also need the truly world-leading peaks.’

Stephen Parker’s view of the current state and future prospects of our higher educa-tion system is very different: ‘We have one of the best university systems in the world, and it is about to be trashed’, he said. ‘These [budget] measures might benefit a few elite universities, but they will damage the university system as a whole.’

Stephen Parker acknowledges that UC is in a different place in the market from the ANU, serving a broad range of students whose goals are primarily professional and semi-professional careers rather than academic ones. And while no Canberra university has many students from low

socio-economic statuses (SES), UC seeks to increase their number.

The proposed funding changes will make higher education less attractive to low SES students. Students seeking a degree as a job qualification may make pragmatic choices about the worth of higher educa-tion. Professor Parker quotes an unem-ployed American student who said ‘You often hear the quote that you can’t put a price on ignorance. But with the way high-er education is going, ignorance is looking more and more affordable by the day’.

NTEU voice more important than everACT Division Secretary Stephen Darwin said ‘The NTEU rejects the deregulation of university fees, the increase in HECS interest rates and savage cuts to university funding. They are inequitable and unjust. I applaud UC Vice-Chancellor Stephen Parker on his policy position, and his standing up for it very publicly where no other Vice-Chancellor does. While he does not find allies among the Vice-Chancellors, his voice joins with those of the great ma-jority of students, parents, university staff and their union, and most in the general community in deploring these cuts.’

‘However, it’s important to remember that each of these vice-chancellors’ views fun-damentally reflects what will most benefit his own university. In addition, Stephen Parker has said he sees the real solution to university funding challenges as cutting costs, including by decreasing job security and reducing pay rises.

‘The separate voice of the NTEU represent-ing the interests of university staff and the sector as a whole is a crucial, non-partisan element in a debate that has been greatly muddied by the divergent interests of different kinds of university.’

Jane Maze, ACT Division Organiser

Above left: Ian Young. Photo: Belinda Pratten. Above right: Stephen Parker. Photo: Twitter.


Update ANU divestment yields dramatic resultsANU’s recent decision to divest from seven companies that did not meet its new Environmental, Social and Governance ratings created an unprecedented and spectacular over-reaction from the Abbott Government and the business media.

For days, Government figures and the pages of the financial press were turned over to attacking the ANU divestment. This reaction is all the more extraordinary given the divestment represented only 5% of ANU’s investments and did not include a range of other fossil fuel companies ANU continues to support. What it did demonstrate was the symbolic importance of the divestment, particularly as it follows on from major withdrawals from fossil fuel investments, including by Stanford Univer-sity and the Rockefeller Foundation.

The divestment was forced by a highly effective campaign led by Fossil Free ANU over the last year, which was activity supported by the ACT Division of the NTEU. This campaign included a student referendum in which 82% of students voted in favour of ANU divesting from fossil fuel investments and a series of pow-erful representations to the ANU Council. This resulted in ANU Council eventually adopting a modest ethical investment policy, advised by the Centre for Australian Ethical Research.

Although activists were disappointed with the limited scope of the divestment as a result of this new policy, no-one anticipat-ed the furious attacks from a range of Ab-bott Government Ministers, including the Prime Minister, Treasurer and Education Minister. In an act of breathtaking hypoc-risy, Education Minister Pyne lamented his inability to force ANU Council to reverse its divestment decision, whilst at the same time lauding his deregulation proposals which will remove the ability of future governments to influence the future direction of Australian higher educa-tion. Moreover, the leading advocate for deregulation in the university sector, ANU

Vice-Chancellor Ian Young, was merciless-ly attacked for the divestment decision. This is despite his academic discipline being oceanography, where the effect of global warming on the earth’s oceans is becoming increasing apparent (a point Young has repeatedly made in defending the decision of the ANU Council).

The success of the divestment campaign at ANU and this response demonstrates the critical point this debate has reached. The climate denialism of the Abbott Government stands in stark contrast to the overwhelming scientific and social consensus as to the escalating dangers of uncontrollable climate change.

At the same time as Tony Abbott was claiming coal to be ‘good for humanity’, an increasing number of universities, superannuation funds and local govern-ments across the globe are looking to divest from polluters and to invest in the growing future of renewable energy. Al-though much of this is driven by a genuine concern about the future of the planet, investors are also increasingly looking to the economic dangers of being stuck with ‘stranded assets’ in industries whose futures are inherently finite.

This is precisely why the modest ANU di-vestment decision became such a volatile matter. The Abbott Government is clearly trying to reframe Australian economic development around the continuing exploitation of fossil fuels – despite the demonstrable damage they are contribut-ing to the earth’s atmosphere - whilst sadly retreating from investment in renewables (let alone education).

Therefore, the underpinning message of the ANU divestment is a moral danger to the ‘no carbon tax’ mantra that has characterised the Abbott Government. The excellent campaign conducted by Fossil Free ANU demonstrates the potential capacity of student and staff activism to force recognition of the potential role of university investments in causing social harm, including future damage to the frag-ile ecosystems on which we all rely.

This is why the reaction to the ANU divest-ment decision was so dramatic and dispro-portionate: it was in its potential to spread and bring more substantial change.

Stephen Darwin, ACT Division Secretary

NTEU sponsors ATEM award for community engagementNTEU was pleased to sponsor the Excellence in Community Engagement Award at the recent Association for Tertiary Education Management (ATEM) annual conference in Cairns in September.

NTEU James Cook University Branch President Jonathan Strauss pre-sented the award to Jennifer Greer from the School of Medicine at the University of Western Sydney for her project ‘A marketing strategy for medical research’.

The judges defined community en-gagement as an idea and an action which is mutually beneficial to the tertiary institution and the commu-nity. Greer’s project hinged on a two way interaction between the Uni-versity and the community and the judges agreed that it was on the way to achieving its aims of creating an atmosphere of philanthropy, which will contribute to the eventual cure for gastrointestinal motility disorders.

NTEU sponsorship of the award helps build partnerships in the higher education sector that further the professional and industrial interests of members. Many members are involved in ATEM which acts as a pro-fessional body for tertiary education administrators and managers.

atem.org.au

Photo © Renee Brown


Update Expert Seminar Series

Off TrackThe second instalment of the NTEU’s Expert Seminar Series, where experts are invited to discuss issues relevant to the higher education sector, hosted in Melbourne on 9 October 2014, was titled ‘Off Track – Research Staff and Insecure Employment in Australia’.

The first seminar, ‘Casualisation, Global and Australian Trends’ was held on 3 July 2014. Australian academic Robyn May, currently working at Melbourne Univer-sity, was invited to discuss with NTEU National President, Jeannie Rea the state of academic casualisation in Australia and how casualisation of academic work is contributing to a deprofessionalisation of the academic profession.

The second seminar focused on the con-sequences of insecure employment for re-search staff in Australian universities. Over 40 people attended the seminar while a number of others joined the discussion via Twitter.

An expert panel comprising Dr Kaye Broadbent (Griffith University), Dr Rhonda Small (La Trobe University) and Dr Miranda Cumpston (Monash University) talked with NTEU President, Jeannie Rea about the findings of the Work and Careers in Aus-tralian Universities (WCAU) survey, as well as the personal experience of precarious employment amongst research staff in order to consider effective strategies and campaigns we can undertake as unionists.

At a time when Australia needs a high-ly-skilled workforce, many of Australia’s best and brightest research staff are trapped on short-term grants, fellowships and the negative effects of the grant funding cycle.

The seminar discussed how research staff are the fastest growing group of employees in universities, yet to many of their colleagues, the least visible. Many NTEU members are surprised to hear that, on a full-time equivalent basis, research staff are now more than one-third of all academic staff, and that nearly one in ten general staff are employed directly in research or research support. Fewer than one in ten research staff has a continuing job, and fixed term contract employment predominates.

This group is amongst the most disad-vantaged of all university staff, with short

contracts, living from grant to grant. The discussion concluded that one of the Union’s highest long term priorities is to recruit and engage with research staff, and to ensure they get the recognition and employment conditions they deserve.

Helena Spyrou, Union Education & Training OfficerThe video of this seminar, plus present-ers’ biographies and presentation notes can be found online

www.nteu.org.au/seminars

National Council stands in solidarityOver 200 National Councillors took part in a video produced by NTEU’s Queer Unionists in Tertiary Education (QUTE) partnered with Amnesty International to highlight issues related to people of diverse sexualities and genders throughout the world.

Called ‘Stand in Solidarity’, the campaign told stories on both the Amnesty Inter-national website and the QUTE Facebook page of the work of activists in address-ing discrimination, isolation, economic hardship, harassment and violence in their communities.

The campaign was to culminate in the filming of a short movie. Unfortunately, the footage of the original movie shot in May was technically flawed and we couldn’t use it. This was hugely disap-

pointing as it took weeks of work to get people in to one room at Melbourne University for the video shoot.

However, National Councillors stepped in to show solidarity for people of diverse sexualities and genders by finishing the project. Councillors formed a rainbow flag, an international symbol

of pride for people of diverse sexualities and genders, with printed cards. Pictures of the activists featured in the campaign were also displayed. After some editing magic, our film will be launched before Christmas.

Dave Willis, Vic Division Organiserwww.nteu.org.au/qute


Update NTEU women cross the line for Bluestocking Week 2014Bluestocking Week ran for the third consecutive year around Australia from 11-15 August. This year’s theme was ‘Crossing the Line’, with a focus on fighting attitudes that seek to silence the voices of women, and to highlight the importance of women speaking out and sharing their stories and views.

Bluestocking Week’s driving purpose is to carve out space and time to celebrate, or-ganise and reflect. In the face of ongoing threats to higher education in Australia, and in an environment where pro-woman policies and approach-es are being ignored in favour of pre-Menzies era approaches for gender quality and women’s rights, this year’s Bluestocking Week sought to create a human tapestry of women sharing their experiences as staff or students at university.

Women around Australia hosted or attended events aimed at bringing women together and celebrating the contribution they make to higher education. More events at more locations than any previous year were held, highlighting the diversity of women and their experiences at university.

In Queensland, women at UQ were invited to share one thing about being a woman at UQ. Stories were compiled for a morn-ing tea with live music, guest speakers and bright blue cupcakes. Events were also held at CQU, USQ, QUT, JCU and Griffith.

South Australia put on two events for women to participate in, including a

fundraiser for the Working Women’s Centre. Flinders University held two events including a breakfast put on by the student union and a seminar by NTEU member, Professor Kay Whitehead enti-tled, ‘Bluestockings and teacher unions: Troublesome women!’

The NT Division was joined by the Lord Mayor of Darwin for a morning tea to share stories of women working at CDU.

Victoria had events throughout the week at RMIT, Melbourne, Deakin, Monash and La Trobe including a film screening of Miss Representation at Melbourne Uni. The Divi-sion kicked off Bluestocking Week

with a lively Q&A discussing issues for women in high-er education.

In Tassie, drinks and nibbles were en-

joyed at a Bluestock-ing Week exhibition highlighting women’s education.

Meanwhile in WA, the Perth Craftivist Group put on a work-shop showing how craft could be used as a political tool to promote positive change in the community. Blue fairy floss, yarn bombing, self-defence classes and sundowners were also part of the Western Australian celebrations.

In the nation’s capital, ANU, ACU and UC all put on events to promote women at university including forums and market stalls.

In NSW, a range of events were held in both Sydney and regional areas. Mac-quarie University hosted a morning tea while over at UNSW, Professor Barbara Pocock delivered a lecture on ‘Women working and living in higher education: what I wish I’d known when I set out’.

CSU Bathurst was treated to hot chocolate while their cousins at CSU Wagga Wagga enjoyed wine. CSU Albury enjoyed a photographic exhibition put on by women who work at the campus while UTS and Newcastle hosted politicians like Senators Kim Carr and Deb O’Neill, Tanya Plibersek, Sharon Claydon and Amanda Rishworth at forums at each university.

Courtney Sloane, National Media Officerwww.nteu.org.au/bluestockingweek

For more coverage of Bluestocking Week, see the 2014 issue of Agenda, NTEU’s women’s journal, available online

www.nteu.org.au/agenda

www.nteu.org.au/bluestockingweek


Update Register online to be part of

NTEU’s national conference on insecure workThe latest Department of Education higher education staffing data – which confirms the trend towards precarious employment becoming the norm rather than exception, along with the results of the Union’s own surveys, industrial cases and bargaining campaigns – are the facts that will inform the NTEU National Insecure Work Conference in Hobart on 19 and 20 November.

The statsLast year’s Department of Education data revealed that 4 out of 5 new jobs in univer-sities in the last decade were contract or casual and consequently one in two jobs are now casual or contract.

This data reinforces that the decline in teaching and research categorised positions continues with an almost 35% increase in teaching only (FTU/FFT) posi-tions. However, these are only a fraction of teaching-only staff. Over 80% of teaching only staff are casual.

Research-only positions have also grown, with research-only staff now outnumber-ing ‘teaching and research’ positions at the University of Queensland and Monash. As NTEU Vice-President (Academic) and UQ Branch President Andrew Bonnell pointed out to The Australian (15 October 2014), the University has been enrolling many more students and not putting the resources into teaching them. Rather the funds have been diverted to assist the University’s research intensive profile.

While this is problematic in itself, the other part of the problem is that across Aus-tralia over 80% of grant funded research positions are fixed term contracts for both academic and professional staff.

University managements continue to bemoan the casualisation of teaching, but just continue casualising. The Union also campaigned about class sizes, so some universities have responded by abolishing classes! More and more teaching is also either partially or fully online and this was the focus of a survey the NTEU recently conducted amongst casual academics (see report, p.15). Not surprisingly, casually employed staff report they end up donat-ing their labour to the university just to get through the student assessments.

Universities who claim to be so short of funds seem to prefer the HR expenses of re-employing the same research staff rather than converting someone to an ongoing position. This seems to be a common experience of people being employed on a ‘soft money’ project. They are not even employed for the whole project in one contract. This is one of the anecdotes reported to the Union that is now backed up by another survey we have been undertaking amongst contract research staff.

NTEU conferenceThe objectives of the conference are to increase understanding of the extent and characteristics of precarious work in the sector; examine NTEU’s past approaches to making work more secure and critically evaluate current strategies to inform ongoing NTEU industrial and political policy. The purpose is to provide a forum to better focus and plan for organising around precarious work to strengthen existing and create new networks.

Through intensive workshops with the three focus groups – academic teaching

casual staff, contract research staff, and project and other fixed term staff not engaged in research – we will interrogate the circumstances of their employment conditions and develop a plan of action to recommend to the NTEU National Executive for implementation at all levels of the Union.

Guest speakers include Dr Robyn May and Dr Kaye Broadbent who have intensively researched, respectively, casual academic and contract research work. Also present-ing are Australian Research Council Chief Executive Officer, Professor Aidan Byrne; former Dean Professor Michael Hamel Green; well-known precarious work re-searcher Dr Iain Campbell; Secretary of the National Union of Workers, Tim Kennedy; and (via Skype from New York) adjunct col-lege staff organiser with Service Employ-ees International Union, Malini Cadambi.

NTEU members Claire Parfitt, Rhonda Small, Kate Bowles, Karina Luiza, and NTEU Senior Industrial Officer Josh Cullinan will speak about organising and capacity building amongst insecure workers in our sector.

Jeannie Rea, National PresidentDelegates have been invited from every Branch, and anyone can also register and participate in the conference online.

www.nteu.org.au/insecurework2014

unicasual.org.au/insecurework2014

NationalInsecureWorkConferenceHobart, TasmaniaNovember 2014


Casuals News Super justice for casualsFor far too long sessional and casual academics in Australia have been excluded from parity in superannuation. As one of the principal employment benefits of a career in higher education it is crucial that this gross discrepancy be immediately addressed!

Recently published research conducted by Robyn May has provided us with a detailed overview of the casual academic workforce in Australia. We now know with absolute certainty that sessional staff in comparison to permanent staff are young-er and much more likely to be women. We also now know with absolute certainty that sessional work discriminates on the basis of age and gender.

In our sector sessional academics receive half the superannuation of their perma-nent colleagues. Some brazenly suggest that the loading paid to casuals is fair compensation for the disparity. Yet upon examining the range of inferior conditions under which casual academics are em-ployed this argument is exposed as both fallacious and prejudiced.

The casual loading does not make up for the myriad of employment rights that are denied to sessional academics including no paid maternity leave, no annual leave and lost incremental advancements in salary. This of course is a truncated list of the employment rights denied to sessional and casual academics.

But it gets worse. The higher superan-nuation paid to some higher education workers is a historical offset against the wages of staff. Staff forewent increases to salaries and instead were paid higher superannuation. Therefore ongoing staff now receive a lower salary to pay for the higher superannuation. Those lower sala-ries are the basis for the casual wages. That is, sessional and casual staff are actually subsidizing the higher superannuation of ongoing and fixed term colleagues.

It is time for this to stop and the solution is both simple and equitable! We are call-ing upon all higher education employers and Unisuper to make a small cost adjust-ment and pay 17% superannuation to all casual and sessional staff.

The NTEU intends to run many different actions and we encourage all sessional and casual academics to get involved. Our

action on superannuation cur-rently includes a special change.org petition and video which we encourage you to sign. You can find it on our website.

The petition goes to Unisu-per and Universities Australia because it is the special Trust Deed between universities and Unisuper which maintains this discriminatory practice.

Let’s campaign together to end superannuation discrimination in our sector!

Dustin Halse, Swinburne UniversityJosh Cullinan, Victorian Divisionwww.nteu.org.au/vic/supercasuals

Online work increases casual exploitationWhen the NTEU surveyed casually employed academics recently on how online teaching was impacting upon their working conditions, the key finding was that they are facing even further exploitation. This remains largely invisible to their more securely employed colleagues.

While the focus has previously been upon those working entirely in an online environment and trying to find some equivalences with face-to-face teaching upon which to base payment rates, this issue has completely blown out. Now most uni-versities and courses have moved to greater reliance on the learning management platforms (Blackboard, Moodle, etc.) and reduced class time moving student discus-sion and marking online. This means that the time allocated, for example, to marking is fictional as staff mark online and also upload results, while responding to constant queries within regimes where students are told to expect a 24 hour turnaround.

‘The online environment has simply added to the very large array of tasks that are supposed to be completed in a ‘teaching’ contract, which involves quite a deal of administrivia. I use four IT platforms per day to do the job: Moodle, email, internet and our online Grades system. As a sessional, I haven’t been paid to attend the training for any of these (although I have done so, otherwise I couldn’t do the job!).’ (17 years a sessional now).

For those teaching in a fully online environment, there is often no recognition of their expertise. They are rarely included in course reviews, and where they have actually developed the course, their intellectual property and moral rights may be ignored.

‘Most of the people I work with, their primary (and often only) source of income is online teaching. They have become specialists in it, despite no recognition of this from our department. There is little respect for online teaching in my department. We are not included in staff meetings and there is no recognition of good perfor-mance. There is no effort to develop online teaching staff. There is no attempt to improve the mix of materials used for online teaching. In short, they don’t care so long as the money keeps coming in and no-one upsets the apple cart’.

This report will be released at the NTEU National Secure Work Conference in Novem-ber and uploaded to www.nteu.org.au/insecurework2014.



Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander News

New Policy CommitteeThe new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy Committee (A&TSIPC) sat for the first time just prior to National Council.

