Advocate, July 2015

Advocate vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au • ISSN 1329-7295

Defend our universities: No $100K degrees! ɓɓPretend policies & fiscal fantasies ɓɓ13 ways the Budget fails women ɓɓNTEU members win at SCU ɓɓStaff reps on uni councils ɓɓAdelaide guts music centres

ɓɓState of the Uni survey ɓɓDefence Trades Controls changes ɓɓIvory Tower: a cautionary tale ɓɓUniversities & fossil fuel divestment ɓɓFree trade vs democracy

ɓɓACTU building a better future ɓɓLomborg: What price consensus? ɓɓSpin a yarn, start a fire ɓɓ#distractinglysexy ɓɓ... and much more.

Advocate ISSN 1321-8476 Published by National Tertiary Education Union ABN 38 579 396 344 Publisher Grahame McCulloch Editor Jeannie Rea Production Paul Clifton Editorial Assistance Anastasia Kotaidis Feedback, advertising and other enquiries: advocate@nteu.org.au

Federal Budget 2015

Contents

All text and images © NTEU 2015 unless otherwise stated.

Budget winners and losers in research & higher education

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2

Bargaining Round 6 – a mixed bag From the General Secretary

3

Some VCs paid more in one week than many casual academics earn in a year Editorial, Jeannie Rea

p. 19

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Budget abolishes learning and teaching advocate

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5

Zero hour contracts

5

Royal Commission into Trade Unions

6

Protests as Adelaide guts music centres

7

SCU member victory against hostile management

$131m saved over 4 years via a functional & efficiency review which includes abolition of ATSIHEAC & OLT

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State of the Uni survey: The tertiary sector has its say

Medical Research Fund, expected to deliver $10m funding in 2015-16, growing to over $200m by 2018-19

$5m cut (on top of $51m last year) to HEPP. Has been redirected to the AIATSIS collection5

FEATURES $26m over 4 years by recovering HELP debt from people who reside overseas for 6 months or more

$31.7m cut to industry grants/ programs4

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8

NCRIS funded by cutting SRE research block grants by $263m over next 3 years2

$16.9m to AITSL over 4 years1

NTEU calls for return to the Colombo plan idealism

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4

$72.5m to be saved by streamlining a number of existing health workforce scholarship programs3

$300m over 2 years for the NCRIS

UPDATE 4

p. 32

$20.5m one-off to the Australian Synchrotron

CRCs funding cut by a further $26.8m over 4 years

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Cover image: Protesting against the Abbott Government’s proposed changes to higher education in Melbourne, March 2015.

Photo: Paul Clifton

NTEU National Office, PO Box 1323, Sth Melbourne VIC 3205 1st floor, 120 Clarendon St, Sth Melbourne VIC phone (03) 9254 1910 fax (03) 9254 1915 email national@nteu.org.au Division Offices www.nteu.org.au/divisions Branch Offices www.nteu.org.au/branches

16 Federal Budget 2015: Pretend policies ê & fiscal fantasies

32 $4mAfor cautionary tale of deregulation an

Ivory Tower is a film exploring the changes in America’s university system that have led to a highly marketised model of education.

Australian Consensus Centre (led by Bjørn Lomborg) to be taken from current allocations and has no impact on forward estimates6

Like last year, this year’s Budget had at its heart ‘budget repair’, but in 2015 itAbbreviations was all about 33 Debt and defraud: another glimpse AIATSIS Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies repairing the political damage caused by the AITSL Australian Institute for Teaching & School Leadership of the US higher education crisis 10 Staff representation on university 2. $150m in 2016-17; $37.5m2014 ATSIHEAC than Aboriginalrestoring and Torres Strait Islander Higher Education Advisory Council unfair cuts rather in 2017-18Budget’s and $75m in 2018-19.

This represents a CRCs Cooperative Research Centres cut of almost one dollar in four (25%) to SRE funding over the forward estimates.

34 Free trade & the high cost to councils the bottom line to surplus. HELP Higher Education Loan Program 3. Savings directed to the Medical Research Fund.

8

No confidence in Adelaide VC

Notes

1. This is the Government’s response to the Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group’s 2014 report Action Now: Classroom Ready Teachers.

HEPP Higher Education Participation Program democracy 4. Commercialisation Australia, Enterprise Connect, Industry Innovation Precincts.

NCRIS National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy 10 Victorian Labor Government to put5. According to the19 Budget winners and losers inof Learning and Teaching OLT Office Budget papers.

Democracy suffers when major trade agreeSRE Sustainable Research Excellence 6. The Government remains committed to establishing an Australian Consensus staff and students back research & higher education Centre, even after UWA decided not to proceed (see report, p. 31). ments are made under a cloak of secrecy.

11 NTEU UNE Branch President called to resign from Council 11 NTEU discovers WA plan to remove students and staff 12 Defence Trade Controls: Changes passed, but still be wary 13 Government once again targeting young people A&TSI NEWS 14 ‘Selfish rabble’ rally in support of ‘lifestyle choices’ 14 National A&TSI Forum 2015

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Advocate is available online as a PDF at nteu.org.au/advocate and an e-book at www.issuu.com/nteu NTEU members may opt for ‘soft delivery’ (email notification of online copy rather than mailed printed version). Details at nteu.org.au/ softfdelivery

15 Palm Island’s Lex Wotton visits NTEU National Office 15 From our A&TSIPC Chair

p. 26

$100,000 DEGREES? I WON’T VOTE FOR THIS

21 Overseas aid cutsNTEUreach ADVOCATEnew • vol. 22 no.low 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page a 19 yarn, start a fire 36 Spin In a particularly cynical and callous move on Budget night, the Government confirmed a further $3.7 billion cut to foreign aid coming on top of the massive 2014 cuts.

22 13 ways the Budget fails women The 2015 Budget was not only a missed opportunity for the Government to actively address a number of important issues for women, but in looking for budget ‘savings’ women are again bearing most of the budgetary burden.