Elections were held for the Chair and Deputy Chair positions. We congratu-late Terry Mason (UWS) on his re-elec-tion to the Chair and welcome Sharlene Leroy-Dyer (University of Newcastle) to the position of Deputy Chair.

Elections to fill vacant positions will be held in 2015.

The new A&TSIPC are:

Terry Mason (UWS), Chair, National A&TSI Councillor and NSW A&TSIPC representative.

Sharlene Leroy-Dyer (UoN), Deputy Chair, National A&TSI Councillor.

John Graham (Griffith), National A&TSI Councillor and Qld A&TSIPC represent-ative.

Aaron Thomas (Adelaide), SA A&TSIPC representative.

Robert Anders (UTas), Tasmanian A&T-SIPC representative.

Frank Gafa (ANU), ACT A&TSIPC repre-sentative.

Ben Atkinson (FUA), Victorian A&TSIPC representative.

www.nteu.org.au/atsi/atsipc

A&TSI replaces IndigenousAt NTEU National Council in October, a motion was passed that the Union adopt the terminology ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander’ instead of the currently used ‘Indigenous’. This is to be rolled out to incorporate all future negotiated Collective Agreements, publications, work units and the staff titles therein, and the caucus.

The Indigenous Policy Committee will now be known as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy Committee (A&TSIPC). The NTEU Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander website URL will change to www.nteu.org.au/atsi.

This motion was informed firstly via mem-bership opinions expressed at individual Branches, via a survey conducted by the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Unit earlier this year, and also via greater community trends. The term ‘Indigenous’ has always been a conten-tious one in the community and there are a number of reasons why Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander is preferred.

‘Indigenous’ came into common usage during the Howard years when it was deemed prudent to use one word as an umbrella term instead of using the clumsy acronym ‘ATSI’, as had been commonplace before then. Part of the issue was that it

had become normal for people to not state ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’ but instead just refer to the dis-tinct groups en masse as ‘ATSI’.

Indigenous, however, came with its own set of issues. The official definition of the term is ‘originating in a particular region or country’ which some non-Indigenous right-wing commentators argue means that because they were born here, they too are Indigenous. In comparison, ‘Abo-riginal’ means ‘inhabiting or existing in a land from the earliest times or from before the arrival of colonists’. Indigenous also homogenises two distinct groups of First Peoples erroneously and encourages lack of engagement with the diversity of these peoples.

Over the past few years, a number of peak organisations, such as the former NIHEN, have reverted back to names that reflect the two distinct groups of Indigenous peoples and indications from members at some Branches were that the NTEU should follow suit. This was confirmed in a mem-bers’ survey in August which stated that of the respondents (all members of the Na-tional Indigenous caucus), 67% favoured ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander’.

In light of this, and the motion passed at Council, the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Unit will be ensuring that a number of publications and titles are updated and we encourage Branches to follow suit. Please also note that the ac-ronym ATSI should be used sparingly and indeed A&TSI is preferred. If an acronym is to be used, it should only be used after it has been defined and not as a default.

Celeste Liddle, A&TSI Organiser

www.nteu.org.au/atsi

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff numbers risingThe latest university staffing statistics show a strong increase in the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander academic and professional/general staff in the sector.

Figures released by the Department of Education show a 3.7% increase in the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff employed in the sector in 2013. In the same period non-In-digenous staffing numbers increased by 1.9%. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander academic and professional/general staff now comprise 1.0% of all ongoing and fixed-term staff employed in the sector. While this achievement must be acknowledged, there remains a significant gap to achieve the 2.2% employment target as recommended in the 2012 Review of Higher Education Access and Out-comes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.

While Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment has been rising on average at 6.5%, this overall increase can only be attributed to the work of the NTEU and those universities who have made a strong commitment to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education and employment.

The NTEU Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment claim calls for numeric employment targets, the development of employment strate-gies and appropriate representation on employment implementation and monitoring committees to be includ-ed in all university Agreements.

These statistics have proven the success of the NTEU Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander bargaining claim and show that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have oppor-tunity to gain genuine employment in an industry from which they had previously been excluded.

Adam Frogley, A&TSI Coordinator


Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander News

The Forrest Review: Advantage or assimilation?The recently released Forrest Review has received a fair amount of press and much condemnation concerning the ‘harsh’ welfare and social reforms recommended. Little has been written about the education issues and some have suggested it is a response to a predicted shortage of remote labour.

On Sky News, Fred Chaney said ‘the only way to end crippling Indigenous disad-vantage is to listen to First Australians. There appears to be little reflection of that in Twiggy Forrest’s report.’

Twiggy’s report suggests that there is little difference between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal employment rates if all have a decent education level and that employers consistently state there is

a need for higher literacy and numer-acy levels. This ignores research that indicates that the greatest impediment to Aboriginal employment is prejudiced and negative views held by employers.

The report suggests sweeping changes. Some, such as increased funding and medical/social support, are admirable although examples drawn from the Challis Early Childhood Centre in Perth bear little relevance to what may ever be feasible in remote community. Some though are not so benign.

There is a strong emphasis on, and it would appear some confusion in the use of the terms, ‘explicit’ and ‘direct’ instruc-tion. Direct instruction may deliver short term results but caters less well in the transition to self-directed learning later. Explicit learning as suggested from the age of three years with an emphasis on English as the language of instruction, is challenged widely.

Twiggy’s supporting statement, ‘let me remind you that the quickest way to lose language is to be unable to record it’, is laughable considering the age of the languages involved. The recom-mendation that cultural ceremonies be scheduled outside of school hours or be held during holiday periods is not only insensitive but is utterly offensive.

The 2007 Successful Transition Pro-grams From Prior-To-School to School for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children Report stated ‘You bring the kids to school and they take them from you. The kids will never be the same again. They’re gone. They are not stolen but it feels that they have gone.’

There appears to be little sound ed-ucational merit in the Forrest Report. Rather, it seems to be responding to age old prejudice and the desire to assimilate Aboriginal people and remove a prob-lem in remote and resource rich areas hearkening back to this 1984 statement by Lang Hancock:

Those assimilated into earning a good living, earning wages among civilised areas that have been accepted into society and they have accepted society and can handle society – I would leave them alone – The ones that are no good to themselves, can’t accept things – the half castes and this is where most of the this is where most of the trouble comes – I would dope the water up so they were sterile and would breed themselves out in the future and that would solve the problem…

Terry Mason, Chair A&TSIPC

Batchelor celebrates first PhD graduateThis year, the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education (BIITE) celebrated its 40th anniversary of providing culturally-appropriate and community inclusive education for Aboriginal &Torres Strait Islander peoples. Fittingly, BIITE also graduated its first successful PhD student, Dr Kathryn Gilbey.

Dr Gilbey is a proud Alyawarre woman from North-East of Alice Springs. Kathryn is also a long-term staff member of BIITE, currently lecturing in education, perfor-mance, policy and place making, First Nations knowledges, inclusive education, and critical race theories.

Additionally, Kathryn has been a long-term Aboriginal NTEU activist and is the outgoing NT Division Indigenous Policy

Committee (IPC) representative, having served in this position for the past term whilst also completing her PhD. Kathryn’s PhD in Indigenous Knowledges was warm-ly praised at the graduation ceremony by academic peers and colleagues at the graduation ceremony held at the Desert People’s Centre.

The NTEU would like to congratulate the Batchelor Institute on its 40th anniversary and in particular, congratulate Dr Gilbey on obtaining her PhD. Additionally, the

new Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Policy Committee wish to thank the newly conferred Dr Gilbey for her long commit-ment to Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander equity in education and her service as an IPC member.

Here’s to many more fantastic PhD gradu-ates at BIITE over the coming years.

Photo: Dr Kathryn Gilbey giving the graduation address, still via video by Grenville Turner:vimeo.com/105485352


Jeannie ReaNational President

When the NTEU was giving evidence to the Senate Inquiry into the Higher Education and Research Reform Amendment (HERRA) Bill on 8 October 2014, the chair, National Party Senator for Victoria, Bridget McKenzie accused the Union of scaremongering because we were saying that some degrees will cost $100,000 if the Bill goes through. However, our modelling, along with that of others, does indeed show this to be the case with the increased tuition fees alone, but once the market interest rate is included the total costs nudge towards and beyond $100,000.

NTEU Policy and Research Coordinator, Paul Kniest pointed out that there are already degrees costing more than $100,000 at pri-vate institutions. I noted that at this stage only the University of Western Australia (UWA) has announced an initial fee for the first three years of $16,000 p/a. UWA will not reveal their fees beyond the first three years, yet many qualifications take longer. They will probably cost more. The further two years required to qualify as a teacher in WA, even at $16,000 p/a, takes the cost to $80,000 before interest is included.

Senator McKenzie claimed that high school students she had spoken to were reluctant to commit to university because of the NTEU’s scare campaign. I pointed out that we had responded to Year 12 stu-dents by telling them to get on with their studies and apply for what they wanted to study – and not let the Abbott Govern-ment wreck their dreams. We have also urged these students and their parents to contact their politicians to voice their op-position to higher education being priced out of reach of ordinary families.

Indeed the Senator, like many on the Government seemed reluctant to barrack for their so-called reforms of higher education. The higher education changes announced in the Federal Budget are among the most unpopular parts of an unpopular budget and I am sure they have been hearing from their constituents.

Federal Budget

$100,000 degrees are no fantasy


It is clear that the Government miscalcu-lated how much support there is across the population for higher education and for research. People do seem to think that governments should invest in all levels of education and people do need to get degrees. The Government’s divisive argument of why should people without degrees pay their taxes for others to go to university has not resonated. People do want the next generation to go to university.

The ALP has firmed up opposition to the budget measures and Senator Kim Carr, along with assistant education spokes-person Amanda Rishworth MP and many other parliamentarians and candidates are running a tough campaign against the whole Bill, visiting campuses and public forums and speaking out at every oppor-tunity. Opposition leader Bill Shorten is publicly arguing that higher education

will be a major issue leading into the next election. It is a far cry from last year’s Labor Government cuts to higher education to fund the Gonski school funding reforms.

The Greens higher education spokes-person Senator Lee Rhiannon and her colleagues have maintained their solid support, and are also vigorously cam-paigning in the parliament and in public to defeat the Bill.

Senator Carr has wiped off suggestions of amendments to support non-controver-sial measures included in the Bill. He has argued, and NTEU supports this position, that the whole Bill must be rejected. When it is defeated any worthwhile measures can be moved separately and if the Gov-ernment will not do so, then the ALP will, according to Carr. It was a devious, but obvious move of the Government to put everything into one Bill.

The report of the Senate Inquiry was pre-sented to Parliament on 28 October and the vote is expected in early December. It is argued that this causes uncertainty to universities and prospective students. We would argue that it is yet another reason to vote it down and call upon the Govern-ment to consult with the sector and public over reforms, not abuse higher education as an ideological battering ram.

For latest information, keep following NTEU on twitter, Facebook and online. Also in this issue of Advocate are the NTEU’s opening address to the Senate hearing (above), CAPA’s evidence (p.25) and commentary by Paul Kniest on the evidence to the hearing (p.20). See also articles by the NTEU’s three local speakers at our community forums with the AEU and United Voice in Townsville, Penrith and Launceston (p.22).

www.nteu.org.au/degreemortgage

NTEU Opening Statement to the Senate Committee Inquiry into the Higher Education and Research Reform Amendment (HERRA) Bill 2014 8 October 2014

Jeannie Rea, National PresidentThe National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) represents the industrial and professional interests of higher education staff.The focus in our submission and here today is upon the core of the Bill, which are the changes to Commonwealth Supported Places (CSPs). In summary these are:• the decrease in the government contribution,• deregulation of tuition fees,• increase in interest rates, and• expansion to private providers.As we argue in our submission, our contention is that the Gov-ernment’s proposed policies have nothing to do with reforming Australian higher education and setting our universities free to offer internationally competitive teaching, research and commu-nity engagement, but have everything to do with achieving large cuts to public investment in our universities, their students and potential students - no matter what the consequences.

Our view is that the Government is abrogating their responsibili-ty to support a world class higher education system of ‘depth and breadth’ (as was noted by the Times Higher Education University Rankings media release last week).Australia, with the exception of Japan, has the lowest level of public investment in tertiary education in the OECD and Austral-ian students already pay amongst the highest fees to attend public universities anywhere in the world. The primary objective of the policy is to shift the burden of who pays for higher education even further away from Government and onto students and their families.

We continue to maintain that the whole package should be rejected and are very wary of the current public discussion about possible mitigation to alleviate some of the negative impacts. For example, while changing the way interest is charged on students’ loans might eliminate some of the highly unfair impacts on low income students and those who take career breaks (predominant-ly women with children), the likely alternatives will still impose very high costs on all students compared to current arrange-ments. The alternatives will only be more equitable in the sense that all students will be equally worse off. This is not what the NTEU considers as equity.

The initial statements on Budget night by the Minister for Education about regional universities and students being the big winners from these policies will be proven as grossly misleading should the Government now move to offer ‘targeted’ assistance for regional universities. This can only be seen as political expe-diency while admitting that the proposed package will result in adverse consequences. To actually compensate for these conse-quences is likely to cost billions, and so would substantially cut into the $5billion in savings the Government wants. A targeted regional (and outer urban) assistance package would also need to compensate universities for cuts to public funding and adverse effects of increased competition from private for-profit providers, who would have access to public funding. Additionally, it would also have to take into account the perverse impacts of the ‘new Commonwealth’ scholarship scheme on uni-versities with relatively high numbers of students from economi-cally and educationally disadvantaged backgrounds. The NTEU also believes that the Senate must take seriously the overwhelming evidence of both policy and market failure in relation to market based policy reforms to vocational education and training (VET) in Victoria which are echoed by warning of non-transparent and utterly unpredictable outcomes for higher education where some public universities, especially those in regional areas that might well fail.

The reality is that outside of those universities already well resourced (through decades of primarily public investment) who may compete on high prices, many universities may find they cannot set a price that will maintain student enrolments and op-portunity, and also maintain the quality of student education and service provision. Universities already operating on inadequate CSP income will make further cuts to staff, courses – and proba-bly campuses, thus further cutting off access and opportunity. It is a downward spiral. In asking the Senate to reject this Bill, the NTEU is not arguing that higher education policy in Australia is not in need of reform, but the answer is not to treat it as a marketplace. Education is too important to leave to market forces. Any reform, must, too, be based on genuine consultation with all stakeholders and explic-itly recognise the public benefits from higher education even if they might be difficult to quantify.


Federal Budget

Contradictions, confusions & concessions in Pyne’s higher ed policies

Evidence given to the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee’s Inquiry into the Higher Education and Research Reform Amendment (HERRA) Bill 2014 definitely confirmed that higher education is far too important to be left to the market. Based on evidence presented at the Inquiry and responses from Government Senators, it is clear that the Senate Committee will recommend that the Minister for Education make substantial amendments if the legislation is to have any chance of getting through the Senate.

The Minister will be lobbied by his own colleagues to amend the policy in relation to the way market determined interest rates are applied to student debt as well come up with an assistance package for regional universities despite his insist-ence that regional universities and their students would be the big winners from his reform agenda.

The NTEU is reassured that the ALP and Greens Senators have remained resolute in their opposition to the whole package. At the time of writing the majority of crossbenchers were still intending to vote down the Bill, however they will be under intense pressure from the Government.

Even allowing for the anticipated and well publicised concessions on the interest rate and regional universities, the week of public hearings was a bad one for the Government as witness after witness of avowed proponents of the Minister’s high-er education changes gave evidence that was at best confusing and, in some cases, contradictory. This is of great concern be-yond the outcome of this current debate as we look to where leader ship and clear thinking is coming from across the higher education sector.

Unintended consequencesThe evidence from the Government’s so-called supporters conceded that many of the consequences of the proposed changes were unknown, and therefore needed to be monitored closely so as to allow the Government to respond quickly to any unintended consequences.

For example, Universities Australia argued that adopting the Government’s polices would help overcome decades of policy instability and uncertainty, while at the

same time advocating for need for an in-dependent monitoring body to advise the Government on any changes that might be necessary given the complexity of the changes of ‘many moving parts’. On the one hand this might be seen as acknowl-edgement of policy failure, or at the very least an acknowledgment that there will be further periods of significant policy instability.

Witnesses in favour of adopting a more market oriented approach to higher edu-cation, were quick to dismiss any notion that the complete policy and market fail-ure which beset the vocational and train-ing sector in Victoria as a result of a similar market based policy framework could be repeated in higher education. The reason for their confidence was because the existence of a strong regulator, namely the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA).

Confidence in the regulatorThe Australian Council for Private Educa-tion and Training (ACPET) amongst others expressed supreme confidence in TEQSA’s ability to enforce the high barriers to entry into sector to avoid the well document-ed failure of the Victorian experience. However, as Professor Henry Ergas made clear in his evidence, the much publicised potential benefits of marketisation of higher education in the form of lower costs and lower fees can only be realised by lowering barriers to entry.

The Government must surely now acknowledge that high barriers to entry, which are necessary to protect quality and the reputation of Australian higher education, are completely incompatible with greater competition.


Federal Budget

The hearings have also created much confusion about what TEQSA’s role is or should be. Professor Nicholas Saunders, acting TEQSA Chief Commissioner, said TEQSA was ‘not a quality improvement agency’. Professor Peter Shergold (wearing his hat as a member of the TEQSA Advi-sory Board), on the other hand, said his view ‘is that it may not be TEQSA’s role to pursue continuous improvement, but it is what I want to see in terms of chairing this council.’

Professor Saunders and other witnesses also wanted to reassure the Committee that, despite the 40% cut to its budget, TEQSA would have sufficient resources (at least based on current demand) to fulfil its role, especially now that is was going to adopt a risk based approach to regulation. To some, this confidence might seem misplaced, given the backlog of current providers that TEQSA is yet to successfully re-register, let alone its complete failure to implement a risk based approach as required by its enabling legislation.

Regulating debtDr Tim Higgins, Andrew Norton and Professor Henry Ergas all warned of the ‘moral hazard’ of fee deregulation when introduced in conjunction with the opera-tion of the income contingent Higher Edu-cation Loans Program (HELP). That is, they were concerned that because universities will not have to bear the consequences of unpaid debt there was little stopping them from increasing fees excessively. Mr Norton reaffirmed his well-publicised concerns about the financial sustainability of the HELP scheme and made the point

that it was not designed to cope with the rapid expansion of the HELP loans as a result of fee deregulation, making loans available to more and more students including those in vocational, education and training and private providers.

Professor Ergas suggested that the way to avoid this moral hazard was by withhold-ing some monies from providers until loans had been fully repaid. Dr Higgins recommended keeping fee caps in place. Mr Norton has suggested placing a limit on the amount each student can borrow. While the Minister might not feel com-pelled to address this issue immediately, he or future governments will be forced to acknowledge that the HELP scheme has become unsustainable as a result of unpaid debts which may well see the end of current income contingent loans.

Efficiency of the market?Many of the witnesses including the ATN and Group of Eight argued that the Govern-ment’s proposed changes were absolutely critical as they would finish the inevitable move toward a more efficient market based system for the allocation of university places. There was a very strong sense that a market in higher education could not operate without fee deregulation.

However, in response to a question from Senator Rhiannon at recent public hearings into the Government’s higher education legislation about ‘whether the ATARs act as a non-monetary price for allocation of places?’, Andrew Norton, the author of the Grattan Institute’s Mapping report, responded: ‘I think it is an interest-

ing analogy, yes.’ That is, there already is a market used to allocate university places but this is based on academic ability and not ability to pay.