24 Budget cuts deep into A&TSI funding With the 2014 Budget cuts to A&TSI programs still impacting communities quite dramatically, the 2015 Budget brought even more cuts.

25 ATSIHEAC abolished Another casualty of the 2015 Budget was the A&TSI advisory body, ATSIHEAC.

26 Defend our Universities: No $100K degrees The NTEU is planning to actively engage in the next federal election to defend our universities and entrench higher education funding as an issue that changes votes.

28 Quality education for all Jeannie Rea’s address to the opening session of ACTU Congress in support of the ‘Build a Better Future’ campaign and union charter.

29 Build a better future 2015 ACTU Congress saw the launch of the ‘Build A Better Future’ campaign which will target over 30 marginal seats across the country in a bid to end the anti-worker agenda of the Abbott Government.

31 Bjørn Lomborg: What price consensus?

As we look back on the fire-storm that was the Australian Consensus Centre proposal at UWA, many questions remain unanswered.

Celebrating Bluestocking Week 2015.

37 NTEU Women’s Conference 2015 38 A scourge or an opportunity?

How effective is performance management in univeristies?

40 Universities & fossil fuel divestment Universities taking a principled stance on fossil fuel investments used to seem like a big deal.

Soon it may be a bigger deal when they do not.

42 Cameron clutches surprise 2nd term COLUMNS 44 Screen Reading News from the Net, by Pat Wright 45 Captain’s picks trump competitive grants Lowering the Boom, by Ian Lowe 46 #distractinglysexy Thesis Whisperer, Inger Mewburn 47 Money saving mergers ignore student needs Letter from NZ, Sandra Grey, TEU YOUR UNION 48 Agreement implementation 48 Global survey on academic freedom 49 Can we go home now?

49 Joan Hardy & Carolyn Allport Scholarships 50 New NTEU staff 50 New ACT Division Secretary 51 Free membership for postgrads

FIND OUT MORE & JOIN THE CAMPAIGN

NO100KDEGREES.ORG.AU Authorised by Grahame McCulloch, General Secretary, NTEU, 120 Clarendon St, Sth Melbourne VIC 3205

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 1

From the General Secretary Grahame McCulloch, General Secretary

Bargaining Round 6 – a mixed bag With thirty-four universities now having Round 6 Collective Agreements, and an end in sight to negotiations at the remaining three (Southern Cross, Sunshine Coast and Federation), it is timely to reflect on the bargaining round outcomes.

The genesis of Round 6 claims NTEU’s strategic approach to Round 6 was set in mid-2012 at a time when the mining investment boom was at its peak, annual wages were growing at 3.7% and the Gillard Government had committed to a 5% increase in base funding (including a new salaries indexation package).

In these favourable economic and political conditions the Union adopted claims across a wide range of issues – Aboriginal employment, general staff classifications and careers, new Scholarly Teaching Fellows (STFs), tighter academic workload regulation, and a competitive wage rise.

However, the Round commenced in difficult tactical circumstances when we were required to open bargaining in early 2012 at Curtin University as a defensive move against an aggressive management.

Nonetheless, the Union made surprising headway. The overall Curtin outcome provided a solid initial platform for the sector with 4% annual wages growth, an STF target of 5% of casual FTE per annum, the creation of a single Agreement, a cap of 15 hours teaching contact for teaching focused academics, robust (although modified) workload, managing change and dispute provisions, and high Aboriginal employment targets (albeit codified in a Memorandum of Understanding).

And the making of the Agreement followed a vigorous on the ground campaign which drew in new general staff activists attracted by equal treatment under a single Agreement, and provided new and established Union staff with an opportunity to work collaboratively on high quality printed and video campaign materials.

The Curtin result together with a similar CQU outcome, provided impetus for negotiations in the rest of the country.

A rapid downturn in commodity prices combined with the April 2013 Gillard/Emerson efficiency dividend cuts, changed the bargaining environment, and emboldened employer resistance to the Union’s core claims. This was compounded by the October 2013 Abbott election victory, which guaranteed bargaining would be lengthy and extended with the Union negotiating the majority of Agreements in the shadow of a Coalition Government.

A tactical decision was made to standardise protected action ballots as a pre-requisite for effective bargaining at the table.

With one exception – Griffith University – the Union met the minimum 50% turnout threshold with strong majorities endorsing industrial action in many forms.

A sizeable group of Branches engaged in well supported industrial action – with the stand out being five 24 hour strikes and associated bans at the University of Sydney. There were many high visibility public campaigns, buttressed by limited but effective low level industrial action.

This high visibility contributed to membership growth in most of the Branches concerned.

Round 6 outcomes We can count the round generally a success, with a 3.2% p.a. minimum wage outcome, nearly 900 STFs, Aboriginal employment targets of around 850, 17% superannuation, enforceable general staff classifications and 26-36 weeks paid parental leave. Importantly, there was no erosion of our dispute and managing

NATIONAL EXECUTIVE

NATIONAL OFFICE STAFF

National President Jeannie Rea Vice-President (Academic) Andrew Bonnell Vice-President (General Staff) Michael Thomson

Industrial Unit Coordinator Sarah Roberts National Industrial Officers Linda Gale, Wayne Cupido,

Susan Kenna, Elizabeth McGrath

General Secretary Grahame McCulloch National Assistant Secretary Matthew McGowan

Policy & Research Coordinator Policy & Research Officers

Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander (A&TSI) Policy Committee Chair Terry Mason National Executive: Stuart Bunt, Carolyn Cope, 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 A&TSI Coordinator National A&TSI Organiser National Organiser National Publications Coordinator Media & Communications Officer National Membership Officer Education & Training Officers

page 2 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate

Paul Kniest Jen Tsen Kwok, Terri MacDonald Adam Frogley Celeste Liddle Michael Evans Paul Clifton Courtney Sloane Melinda Valsorda Ken McAlpine, Helena Spyrou

change clauses, with all Collective Agreements providing ultimate access to the arbitration of disputes (with very mild dilutions of these provisions in some cases).

Certainly against the standards of the economy and trade union movement as a whole, these are exceptionally high outcomes, but when measured against NTEU’s internal standards, we have fallen short in several areas, with a patchy outcome on academic workloads and our general staff career claims, and a widening dispersion of expiry dates. The Round also saw slippage on general staff span of hours standards and HECE concessions in many instances.

Implementing Round 6 leads to Round 7 On four key issues – the creation of STFs, A&TSI employment targets, workloads and job security/managing change – the immediate challenge is to implement the new jobs and protections that these Collective Agreement clauses are meant to provide.

NTEU cannot rely upon management initiatives but instead must pursue its own independent implementation agenda.

Although new Round 7 Collective Agreements are not up for negotiation until the second half of 2016, (with the majority not up until the second half of 2017) it is already clear that Round 7 bargaining will involve updating these important Round 6 provisions. We are unlikely to make headway in Round 7 if we do not effectively prosecute the key outcomes of Round 6.

Grahame McCulloch, General Secretary gmcculloch@nteu.org.au

Executive Manager Peter Summers ICT Network Engineer Tam Vuong Database Programmer/Data Analyst Ray Hoo Payroll Officer Jo Riley Executive Officer (Gen Sec & President) Anastasia Kotaidis Executive Officer (Administration) Tracey Coster Admin Officer (Membership & Campaigns) Julie Ann Veal Administrative Officer (Resources) Renee Veal Receptionist & Administrative Support Leanne Foote Finance Manager Glenn Osmand Senior Finance Officer Gracia Ho Finance Officers Alex Ghvaladze, Tamara Labadze,

Lee Powell, Daphne Zhang National Growth Organisers Gaurav Nanda,

Rifai Abdul, Priya Nathan

Editorial Jeannie Rea, National President

Some VCs paid more in one week than many casual academics earn in a year The university annual reports have once again made the national news revealing that seven vice-chancellors have now joined the $1 million club and the average VC salary package last year was $835,000.

This is more than four times the salary of a full professor, and more per week than many casual academics make in a year.

Yet casual academics are the face of the university to thousands of students, while the vice-chancellors are more and more remote from the daily life of the university.

The NTEU responded in the media commenting, ‘In a year when almost all vice-chancellors supported the fee deregulation legislation of the Coalition Government, which included a 20 per cent cut to university funding, staff, students and their families must be dumbfounded at these salary increases’.

Our current campaign against the Coalition Government’s agenda has high public support as most people agree that access to university should be on merit not wealth. Despite being rejected twice by the Senate, Education Minister Pyne is persisting with his legislation and the 2015-16 Budget papers restate the intention to cut 20 per cent in funding and deregulate fees as of 1 January 2016 (see report, p.16).

The Government is out of step and Pyne’s preparedness to jeopardise the future of our national system because he wants an Australian Harvard has fallen flat. It is very clear that Australians will not accept the Americanisation of our tertiary education or health systems. The NTEU is currently sponsoring screenings of a US documentary, Ivory Tower, which examines the decline of the once great American mass system as government funding continues to decline, tuition fees rise and the gap between the rich and everyone else widens (see report, p.32).

Ivory Tower reports outrage against the salary packages of university presidents presiding over tuition fee rises, the casualisation of teaching and the erosion of education standards. The Australian (10 June 2015) reported that a recent survey revealed that the average US university president was paid $A557, 040.

Australia’s university councils, who decide the VC’s salary package, should have to justify their decisions, particularly when they also oversee constant job cuts and casualisation of the workforce. Whilst some may say that this is a cheap jibe from the NTEU (and many public commentators), it is not so in a climate where 80 per cent of teaching-only staff are employed casually and 80 per cent of researchers are on fixed-term contracts.

Even staff in ‘ongoing’ positions face constant fear of jobs cuts, and new jobs are increasingly casual, fixed term or outsourced. One in two university staff are now precariously employed.

...we should expect the universities to be leading in workforce planning for the future rather than being increasing characterised as poor employers.

With more people enrolled in higher education than ever before and widespread recognition that higher education and research are key to Australia’s economic and social future, we should expect the universities to be leading in workforce planning for the future rather than being increasingly characterised as poor employers.

Ongoing claims of falling academic standards and integrity, as well as declining student support, are harming the reputation of our system. Universities need to be boldly addressing these. However, more typical was the lack of vigorous response to the recent Four Corners program containing allegations of dishonesty and unethical behaviour in the recruitment and treatment of international students. This overly cautious behaviour did not reassure staff of the integrity of some university systems and processes, or that they would be supported if they raised concerns. Instead, university staff often feel that they are unable to do anything more than scramble on the ground to maintain standards and look after the welfare and education of students.

Lack of control over their work is continually cited by university staff as a major issue.

At one level this is the direct outcome of the adoption of corporate structures and practices, which seek to diminish any vestiges of collegial and democratic university decision making. University councils are being corporatised with an active focus on the removal of staff and students (see report, p.10). The authority of academic boards is being hollowed out as power moves to the senior management groups.

Academic staff are losing any grip on decision making over what is taught and researched, how this done and with whom.

On the ground, the most exploited group, the academic casuals also report lack of control over their work as a major concern.

They feel strong responsibility for their students and their progress. They have issues with curriculum, assessment and teaching modes but rarely have any say.

They continually worry about the erosion of quality and standards.

This lack of control over the core work of universities by the responsible staff should not be interpreted as a return to the 1960s call for student-worker control of our universities. I was though heartened by the recent conversation amongst Flinders University academic and professional staff at a forum organised by Southgate Institute for Health, Society and Equity, which posed the question of what makes for a healthy university workplace. Participants challenged themselves to consider whether their university, once a bastion of progressive and rebellious staff and students, could start to imagine a different university future (see http://mtu.flinders. edu.au/events/PolicyClub_18June2015.cfm).

The challenge is to consider what can be done to democratise our universities, even within an environment of external threats to funding and independence. Indeed this could even show us a way to tackle these threats.

Surely our university leaders should be standing up to the politicians and refusing to accept funding cuts to higher education and research, not using them as a rationale for bad decisions that harm not only students and staff but the community that the university is meant to serve.