As the data in Figure 1 taken from the Grattan Institute’s latest higher education report shows, the median ATAR required to gain entry into a Business of Commerce Degree at an Australian university last year varied from 97 at the Universities of Sydney and Melbourne to 56 for Victoria University. The data in Figure 1 also gives some idea as to the depth of the student market in which universities operate. The greater the difference between highest and lowest quartiles, the thineer the market. The data clearly demonstrates that under the demand driven model, you do not need to deregulate prices to allocate university places.

Finally, a number of witnesses in favour of the Government’s proposal to extend funding to private providers made the argument that it is only fair to treat those students who chose a private provider exactly the same as those students who chose to study at a public university. That is, it seems that they think it fair and equitable that 93% of students who study a public education (the majority) should be disadvantaged by cutting public investment and increasing fees for the 7% of student enrolled at non-university providers (the minority). I wonder what Dr Spock would have to say about that?

Paul Kniest, Policy and Research Coordinator

Australian TechnologyNetwork

Innovative ResearchUniversities

Regional UniversitiesNetwork

Unaligned Universities

97 97 95 94

91 89

89

88 86 87

85

78 75

71 70

76

71 71 70 68

66 65

83

78 76

61 59

89 87

74 73 72 70

66 65 64

58

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Chart 1: ATARs for Business and Commerce Students by University 2014

Group of Eight

Source: Grattan Institute Mapping Australian Higher Education 2014-15 Figure 36 p82

Median ATAR

90th Quartile

10th Quartile

Figure 1: ATARs for Business and Commerce Students by University 2014


Federal Budget

Big cuts = little future Community forums for education

The Abbott Government’s attacks on education, which are wrecking the opportunities and aspirations of children and adults and their communities across Australia, were the motivation for a series of community forums organised by the NTEU with Australian Education Union (AEU) and United Voice. The forums highlighted the attacks on all parts of the education system, from early childhood, through schools to TAFE and university.

While the NTEU’s focus was on the federal budget higher education changes, the AEU spoke of how the decisions to abandon the Gonski funding arrange-ments would strip resources and teachers from schools. United Voice, who organise childcare and early childhood educa-tors in parts of the country, argued the importance of investing in early childhood education and the recognition of workers who continue to be poorly paid and undervalued.

The forums kicked off in Townsville, Pen-rith and Launceston in mid-September. The emphasis was upon examining how the Federal Government’s policies impact locally. At each site national union leaders provided some oversight, but the key contributions came from local members. The NTEU was most fortunate in having three excellent local speakers. Theresa Petray spoke at the Townsville forum, Jessica Whyte at Penrith and Deb Carnes

in Launceston. They have written up their notes into the following articles.

These forums were successful in bringing together activists from the three unions, and also other members of the communi-ty, notably parents and grandparents con-cerned about their children’s education. To these audiences the Pyne-Hockey- Abbott line that people who didn’t go to universi-ty should not have to pay taxes for others to get a degree rang hollow. We heard the opposite message. People who did not have the opportunity to go to university want their kids and other people’s kids to have that opportunity.

We plan more forums into next year and through to the next federal election. They are an excellent opportunity for organis-ing across unions at the local level and our elected representatives and organisers did a fabulous job in bringing together these first forums with little notice.


www.qualitymatters.org.au

www.giveagonski.com.au

www.stoptafecuts.com.auAbove: Angelo Gavrielatos, AEU Federal President and ALP Senator Doug Cameron hold NTEU’s ‘Unwanted’ posters at the Penrith forum. Photo by Amber Jacobus.


PenrithSoon after the Federal Budget announced plans to deregulate the higher education sector, I came across a stall set up by a private college at the Parramatta train station. As a lecturer at the University of Western Sydney, I was curious about this college and what it was offering the people of Western Sydney.

I went up to the stall, and the woman staffing it, seemingly assuming I was a prospective student, asked me ‘Want to come to our college?’ When I asked her to tell me something about the college, she responded quickly: ‘It’s free, and there are no exams, and you don’t have to come to class, and you get a free I-Pad.’

On the college’s homepage, these claims are nuanced slightly: ‘it’s free’ be-comes ‘study now, pay later’; ‘you don’t have to come to class’ becomes ‘flexible learning’; and ‘you get a free I-Pad’ becomes ‘We supply you the latest tech-nology’. However attractive the pitch may sound to prospective students, in fact the courses are far from free. While prices are not listed on the website, a course like the diploma of web design costs $22,000, more than four times as much as the equivalent course at TAFE.

In a speech to a London Think Tank back in April, Federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne argued that when it comes to offering students ‘choice’ and setting ‘higher education providers free’, ‘we have much to learn about this from our friends in the United States’. It is worth noting then that, in the United States, student debt has topped US$1 trillion – higher even than credit card debt. For those who take on these debts and still can’t find a job after graduat-ing, default is becoming a frighteningly common experience. And when it comes to graduates of private, for profit colleges, like the one I encountered in Parramatta, the default rate on student debts is an astounding 40%! It turns out that ‘there are no exams and you don’t have to come to class’ may not be the best recipe for securing the kind of career that will allow you to earn the money you will need just to repay your student loan.

Along with the risk of debilitating debts that will continue to accumulate interest, this question of the quality

of education available to students in regions like Western Sydney is critical. Staff at most Australian universities would already be well aware of the way budget cuts are translated into the students’ educational experience: they mean bigger class sizes, less time with staff, the end of paid class consultation hours for the casual staff who do the bulk of the teaching, and pressure to re-duce subject offerings, which, contrary to Pyne’s statements, does not enhance student ‘choice’.

In a deregulated environment, regional universities and universities that serve communities with high levels of eco-nomic disadvantage will be unable to charge the same fees as Group of Eight universities like Sydney University, and will increasingly find themselves unable to provide the same quality of educa-tion and support, let alone the same amenities, as more wealthy universities. The result will be a further divergence in the education available to the wealthy and to those who cannot afford to take on the debts – a divergence whose social effects will not be ameliorated by a few scholarships.

I teach at a university that has one of the highest proportions in the country of so-cio-economic status students, and some of the highest rates of recent migrants and students from non-English speaking backgrounds. Many of our students are the first in their family to go to univer-sity. These are the students who most need quality education, and who most require the support and the time of good teachers. They are also the students who can least afford to take on student debt. Many of my students already work to support their own families, and have parents who have also worked very hard so that their children would have the opportunity to go to university. Last year I watched a father cry at a graduation ceremony as his daughter graduated, and was starkly reminded of what a uni-versity education means for many of our students, and what their families have sacrificed to make sure they get one.

The private college I mention has a slo-gan on its website that reads: ‘Nothing should ever hold you back – especially your finances.’ I couldn’t agree more. But that should not mean expecting stu-dents to disregard the ‘debt-sentence’ that they will have to take on in a dereg-ulated environment. Rather, if finances are not to hold potential students back, we will need to re-invest in a quality, publicly-funded education system.

Jessica Whyte, Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Social Analysis , UWS

Federal BudgetTownsvilleIf the Abbott Government’s proposed changes to higher education go ahead, they will drive up inequalities across Australia. As a sociologist at James Cook University in Townsville, I am particularly concerned about what those inequalities will look like for my students, and those people who will choose not to become students in the future.

I started teaching at JCU when I was a postgraduate student in 2007. Since then (and in fact before then), the University has been squeezed by cuts from both sides of politics. I have seen this result in increasing class sizes and less one-on-one time for students. We are expected to teach more and more with fewer resources and assistance. The 20% funding cut to universities will squeeze us even further. It will mean that even more of our teaching has to go online and students will miss out on face-to-face learning, they will not interact with academics, and more importantly, a lot of the support programs that currently help students who need it will no longer exist. Teaching academics will see an increase in our teaching load – and teaching is meant to be only 1/3 of our job, alongside research and service. It is important to maintain this balance because the point of studying at univer-sity is that students learn from experts who conduct original research. If our teaching loads increase, we will have less time for research, and our teaching will be more like reading a textbook than an exciting conversation about our first-hand research. Students will lose the richness of what is supposed to be the university experience.

JCU, along with many Australian uni-versities, has responded to the threat of funding cuts by agreeing to the deregu-lation of fees. This will disproportionately affect regional students like mine in North Queensland. According to JCU’s own statistics, 24% of our students come from regional and remote areas; 20% come from low SES backgrounds; 62% are wom-en; 4.3% are Indigenous; and about 1/3 of our students are 26 or older. These are the students who already face huge hurdles, and the proposed changes will basically knock them out of the race altogether.

60% of our students are the first in their family to attend university, and so they

continued over page...


come in without what sociologists call ‘cultural capital’ – that is, they don’t have family members who can help them navi-gate the complicated world of enrolling in subjects, buying textbooks, understanding assignments, and studying for exams. Many of these students struggle, especial-ly when (as most students are) they work 15 or 20 hours a week or more to earn enough to eat and pay rent. If the changes go ahead, these are the students who will choose not to enrol in university – the risk of the debt (which needs to be repaid

even if you fail) far outweighs what they see as the potential rewards.

The students who we currently teach at JCU are already the people who are least likely to access higher education, and the government wants to make it harder for them.

Education is a social good – having a lot of well-educated people is good for society, even if those people don’t go on to high-paying jobs. Education leads to creative thinking, to understanding,

and to citizens who are more involved in their communities. I came through the US education system, where students need to consider the cost of their degree when they are deciding whether to study, what to study, and where to study. If these changes go ahead, a large group of people – already the most vulnerable people – won’t get the freedom to choose their education.

Theresa Petray, Lecturer in Sociology and Anthropology, JCU

Federal BudgetCommunity forums for education cont...

LauncestonProposed changes to higher education which form part of Tony Abbott’s grand plan for ‘Team Australia’ include proposals for student fees going up, income for universities going. Thus more stress for staff and concerns about job security.

Unfortunately there are implications that go beyond the gates of our institutions. Australia has a shortage of nurses. It is estimated this shortage will be 109,000 nurses by 2025.The proposed budget changes mean the cost of an under-graduate nursing degree increases by $10,000 to $28,000. Specialisation requiring further study will incur further debt. My undergraduate degree, com-pleted in 1994, was fee-free – the result of a government initiative to attract people to study nursing because of a projected shortage.

Of further concern is the proposed in-troduction of market interest. The debt will rise and the students will end up paying more. For women (and nursing is a profession of primarily females) a break for further study or to have a family will further increase debt adding to a reluctance amongst nurses to undertake further training when there is a limited increase in remuneration.

Australia has a high reliance on overseas trained health professionals, more so than any OECD country. The health workforce is not well distributed and ru-ral areas are particularly vulnerable. We know there is a link between education and health and we know rural areas are at a distinct disadvantage.

The projected nursing shortage is worse in mental health and aged care. It is expected that by 2035 the funding for aged care will be 12% of GDP (up from 9.3% in 2002-03). That is why Health Workforce Australia has recommended a three point plan to increase productiv-ity, lower demand (through improving health outcomes and prevention) and improve retention.

It has been suggested the budget higher education changes will result in rural areas having greater difficulty sourcing health professionals and implications for recruitment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to health science careers. Yet ‘…the workforce and student pool should be viewed as a national resource…’ Even if implemented, it is estimated Australia will face a shortage of 20,000 nurses by 2025.

Yet the National Health Prevention Agen-cy has been axed, and the ARC ($74.9 million) and The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare suffered fund-ing cuts. Add to this the user pays GP co-payment leading to a reluctance for seeking primary health care amongst the most vulnerable and we will have more demand and will need more nurses.

So where will the plan for ‘Team Aus-tralia’ see your family in 2025? How will student debt levels affect you and your family? How will the projected shortage of 109,000 nurses affect you and your family? Will you, or a loved, one need aged care? Tony Abbott has a plan for ‘Team Australia’. However, I’m pretty cer-tain he’s not sponsoring a winning team. The average Aussie battler is going to battle a whole lot more than they realise.

The union movement has always repre-sented the battlers and this issue is no exception. We need to think broader than our industry and consider the implications for society as a whole. So when you think of the budget changes to higher education, don’t just think of academia but the industry and/or profession that relates to your academic role. Look to others from that area and seek partnerships to help build a cam-paign to ensure the battlers’ voices are heard. Tony Abbott’s grand plan to turn education from a fundamental human right to an entitlement only for the elite should not be given any legs whatsoever and be consigned to the dustbin of poor policy.

Deb Carnes, Lecturer School of Health Sciences, UTAS


This is an edited version of the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA) opening statement to the Senate Committee Inquiry into the HERRA Bill.

CAPA would like to focus on the following key areas of concern for postgraduate students: cuts to the Research Training Scheme of $174.7 million or 10 per cent overall; the proposal to introduce the ability for universities to charge fees on higher degrees by research of up to $3,900 per year; and indexation of HELP debt interest against the 10 year bond rate up to a maximum of 6 per cent.

The Government’s argument in proposing this package has been that graduates of higher education can expect strong correlating employment and payment outcomes. Where postgraduates and the introduction of fees on research degrees is concerned this claim does not stand up.

The Australian Financial Review recently reported that whilst enrolment figures for domestic postgraduate by coursework students have increased 25 per cent in the last five years, graduate outcomes for Mas-ters by Coursework students are the worst on record at 17.9 per cent unemployment on average, 19.6 per cent for women.

Put simply, there are not enough jobs for the number of postgraduate coursework students that Australia is training, and this will continue to be further exacerbated by examples such as ‘the Melbourne Model’ and at the University of Western Australia, where students are required to undertake postgraduate study on top of a general-ist undergraduate degree to qualify in a professional field.

A report by the Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA) in 2012 found that ‘working on interesting and im-portant issues’ was the greatest motivation in pursuing a research career, and yet un-certain job prospects, short-term contracts and unrealistic work-loads were major drawbacks to participation in the research workforce. PhD students already say they do not have enough financial support to do a PhD and too much pressure to com-plete in too short a period of time.

The NTEU has repeatedly found that the academic workforce is subject to increased casualisation and workplace uncertainty and yet we know that academic careers remain the goal for an overwhelming majority of HDR students.

A 2010 report by Brailsford into the moti-vations of PhD students determined that ‘Limited financial support was important in the decision-making process. Without funding it is questionable whether the ‘pull’ of the doctorate would have out-weighed the ‘push’ from the former career.’

Charging fees on research degrees will only further discourage our potential future research leaders. This change at its very essence embodies charging individu-als to come to work.

The changes to the RTS impact on students regardless of enrolment date. The profound unfairness of charging fees on students who enrolled prior to the announcement of these changes is so

obvious as to barely require acknowledge-ment.

We strongly reject the Minister’s attempts to publicly hold Senators and the sector to ransom by threatening cuts to research in the event that deregulation is unsuc-cessful. On October 2, the Minister said in Question Time that:

‘The simple fact is that if these reforms are not passed … The National Collab-orative Research Infrastructure Scheme [NCRIS] … will not continue, meaning that terrific research infrastructure will not be rolled out in our universities. The Future Fellowships scheme, which is a scholarship for midcareer researchers … will not go ahead … That means that the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy and the Future Fellowships will end.’

On 24 August, Fairfax reported that the Minister had refused to rule out research cuts without reform. This has placed already worried research students, seeking future research careers, in a profound state of stress and uncertainty.

We also express our strong concern around changes to the Indigenous Tutorial Assistance Scheme and to ABSTUDY and AUSTUDY and with the poor publicity of, and consultation around, those changes, and representatives from the National Indigenous Postgraduate Association Aboriginal Corporation will address these impacts.

In closing, we wish to put on the public re-cord our disappointment with the absence of any consultation by the Government, with student leaders, in relation to the Bill prior to this point.

Meghan Hopper, CAPA National President To read the full speech, go to:

www.capa.edu.au/media-releases/1525/

Federal Budget

CAPA goes in to bat for research & PhDs

capaCouncil of Australian Postgraduate Associations Incorporated


Rosaria Burchielli M@ BurchielliRos

It’s not like I didn’t know that jobs were going to go. In 2013 the Vice-Chancellor put out a press release about the cutting of 350 jobs. But, like my colleagues, I had no idea of the details. I had assumed that only underperforming staff would be affected. I was recently promoted to Associate Professor, on the basis of excellence, so there was no reason to think that my job was in any danger.

I was overseas, on leave, when I was notified: a generic email sent to the entire faculty. The email subject was ‘Faculty change proposal’. There were so many attachments and I was on leave, so I didn’t look at them. In the next two days I received commiserating emails from colleague-friends… sorry to hear what’s happened, Rosaria.

It wasn’t just me. About 80% of staff in the faculty were affected. In what is known as a ‘spill and fill’ restructure, half of us would be redeployed. It felt like a blow to the back of the head with a sharp stone.

It’s ironic that one of my research areas is about how employment is changing. Nu-merous ideological, economic, geographic and political factors have combined, cre-ating the current labour market reality of increasingly precarious employment and a reduction of the jobs with good condi-tions. Job losses are occurring throughout the world, across all industries.

If redundancy can happen anywhere, to anyone, why not me? I actually did think this. I know that no one is indispensable. And at first, I thought I would probably reapply for one of the jobs available at my level. Then my thinking changed.

Why should I reapply for a job that I am already doing? Why should I have to waste time making arguments to my colleagues that my performance is unquestionably

When work doesn’t work anymore

REDUNDANT


high. It felt demeaning. If I’m going to write a job application, I thought, it’s going to be for somewhere else. I decided I was leaving.

There was something empowering about making this decision. From having been a victim of someone else’s ‘strategy’, I sud-denly had my own strategy. A redundancy payout would mean I could pay off the mortgage. Friends reminded me I would have a lot more time and could pursue personal projects that had been on hold indefinitely.

I felt better for all of a few days, until I realised a whole new internal process had started. I have been in this job for 15 years. I felt sad about saying goodbye to the campus, to colleagues, to students. I worried about what a prospective em-ployer might think about redundancy, and I worried about the likelihood of being successful in a job application at the age of 60. Suddenly who I was and my worth were in question: the redundancy was affecting my identity and self-esteem.

This restructure has been particularly cruel and ugly. Although I have been redundant for three months, I am still working, since the university has posited that despite the change upheaval, it’s ‘business as usual’ and staff are expected to meet all previously allocated workload commit-ments. Moreover, although any of us can indicate our preference for a specific job, or for departure, the university reserves the right to make the final decision. Many of us are in limbo, waiting, while we fulfil our pre-existing commitments. Others are on stress leave.

I have had a number of sleepless nights, troubled by anxiety or grief. I have cried and felt angry. A friend recently quipped, light-heartedly: ‘Is it just that the univer-sity hasn’t said we can’t live without you, Rosaria?’ I laughed, and said ‘Yeah, maybe’. But I know it’s not that.

It’s the sudden utter ruthlessness of understanding, viscerally, that I am totally disposable. It’s knowing that despite all managerial rhetoric about the value of human resources, my contribution is not seen as unique but equates only to dollars and cents. It’s realising that while the firm – and it is a firm – wants my loyalty, there is no commitment to me.

I can’t plan or move on until I get the university’s final decision, and there is absolute powerlessness in knowing that I may have decided to leave, but they’ll let me go when they’re good and ready and not a moment before. I couldn’t know how deeply shattering redundancy was until it happened to me.

Parallel to my internal process, there’s been the Union Branch activity. NTEU La Trobe University Branch has worked – frankly – tirelessly on this issue. It succeeded in taking the case to the Fair Work Commission (FWC). The FWC made some important findings, including: there

was no budget deficit and the University is currently operating on a surplus; the contradiction between compulsory redun-dancies and the job security outlined in our Enterprise Bargaining Agreement, and the lack of transparency in decision-mak-ing, as evidenced by the existence of many ‘secret’ documents.

Importantly, FWC also acknowledged that the University had rushed to implement its ‘strategy’ without adequate consultation, and ruled that the entire process should be halted to give staff sufficient time to influence the strategy and management decisions. This was controversial. On the ground, in corridors and on social media (Yammer), many staff (union and non-un-ion) expressed that they were fatigued by the restructure and wanted the process to be ‘over’.

Many of my colleagues felt that the FWC extension for proper consultation was extending our collective misery and uncertainty. Understandable, in the face of the shock and anxiety caused by the brutality of this change process. The an-nouncement of the spilled positions had been accompanied by powerpoint slides showing the affected positions and the incumbents’ names, so that in addition to the threat of job loss, there was the shame of having been named, and the humilia-tion of having to reapply for a job.

Branch activism – fighting back – has proved to be a good foil for the loneli-ness, numbness and paralysis that can follow shock and anxiety. I experienced the Branch leadership and information about next steps as unifying and re-em-powering, as were the symbolic gestures, such as signing a protest banner, to be delivered to the VC. At our last rally, we walked around our public square ‘The Agora’ where the students hang out; we chanted and sang and held up our plac-ards. Stopping in front of the VC’s offices, staff shared their personal experiences and views. I moved a motion of no-confi-dence in the VC, supported unanimously. Later, I also coordinated my department’s response to the proposed change. Quite a few of my colleagues declined to partic-ipate: they didn’t believe it would change anything or serve any purpose.

Where to from here? For now, I’m working: teaching, writing up research, providing editorial support to ‘our’ journal, dealing with associated daily emails and admin tasks. I still have no idea if I have a job next year or if I’ll be taking a redundancy. I’m clear on one thing though: I can go on alone, worrying about my job, my future, my problems… Alternatively, I can use this time to unite my voice with those of my colleagues.

It’s like this: if we don’t fight, we lose. Contact us on 1300 853 352or log onto the website at

memberadvantage.com.au/nteu

Your NTEUMember

Advantagebenefits

are waiting.


Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences

For the public good

Presenting accessible researchHeld in Melbourne over 8 and 9 October, the 2014 CHASS Forum challenged partic-ipants to think about how well humanities and the social sciences were prepared for an environment with increasing demands for ‘accountability’. Is it really acceptable for academics to expect personal, curiosity driven research to be funded? How could the impact of research be ‘measured’ and justified? How well do academics engage with the public to explain their research and its importance?

Participants discussed trends towards measuring the ‘impact’ of the humani-ties, arts and social sciences within the ERA framework. Designing such impact requires sensitivity towards the disciplines, and movement beyond raw metrics such as citations and journal quality.

This is not easy. Professor Graham Turner argued that we needed to become better at discussing the value of research, for instance, the contribution enhanced un-

derstanding brought to social and political topics, and to recognise that research on Australian society was not something that would be performed by anyone else. The danger of focussing research on contemporary issues of the day, however, is that Australia risks creating knowledge shortages; for instance, at the beginning of the century there was a poverty of work in Islamic studies and the Middle East that would allow people to analyse and to understand what was going on.

Universities, therefore, must continue to support broad research that would supply the knowledge base of the disciplines as a whole, and must be wary of endorsing impact measures that leaves disciplines pretending to deliver things they do not. Chief Scientist Professor Ian Chubb argued that academics had an obligation to engage with the community and with the concept of ‘the public good’.

At the end of the day, academics cannot simply congratulate themselves for ‘my new book’ with a glass of fine wine, but needed to think about the purpose of research, and how it was justified to the public. In order for their advice to be accepted by government, and to have impact on public policy, research needs to be presented in language that the public understands, and it needs to be accessible to them.

An example of how this can go sadly wrong was the debate over climate change, where, until it became a public

issue, scientists had seen it as a debate amongst themselves, but that when it be-came a public issue, the scientific debate simply moved into the public arena. As a result, there is confusion, policy stagnation and delay on a pressing social issue.

One theme that all speakers appeared to agree with was that the concept of value, including moral values, needed to be part of this public debate if the concept of ‘im-pact’ and ‘value’ were not to be overtaken by narrow economic values as a means of justification.

During the conference, academics rose to the challenge in a competition to explain and justify research in topics as diverse as reconciliation, backyard environmental-ism, the curation of history and arts soft-ware design within three minutes. These models showed that it was possible to inspire, persuade and explain clearly and concisely to a non-specialist audience.

But it was not the three minute presenta-tions that, at the end of the day, made the most impact on participants. David Ma-louf, and Professors Hugh Mackay, David Christian showed us just how touching, and humane the HASS units could be, and how, given a chance, they open up new vi-sions of the world in which we live, as well as invite contemplation of the different ways in which we might live in it.

Dr Elizabeth Burns Coleman lectures in the School of English, Communications and Performance Studies.

This year’s Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS) National Forum explored the theme of the Humanities, Social Sciences and the Public Good. NTEU sent two members to the conference, Dr Elizabeth Burns Coleman and Dr Emma Robertson, who provided these thoughts for Advocate.

Dr Elizabeth Burns ColemanMonash University


Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences

Working with scientists for mutual benefitWhen a last-minute ticket came up for the 2014 CHASS Forum, I was quick to volunteer. The conference promised to tackle one of the burning questions facing the humanities, arts and social sciences: how to engage with and contribute to the ‘public good’.

Coming from the UK, I was relieved to find that the Australian HE sector is not (yet) formally measuring ‘impact’. Still, the ques-tion of how we communicate the value of th ehumanities, arts and social sciences to a wider public remains crucial. As Professor Paul Gough urged during the conference, it is important that we take any opportuni-ty to shape the agenda.

Being a CHASS newbie, I was pleasantly surprised on arrival to find a diverse audi-ence of teachers, researchers, practition-ers, policy makers and students, ranging in age from around 15 to 80. After the Welcome to Country, which established a theme of mutual responsibilities, Hugh Mackay argued that humans are not (at least not completely) selfish, but rather naturally inclined to cooperate. Drawing on his recent book The Art of Belonging, Mackay conjured up images of magical neighbourhoods for us all to work towards – whilst acknowledging the challenges to such a vision.

Next, David Malouf treated us to a selec-tion of his poems, both old and new (from the Earth Hour collection). His ability to see beauty and meaning in the everyday was striking – I will never feel the same about my daily trip to the dog park! Whilst not wanting to reduce his poems to any one central theme, there were clear connec-tions with the established tropes of place and belonging.

After morning tea, and a showcase from the Design Institute’s Australasia Graduate of the Year Awards (AGOTYA), the two re-maining sessions before lunch tackled the question of impact. In the panel discus-sion, representatives from the Australian Research Council (ARC), Australian Acade-my of the Humanities, and the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies (University of Queensland), joined by Chief Scientist for Australia, Professor Ian Chubb AC, put forward their perspectives on the contri-bution of humanities and social sciences to society and, most pressingly, how we might demonstrate our significance. There were no easy answers but Professor Chubb stressed the value, indeed the necessity, of working in collaboration with scientists to our mutual benefit.

In the ‘speed dating’ session that followed, senior researchers gave a 3-minute pitch on the value of their work. My personal favourite (and joint winner of the audience prize) was Professor Deb Verhoeven (@bestqualitycrab) who gave an inspiring, technologically dazzling, presentation on the HuNI (Humanities Networked Infrastructure) project, which claims to (re)introduce the pleasures of serendipity and meaningful meandering into online research.

Professor David Christian’s post-lunch ‘Big History’ romp through millennia challenged us to think a little differently about humans as a planet-changing species. Next, the

panel discussion on ‘Safeguarding Freedom of Expression’ brought us back to the challenges of the immediate present with a bump. This was no cosy left-wing chat: John Roskam from the Institute of Public Affairs relished the opportunity to declare that the Arts should not be government funded. Emma Bennison of Arts Access Aus-tralia did an excellent job of highlighting the need for accessible platforms for public expression, but the absence of Jeannie Rea as an NTEU voice was palpable (she was called away to Canberra to give NTEU’s evidence to the Senate Committee Inquiry on the HERRA Bill).

Day one ended with an informal, and less contentious, conversation between Profes-sors Anthony Elliott and Frank Furedi on ‘Risk, Fear and Terror’ in the 21st century, with Furedi raising important questions about western understandings and constructions of ‘risk’ and ‘terror’. This was an all-too-relevant topic and suggested the real interventions humanities, arts and social sciences scholars are making into contemporary issues.

Day two offered master classes on grant writing, public engagement and forming powerful partnerships. From a personal perspective, Professor Denise Meredyth’s workshop on ARC applications provided crucial insights into the decision-making process. Those of us still new to the ARC were able to learn from both seasoned applicants and experienced reviewers. This opportunity for networking and inter-action, within and beyond the university sector, seemed to me the real strength of CHASS, and is the reason I will be watching out for future events.

Dr Emma Robertson is a Lecturer in History at La Trobe Bendigo.

Photo: CHASS Forum delegates, www.facebook.com/CHASSAustralia

Dr Emma RobertsonLa Trobe University


The desire to harness public research to build Australian business competitiveness echoes the former Labor Government’s 2009 Powering Ideas statement on nation-al innovation. Certainly, it confirms a bipar-tisan consensus about the role of higher education and research in Australia’s future economic competiveness.

Nonetheless, the new policy architecture also signals an important ideological shift. Labor basically saw government-led col-laborations between research and industry as critical to improving business produc-tivity. Through its Innovation Precincts program it was beginning to selectively invest in infrastructure that facilitated and coordinated innovation across industries on a massive scale.

In contrast, the Coalition proposes that decisions about public investment in re-search are better led by industry, and that public research should rightfully sponsor private wealth creation for Australia’s biggest and most profitable firms. Of considerable concern, the policy appears to unbundle itself from the discrete role publicly-funded research plays in the ecol-ogy of national innovation systems, such as through basic and blue-sky research.

What manufacturing crisis? Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced the establishment of a National Industry Investment and Competitiveness Taskforce

While the proposed establishment of Industry Growth Centres has been the subject of much of the limited public attention to the Coalition Government’s Industry, Innovation and Competitiveness Agenda, the policy has a range of notable implications for higher education. It is unsurprisingly that the relationship between industry and public research has come under significant scrutiny, in spite of misstatements by Industry Minister Ian MacFarlane in the lead-up to its mid-October release (including a proposal to reallocate research funding based upon patent registrations).

Jen Tsen KwokPolicy & Research Officer

M@NTEUNational

The Coalition’s Industry, Innovation and Competitiveness Agenda

Opening science to business

Phot

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Pesh

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following the closure of the Holden and Ford factories last December. The purpose of the Taskforce was to prepare a policy response that could ensure the manufac-turing industry was competitive into the future, and brought together Coalition heavy-hitters such as Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey, Andrew Robb, and the Industry Minister, Ian MacFarlane. The Taskforce was advised by the Coalition’s big business stakeholder group, the PM’s Business Advisory Council.

The policy has since ‘evolved’, with support for advanced manufacturing minimised. Though the actual document is more piecemeal and predictable than it is comprehensive or transformative, it is a big-ticket policy announcement. It attempts to integrate the Coalition Gov-ernment’s existing deregulatory crusade, focused on reducing the cost of business, to a grab-bag of other elements in its eco-nomic agenda, from negotiating free trade agreements and enlarging public-private partnerships in infrastructure policy, to staking out future domestic reforms around visa conditions, labour mobility and industrial relations.

The new Industry Policy also provides the policy narrative that the proper role of government is to provide (or terra-form) the juridical, policy and cultural conditions that elevate the competitiveness of Aus-tralian business. It seeks to shift the narra-tive of nation-building from Labor which saw the harnessing of public research as an expression of the public interest, to a position that nation-building is expressed through building business competitive-ness at all costs.

Winners and losersThe media has largely focused on the establishment of Industry Growth Centres or $188.5 million that the Government committed to the facilitation of indus-try-research partnerships in five key areas:

• Food and agribusiness

• Mining equipment, technology and services

• Medical technologies and pharmaceu-ticals

• Advanced manufacturing

• Oil, gas and energy resources.

The initiative has been roundly criticised by Labor and the Greens, with criticism centred on the narrow, selective focus of the Coalition vision - picking winners and excluding emerging industries such as renewable energy, tech and education. Other criticisms have focused on the likely impact upon Australia’s CRC programs, including the proposed wind-up of certain CRCs, and even criticisms of the funding model, which assumes the Growth Centres will become independent of public fund-ing within four years.

Importantly, the initiative reinforces that the Coalition believes government must play a role in innovation and advocates for public investment to be targeted at Australia’s biggest and most profitable firms. The media mantra has been about investing in industries with competitive advantage, rather than about choosing winners.

Notably, the proposal to play to Australia’s comparative strengths has been intimately guided by big business. This is not just the PM’s Business Advisory Council. In early August, Macfarlane spoke glowingly about BCA President Catherine Livingstone’s first major speech, which supported a BCA Re-port called Building Australia’s Compara-tive Advantages and stated that govern-ment’s role in facilitating and coordinating innovation should be concentrated in areas of competitive advantage.

Relevance to higher education and researchThere have been positive responses to some reform in the regulatory envi-ronment, including reintroducing tax concessions for employee share schemes (for start-ups), and attention to the crowd sourcing of equity funding. Nonetheless, the implications of the Industry Policy are concentrated in higher education and research with the:

• Establishment of five Industry Growth Centres ($188.5m);

• Targeted support for STEM education ($12m);

• Streamlining the 457 visa and expand-ing the Significant Investor visa;

• Revising standards to make VET more industry-focused;

• Stream-lining regulation and govern-ance in VET;

• Establishment of the Commonwealth Science Council (to replace PMSEIC);

• Developing policies to better translate research into commercial outcomes, including adjusting research funding mechanisms to provide greater incen-tives for collaboration between research and industry.

In a speech to the Queensland Media Club in August, Ian Macfarlane first proposed allocating funding based upon patent registrations. This was heavily criticised, with the Australian Academy of Science and a former Howard Government science advisor claiming this would lead to institu-tional gaming and the registration of junk patents.

The Industry Policy, however, signals that Government wants public consultation around the allocation of research funding to promote commercial outcomes, and signals a more intense attention to re-search impact metrics.

Chief Scientist’s STEM reportThe most credible aspects of the new Industry Policy piggybacks off the Chief Scientist’s position paper on public invest-ment in Science Technology, Engineering Mathematics (STEM).

While the report was indeed focused upon expanding basic STEM skills in primary and secondary education, the Chief Scientist’s recommendations on research notably went further than Coalition policy, and included recommendations such as the maintenance of basic research as the source of new knowledge, providing con-tinuing support programs for postgradu-ate and early career researchers (ECR), and advocating that public funding needed to cover the full indirect costs of research.

The Industry Policy ignores all the finer details that relate to workforce planning and public funding.

Enter the P-TECH ModelIn June, Prime Minister Abbott visited a P-TECH (Pathways in Technology Early Career High) school while in New York, a school co-funded by IBM. Upon gradua-tion students from the Brooklyn institution are set to receive a high school diploma, an associate degree in Applied Science, and a job interview with IBM, though the first student cohort began in 2011 and is still yet to graduate.

We now know this was a precursor to its announcement in Australia, with the Coalition’s new Industry policy supporting a trial of a P-TECH style school in Geelong. Multiple criticisms by commentators have already been leveled at the pedagogic approach, which is focused on making stu-dents job ready and thus fitting a specific purpose, rather than preparing them for life and encouraging the critical faculties.

The other major concern is that this dove-tails with the opening of Commonwealth Student Places (CSP) to private providers, or in other words, the subsidisation of corporates in the delivery of education. In the US and UK, private tertiary colleges chasing the public dollar have enrolled the most disadvantaged young people and led to them racking up massive debts. The warning signs are that the P-TECH-style Geelong institution will be private, and that the VET elements of the program might allow students transitioning from secondary to tertiary education to also rely on VET-HELP loans.

At a time when the futures of higher education staff and students are being held hostage to Budget cuts and fee deregulation, the release of the Coalition Government’s Industry, Innovation and Competitiveness Agenda opens another battlefront in the Australian taxpayer’s subsidisation of big business, with further threats to the pedagogic integrity of Aus-tralia’s education system.


These days, universities seem to be under perpetual attack from those who would ‘reform’ them.

According to the Oxford Dictionary of English, ‘reform’ is a verb that means make changes in (something, especially an institution or practice), in order to improve it. Seeing as governments of both persua-sions seem to be in love with ‘reform’, one would think that these same governments would be anxious to test the effectiveness of their reforms.

Did the intended improvements (if stated) actually come to pass? Don’t hold your breath waiting to find out! So-called reform by governments is not likely to be followed-up, nor unfortunately, do incoming governments seem willing to undo the errors of their predecessors. Universities just have to work within what has been described as ‘endless cycles of re-form’, of government policies that require hard-working university staff to engage in more and more reporting about things, rather than letting them do things.

I mention ‘reform’ because the scattier examples should draw scorn from those in the sector, but where can such scorn be presented? Newspaper opinion pieces provide a chance to present opposing ideas, but the purview of many scholarly journals means that such critical commen-tary is uncommon.

The Australian Universities’ Review (AUR), however, is a journal willing to publish pa-

pers that ‘have a go’ at the source of the various chal-lenges faced by university staff in providing good ser-vice to students. In recent years we have published papers on ‘research grant mania’, casualisation, the stupidity and subjective nature of journal ranking, institutional bullying and secret deals. It is impor-tant that there is a journal that challenges govern-ments or others who would seek to impose unworkable, unfair or unscientific requirements on universities and their staff. AUR seeks to be different, and it is!

The current issue (vol.56, no. 2) contains some papers that present a challeng-ing front. One such paper is that by US denizens the Laura’s Risler and Harrison, which asks whether the performance of the presidents of US universities (aka vice-chancellors) can be correlated to their performance. This is a relevant question in the modern era, and even if the setting for this paper is the US, it raises equivalent questions about the Australian scene. Please could somebody examine contem-porary Australian universities and their vice-chancellors?

Another paper looks at ‘academic snob-bery’, in which Brian Martin and Maj Søren-son record the negative impact snobbery can have on morale, research and public image. Yet another paper, by Raewyn Connell, questions the current situation in which university staff feel overworked and demoralised. ‘The floggings will continue

until morale improves’ is what the work environ-ment has come down to for many in the sector.

Of course, AUR is not just about presenting a coun-ter-offensive voice. It is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal that presents a wide range of interesting articles. Two papers have a strong international flavour, with a set of interesting ob-servations about democra-

cy and international education in China by Andrys Onsman and Jackie Cameron.

Further, Peter Ling, Margaret Mazzolini and Beena Giridharan present an interest-ing paper on the management of transna-tional education. Cath Brown explains the links and the gaps in Enterprise Agree-ments and Aboriginal & Torres Strait Is-lander employees, whereas Hamish Coates explains how the right sort of support can reduce the prevalence of students’ early departure from study.

Finally, Michael Cuthill and his colleagues bring us up to speed on Australian univer-sities, knowledge exchange and univer-sities and the public good. This is a ‘must read’ for doctrinaire Ministers of education and senior education bureaucrats.