Jeannie Rea, National President jrea@nteu.org.au

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 3

Update Budget abolishes learning and teaching advocate The latest Budget cuts to higher education programs include the abolition of the Office of Learning and Teaching (OLT).

The OLT was established as a unit within the Department of Education by the Labor Government to administer the national higher education teaching awards and grants schemes. Its establishment followed the outcry after the axing of the Australian Learning and Teaching Centre (ALTC) established by the previous Coalition Government.

While there are those who are sceptical of the awards as (dis)incentives to improve performance, and of grants schemes as substituting for decent staffing levels, the OLT had become even more than this. The strategic priority commissioned projects, extension grants, discipline networks and the fellowship program all built upon the initial objectives of the OLT to promote

and support quality in learning and teaching through innovation and recognition of excellence.

The NTEU was represented on the OLT advisory committee by myself, over the past four years, as NTEU President; the NUS President was also included. The advisory committee was chaired by Professor Margaret Gardner and comprised a group of VCs and DVCs who were invited because they are passionate educators. Of all such bodies in which I have participated, I would count the OLT as one where the committee was very active in providing sound advice and persuading Ministers to support good initiatives.

At this time when university teaching is under scrutiny as never before and university teachers are feeling the sort of often negative glare our school and TAFE teaching colleagues are well used to, we need a body like the OLT with an advisory committee that can both run a critical gaze over what we are doing as well

NTEU calls for return to the Colombo plan idealism

education as a profit making export industry that subsidises domestic teaching and research, boosts the Australian economy and provides (often vulnerable) workers for Australian employers.

In early April, the Minister for Education released a White Paper on Australia’s International Education Strategy and called for submissions from the sector in response to the proposals in the paper. Although the White Paper made a number of positive steps towards improving long standing problems in international education, its focus was still very much on international

The NTEU’s submission argues that the international student market should be seen through the lens of educational exchange, international capacity building and human rights, rather than a global market for profit (and inevitably exploitation).

In numerous submissions to Government and sector reviews on international students over the last 20 years, the NTEU has argued for the re-examination of legislative frameworks, practices and support systems that cater to international students, with a view to guaranteeing their social and economic rights.

We continue to advocate strongly for

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encourage good practice and promote university teaching. The projects supported by the OLT are having an impact upon the quality of learning and teaching across our university system.

With a well-defined grants and projects program and too few but highly competent public service staff, arguably the Government got a lot for a very modest investment. The fact that they want to cut it is troubling. The Government’s plan is apparently to hand the awards and grants program over to a university or group of universities to administer. This will diminish the standing of the program and lead to suspicions of favouritism even if there is no foundation to that. I would not be surprised if the program would then wither and be defunded altogether.

Jeannie Rea, National President www.olt.gov.au See full Budget report, p.16

this change of perspective in this latest submission, stating that the measure for success for international education should not be assessed only in economic terms, such as increased student numbers, increased fee income, increased profits for providers or economic growth in the sector alone.

In reality, the objectives of the original Colombo Plan – which was to promote education and links throughout our region – is as valid a measure for success today as it ever has been. Unfortunately, this objective appears to have been forgotten in the drive for profits and growth, as institutions rely ever more on international student income in order to subsidise domestic teaching and research.

Terri MacDonald, Policy & Research Officer NTEU submission: www.nteu.org.au/policy/legislation_ submissions/current_inquiries

Update Zero hour contracts In the lead-up to the 2015 UK election, industrial relations policy was at the forefront of Labour’s agenda, with then leader Ed Milliband promising to end the scourge of ‘zero-hour contracts.’ The UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) had reported that 2.3 per cent of the UK workforce was employed on zero-hour contracts in 2014, up from 1.9 per cent in 2013.

So what are these zero-hour contracts and what makes them bad enough to feature as an election issue in the UK? In essence, zero hour contracts allow employers to hire employees with no guarantee of work. Some of these contracts require the worker to take the shifts they are offered, and they do not usually include sick pay. In other words, zero-hour contracts are a form of insecure employment with fewer employment rights than those on traditional contracts of employment.

Australians might know these ‘zero hour contracts’ by another name – casual employment.

Yet in Australia the rate of casual employment (in 2012) was 19 per cent - literally a scourge. But we have become used to it. Politicians do not spruik for providing more secure forms of employment in our election campaigns. And it is hard to understand why not given there are over 2 million Australians who rely on wages from entirely insecure employment for their very existence.

It is understandable that employers prefer this form of employment over others: it is cheap and flexible, allowing the employer to chop and change staffing arrangements without penalty. So everything being equal, we can expect the level of casual employment to continue to rise at the expense of permanent and fixed term employment.

Trade unions such as our own have achieved important gains in ensuring more secure forms of employment are offered to casual employees, but we need assistance from Government to truly stop the growth in casual employment and bring back permanent jobs. It will not happen on its own. If it can be an election issue in the UK, why not here in Australia? It is up to us in the union movement to make sure the issue of casual employment is firmly on the electoral agenda.

Sarah Roberts, National Industrial Coordinator Source: BBC news www.bbc.com/news/business-23573442

Royal Commission into Trade Unions The Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption, or ‘TURC’ as it is known, has now been in operation for over 12 months, with still no evidence of widespread union corruption to come to light.

At its opening, presiding Commissioner Dyson Heydon indicated that TURC’s terms of reference did not ‘assume that it is desirable to abolish trade unions. They do not assume that it is desirable to curb their role to the point of insignificance.’ However unionists attending TURC hearings throughout the last 12 months might be forgiven for believing it to be simply an artifice to provide the Abbott Government with the necessary cover for a broad-based anti-union legislative agenda – which we will presumably see after the next election.

Royal Commissions are unusual beasts and TURC is no exception.