This is also a good edition of AUR for any-one who likes book reviews: there are no fewer than 14 of them!

Ian Dobson is editor of AUR. Vol. 56, no. 2 will be available mid November.www.aur.org.au

Australian Universities’ Review

A polemic option in the world of scholarly publishing

Since 1958, the Australian Universities’ Review has been encouraging debate and discussion about issues in higher education and its contribution to Australian public life.


vol. 54, no. 1, 2012Published by NTEU ISSN 0818–8068

AURSpecial Issue

Contemporary issues in doctoral education


vol. 54, no. 2, 2012Published by NTEU ISSN 0818–8068

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Changes to the Defence Export Controls Act 2012 are coming. Following advocacy by the NTEU, these changes should improve the present situation for Australian scientists working in universities, research centres and institutes, by reducing the administrative burden and the number of non-Defence scientists exposed to criminal liability.

But knowledge about the legislation across our sector continues to be poor, and the only way we can improve the legislation is if university staff are better informed, and carefully consider the im-plications of the legislation. Recently, the NTEU has been actively engaging with the Departments of Industry and Defence to get the word out.

WorkshopsOn 22 September, a meeting of 50 staff from UQ, Griffith University, QUT and the Queensland Institute of Medical Research had opportunity to discuss the implications of the Defence Trade Controls Act (2012) on their research with representatives from the Commonwealth Government; Kris Browne, Manager of International Science Collaboration, Department of Industry, and Gaby Burrell from the Department of Defence. A similar meeting occurred at UWA for university staff, and involving NTEU’s WA Division on 23 September.

The meeting heard that the laws were introduced under international treaty

arrangements to counter proliferation of weapons, including biological weapons, by extending controls beyond current powers under the Customs Act, to cover intangible supply of technology (such as email), brokering and publication of technology. However, against the recom-mendations of the Senate Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee, the legisla-tion was rushed through parliament, with the only concession being a strengthened Export Controls Steering Group led by the Chief Scientist, to improve the legislation over a two year transition period that concludes in May 2015.

The meeting also heard that round-ta-ble discussions convened by the Chief Scientist revealed a level of anxiety within the research community about the implications of the new legislation. These included curtailing of academic free-dom through apparently over-restrictive controls on publication, and the admin-istrative burden to be carried by research institutions and their staff. Of concern was that Australian legislation was apparently more restrictive than similar regulation in the US, and would disadvantage Austral-ian researchers within the international context.

The two-year implementation period in-cludes pilot programs at UQ, Curtin, QIMR and Boeing designed to test solutions to issues identified during the transition peri-od. One of the issues the pilot has already revealed is “the incidence of Defence and Strategic Goods List controlled technology in Australian publications is low, while the regulatory burden associated with identifying such incidences is high” (Letter from the Chief Scientist to the Minister of Defence and the Minister for Industry, dated 12 December, 2013). Solutions be-ing put forward include easing restrictions through the development of open licences for export to UK, EU and US, extending licence timeframes and refining the scope of brokering controls, as well as the devel-opment of an online self-assessment tool.

Questions from the floor revealed con-cerns for those whose research is likely to come under the ‘dual use’ provisions of the

legislation, where aspects of their work, in say genetics, could fall within the parame-ters of the legislation. There was particular concern about the status of ‘verbal supply’ in relation to international conference presentations, and whether this consti-tutes export of intangible goods, and with it the potential to inadvertently fall foul of the law.

UQ representatives discussed the gov-ernance and resource implications of the legislation, proposing to establish an ‘Export Control Officer’ and a review com-mittee to ensure procedural fairness in decision making, under the auspices of UQ Research and Innovation within the Office of the DVC (Research). Other institutions are considering overseeing the regulations through their legal offices.

More work to be doneThe NTEU has taken a leading role in advocating on behalf of researchers in the university sector to ensure that there is adequate consultation around the implementation of the legislation and development of amendments aiming at addressing identified issues. Concerns remain about academic freedom and procedural fairness within the context of the heightened security environment, and the implications for research in areas not previously subject to regulation.

We are anticipating that the Department of Defence will release an Exposure Draft of amendments before the end of 2014. We are keen to hear from members who may be affected, or have students or colleagues unduly affected. Get in touch by calling the NTEU National Policy and Research Unit on (03) 9254 1910 or join our Mailing List by sending an email to [email protected].

Lachlan Hurse, Queensland Division OrganiserFor more information visit:

www.nteu.org.au/defencetradecontrols

Science & Technology

Changes to Defence Trades Controls


The principal right of an author is cop-yright, which ensures that the literary work is their legal property and can’t be reproduced without their permission. This is a right that has been enshrined in national copyright laws around the world, including in Australia. The protection of copyright, and the rights of authors more generally, has been the principal aim and activity of the Australian Society of Authors (ASA) for the last half century.

The ASA, along with the Australian Pub-lishers Association, was instrumental in establishing the Copyright Agency, which collects fees on behalf of authors when their work is photocopied for distribution in schools, universities, businesses and government departments. Collecting such a payment is obviously not something that an author could do by themselves. Hence the need for an organisation that can balance the protection of an author’s copyright with the need for people to access their work.

Starting from very small beginnings in 1974, the Copyright Agency initially faced fierce opposition from universities and schools and education departments, which did not want to pay for the photo-copying of copyright works. It required a number of court cases and changes to the copyright law before they agreed to record their photocopying and pay authors for using their works.

Academics are teachers and researchers and administrators. Many are also writers, whether it is of journal articles or scientific papers or scholarly monographs. For many academics, writing for publication is required for their promotion. Some also write outside of their work, whether it is fiction or non-fiction, poetry or opinion pieces. Whatever form of writing is done, what is produced automatically accrues important rights that shouldn’t be ignored.

David DayAustralian Society of Authors

Phot

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The rights of academic writers


Forty years later, the Copyright Agency uses its statutory licence to collect more than $125 million each year on behalf of authors and publishers. It is in the interest of all academic writers to become mem-bers of the Copyright Agency, so that they can register their copyright works and be paid whenever their work is copied. Be-coming a member is free and can be done by registering on the Copyright Agency website, www.copyright.com.au. But it doesn’t end there.

The struggle to create the Copyright Agen-cy took a lot of energy and dedication over more than a decade, and it will take similar energy and dedication to protect that achievement. Some universities and education departments would like to return to the days when a writer’s work could be made available to students for ‘free’ and without reference to anyone’s rights. Then there are the mega-corpora-tions like Google, which see the copyright of others (but not their own copyright) as an impediment to their business model of acquiring and controlling as much ma-terial as possible. By providing so-called ‘free content’ to attract advertisers, Google has become the most lucrative advertising host in the world.

Some years ago, Google began a project to try to digitise every book in the world, and to become the gate-keeper to that material. Google undertook this project, in tandem with some American univer-sities, without seeking the permission of copyright holders. Millions of books were digitised with the intention of making them available without regard to the rights of those authors who still retained copyright over them. Writers reacted to this unconscionable grab and, after a long legal case was mounted by author organisations, Google’s project was judged to have breached the rights of writers. The case is now on appeal, and likely to go all the way to the US Supreme Court.

Apparently undaunted by that experience, Google has teamed up with universities and libraries in Australia to form the Aus-tralian Digital Alliance, which aims to pres-sure the government to loosen copyright law in ways that will be detrimental to the rights of writers. In particular, the Goog-le-led consortium wants to replace the Australian legal concept of ‘fair dealing’, which largely protects copyright holders from unauthorised use of their material, with the much looser American concept of ‘fair use’.

Such a change will attack the rights of ac-ademic authors and threaten the income they are otherwise entitled to receive from the Copyright Agency. Academics are in

the frontline of this new struggle, and should join the campaign by the Austral-ian Society of Authors to protect their interests as authors. One way of doing so is to challenge their respective university’s membership of the Australian Digital Alli-ance and ask why their employer is joining with Google in an underhand campaign to undermine their copyright.

A few educational book publishers have also sought to take advantage of the exist-ence of the Copyright Agency by offering an up-front payment to academic authors in lieu of a royalty payment and with the requirement that the author must cede their copyright to the publisher. Or they might offer a normal royalty rate while still having their academic authors sign over most if not all of their copyright. Many authors agree to these arrangements, not realising the potential value they are foregoing.

Publishers making such offers do so in the confident knowledge that large amounts could by forthcoming to the publisher from copyright payments when parts of

the book are photocopied for educational courses. And those copyright payments can keep flowing for decades. Such stratagems ensure that little if any of the copyright fee will go to the rightful recipi-ent - the creator of the work.

Because of this, it is important to get good legal advice before signing a publishing contract with terms that are unclear in their implications. With its long history and close contact with the publishing industry, the ASA can provide such advice to its members at a relatively nominal fee and can also intercede with publishers when unconscionable terms are offered. There is much value for members of the NTEU in also being members of the ASA.

David Day is a historian and biographer, who is currently an Honorary Associate at La Trobe University and Chair of the Australian Society of Authors. © David Day 2014

www.asauthors.org

www.davidday.com.au

Copyright reforms and the rights of authors: ‘Fair use’ vs ‘fair dealing’

There is agreement that the technological developments that have transformed how content is created and shared mean that Australia’s copyright laws need improvement.

Multinationals like Google, Yahoo and Ebay are arguing for the introduction of a ‘fair use’ exception, as a way to harmonise Australian copyright law with the US, and they argue as a basis to encourage innovation in Australia’s technological industries.

However, as the opponents of the fair use exception are numerous and diverse, so are its supporters. In December 2013, the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC), delivered a report called Copyright and the Digital Economy, recommending modernisation of Australian copyright laws for a digital world. Aside from useful proposals around statutory licences, the Report’s primary recommendation was that Australia adopt a broad fair use exception. The fair use exception would replace the existing provision for ‘fair dealing’, which allows copyrighted material to be used for a list of prescribed purposes, including research or study.

If fair use was not taken up, the Report had a fall-back position, arguing that the Copyright Act should be amended to provide expanded fair dealings with copyright materials, including in relation to more modern or ‘technologically neutral’ uses such as non-commercial private use, library or archive use, and importantly, in relation to all forms of education.

The tension in this debate is contested largely along lines of great interest to academics, university librarians and university staff. This is the extent to which any reforms might ensure authors and creators are acknowledged, as well as the extent to which fair use may strengthen (or weaken) the incentives related to the creation of copyrighted materials. The Copyright Law and Practice Symposium in March demonstrated that there remain deep divisions about what the introduction of a broader fair use provision might entail.

Jen Tsen Kwok, Policy & Research Officer

Read the full statement at www.nteu.org.au/policy/research


Pat Wright

News from the Net

The convergence through digital information and communication technologies (ICTs) of Internet audio and video with broadcast radio and television proceeds apace. In early 2015, TPG Telecom, Australia’s fourth-largest broadband internet provider, plans to offer Internet Protocol television (IPTV) to 500,000 capital city apartments on its fibre-to-the-basement (FTTB) network, which will cherry-pick the most profitable consumers of infotainment, and thus reduce the capacity of the National Broadband Network (NBN) to cross-subsidise broadband services in the bush.

Meanwhile, the free-to-air broadcasters of television are battling with the pay-TV providers to keep market share by offering enhanced services such as iView, SBS On Demand, and TenPlay, uploading news items, fact checks, comedy skits and sports highlights onto YouTube, and now Catch Up repeat programs on selected Smart TV sets.

In 2013, the number of TV sets sold in Australia actually fell for the first time, probably indicating that infotainment consumers are relying more and more on devices such as computers, smartphones and tablets (and hybrid ‘phablets’). Nat-urally enough, the FreeView TV channels are following their customers onto the Internet.

Cable pay-TV providers such as Foxtel, too, are making more and more use of the

Internet, as well as their cable networks, particularly for streaming movies, on the NBN and on TPG’s FTTB network. Foxtel, for example, has agreed to sell a ‘white label’ version of its content to TPG, and has long made available AFL content to Telstra’s BigPond broadband network. Chances are that TPG, Foxtel and Telstra will each be involved in a ‘triple play’ of broadband, telephony, and Pay-TV – all via the Internet – in 2015. How will we know if we are watching television or internet video? Does it matter?

Such conflation is changing the media landscape – and thus the online learning environment – and also changing the way in which we consume, and interact with, media content. Once upon a time, Marshall McLuhan could distinguish a ‘hot’ medium from a ‘cool’ medium, according to the intensity of attention required to absorb its message – hence, in his day, a radio talk was ‘hot’ and a television show was ‘cool’. Nowadays, however, nearly all media are increasingly ‘cool’, immersive and undemanding – lest the consumer, or customer, ‘switch off’ and find another medium.

The new technologies shift much of the communication initiative from the sender or producer to the receivers or consum-ers, who also have a much wider range of choice of media to which they can pay attention. The asynchronous nature of much modern infotainment gives consumers greater control over when they are ready for it, and the action replay ability to rewind a lecture back to a point they might have missed is reassuring. The overall effect is to give the receiver/consumer/learner more power over the time, place, pace and way in which they receive/consume/learn the information or entertainment.

Foremost among media for transforming the ‘hot’ into the ‘cool’ is radio, particularly since the advent of FM music stations and now digital audio broadcasting (DAB). The ability to set up radio stations dedicated to one specific genre or era of popular music has fragmented the market into multiple niche markets, to which listeners have

stronger loyalty – the aural wallpaper with which they are most comfortable is ‘cool’. The ears have walls.

The ability for DAB to transmit text simul-taneously with music enables the titles of songs to accompany the audio, thus facili-tating the online ordering of a copy of the song or album. Consequently, ‘my kind of music’ becomes ‘My Music’ in a stronger sense than ever.

Meanwhile, the ability to garner feedback by way of reviews, star-ratings, ‘hits’ and ‘Likes’ provides the online vendors with instant market research, through which they can assess overall demand and more precisely target their offerings. The walls have ears. The Sony Walkman CD-player could only assess demand through CD sales, Apple’s iPod makes it possible to construct an individual’s profile from

their playlists. Who knows? Next step might be personality analysis through musichiatry.

Similar develop-ments are occurring in free-to-air TV and IP video-streaming. Watch what you Like. Such feedback is facilitated through iPad apps to en-hance your viewing

experience, such as QandA Tweets, Beamly and the ABC Companion. This applies to news and information, as well as to entertainment. Indeed, it applies to news-papers, particularly as they dig in to such politically partisan positions that readers abandon them.

There is a danger, of course, that we diminish the diversity of voices and views to which we attend even as we increase the conviction with which we commit to our own views. It would be a shame if the technology which can help us engage with an unprecedented diversity of differ-ences led us only to very much more of the same.

Pat Wright is a Foundation Member of the NTEU. [email protected]

TV or not TV?

Such conflation is changing the media landscape – and

thus the online learning environment – and also

changing the way in which we consume, and interact

with, media content.


Ian Lowe

Lowering the Boom

Yes, it is that time of the year again. I can hear the groans of despair and reverberating thuds of Advocate copies hitting the waste paper bin, as staff realise I have again made my annual pilgrimage to brave little Tamworth University. Last year the founding Vice-Chancellor, also President, Chief Operating Officer and now beloved Supreme Leader, Cal D’Aria, was in good heart, cheered by the change of government and the appointment of the new Minister. This year he was jubilant about the proposed deregulation of higher education and the review of the school curriculum.

‘This bloke Piney has obviously been listening to my good mate in the Depart-ment’, Cal chortled. ‘I had Dr Ongo up here a few years ago for a briefing, but the government wasn’t listening to him then. Now the Dr Ongo approach is really gathering steam’.

Cal was particularly enthusiastic about the curriculum review. ‘It shows Piney’s political insight. You find someone who’s been blatting on about getting back to the basics every few weeks for twenty-five years in the Liberal Party house newspa-per, then appoint him to do an impartial review. As Dr Ongo always says, you don’t set up a review unless you know what it will find.’

Cal was delighted that the review went further than the predictable calls for Judeo-Christian values and the three

Rs. ‘Get all this trendy crap about Asia, Indigenous culture and sustainability out of education’, he snarled. ‘Waste of bloody time. How is that going to get kids off the streets and down the mines where they belong?’

When I asked Cal about the possible impact of the proposed deregulation of higher education, he was almost beside himself with excitement. ‘I’ve had my PVC (Academic), Prof. Ateer, and my head of marketing, Dr Saba de Todo, looking at it’, he said. ‘They’re really excited. At last we’re going to get bureaucracy off our backs.’

Cal said his good mate Dr Ongo had told the Minister about the scandalous waste of taxpayers’ money in the current ap-proach. ‘We’ve seen some progress, but Australia is still only the second-lowest in the OECD for fund-ing of higher educa-tion per capita’, he said. ‘So we should be cutting more. We could lead the world. Team Australia, lean and mean.’

He reminded me of Dr Ongo’s argument for withdrawing public funds completely and forcing students to pay the full cost of their education. ‘People only value what they pay for’, he chuckled. Cal also gave me an earful about the impacts of deregulation in New Zealand, and urged me not to be swayed by the short-sighted critics in the union. He waxed lyrical about the shining example of the USA. ‘Look at the diversity you get when you are serious about deregulation’, he exclaimed. ‘The Bob Jones University of Theology, where Ian Paisley got a doctorate in six weeks so he could call himself Dr Paisley. The Mud-ville Community College, where you can get degrees in baseball and ice hockey. Bumcrack University, Nebraska. The list goes on!’

As we know, Tam U has pioneered many educational innovations. Cal ticked them off: city centre offices so people could col-lect credits while shopping, no academic buildings, every assignment routinely given a high distinction to save time marking, every graduate given the title of ‘doctor’, no tenured academics, all casual lecturers given the title of professor, help-ing local business by consultancies giving an academic veneer to their commercial

interests, no unions for staff or students wasting his time with their inconvenient demands, honorary doctorates for local politicians.

‘We’ve stepped up to the plate’, said Cal. ‘If the other universities don’t put their hands up, they won’t have a seat at the table when the ship leaves the dock!’

‘The best thing about deregulation and giving universities freedom to set their fees’, Cal continued, ‘is that it reframes the whole purpose of education’. Impressed by Cal’s grasp of the recent literature, I asked him to elaborate. ‘Well, he said, education can’t be seen as a public investment in our social and economic future. It’s a private investment that helps people make more

money’.

He reminded me that the changes already made had been spectacularly successful in getting students out of unproductive areas like science, mathe-matics, history, phi-losophy, literature

and the classics into fields that are seen as licences to make money: medicine, law, commerce and business studies. ‘When I was an undergraduate’, he said, ‘the brightest students were wasting their time in maths and physics. Med students were the sort of dull people who were prepared to memorise every sphincter in the body. Now the brightest are fighting to get into medicine.’

Cal thinks the Government recognises we need to go further. ‘There are still students wasting time and taxpayers’ money in those old fields in other universities’, he said. ‘And the deregulation agenda is being held up by those Senators from minor parties. What do Clive Palmer, Glenn Lazarus and Jacquie Lambie know about higher education?’

I left Cal proof-reading the brochure for his new six-week professional doctorate in diplomacy, with units on creative bullying, shirt-fronting and verbal abuse. As always, I came away from Tamworth reflecting that it now gives the nation more than the comforting twang of country music.

Ian Lowe is Emeritus Professor of Science, Technology and Society at Griffith University.M@AusConservation

TamU celebrates deregulation

‘Well, he said, education can’t be seen as a public

investment in our social and economic future. It’s a private investment that helps people

make more money’.


Inger Mewburn

The Thesis Whisperer

Sometime early in 1975. Monash University forecourt. Market day.I am four and a half years old. My mother has my twin sister and I by the hand as we walk through an enormous plaza surrounded by towering, square buildings. The wind whips my short shirt up above my waist and flings building site dust in my face. I’m confused, tired and want to go to the toilet. I start crying and sit on the ground, refusing to move any further.

My sister stops to look at a bug, uninterest-ed in my hysterics, while my mother bends down to wipe my face. I ask her where we are and when we are going home. She tells me we are at a University and that one day, years from now, I will come here to learn things. She told me that, even though I had a lot of school to go yet, she was sure I was going to university because a man called Gough Whitlam had changed things so kids like me had a chance.

Late 1975. The family lounge room, inside a modest, triple fronted brick veneer in the suburbs. My mother is standing by the television, crying. My father is standing, stony faced, with his arm around her. I’m deeply con-fused – I ask them what is wrong and they don’t answer. I lean around them to see what is on the television.

There’s a black and white image of a whole lot of men standing on some white steps. I recognise Gough Whitlam from the news-paper my father reads in the mornings. He’s giving a speech. I know that he says ‘Well may we say God save the Queen, because nothing will save the Gover-nor-General’ because I have it on a mug in my office, but at the time I only saw that he was angry.

‘What will happen to our girls?’ my mother asks my father tearfully. He just looks at her. ‘I don’t know,’ he says.

Sometime in 1990. The steps of the Victorian parliament house.I’m 19 and I’ve just started university. My mother has cancer. The house in the suburbs is sold. There’s no room for me there, even if I wanted to move back. I barely understand this new thing called ‘HECS’ that I’ve signed up to. It seems so complicated, but I’m grateful. I don’t have to find money upfront for university fees

so I can still fulfil my ambition to get an architecture degree.

I’m living on Austudy and around $120 a week from working in a bookstore. I’m poor, which is not helped by the fact that I have taken up both drinking and smoking, much to my mother’s disgust. She worries I wont finish my degree, but she’s wrong. University is amazing, scary, harder than I ever thought possible. I’m hooked on learning, even if my grades are reflecting the amount of time I’m spending smoking and drinking with my new musician friends.

I’m here today, on these steps, because the government is talking about cutting Austudy. I’m really worried that I won’t be able to pay the rent for my mouse-infested share house. A recession has just hit and people aren’t buying books. My hours at the bookstore have been cut. So I’m pro-testing with my sister and a few friends. Again. Colleen holds up a sign saying that the education minister is the new Sheriff of Nottingham. ‘Where is Gough?’ asks another sign, plaintively.

Suddenly I’m caught up in a mass of stu-dents, rushing towards the front windows of parliament house. I hear glass breaking and then mounted police arrive. Those horses are scary when you are under their hooves. I actually have a moment where I think I’m going to die and I break away from the crowd. I make it to a quiet side street. I wonder where my sister or my friends are as I light a cigarette with shak-ing hands. Smoking calms me and I get to thinking. These protests will gain nothing. It’s the Labor Party who is stiffing us this

time. I realise something profound: the Government doesn’t care about me.

2009. The stage in the conservatorium at the University of Melbourne. A man in a floppy hat is talking and I am standing on the side of the stage in aca-demic robes. I’ve got the same floppy hat as the Chancellor. The hat has been worn by so many people before me that the brim has taken on an odd shape. It won’t sit on my head properly.

My name is called and I walk carefully across the stage to take the roll of paper from his hands. He smiles and shakes my hand, saying something I barely hear as I search the crowd for familiar faces. My husband, sister and son smile at me and applaud loudly. It’s a good day. I am finally a doctor. There is no more university to do.

Suddenly I remember that day in the Monash University plaza and my mother’s words. She has been dead now for nearly a decade: she would be amazed this univer-sity thing has gone as far as it has. I’m sad she’s not here. She would have so enjoyed bragging to her friends. I send her a silent thank you. And I add in another silent thanks, to Gough. Thank you for giving me a chance.

Dr Inger Mewburn does research on research and blogs about it. www.thesiswhisperer.comM@thesiswhisperer

Photo: Gough Whitlam with Patricia ‘Little Pattie’ Amphlett in 1972.

A tribute to Gough Whitlam in four parts


Lesley Francey

Letter from Aotearoa/NZ

Two months ago, New Zealand’s largest private tertiary education company Intueri, announced a $1.6 million profit, courtesy of a massive increase in public funding over the last two years of at least $1.8 million.

In effect, the Government had subsidised Intueri’s private shareholders to make a profit off New Zealand students.

Intueri is a publicly-listed stock-exchange company that owns five private training establishments (PTEs). It is a company with campuses at 26 locations and about 9000 student enrolments.

Of Intueri’s five PTEs, we were able to find government funding figures for three of them in the Government’s 2014 funding data. Those three (the Design and Arts College of New Zea-land, the Elite International School of Beauty and Spa Therapies Ltd, and the Cut Above Academy) received a com-bined increase of $1.8 million in public funding between 2012 and 2014. In 2012 the company received at least $6.8 million of public funding. In 2014 it received at least $8.6 million.

The situation with Intueri, as with the broader tertiary education environment in New Zealand, is increasingly messy. The chair of Intueri’s board, Chris Kelly, is also the chancellor of New Zealand’s largest public tertiary education provider, Massey University. That dual role appears to us to conflict with his commitment to the university and to promoting high quality accessible public education. It is hard to square such a philosophy with chairing a company that believes education is a trad-able commercial service. Indeed Massey and Intueri even offer competing courses.

While people investing on the share market might be celebrating the Govern-ment’s largesse over the last two years, students in our regional public polytech-nics saw their funding fall by $17 million over the same period.

The Government is directly transferring money from students in public polytech-nics to private investors on the stock exchange. It is corporate welfare at the expense of students.

This bizarre outcome is the result of a de-cision several years ago by the New Zea-land government to ‘restore equity’ to tertiary educa-tion and ‘remove the funding gap’ between public and private education providers.

Since then private providers received an extra $30 million of public money, while polytechnic funding fell commensurate-ly. The government also opened up to competition funding to foundation level courses for people entering tertiary educa-tion. Polytechnics suddenly found they needed to tender to teach students they had always previously taught. Most lost their contracts to other providers offering to do the task for a cheaper price.

This transfer of money from public to private education is a blatant attack on public education but it also does not even make economic sense.

There are some great private training establishments in New Zealand and some great staff working in them. Private edu-cation does have a place in New Zealand’s

tertiary education landscape supporting a comprehensive, accessible and equitable public education system.

However, as soon as those private tertiary education providers start com-peting with public education providers, instead of collabo-rating with them, they undermine rather than enhance public education. When their focus is cherry-picking stu-dents, winning gov-

ernment grants or generating profit for business owners and shareholders, they miss the point of public education. Any government that believes education is a service to be bought and sold for a profit misses the point of public education. And any government that thinks spending

money to help a company generate a profit on a public service that used to be free needs a better public education.

According to its proponents, the private sector is supposedly better than the public sector at delivering public services because it is more efficient and

responds to signals from the public. Thus, it saves us taxpayers our money. However,

this company is not saving taxpayer money because it is doing the educating cheaper than for what it was paid and is giving the remainder out as a dividend to sharehold-ers.

This company, which either can’t or won’t generate a profit without the help of large government subsidies, is efficiently reading market signals. The signal it has read is that the big pool of cash the gov-ernment awarded it need not be spent on education, it can cash it up as shareholder returns instead.

Lesley Francey is National President/Te Tumu Whakarae, New Zealand Tertiary Education Union/Te Hautū Kahurangi o Aotearoa www.teu.ac.nzM@nzteu

Making a dollar

While people investing on the share market might be

celebrating the Government’s largesse over the last two

years, students in our regional public polytechnics saw their funding fall by $17

million over the same period.


My Union

National Council 2014Held in the shadow of the wholesale attack by the federal Coalition Government on the expansion and democratisation of public higher education, the start of a new round of anti-worker industrial legislation and the loss of over 1500 jobs across the sector this year, the 2014 National Council Meeting was a fairly sombre affair.

Much of the discussion was upon the implementation of the current round of Collective Agreements, while noting and expressing solidarity with those univer-sities still bargaining. Prompted by not only the changes going on in the sector already, but also the Bill before the Senate incorporating the higher education chang-es announced in the Federal Budget, there was a more overt general consensus towards connecting industrial implemen-tation with broader campaigns over policy, governance and university budgets.

The knowledge economy and university workersFraming bigger and, hopefully, ongoing discussions was the keynote speech of recently retired, Raewyn Connell, Professor

Emerita of the University of Sydney, who deftly took us through the history of Australian higher education, and a critique of the neo-liberal university to challenging us on what we would want in a university. She proposed Possible U as being a dem-ocratic workplace, modest in demeanor, multiple in epistemology and ambitious intellectually. Connell was presented with NTEU Life Membership at the conclusion of the session (see p.44).

Queensland Division President, Associate Professor Andrew Bonnell and University of Sydney delegate Dr Patrick Brownlee responded to Connell’s address. Brown-lee commented upon the importance of taking time and reflecting upon our cam-paigns as well as taking forward the analy-ses of neo-liberalism to positing where do


My Union

we go from here. He also appreciated the proposition of universities being ‘modest in demeanor’ rather than running on marketing slogans.

Bonnell, a historian, welcomed the historical perspective and while warning against a rose coloured lens on the past, noted some worth in comparisons. He compared the deans of previous times as often a ‘harmless drudge’ in stark contrast to those of today ‘trained as jackals’ and charged with picking off slower members of the pack. Bonnell pointed to a crisis of reproduction of intellectual culture and scholarly practices, which impacts upon the whole university, not only academic staff and their work.

Following discussion with delegates, Con-nell concluded that we must be ‘telling the truth’ of what is going on in universities. This important, but sometimes not explicit point, effectively wraps together our joint campaigning foci on what university man-agement is up to and what government is doing. It is NTEU members working in the higher education sector that know and care about what is going on. We have the authority and the right to speak out.

In my President’s report to National Coun-cil, I spoke to the responsibility of speaking out, in the context of intellectual freedom, but also through our political campaigns. Later in the meeting we passed a motion which strengthened our commitment to intellectual freedom and also political speech on campuses.

Noting that four out of five new jobs in universities in the last decade are insecure and that today one in two jobs are now insecure. I reiterated that insecure work is one of the greatest threats to intellectual freedom. The NTEU must prioritise organ-ising around insecure work.

I reported upon the success of our current campaign against the Federal Budget in terms of starting to shift some of the public discourse about the role of univer-sities and how they should be funded. NTEU made $100,000 degrees a key and resonating message, but it is how we have framed the debate which also matters. For example, we have challenged the Govern-ment’s line that taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for others to go to university.

Not surprisingly, we received strong sup-port on this from other unions who quick-ly chimed in saying that their members without degrees sure wanted their kids to have a chance. These views were reiterated at community forums and public events. The Leader of the Opposition has strongly swung in focusing upon these issues, and also spoken on the value of university education beyond immediate personal advantage and economic contribution. If we are to win greater public investment in higher education we have to keep chal-lenging neo-liberal assumptions.

Council passed a series of motions calling for ongoing vigilance and action in cam-paigning against the Federal Budget, not-ing the need to work in alliance with other unions and community organisations, as well as continuing to campaign on higher education with others in the sector, in particular the National Union of Students (NUS) and the Council of Australian Post-graduate Associations (CAPA).

The presidents of NUS and CAPA, Deanna Taylor and Meghan Hopper, respective-ly, spoke to the conference, along with Australian Education Union (AEU) Federal Secretary and Education International President, Susan Hopgood. Deputy Sec-retary of the NZ Tertiary Education Union (TEU), Nanette Cormack told us that there

New National ExecutiveThe NTEU National Executive 2014–2016.

National PresidentJeannie Rea

General SecretaryGrahame McCulloch

National Assistant SecretaryMatthew McGowan

National Vice-Presidents(Academic) Andrew Bonnell (General Staff) Michael Thomson

National Executive Members

Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander MemberTerry Mason

Division SecretariesACT Stephen Darwin NSW Genevieve Kelly NT Lolita WikanderQld Michael McNally SA Kevin Rouse Tas Kelvin Michael Vic Colin LongWA Gabe Gooding

National Executive Members (Ordinary) Stuart Bunt Carolyn Cope Virginia Mansel Lees Anne Price Cathy Rytmeister John Sinclair Ronald Slee Melissa Slee

Full details for all members:

www.nteu.org.au/myunion/about_us/national_executive

Above: Terry Mason, Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Policy Committee Chair, delivering the A&TSI report.Opposite page, top: WA delegates at National Council. Bottom left: General Secretary, Grahame McCulloch. Opposite page, bottom right: National President, Jeannie Rea. All photos Paul Clifton


My Union

is far too much in common between the Australian Government and the recently re-elected NZ Government.

ACTU President, Ged Kearney, once again demonstrated her enthusiastic and inclu-sive leadership, congratulating the NTEU on our campaign for which she has repeat-edly spoken in support and participated in rallies, meetings and actions.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders policy mattersThe focus of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (A&TSI) matters panel was upon implementing the bargaining clauses and getting it right. As National Coordinator, Adam Frogley emphasised it is about translating the clauses to jobs on the ground.

The importance of working with A&TSI members and community was empha-sised. National Organiser, Celeste Liddle provided some insight into what it is like for A&TSI staff and students on campuses.

She spoke of how confronting it can be, about feeling like you have to fight the system all the time, of feeling isolated and silenced on campuses and how this will get worse if further mainstreaming goes ahead and centres are closed. She spoke of the time it takes to build trust.

The Union’s cultural competency educa-tion is about to be trialled before being rolled out across the country.

A&TSI Policy Committee Chair, Terry Mason noted that in our New Zealand counterpart union (the TEU), mainstream-ing is called ‘whitestreaming’. (See p.16 to read why we are not longer using the term ‘Indigenous’.)

Axe the ERAAmongst motions updating the NTEU po-sition on tuition fees, university regulation and accreditation and the Taylorisation of university work, the Council decided to take a tougher position on the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA).

Council voted to call on the Government ‘to axe the ERA and provide a simple but useful research funding mechanism’. Coun-cil also called on members to withhold vol-untary labour on the ERA, such as acting as assessors.

WorkshopsFollowing on the success of last year, work-shops were again held. Sarah Gregson convened a workshop on ‘challenging the bullies and building the Union’, while Stuart Bunt and Lolita Wikander examined the ‘industrial and pedagogical impacts of student feedback’.

The NSW Division led a workshop on organising focusing upon planning and mapping campaigns with general and pro-fessional staff. Matt McGowan facilitated a workshop providing insight into the ‘a de-gree shouldn’t cost a mortgage’ campaign. There will be a report on the workshops to the next National Executive with follow-up activities recommended.

Union Aid Abroad–APHEDAKate Lee, Executive Officer of Union Aid Abroad–APHEDA addressed Council noting the high levels of support for APHEDA over the years from NTEU members and encour-aged us to continue that commitment. The almost halving of development assistance through AusAID announced in Federal Budget demonstrated the callous disregard of the Abbott Government for alleviating international poverty and distress.

Apparently the remaining aid funds will be largely fostered through private compa-nies. Government funding of APHEDA’s programs will be jeopardised with new funding probably minimal, as is the case for other NGOs. Dozens of Council mem-bers who were not already APHEDA spon-sors signed on during Council. You can

Above: Council votes on a motion. Below, left: Aunty Carolyn Briggs, who delivered the Welcome to Country, with Adam Frogley, National A&TSI Coordinator. Centre: Ged Kearney, ACTU President. Right: Raewyn Connell with University of Sydney delegates.


My Union join them at www.apheda.org.au. National Council also voted to support APHEDA’s Skillslink program through an annual block grant to a project determined by National Executive.

(Nearly) paperless A weighty achievement, which went off with barely a hitch, was the move to using digital technology instead of reams of pa-pers before and during Council. Apparent-ly less than one ream of paper was needed at Council this year.

Annual ReportThe other big shift as well as the electron-ic delivery of papers, was producing an Annual Report, rather than a collection of papers. The Annual Report, available at www.nteu.org.au/annualreport, provides links to the supplementary documents. Feedback has been positive, with dele-gates reporting it was easier to find and focus in upon issues.

The next project is to archive our massive Policy Manual of every motion ever carried at a National Council, and produce a usa-ble up-to-date Policy Manual that we can amend at Council meetings.

Executive electionsThis was an election year and so many new delegates were attending their first Council meeting. They plunged into intense days of meeting, caucusing and, I hope, finding new friends and colleagues across the country. They also had to elect the new National Executive and Vice-Pres-idents. The National Executive is made up of the three full time elected National Officers, the Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Policy Committee Chair and the Division Secretaries with the balance of ten members elected from the floor of Council. Out of that group were elected the new National Vice-Presidents: Dr Andrew Bonnell (Academic) and Michael Thomson (General Staff ). Both Michael

and Andrew have a lot of Branch and Division experience, and have each served several terms on the National Executive.

Dr Lynda Davies and Dr Kelvin Michael retired as Vice-Presidents and I would like to reiterate my thanks to them both for their consistent and excellent advocacy for respectively general/professional staff and academic staff. I also want to congratulate them on the way that they have advo-cated for one another’s constituency and have always seen the Union as a whole. They have acted in the national interest, listening to everyone, rather than the easy path of seeing things through one’s own university or state.

Fortunately, there was gender balance in the outcome of the National Executive elections. The Women’s Action Committee report had noted that there seems to be a level of complacency in the Union over keeping focused upon women and gender issues and this has likely contributed to slippage in the representation of women in leadership positions.

New members of the National Execu-tive are Carolyn Cope, Anne Price, Cathy Rytmeister, Ron Slee and Michael McNally. I congratulate Michael McNally on his recent election as Queensland Division

Secretary. (See box on p.41 for a full list of 2014-16 National Executive.)

Retiring from the Executive were Queens-land Division Secretary Margaret Lee, as well as John Kenny, Ryan Hsu, Lynda Davies and Linda Cecere. We will miss Margaret Lee, not only in our Queensland Branches, for Margaret has been a both a wise voice on the National Executive, and a tough one – always amongst the first to take up the fight and standing up for members whatever the situation. She was described in her Life Membership nomina-tion as possessing ‘a righteous anger’ (see more on Margaret Lee on p.45).

I welcome the new and returning National Executive members to their first meeting this November, where they will consider the implementation plan for the deci-sions made by the 2014 National Council Meeting.


More photos at:

www.nteu.org.au/myunion/about_us/national_councilBelow: Sarah Gregson, UNSW Branch President, facili-tates the Council workshop ‘Challenging the bullies’.


My Union Life MembersFourteen exceptional NTEU members received Life Membership at the 2014 National Council.

Raewyn ConnellSydney

Raewyn began her academic career in the early 1970s. She retired officially from the University of Sydney in July 2014–a career of more than 40 years. The NTEU has only existed for around half that time but Raewyn has been an active Union member for all of the NTEU’s 22 years of operation and beyond. In fact, Raewyn was a member of the Sydney University Staff Association executive committee in the 1970s, along with Ted Wheelright, among other many notable left activists and scholars of the time. Prior to that, one of Raewyn’s first political contributions to higher education was the Free University counter-movement in Sydney in 1969. Raewyn was among a group of activist scholars and students attempting a home grown approach to democratising higher education. The Free University movement pursued a home grown strategy of collec-tivist education akin to the radical teach-ing made famous in the USA during their Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam movements. Raewyn published a piece of advocacy in the then Sydney University Staff Associ-ation’s newsletter in 1969, Vestes entitled ‘On the autonomy of universities’.