While the proceedings resemble those of a court, normal court rules do not apply. TURC’s Practice Directions instead do not allow cross-examination of witnesses as of right, and cross-examination (if allowed) does not occur immediately after examination in chief: rather after a temporal break, and only after written objections to evidence have been lodged. This process has meant TURC is a forum where untested allegations can be made against those innocent of corruption, and conversely witnesses who are accused of corruption can tidy up their evidence if they appear to be getting themselves into hot water on the witness stand.

So far only one prosecution has been recommended by Commissioner Heydon, but we would expect more scalps in the coming months – even if only so that TURC can justify its own existence.

Sarah Roberts, National Industrial Coordinator

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 5

Update Protests as Adelaide guts music centres NTEU members, students and the general public alike have been distressed and outraged following proposals

by University of Adelaide management to cut jobs at the Elder Conservatorium of Music and the Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music (CASM).

Within the Conservatorium, Classical Voice would be folded into an inferior group choral program, providing a qualification described by students as ‘unrecognised and without value’.

Meanwhile the unique CASM would be closed, though its highly-marketable name is to be kept and given to a new research centre (on soft money incidentally), a move described as ‘overtly racist’ in resolutions made by a mass meeting of students.

All of this because of an internally-created budget shortfall. Not of the University of Adelaide’s overall budget, you understand.

It’s just that the amount the University allocates to the Conservatorium and CASM is less than the money it costs to run them.

This problem is familiar to arts programs globally, but the situation was made significantly worse when the University moved to a system of space charging, effectively forcing schools to pay rent on the rooms they use to the institution’s central finances. For programs that need one-on-one lessons, practice rooms and performance spaces, these costs have been devastating.

‘The arts are essential to any modern society.’ This is a sentiment proudly espoused by any politician or vice-chancellor, usually when launching some policy or strategy that ‘affirms their commitment’ to the arts.

But for all such affirmations, the arts have endured a long-term decline in funding and support from government, and it seems that vice-chancellors too have reached the limit of their commitment as we see arts programs across the country facing staggering cuts or even extinction.

For years South Australian number plates bore the slogan, ‘The Festival State’. This

Silent protest staged by the Classical Voice students outside a concert in the popular Lunchtimes at Elder Hall series on 15 May. earned all of the usual jibes about a sleepy backwater - ‘yeah, a festival and nothing else!’ – but unlike the meaningless marketing of other states, it also reflected something true. South Australia, for all its quiet nights and small town ways, supports the arts. Adelaide is home to a number of large, international festivals and the country’s most successful Fringe, a full symphony orchestra, professional and semi-professional theatre companies and a state opera. No more than you might expect in a capital city but not bad for a population that barely cracks a million.

South Australia is the perfect example of a society that benefits, both culturally and economically, from a thriving arts sector. What is often forgotten is that the sector relies almost entirely on two South Australian universities through the Department of Drama at Flinders University and through the Elder Conservatorium of Music at the University of Adelaide. These programs train the teachers that sustain high school and other education programs throughout the State.

They also take the very best students and train them to be world-class performers, not all of whom (despite impressions to the contrary) leave. In short, on the conceptual, cultural map, these programs are the point of intersection that makes The Festival State possible. They are also the only local university options for aspiring artists.

In many ways, though they are placed within two universities, these programs belong culturally to the people of South Australia. Indeed, the Conservatorium was

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established as the result of vast donations from members of the South Australian public, especially the pastoralist Sir Thomas Elder, and its modern form is the result of mergers with several other, similarly created academies.

When Sir Thomas Elder gave the equivalent of more than $120 million today (calculated for economic power) he wasn’t just making an astonishingly generous donation. He was also giving the University of Adelaide an important responsibility, that of safeguarding music for our community.

Today it seems that legacy, and that responsibility to our society, aren’t even worth protecting from a death by internal bean-counters. Rather than safe-guarding Music, the University is strangling it from within. No wonder people are making a song and dance about it.

Kate Gale, University of Adelaide Branch Organiser

Update SCU member victory against hostile management

Enterprise Bargaining Southern Cross University

VOTE

NO

A pay offer of 2.4%? You’ve got to be kidding!

Our colleagues across the sector have achieved average pay rise s of 3.11%, so SCU management’s offer will see our salaries fall a long way behind in comparison.

An overwhelming number of staff voted no to a nonunion ‘Agreement’ proposed

by Southern Cross University (SCU) management – a deal that would have undercut staff pay, conditions and job security – following a vocal, visible campaign by NTEU members.

Management were attempting to force through an Agreement not endorsed by NTEU members that included an average annual pay increase of just 2.4 per cent – less than the industry standard of 3.11 per cent and less than the offer put to the Union earlier in negotiations.

‘Management had previously offered NTEU members an average pay increase of 2.6 per cent, which was unanimously rejected by a member vote because it was well below industry standard and was also paired with a reduction in conditions,’ said Kate Mitchell, NTEU SCU Branch President.

‘It seems management have then misread the situation entirely, trying to bypass NTEU members by kicking off an all staff vote. Their proposal was an average 2.4 per cent increase and no assurances around job security,’ Mitchell explained.

‘Staff saw right through their disrespectful proposal. For starters, management had already showed they had the capacity to pay staff more, but chose instead to pay less.’

Staff rejected the proposed Agreement with a resounding majority: 703 no to 302 yes.

Stand up for fair pay.

Management vote for a big pay rise...

2013

VC DVC

2014

$632,374

$672,600

$404,053

Total increase in all exe c

$434,800

salaries

Source: 2014 SCU Annual Repor

ts

$198,945

For themselves!

% increase

6.4% 7.6% 7%

Voting opens Thurs 18 June & closes 5pm Mon 22 June.

NTEU National Tertiary Educa tion Union—SCU Branch Phone: 02 6620 3297 Email: scu@n teu.org.au www.nteu.org.au/scu Authorised by Kate Mitchell, NTEU Branch

President, Southern Cross University.

Email: scu@nteu.org.au

Respect for SCU staff was a key message during the campaign. NTEU members held workplace conversations across the University, where the disparity between executive and staff pay increase was a point of anger.