A world renowned sociologist on class, gender and power, Raewyn’s intellectual work has always been connected with po-litical struggle for social justice. Her work more recently has attempted to describe the neo-liberalisation of education, both in schools and higher education. This was acutely powerful in the recent enterprise bargaining campaign at the University of Sydney. As University management took a hard line against the Union, Raewyn participated willingly in all picket lines as expected, but she also used her profile and standing as a University Chair to write one of the most influential detailed ‘Open’ letters to the Vice Chancellor and the university community explaining what was wrong with the way education was being managed and fetishized as a consumer good. A simple and genuine effort became a catalyst for others to do the same but that letter eruditely exposed

the Vice-Chancellor as a lesser being among his peers and galvanised much of the academic community as it showed how collegiality could work to pressure management.

Raewyn’s contributions during the most recent campaign also included a public lecture on the threats to the University as a social good, and in separate fora argued for the role of public intellectuals as essential to Australian democratic life. Throughout, Raewyn has been able to po-sition her academic leadership (not a term that Raewyn might use for herself!) in ways that encourage colleagues to consider their own activism in the workplace and in community.

There are many more reasons for recom-mending Raewyn as a Life Member. In fact, it is an impossible task to do justice to her level of commitment to trade union-ism in higher education. It would be far more appropriate for Raewyn to be receiv-ing a recommendation of life affiliation from the NTEU for her singular purpose of justice for all, one which has never ceased and predates significantly the NTEUs proud but comparatively shorter history.

Raymond CanningACU

Professor Raymond Canning joined the staff at Signadou College in 1986. Ray-mond has played pivotal roles in shaping the discipline of theology, the Signadou Campus and also the University. In terms of the three elements of the University’s formal operations: teaching and learning; community engagement; and research, Raymond has been a leading contributor. Raymond was a foundation member of the University Senate; a foundation member of the University Goals Committee (now the Identity and Mission Committee); a foundation member of the Academic Board of the University; a foundation member of the Faculty of Arts and Scienc-es Board and the Sub-Faculty of Theology and Philosophy Board.

In each of these major committees of the University Raymond played a role in helping to form the University as we understand it today. He was the prime developer of the original University Mission Statement which stood from 1998 to 2014 renowned for its accent on ‘a community characterized by free inquiry and academic integrity guided by a fun-damental concern for justice and equity.’ For a number of years he was the Chair of the University’s Institutional Research Ethics Committee and served a number of times as Head of the School of Theology,

shaping the curricula of the University–es-pecially in theology and philosophy but also throughout the work of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and bringing a degree of precision and care that have benefitted the University.

In teaching and learning Raymond helped to write the curricula for Religious Educa-tion, Theology and Philosophy, but also in diverse areas of Arts and Social Work through his work with Peter Camilleri to pioneer the Bachelor of Theology/Bachelor of Social Work course. He also led teams to develop the Master of Arts (Theolo-gy) and Master of Arts (Spirituality and Pastoral Ministry) programs; the Graduate Certificate in Interfaith Relations marked a substantial turning point for ACU in de-veloping a partnership with the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and brought together groups of young women funded to undertake a course of study and forma-tion in Interfaith Relations. For its initial five years Raymond served as the Director of the Centre for Interreligious Dialogue. Not only has he been a leader in curric-ulum development but has also been a formidable teacher–always well-regarded by students for the thoroughness of his teaching, the depth of his knowledge and the generosity of his assistance.

Raymond has built up relationships be-tween the University and the Church and the wider community in a variety of ways. He led the ground-breaking initiative with CSU to enable cross-institutional study of theology between St Mark’s National Theo-logical Centre and the Canberra Campus. In recent years, he has fostered relationships with a number of other religious groups, especially with representatives of Islam, working with groups such as the BlueStar organisation and the Australian Intercultur-al Society for special conferences, lectures and for community and other faiths’ experience of Iftar dinners during Rama-dan. His assiduously prepared speeches and leadership for gatherings such as the Canberra launch of the film ‘Tackling Peace’ (a program for a combined Israeli-Palestin-ian football team) have lived long in the Canberra community’s memory.

Research has also been a particular commitment and love for Raymond. He was the initiator of the Canberra Faculty Research Seminar which has become a bench-mark of peer-support and intellectual encouragement for staff and post-graduate students alike. His multi-lin-gual skills and close attention to reading have endeared him to HDR students he has supervised. Raymond is internationally recognised as one of the world’s leading scholars of St Augustine. In two areas–Au-gustine’s insights around the common good and his perspectives on the nature of catechesis (learning in the faith) — he is a


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pre-eminent scholar. With the opportunity now to read and reflect, we look forward to continuing insights and contributions. This will soften the immense sense of loss that the campus is feeling at news of his retirement.

Raymond’s support and promotion of the Union through his commitment to social justice and fairness has been evident in his work, participation in rallies and dealings with a diverse population at ACU as well as outside the University.

Addendum: Professor Canning was involved in the establishing of the role and presence of the NTEU in the new Australian Catholic University. His calm and considered manner, a sound knowledge of the Catholic Church and its philosophical traditions went a long way to ensure that the newly formed institution was of this world and not another. The University and its staff were uniquely blessed to have Professor Canning speaking the language

of the faith, and leading its management to the modern paths of righteousness and not being bogged down in whether the University should submit to the Canon Law, and the rigours of a Pontifical University in twentieth century Australia. It seems bizarre now, but when the first gathering of unions and the management that was the legacies of the four Uniting Colleges and the supporting religious institutes, these were live issues. Time moves on, and as such we take this moment to honour one of our respected colleagues as he takes his leave and moves onto other things.

Christina BallantyneMurdoch

Christina Ballantyne transferred from CPSU/CSA to NTEU in 2005 when General Staff were first invited to be a part of NTEU.

She has been an active and steadfast member and leader within NTEU up until her retirement in 2014. Christina’s official roles include serving four consecutive terms as Branch Vice President (General Staff ) from 2007 to 2014, WA Division Vice-President 2012 to 2014, National/Divi-sion Councillor 2010–2014, Division Assis-tant Secretary (General Staff ) 2011–2012.

Christina represented NTEU at General Staff Consultative Committee on a variety of issues, including: change management, asbestos removal, smoke free campus and a multitude of other issues that were raised on behalf of staff. She has represented NTEU General Staff in three bargaining rounds between 2008 and 2013. Christina earned the respect of those on both sides of the bargaining table with her well researched and well prepared ap-proach to each issue negotiated. But most importantly, she genuinely reflected and represented the best interests of staff. One

Margaret LeeMargaret Lee has retired as Queensland Division Secretary after 8 years.

When Margaret, then a lecturer in Indus-trial Relations, joined the Griffith Univer-sity Branch Committee, she brought with her a wealth of expertise as an industrial relations expert and labour lawyer, with significant publications on labour market regulation, industrial disputes, union rights, and bargaining and negotiation, and a wealth of experience of working with and for the union movement. More importantly, she brought with her a solid core of strong union values which would be a great source of guidance and strength for everyone in the Division who has had the privilege of working with her.

Following a term as Branch Secretary, Margaret served as Branch President at Griffith University from 2004 to 2006. This was a testing period for the Union, given the Howard Government’s assault on university staff’s workplace rights under the HEWRRs regime. It was also a time of transition for the Griffith Branch and the Queensland Division. When Howard Guille retired from the position of Queensland Division Secretary, there was concern about succession. Howard had built up the Division as a very effective organisation, well-run, with a strong and stable group of staff, and with a strongly collegial spirit prevailing on its Council. No doubt there were less strenuous op-tions open to Margaret at the time, but to our great good fortune, she stepped up

to nominate for the Division Secretary position in 2006.

Under Margaret’s leadership, the Division has gone from strength to strength. Margaret led the difficult, and sometimes gruelling, bargain-ing round that rolled back the HEWRRs across Queensland Branches, leading negotiations herself at several Branches. (A highlight of this round was an 8-hour hearing in the Fair Work Commission in Brisbane in 2009 in which UQ management sought to pre-vent the UQ Branch from even conduct-ing an industrial action ballot, alleging ‘pattern bargaining’. Subjected to lengthy cross-examination, Margaret made mincemeat of the UQ management case.)

As Division Secretary, Margaret showed a strong sense of priorities, taking impor-tant initiatives in areas such as Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander rights (the NTEU in Queensland had already been instrumen-tal in getting the Queensland Council of Unions to treat the Stolen Wages Issue as a priority – Margaret enlisted the invaluable assistance of the CFMEU in the related issue of compensation for below-award wages), and the recruiting of Aboriginal and Torres Islander mem-bers. Margaret made workplace health and safety a particular priority, leading important campaigns on the issue and intervening in critical situations at some

workplaces. Margaret was intensely collegial in her approach, eager to adopt constructive proposals from the Council. On National Executive, Margaret was al-ways a vital contributor. Her sound sense of judgement and expert knowledge of labour law were often invaluable in Na-tional Executive meetings, and her sense of humour (and style) also made the meetings more enriching and enjoyable than they might otherwise have been.

For those who have had the privilege and pleasure of working with Marga-ret in union roles at Branch, Division, and National levels, it has been a great education in union values as well as applied industrial relations knowledge. As a marvellously unpretentious and down-to-earth (but always stylish!) per-son, Margaret may not be aware of the extent to which she has educated those around her. The Queensland Division in particular is in her debt, as she leaves the Division bigger and stronger than it has ever been. We look forward to a con-tinuing association in her Life Member capacity.


My Union of the university bargainers commented that none could doubt Christina’s integrity and commitment because she clearly understood and cared for the University as a whole and she was not motivated by self-interest. Her intelligence, common sense approach, her even handedness and her ability to speak with authority on behalf of general staff were invaluable.

Christina’s involvement in NTEU was not limited to her official roles. She consistently assisted with various NTEU campaigns, such as the ‘Dumb Cuts’, Blue Stocking Week and bargaining. She regu-larly assisted and participated in the NTEU at a grass roots level including phoning members, assisting with mail outs, vol-unteering on stalls and helping organise Union events. She tirelessly promoted NTEU to those she came into daily contact with and assisted those members who approached her with issues.

Perhaps most importantly, throughout her long and active membership of the NTEU Christina continued to be a staunch advo-cate for improving the working conditions and status of general staff both within the Murdoch University community and with-in the Union at a state and national level.

Marian KempMurdoch

Marian Kemp was an active and stalwart member since NTEU’s inception (1992). Marian was also an active participant in the Murdoch University Academic Staff Association. Marian held multiple leadership positions including Murdoch Branch President 2008–2010, Murdoch Branch Vice President (Academic Staff ) 2006–2007, National /Division Councillor 2004–2010. As well as leading the Branch as President, Marian was a leader in the Academic Staff Consultative Committee and conscientiously raised our members’ concerns to management over a long pe-riod of time. She raised such issues as: the non-payment and poor payment of casual academics, the safe removal of asbestos and she championed general staff reclassi-fication application processes.

Marian is renowned for her ethical and even-handed responses to issues and her ability to see through to the heart of a dispute. She pro-actively engaged with Murdoch management to resolve prob-lems. These included the massive change management processes that took place in the lead up to the infamous 2010 overhaul of the University structures.

Marian was involved in the Women’s Action Committee and was a strong role model for women on campus as she

negotiated with a usually male dominated hierarchy.

As Branch President during the major 2010 Murdoch University restructure, Marian worked tirelessly to support and protect the interests of those members who were affected by the dramatic changes. Marian’s compassion and concern for the impact that such changes have on individuals and their work is well regarded throughout the university community.

At an institutional level Marian was a strong advocate for promoting a work-place culture that would enhance the teaching, learning and research environ-ment for which decent working conditions for all staff were a key. The nexus between decent working conditions and good teaching, learning and research led her to advocate strongly for a legitimate place for unions within University structures at all levels.

NTEU Murdoch Branch Committee voted unanimously in favour of Marian Kemp’s nomination for a Lifetime Membership in February 2014. It was with deep sadness that the Branch announced at National Council that Marian had passed away just a few days earlier.

Carol WilliamsMonash

Carol was one of the most dedicated, te-nacious and some would say pugnacious members of Monash Branch over her long career at the University. She served on the Branch Committee from 1998 inspired by a long battle between members in the Arts Faculty and University management over the sweeping cuts foisted on the Faculty on arrival of the plagiarist VC David Robinson in 1996. Carol quickly took on leadership roles, becoming an inspiration to a new wave of Branch activists. Within the Branch she became Vice-President (Academic) (2000–2002) and then Branch President (2004–2008). She was a National Councillor from 1998 onwards, was a National Executive member (2004–2006), and was Victorian Division Vice-President (Academic) (2004–2008). (Her combative nature saw her lead the Branch success-fully through two fractious EBA negotia-tions, where she never shirked the need to engage in industrial action to further the Union’s cause. Members will always re-member her leading the way in her purple NTEU regalia, inspiring them at stop-work meetings and on the picket lines around Clayton campus.

Those who know Carol understand she does not tolerate fools well, especially if she believes they are being wilfully foolish,

naive and/or deceitful. On occasions this would surface at Branch and Division meetings as policy, politics and tactics were debated, however on an almost daily basis the recipients of Carol’s tongue-lash-ings would be the Director of Monash HR, the Director of workplace relations, more lowly HR operatives who had failed to read or understand the EBA, recalcitrant aca-demic heads, and of course the plethora of hired HR consultants brought in to deal with industrial relations. This seeming en-joyment of the battle arena extended into her role on University Council (2006–2012) where she was always a strong advocate for the rights of staff and students, a de-fender of universities as public institutions, and she never shied from probing and querying the manoeuvrings and decisions of management that acted against these instincts and beliefs.

Two other things made Carol a formidable friend and foe. Firstly, she has an impecca-ble grasp of Latin, grammar, and history. Her simplest and effective ploy is to disarm her opponent by correcting their written or spoken English, and - if they dare - their poor use of Latin phrases. Secondly, she made copious notes. The transcript of every meeting she was involved in exists in Carol’s voluminous collection of notebooks. It is a practice that can be simply unnerving. It meant there was no useful convenient forgetting of details post-meeting, and in constructing her thoughts on paper before speaking it gave her the perfect anticipatory pause and scaffolded logic to launch her argument.

In her real life Carol is a musician and an historian of music. This is the domain in which she taught, practiced and published. She also refused to see her Union role separate from politics and was engaged in various political parties and movements, from Labour to Socialist Alliance to the Greens. With a passion for social justice she found herself not only on picket lines but also at rallies against war and racism (remember Pauline Hanson), and for refugee rights.

Jeffrey BenderMonash

Jeffrey Bender was a Union member all his working life. Now that his tenure as a for-mal wage slave is over it was the pleasure of Monash Branch to nominate him for life membership of NTEU.

Jeffrey started his union life as a delegate in the Victorian Teachers Union in 1974. A decade later, Jeffrey found himself em-ployed at Monash University for the first time (1984–1991), becoming a member


My Union of the Monash General Staff Association, in which he became the Branch Vice-Pres-ident, and the Victorian Colleges and Universities Staff Association, forerunner of NTEU. Before returning to Monash in 2000 he collected memberships of and paid dues to a number of other unions; Australian Services Union and Victorian Public Service Union among them. He was notably one of a small group of staff in the Australian Public Service who stayed on a Collective Agreement despite efforts by the Kennett Government to move workers onto individual contracts.

Jeffrey joined the Branch on returning to Monash in early 2000, and was elected to the Branch Committee in 2002. He brought to the Branch a great sense of Monash union history, a healthy scepti-cism of management edicts (which never waned), strong political motivations, and an unnervingly sharp analytical mind that often allowed the Branch to find clarity among industrial, financial and logisti-cal fog. In 2005 he took over the role of Vice-President (General staff ) and was then Branch President from 2008–2010. Jeffery is not a table banger and is rarely known to raise his voice in anger. He led through dialogue, clarity of ideas, and by creating a sense of inclusiveness, belonging, and of collective strength. In the face of management provocation or stupidity his response was a snort of exasperation followed by a laugh, letting ‘them’ know in no uncertain terms what he thought about their latest schemes, plans, positions, and/or actions.

Jeffrey was an NTEU National and Division Councillor from 2004, but he was also a member of Monash University Council from 2005 until the orchestrated removal of staff representatives by collusion of the State Government and the University Chancellor in 2012. In this latter role he was a steadfast voice for staff and students of the University. Serving on the Finance and Resourcing Committee he gave the Union important insights into financial aspects of the University that they tried hard to mask.

As a measure of the commitment of Jeffrey to unionism and the strength of his backbone, he did all this while working in the Office of the Deputy Vice-Chancel-lor (Education), in the heart of the main administration building – a place where many union members don’t actually own up to being a member. Daily he crossed the paths and shared the corridors of the managers and administrators he duelled with in his leadership role in the Branch, on Council, and on the negotiating team for the new EBA.

Jeffrey has also led a rich life away from Monash: Board of the local Childcare

Centre, volunteer worker in Tonga, mem-ber of the local Labor Branch and more recently of the Greens, regular marcher and campaigner over political and social justice issues. It is highly unlikely that his level of activism and enjoyment of life will diminish on leaving the University.

Kay SauerCurtin

It is with much regret that Kay has recently been made redundant as part of the ‘Curtin Academic Restructuring’ program. Kay’s academic career has stretched over 26 years as a lecturer and senior lecturer with the School of Public Health. During the entire time she has been employed at Curtin University, Kay has been an active member of the Union. Her initial involve-ment was as a member of the Curtin University Academic Staff Association and her membership transitioned in 1994 to the NTEU as a founding member.

In October 2001, Kay was elected to the Curtin Branch executive committee and has been a constant member of this body up until her departure from Curtin University. In 2005 Kay was elected to the National and Division Councils as the aca-demic representative by the Branch Mem-bership. Again she held this position until her departure in July this year. During this period Kay also took on the role as the WA representative on the Women’s Action Committee (WAC) from 2006 to 2011.

Kay’s involvement on the Curtin Branch has extended to serving on the Curtin Academic Board for a number of years throughout her tenure while an exec-utive committee member. In addition Kay has also served on numerous Curtin promotional committees, Curtin appeal committees and the important Academic Workload Monitoring System committee from 2009 to 2012.

Kay’s commitment to unionism and the members of Curtin University over the past 12 years has been nothing but inspir-ing to the people around her. She is, and always has been, an outspoken advocate for fairness and equity in the workplace. Kay has consistently challenged manage-ment on these issues - from the Curtin Academic Board, to her Faculty Board and through to her School Board of Man-agement. She has also been an ardent recruiter and area delegate over the years and her School currently has the highest membership rate across the University. For the past two years Kay has been an active contributing union member of the Implementation and Monitoring Consulta-tive Committee (IMCC) for the current EBA.

This committee has played a pivotal role in ensuring that management continue to adhere to the negotiated EBA.

During the years where Curtin NTEU has been negotiating Enterprise Bargainin-gAgreements and taking industrial action (which was most times in the recent past), Kay has been a committee member to count on. She was always forward in helping to organise protest action and certainly in the front row of any protests.

Much of Kay’s Union activity on this cam-pus has been at the expense, sometimes, of her family and career. She has been an outspoken advocate for staff rights, at all levels, which has won her very few friends with senior Curtin management over the years. Her departure from the University has left a very large hole in the Branch committee, in terms of passion and collective memory, that will be difficult to replace. Kay is currently planning to retire from academia and pursue other interests in life.

Graeme ByrneLa Trobe

Graeme joined the Union of Australian College Academics on 12 February 1991 and proceeded to become involved in the Union which he continued with the merg-ing of the former Union into the NTEU in 1994. In both arenas he was active within their respective Branch Committee and has given counsel to many members over this period.

Once the Bendigo CAE became part of La Trobe University Graeme continued his involvement in the Sub-Branch and the main Branch activities. From 2001 he stepped in as Sub-Branch President when the incumbent was unable to continue. He was Treasurer of the overall Branch and was able to support the Branch in understanding the changes in how finances were to be undertaken which was beneficial for all members and particularly the Committee who were not always up-to-speed with the finer detail.

Graeme has been on the Branch commit-tee of the NTEU since 2003 and in that time has been the Lead Negotiator for three rounds of Bargaining, the Vice Presi-dent (Academic) for three terms; a Nation-al Councillor since 2003 and someone who has been a committed member prepared to go the extra mile so that members could be well served by their union.

Graeme was part of a small team of members who worked with consultants and university management to develop a workload Management System whereby


My Union every element of academic work would be allocated a time fraction so as to stand-ardise how work was performed. This was ground breaking in that it separated out for the first time teaching from teaching related duties and was an attempt to have workload distributed fairly. Unfortunately the system was not acceptable to the cur-rent university management who hacked the system until it looked very little like the original proposal.

As so often happens in our sector there was a ‘changing of the guard’ who then determined that workload should be assigned in points so as to ensure that no one was able to work out their allocation. Perhaps the masterstroke for all staff was in Graeme being able to take apart the Workload Management Points System, develop a matrix within which staff could submit their workloads so that they could then work out how many points they had been allocated and at the same time explain to management what it all meant. No mean feat that’s for sure.

In submitting a nomination such as this it is important that some of the ‘behind the scenes’ actions of Graeme are shared. He has been heavily involved in uncovering the vagaries of the financial status of La Trobe University where again he is often asked by management to explain their documentation and in many cases has had to point out errors that they have made. It has been a pleasure working with Graeme and he will be missed by all of us because his sense of humour has often bridged a difficult situation.

Tom StewartUWA

It is with much sadness that the School of Animal Biology at UWA recently farewelled Tom Stewart when his position was made redundant after three decades of service to the University, the staff, Zoology stu-dents and the Union.

Tom was an early member of the Universi-ty Salaried Officers Association which was eventually consumed by the Civil Service Association and which was then itself con-sumed by the State Public Services Feder-ation and ultimately the CPSU. At no stage of his working life has Tom ever not been not only a member of the relevant union, but an active supporter of his workmates through his union membership.

When the opportunity arose for non-aca-demic staff (in those days still defined by exclusion) to join the NTEU, Tom was a key figure in the campaign in WA to ensure that we could become a truly national union representing all who work in higher

education. As a key member of the WA bal-lot organising group he threw himself tire-lessly into the campaign for a ‘pro-choice’ vote and was one of the first general staff members to sit on the UWA Branch Com-mittee. As many who have long memories will know, it was not always smooth sailing at UWA, and Tom’s longevity on the Branch Committee is testament not only to his commitment but also his optimism and willingness to see the good in people.

Tom has served on many NTEU commit-tees and groups over the years holding of-fice as a UWA Branch Committee member, UWA Vice President (GS), National Council-lor, Division Vice-President and a member of the National Executive. Tom has been at the coal-face of Union activity at UWA for many years being a key member of the collective bargaining team for more rounds than is possibly safe for one’s men-tal health! He has also represented NTEU on numerous internal university commit-tees including the reclassification appeal committee and consultative committees in various forms. Tom is also a member of the UniSuper Consultative Committee.

It is hard to imagine life at UWA without Tom’s ever smiling presence. Many mem-bers have benefited from Tom’s advice, assistance and support over the years–he has always thrown himself fully into the support of those who have found them-selves in trouble at work. His keen sense of justice and his overwhelming compassion make him a passionate and tireless advo-cate for those who have been wronged.

Most recently Tom has been an essen-tial part of the WA effort in the national campaign against university cuts and has been a ubiquitous presence at rallies, protests and polling booths in the past 18 months. It is not, and never has been, a question of how we will replace Tom for he is simply irreplaceable. The University and the Union will be poorer places without his contributions, and while we wish him well in his future life, we hope (and fully expect) to see him popping up in support of NTEU whenever he is needed.

Ron PerrinWollongong

Ron Perrin was the described ‘backbone’ of the bargaining team for as many bargain-ing negotiations as the current UOW com-mittee can remember. Ron, along with Kim Draisma, famously negotiated and won a 35 hour working week for the grounds and maintenance crews. They had previously been subjected to 38 hours when the rest of the university staff were set at 35. This made lifelong members out of some of the men on those crews.

Ron was an NTEU member for over 20 years. Serving as Branch President, Vice President and as the NTEU representative on the Faculty of Business Workload Refer-ence Group.

He was a stalwart of the UOW Branch and continues to mentor members of Faculty Workload Reference Groups.

Kim DraismaWollongong

Kim has been a member of the NTEU since its inception two decades ago. Prior to that she was involved in the University of Wollongong Association of Staff. Kim has served in various committee executive po-sitions for as long as anyone can remem-ber. Faculty of Education staff in particular site Kim’s dedication to her delegate duties with some lecturers still citing Kim’s advocacy as the reason they were able to get permanent jobs in the faculty.

Kim served as Branch President and led the Branch through years of arduous bar-gaining rounds and strike actions. Along with Ron Perrin she was a formidable force at the bargaining table. Kim also served on NTEU state and national councils.

As one of the UOW Branch’s longest standing and most tireless activists, Kim’s contributions to the Union are inimitable.

Rick KuhnANU

The ANU Branch nominated Rick Kuhn for Life Membership for his career-long role as a passionate, active, vocal, militant unionist at every level: as member and workplace delegate, as Branch Committee member, Division Council and National Councillor and as NTEU delegate to Unions ACT over many years.

Rick was been a member of the NTEU and its predecessor unions from 1987 to 2013, over 26 years. He joined the Federation of Australian University Staff Associations (FAUSA) when first employed at the ANU in early 1987 and within the year was on the FAUSA Committee. He served on the Committee until FAUSA amalgamated with other unions to form the NTEU, and then on the NTEU Branch Committee until the early 2000s, including a term as Branch Vice-President. On the Branch Committee he was a strong supporter of bringing in the HREA members and later AMWU members into the NTEU at ANU, which eventually was achieved. He stands strongly with the workers at the base of


My Union university hierarchies, for casual staff and non-management professional staff.

Rick Kuhn has been an NTEU workplace delegate for the entire period during which there have been NTEU delegates at ANU, and would possibly regard this as his most important union role. He has been an active and activist delegate for his colleagues in the Department of Politics, School of Social Sciences and School of Politics and International Relations, recruiting them to the Union, encouraging them to come to Union meetings and to get involved in Union campaigns, talking to all those around him about how crucial unions are in the fight for social justice, standing at the front of every picket line, and vigorously representing members when their rights were attacked.

Rick has also been a highly visible presence in the NTEU, holding out to members and officers of the Union a strong, public expectation that the Union should act with integrity and boldness, not accepting a compromise deal when by organising and mobilising members we might do better. Rick’s stated view was that ‘compromise is siding with the bosses’. He has been an advocate for grassroots organising since before it became union orthodoxy in the 1990s (again).

Rick Kuhn’s analysis and ideals spring from a strong ideological base in Marxism, but it is not a dry theoretical perspective. His motivation is the well-being of his fellow humans. He is a person acting not only to realise socialist ideals but to take steps towards improving the state of the world and helping others in the here and now. This has led him to activism on behalf of Palestinians and refugees, among others.

In some ways we are honouring Rick for performing the difficult and important role of a ‘thorn in our sides’, who acts with integrity and courage himself and demands integrity and courage from union leaders. Rick has played a crucial role in promoting active debate on proposals, policies and campaigns. He has provided a voice in all important discussions, speaking for unions as crucial to the broad fight for the rights of the working class and for a just society.

While Rick might argue strongly for a particular course of action, if the final decision of the Union as a collective went a different way, as a good, militant unionist he would always act in support of the decision the collective made. Rick was honoured with the 2003 ACT Trades and Labour Council May Day Award in recognition of ‘his significant contribution to improving and advancing the social and industrial conditions of ACT workers’, including during the great campaign by the NTEU against Vice-Chancellor Dean Terrell over pay and conditions.

Rick retired from the position of Reader in the ANU School of Politics and Internation-al Relations at the end of 2013. We wish him well for a long retirement mixing con-tinued political and intellectual engage-ment with rest, enjoyment and friendship.

Ewan MaidmentANU

After coming to the ANU to work in what was then called the Archives of Business and Labour (now the Noel Butlin Archives Centre) Ewan joined the Health and Re-search Employees Association (HAREA), a New South Wales based health union with a rump of university general staff from three universities. When HAREA merged with the Victoria Health Employees Fed-eration to form the Health Services Union of Australia (HSUA), the university general staff component of the new union was even smaller.

Ewan was elected to the national exec-utive of HSUA and pushed strongly for more recognition of university general staff, but to no avail. University general staff were marginalised. Ewan became so frustrated by the intransigence of the HSUA leadership that he walked out of an executive meeting and went straight to talk to Di Zetlin at FAUSA about getting university general staff into a tertiary education industry union. Fortunately the NTEU was already coming into being. So the first approach of bringing ACT general staff into what was to be the NTEU was made by Ewan.

Members particularly at the ANU began calling for general staff to get out of the health union and into a tertiary education union. The ACT Branch Committee of HSUA was unanimously in support of this and went ahead with a referendum of members on the question of joining the NTEU. Ewan was heavily involved in this process.

Over 50 per cent of members voted and the vast majority supported moving to the NTEU. In the final period of the ACT Branch, Ewan took over as Secretary and organised the difficult process of getting HSUA members to resign from the HSUA and then join the NTEU, once the NTEU had won coverage of general staff in the ACT. It had to be done individual member by individual member.

By this time Ewan had moved to the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau and began to do extensive travelling to Pacific Islands, microfilming the archives of many organ-isation there; these paper records were always at risk from the humid climate and his job was to preserve them. On an early trip to Tahiti, in 1995, Ewan and Barry

Howarth reported to NTEU Advocate on the anti-nuclear protests in Tahiti.

Ewan was a key figure in the struggle to save the Noel Butlin Archives Centre, an important archive of labour history in Aus-tralia, when it was threatened with closure and dissolution during enterprise bargain-ing under ANU VC Dean Terrell in 1997. Ewan, with others, established the Friends of Noel Butlin Archives Centre which coor-dinated activity both here and overseas to preserve the Archives. Ewan was Secretary of the Friends from its inception in 1997 to 2003, when the Archives were secured. That was a difficult struggle, one that was supported by the NTEU and many of its members who joined the Friends.

Ewan was always very active on the ANU Branch Committee of the NTEU until his retirement in 2011 and also as an ANU National Councillor. He always remained a vigorous defender of the interests of general staff.

Merit Awards

Andrea BrownVU

Andrea Brown first joined ACUSA in 1995 and has been a member of the NTEU VU Branch Committee continuously since 1998. She has been a key part of the local union leadership group and has worked tirelessly to support members’ rights, and the Branch over a long period. In all her roles she has put in many hours work and service to the Union. After a long period of sustained union commitment, Andrea has left VU following a restructure.

Andrea was instrumental in leading key negotiations around general staff classifi-cation at VU, has been a member of several Enterprise Bargaining teams and has been a highly committed bargainer who has always pushed staff rights to the forefront.

Andrea has been part of the glue that has held the VU Branch together and has been critical in ensuring that the big decisions on the local Branch have been followed through and implemented. Throughout, her good humour, tolerance and commit-ment to working through difficult problems which have confronted the Branch have come strongly to the fore and have been appreciated by everyone on the Branch Committee. She has played a vital role on many University, Union and joint un-ion-management committees to negotiate better conditions for professional staff.

Andrea has immense commitment and passion for the things she believes in, and


My Union at the same time also possesses the rare ability to see an issue from several sides and people from several angles. During 2006-2010 when the Branch faced mass retrenchments, Andrea helped organised picket lines with great energy, industrial action, three day strikes and other actions including bans on results. These efforts were instrumental in reducing job losses at VU and getting agreement for a new Enterprise Agreement. Andrea was central to these Union campaigns and they clearly would not have been as successful with-out her involvement.

With yet another restructure and a move of Andrea’s Equity and Diversity role to People and Culture, it became especially difficult for Andrea to play a public role in Union activities. Despite these difficul-ties Andrea continued to remain highly involved in the Union, participating on the Union side in general staff classification committees, helping write union bulletins, organising meetings and recruiting members.

This has been at some personal cost, yet Andrea’s work for the Union has contin-ued to be exemplary and outstanding. In addition, Andrea has provided valuable support, information and advice to many members, and non-members, across VU for many years, combining her passion for industrial fairness with her forensic knowledge of negotiated Agreements and University policy. Her efforts have gone above and beyond the call of duty and have made a significant difference to people’s lives.

Despite leaving VU, Andrea has contin-ued to recruit members to the Union and Branch Committee. She is now working part-time for the NTEU National Office assisting with a research project on profes-sional and academic staff award variations and is continuing in this new role to pro-vide dedicated support to the Union.

Geoff LummisECU

ECU Branch President Dr Geoff Lummis is stepping down from office in October. This term of office has not been an easy one, from the very start. When the previous elected Branch President had to step down suddenly only weeks after taking office, Geoff agreed to step into the role at short notice. His leadership and nego-tiation skills proved useful immediately and have been called upon many times since, not least during the latest round of bargaining.

Geoff’s ability to strategise and see the big picture saw him lead the NTEU bargain-

ing team to a very favourable outcome, reaching an early Agreement with tangible gains before the arrival of the Abbott Government.

Time and again, Geoff’s deep corporate knowledge has been vital in Branch successes. Geoff can be relied upon to know the history behind every decision, every strategy, every position; his knack for recalling every detail would surely rival that of Barry Jones!

Perhaps even more striking is his dedica-tion to members, as shown by his direct involvement in so many personal cases. Geoff always throws himself completely into every case, often while simultane-ously taking on extra responsibilities in academia; this has frequently come at the expense of his time and even his health.

Michele FeinbergUQ

Michele Feinberg has been one of the most active and committed members of a very active and engaged section of the UQ Branch membership: the TESOL teachers of the Institute for Continuing and TESOL Education (ICTE).

Michele became the lead delegate in 2010, having already been a key activist in ICTE since 2004. She was instrumental

in galvanising the members and keeping them engaged over three bargaining rounds. Not only was Michele brilliant at getting members to attend meetings and keeping them informed, she was very effective at the bargaining table, with a comprehensive knowledge of TESOL pay and conditions around the country at her fingertips.

Industrial disputes in a small institute, with staff and management occupying one building together, had its advantages and its difficulties. Michele was always fearless when it came to standing up to manage-ment when she believed it was necessary to defend her colleagues’ conditions. Strikes at ICTE had a flavour all their own: strike placards were prepared in several languages. Thanks to the dedication and professionalism of Michele and her colleagues, they were cheered on by their students when holding protest meetings (which sometimes included a choir).

Over the ten years Michele was with the Branch, no-one was more important in building up and maintaining a high level of unionisation and activism among ICTE teachers. Michele retired from UQ (way too young, Michele!) at the end of 2013, and her constant active contributions will be much missed by the Branch and her colleagues.

Introducing new Qld Division Secretary, Michael McNallyYoung(ish) new, non-smoking, Queens-land Division Secretary with a GSOH looking for LTR with an intelligent, di-verse, caring, active union membership. Must be engaged in tertiary education. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders welcome. Physical appearance not important. Social drinkers welcome. Commitment to union values essential. GSOH preferred.

Turn-ons: solidarity, evidence-based policy, activism, collegiality, intel-lectual freedom, professional staff recognition, equity and diversity, trust, capacity-building, career paths, budget transparency, teaching-research nexus, healthy workplaces, research funding, training, student union activism, honest communication.

Turn-offs: obscene VC salaries, per-formance management, Christopher Pyne, pointless restructuring, bullies, underfunding, KPIs, shiny new build-ings, nepotism, university rankings, managementspeak, shoddy journalism, hierarchies, journal rankings, free-mar-ket solutions, spin.

I am looking for an interesting mem-bership to engage and communicate with in good times and in bad. I see unionism as a way to protect and pro-mote the living standards of an active membership and their community. I am willing to work really hard on our relationship, but make sure it’s fun.

Follow me @NTEUQldDivSec


My Union NTEU surveys ex- members NTEU’s intensive campaigning around public policy issues in the higher education sector over the last 18 months is being positively recognised by the people working in universities, judging by the results of a recent survey of former NTEU members.

Compared to the last major former mem-ber survey done in 2011, the perception of NTEU’s ‘effectiveness at advocating on pol-icy issues affecting the higher education sector’ was significantly higher in 2014 than in 2011.

This shows that the Union’s work on the 2013 ‘Dumb Cuts’ campaign, the 2013 election ‘Vote Smart’ campaign, and the current ‘A Degree Shouldn’t Cost a Mortgage’ campaign in opposition to the Abbott Government’s proposed changes announced in the 2014 Budget has been both recognised and well received by higher education staff.

The survey’s aim was to seek the views of former members about their experiences as an NTEU member, and the reasons why they left the Union.

Most respondents were positive about NTEU’s performance around traditional core union work – negotiating salaries and conditions, and providing industrial and employment advice.

However, there is a reduction in how effec-tive NTEU is perceived around enterprise bargaining categories since 2011, reflect-ing the generally tougher circumstances experienced by most Branches during the recent bargaining round.

While there has been an increase in the perception of the effectiveness of the work done around Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues since 2011, this is still not well known or clearly recognised by the large majority of former members.

The survey showed a big increase in the numbers of members who have retired since 2011, continuing the growing trend of ‘baby boomer’ generation members reaching retirement age. Nearly all have very positive views about their NTEU expe-riences, with many expressing regret that their retirement meant ending their Union membership.

In response to this, there are moves to invigorate the NTEU Past Members Associ-ation, to enable former members to keep in touch with the Union’s activities and get involved where appropriate. Around 90 survey respondents expressed interest in joining the Association.

Michael Evans, National Organiser

Athan McCawAthan McCaw, NTEU Branch Industrial Organiser at Federation University Australia, Ballarat, was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident on 26 October.

Athan was only 36, had a large and loving family and two young children. He had previously worked for the NTEU at Monash and RMIT, and had recently become the President of the Ballarat Trades and Labour Council.

An admired and well liked colleague, Athan will be sorely missed by the NTEU and FUA communities.

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Contributions are quoted for a family and include no Lifetime Health Cover loading, and include the 29.04% Australian Government Rebate on Private Health Insurance. Rates are effective as at 8 August 2014 and are sourced from privatehealth.gov.au Eligibility criteria and conditions apply. See unihealthinsurance.com.au for details.Teachers Federation Health Ltd. ABN 86 097 030 414 trading as UniHealth Insurance. A Registered Private Health Insurer.

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Advocate, October 2014

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Transcript of Advocate, October 2014