As the member campaign kicked off, The Australian ran a story reporting that SCU’s Vice-Chancellor, Peter Lee, increased his pay packet by a whopping 36 per cent in the last 4 years. In 2014 alone, the University’s Annual Report suggested senior executives received an average 7 per cent pay increase for the period.

During this time staff received a pay rise of just 2 per cent and endured multiple redundancies. Lee’s 36 per cent salary increase sat in stark contrast to the staff offer

703

302

of 2.4 per cent per year, particularly as the Vice-Chancellor has been demanding ‘110 per cent’ workload from staff.

‘Staff definitely felt the offer showed a complete lack of respect and appreciation for their hard work and commitment, particularly over the last 18 months of dwindling staff numbers and increasing workloads,’ Mitchell said.

‘This vote demonstrates the depth of feeling amongst staff. Now, management just needs to listen and come to a reasonable Agreement.’

Adam Knobel, Communications Officer/Organiser, NSW Division The SCU NTEU member ‘Vote No’ campaign comes off the back of their ‘Save our Uni. Save Our Local Jobs’ community campaign. You can read more about their local community engagement in Advocate vol.21, no. 3 (November 2014).

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 7

Update State of the Uni Survey

The tertiary education sector has its say Staff in Australian universities have said that their work gives them satisfaction, that they have positive work relationships and that their work is exciting and interesting. But they have also said that workplace change is handled poorly, and most do not trust senior management believing executive salaries are too high.

These are just a few of the insights that are buried within one of the largest ever nationwide staff satisfaction surveys to be conducted in Australia. The NTEU State of the Uni Survey is to be a biennial survey of attitudes on employment and workplace culture in Australian universities. It seeks responses from all types of staff across a range of issues from government policies on higher education, to working conditions and the role of trade unions in the tertiary workplace.

The 126,000 staff in the sector were invited to participate in the survey by email.

Quite a few institutions blocked the initial emails, so Union members were encouraged to distribute the survey invitation to their colleagues. Over 40 per cent of respondents were non-union members.

Of the respondents, 55.7 per cent identified as academic staff with 44.1 per cent as general, professional or administrative staff. In comparison, the Department of Education’s 2014 higher education statistics identify 55.4 per cent from a non-academic classification as a head count.

The sample also accurately reflected the gender demographics of the sector.

No confidence in Adelaide VC

professional staff through yet another period of extreme job insecurity is likely to help in management’s other stated aim: a less bureaucratic, less risk-averse approach in professional services.

A mass meeting of NTEU members at the University of Adelaide on 14 May 2015 passed a motion of no confidence in Vice-Chancellor Warren Bebbington.

The third proposal of concern to the members is the plan to introduce Academic Expectations. This section of Professor Bebbington’s email opened with this statement: ‘The intrinsic satisfactions of academic life are great—the freedom to develop innovative ideas, write and think as one chooses, share one’s specialist interest with research students, and teach bright young people. But essential to maintaining these privileges are shared obligations, a collective sense of mutual responsibility to contribute one’s fair share to the work of the institution.’

The motion was moved from the floor of the meeting following discussion of the changes proposed by Professor Bebbington in an email dated 27 April. As well as the proposals themselves, many members were clearly insulted by media coverage in which the Vice-Chancellor described these changes as a way to deal with the problem of ‘underperforming’ staff.

The proposed changes included a move to convert many academics onto teaching-only contracts, compressing teaching into fewer roles with the money saved on salaries going to fund research.

Also planned is a university-wide ‘redesign’ of professional (meaning ‘non-academic’) operations with a view to saving $6million p.a. in those areas by 2017.

This ‘savings target’ is set in the University’s five year financial plan, though some members have asked how putting

And in closing, his email said this: ‘There will be costs in implementing the project. Faced with the Adelaide Academic statements, not all staff will want to commit to those expectations. Some may prefer to depart the University, while some may fail to meet the objectives even after the support of a Performance Improvement Plan, and depart then. For all these, central resources have been allocated to fund departure arrangements on appropriate terms.’

The Adelaide Branch office has received record levels of correspondence from members on these new Academic

page 8 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate

Yes 2% Unsure 17%

No 81%

Figure 1: Are the current Federal Government policy settings taking Australian universities in the right direction?

Deregulation The views of staff on the Abbott Government’s proposed changes to the sector were significantly at odds with the public positions espoused by many vice-chancellors. Survey responses reveal that there is overwhelming staff opposition to the Coalition Government’s proposed higher education reforms (see figure 1).

More than 4 in 5, or 80.7 per cent, of people working at a university believed continued opposite...

Expectations, which were released in far more detail on 29 May. Members have raised two key questions. Firstly, they have wondered about where they can find these ‘intrinsic satisfactions of academic life’ that the Vice-Chancellor keeps referring to. But once the hysterical sarcasm passes, most people move on to the second, and far more central, question: how can this possibly be thought of as appropriate? As one member said, ‘It’s the equivalent of a hospital CEO telling doctors how to carry out surgery.’

The meeting on 14 May passed three other resolutions: • A motion stating that these proposals would be harmful to staff, student and the university’s reputation and that they should be withdrawn.

• A motion supporting a delegation of Professional Staff to raise concerns about the overhaul of their work.

• A motion resolving to oppose the Vice-Chancellor’s proposals by refusing to take part in punitive PDR sessions and refusing offers of teaching-only positions.

The Adelaide Branch has been working to support its members in these actions and will continue to do so in the coming weeks and months.

Kate Gale, Adelaide Branch Organiser

Update that the Federal Government’s policy settings were ‘taking Australia in the wrong direction’.

Support for the Coalition’s higher education policies was almost non-existent, with only 2.6 per cent stating they believed the Federal Government’s policy settings were taking our universities in the right direction.

These views were held regardless of union membership or the type of work performed. When asked to respond to the statement, ‘The Government has a responsibility to invest in higher education rather than requiring universities to rely on other funding sources to fund core activities,’ every demographic gave overwhelmingly supportive responses (see table 1).

How staff rate their employer and senior management Given the disconnect between staff and university leadership over government policy, it is not surprising that senior management got a big thumbs down from staff in the survey. Staff highlighted a range of issues, but confidence in senior management and concern about how change in the workplace is managed were the most significant concerns in this section (see figure 2).

These responses depict universities as workplaces with work cultures that are not positively shaped by university leadership.

Unions in the workplace Of the respondents, 59 per cent were union members, while 41 per cent were not members of a union. Unsurprisingly, union members overwhelmingly agreed or strongly agreed that unions have an important role in the modern Australian economy, that unions have helped to make better workplaces, and those who benefited from the efforts of a union should contribute financially to its operations (see figure 3).

Interestingly, the number of staff who are not union members also believed these things. When asked to respond to the statement ‘My institution can be relied upon to look after the interests of staff whether or not the union is involved,’ 19.7 per cent of non-union members agreed or strongly agreed, while 39.8 per cent disagreed or strongly disagreed (see fig. 4).

Matt McGowan, National Assistant Secretary A full report of the survey is being compiled by the Union. The results will be made available to participants in the near future.

NTEU would like to thank everyone who participated.

All

Union

Non-Union General

Academic

Swinging voters

Strongly agree

69.7%

77.1%

59.7%

59.5%

77.6%

62.8%

Agree

24.1%

19.4%

30.5%

31.6%

18.5%

28.7%

Total agree

92.8%

96.5%

91.2%

91.1%

96.6%

91.9%

Table 1: ‘The Government has a responsibility to invest in higher education rather than requiring universities to rely on other funding sources to fund core activities’ Managing change in the workplace Confidence in senior management Staffing levels Reliance on casual staff Access to promotion and progression Workloads management Workplace culture Treating staff with respect 0%

10%

20%

30%

1 - Excellent

40% 2

50% 3

60%

70%

4

80%

90%

100%

5 - Unsatisfactory

Figure 2: Howofwould rate your employer?

Opinions Unionyou Members My institution can be relied upon to look after the interests of staff whether or not the union is involved If someone benefits from a union, it is reasonable that they financially contribute to its operations Unions have helped to make working at my institution better than it otherwise would be Trade unions have an important role in the modern Australian economy Overall, I have had a positive experience with trade unions in the past 0% Strongly Agree

Agree

10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Neither Agree nor Disagree

Disagree

Strongly Disagree

Figure 3: of Opinions of union members Opinions Non-Union Members

My institution can be relied upon to look after the interests of staff whether or not the union is involved If someone benefits from a union, it is reasonable that they financially contribute to its operations Unions have helped to make working at my institution better than it otherwise would be Trade unions have an important role in the modern Australian economy Overall, I have had a positive experience with trade unions in the past 0% Strongly Agree

Agree

10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Neither Agree nor Disagree

Disagree

Strongly Disagree

Figure 4: Opinions of non-union members NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 9

Update Staff representation on university councils In an apposite headline on an article revealing the latest on vicechancellors’ excessive salary packages - ‘Crisis? What crisis?’ – The Australian was referring to the funding. However, without the irony, they could have been questioning the governance crisis in our public universities.

As Sarah Roberts notes in her article on the opposite page on the attempts by the University of New England (UNE) to challenge the legitimacy of the NTEU Branch President sitting on the University Council, there was a time when the representation of staff and student interests through their associations or unions was ‘an integral part of the fabric of the university’. Since the move towards corporate management, the size of councils has been cut and now business qualifications are privileged over representation of the views of the university community by elected staff and students.

At a session on university councils at the Universities Australia conference in March this year, speakers observed that the ‘downsized’ and more ‘professional’ councils though may have a problem with being out of touch with day-to-day activities of the ‘enterprise’. This position was rather bizarrely argued by the same speakers who also railed against students and staff being on councils because they would have a ‘conflict of interest.’ But what

Vic Government to put staff & students back on councils & boards Prior to the Victorian State election in November 2014, and following lobbying by the NTEU, the Victorian ALP committed to restore elected staff and student representatives to university councils and TAFE boards.

These representative positions had been abolished by the Baillieu Coalition Government in 2012, despite protests from the NTEU and its members.

was the solution? Ignoring staff altogether, did they think a few handpicked students could constitute an advisory committee?

We are back to arguing basic principles.

Staff and students should be part of the governance of universities. Universities are not corporations. Our universities are public institutions, publicly funded (underfunded) and accountable to civil society.

They are supposed to operate in the public interest and for the public good. That is why university councils/senates have traditionally included not just representatives of their internal community – staff and students – but also community, government and business representatives. The vice-chancellor is not a CEO, reporting to shareholders, but is publicly accountable.

Clearly, vice-chancellors do not see their role this way and neither do the councils to whom they now answer. Otherwise we would have expected council members to have been challenging their VCs on their support of government funding cuts and fee deregulation. Most universities

It is pleasing to see that the new Andrews Labor Government intends to meet its commitment and has been consulting with staff and student organisations, as well as university managements, about how to implement it. The NTEU and student organisations have advocated for a minimum of two staff (academic and general/professional) and two student positions to be created, to be elected from the staff and student bodies.

In TAFE, the Government has committed to reinstate staff representatives. While the restoration of elected TAFE student representatives is likely, it is not as simple a matter as in universities, since there are no student unions in TAFE and students on average are enrolled for quite short periods.

While there is some debate still to be had about the optimum number of staff and student representatives on university councils, the fact that the Government is

page 10 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate

will not reveal what they discussed on deregulation claiming it to be ‘commercial in confidence’.

Astoundingly most VCs have received further pay rises and now seven VCs are on million dollar plus salary packages. There seems to be no compunction to explain or justify these increases except to argue that the vice-chancellor works hard. Also working very hard are the staff constantly facing higher workloads as they struggle to maintain the core university services in this climate of constant growth but also continual job cuts and casualisation.

The role of councils is to ensure that the university is fulfilling their mission, keeping the doors open and keeping up the quality of teaching, research and engagement. Clearly our university councils need to be more accountable and transparent, not less. Yet as well as the attack on the NTEU President’s membership at UNE, it seems that the state government in Western Australia is looking to remove staff and students and make commercial activity a core function (see ‘NTEU discovers WA plan to remove students and staff’, opposite page). But on the positive side, after the secretive axing of students and staff representation from the Victorian University Acts under the previous Coalition Government in Victoria, the new Labor Government is implementing its promise to restore representation (see report, below).

Jeannie Rea, NTEU National President

intending to proceed with legislation to reintroduce them, with a starting date of January 1, 2016, demonstrates a reassuring understanding of the importance of collegial governance in our universities.

However, the fact that the Minister, Steve Herbert, has had to deal with considerable resistance from a number of university chancellors shows that senior university managers continue to advocate a corporate model emphasising their power at the expense of the university as a community of scholars, including both staff and students.

Together with the woeful performance of most of the vice-chancellors in the debate over federal policy for universities, it also suggests that now is the time for renewal of Australian university leadership.

Colin Long, NTEU Victorian Division Secretary

Update NTEU Branch President called to resign from Council Many NTEU members may recall a time, not so long ago, when the union or the staff association, was an integral part of the fabric of the university.

Decision making on academic matters was more collegial and the role of the union as the representative of staff was respected as vital to proper governance.

Union representatives and student union representatives had designated positions on university councils and senates.

But times have changed. Since the 1990s there have been successive attempts on the part of state governments to reduce or eliminate staff and student representation from university councils and senates, reflecting and supporting the more corporate approach to university governance that we see in today’s universities.

Most university councils now comprise a handful of business and state government representatives, with elected staff and student representatives, if they are present

NTEU discovers WA plan to remove students and staff After hearing some rumours regarding potential changes to governance arrangements in WA, the NTEU served Freedom of Information requests on the four public universities and the State Department of Education Services.

All four WA universities have refused requests for minutes of Senate or Council as they relate to this matter and all of those agencies with the exception of Edith Cowan University (ECU) have refused the Union’s request for documents and correspondence. This refusal was on the grounds that to reveal the details of deliberation of government agencies prior to a final decision would not be in the public interest.

at all, no longer earmarked for trade or student unions.

Over this period of change NTEU representatives have continued to stand for and be elected to university councils and senates. It is still relatively commonplace for NTEU Branch Presidents to hold these positions. However, as the below example shows, this does not mean the role of NTEU representatives on university councils and senates is seen as legitimate by university leaderships.

On 18 February 2015, the University of New England (UNE) Chancellor, James Harris wrote to Professor Margaret Sims, NTEU UNE Branch President, indicating that her powers and duties as President raised a conflict with the proper performance of her duties as a member of University Council and inviting her to ‘reconsider [her] position on the University Council.’ Professor Sims responded by rejecting the proposition that any such general conflict existed. The Chancellor wrote back providing advice from counsel that apprehended such a conflict could arise for Professor Sims if the Council were to consider a matter involving enterprise bargaining or a matter otherwise concerning conditions of employment, rights or welfare of employees.

NTEU’s view, supported by our own legal advice, is that while a conflict of interest may certainly arise for an NTEU representative who is elected to a university

The NTEU is seeking a review of those refusals and may subsequently lodge an appeal.

What we have learned from the heavily redacted materials provided by Edith Cowan University, and from the answers to parliamentary questions, is that the State Government, on the request of the universities is considering changes that would alter governance arrangements to: 1. Remove student representation.

2. Remove alumni representation.

3. Replace elected staff representatives with appointed positions.

4. Grant greater control over student amenities fees to the universities.

5. Allow the universities more flexibility in borrowing and commercial operations.

As if the removal of elected representation was not bad enough, given that it completely undermines collegiate governance, the State Government is also considering changes to the objects of the University Acts in order to allow them to act as commercial entities. In other words the State Government would be legislating that a

council, that conflict could only be where a matter under consideration may result in a detriment being suffered by or a benefit accruing to the member – such as consideration of their own terms and conditions of employment. However, this ‘material interest’ does not arise by virtue of being an NTEU officeholder; it arises because the person in question is a staff member. And so, the same rule applies equally to other staff members on the Council such as the President of the Academic Board.

Nonetheless, and despite the limited nature of counsel’s advice, the Chancellor’s approach at successive Council meetings has been to exclude Professor Sims from discussions (and any relevant papers) on matters ‘that have a direct or indirect impact on staff.’ No other staff members on Council have been similarly excluded. Further, Professor Sims has not been informed as to the precise nature of the matters she has been excluded from: they are ‘known unknowns’ in the parlance of Donald Rumsfeld.

NTEU’s legal advice to date has been that UNE’s approach is unlawful on two counts: it breaches the UNE Act and the general protections provisions of the Fair Work Act, which outlaws discrimination on the grounds of industrial activity or of holding an office in an industrial association.

Sarah Roberts, National Industrial Coordinator

core function of a university is to engage in commercial activity.

This is a major threat to the fundamental character of the institutions and will also threaten key aspects of university life such as academic freedom.

While ECU’s responses indicate that not all of the institutions support all of the changes, ECU does support some of what the Union would consider are the most egregious.

It is simply not good enough for the WA Vice-Chancellors sitting as the WA Higher Education Council to initiate changes to the fundamental character of the universities which they serve and to then hide behind a veil of secrecy to keep their roles in the destruction of our heritage secret.

The NTEU WA Division will continue to pursue transparency in university decision making and will campaign vigorously to protect our institutions from this attack from the very people who have the responsibility to protect and preserve our universities.

Gabe Gooding, NTEU WA Division Secretary

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 11

Update Defence Trades

The big rod in the legislation is the creation of three criminal offences: ‘supply’, ‘publication’ and ‘brokering’ for particular scientific goods and technologies. The criminal offences come into effect on 1 April 2016.

Changes passed, but still be wary The Defence Trade Controls Amendment Act was passed on 18 March 2015, incorporating nearly all amendments proposed by the Chief Scientist’s Strengthened Export Controls Steering Group and securing support in the Senate from the Coalition, Labor and the Greens.

The NTEU supported change and many proposals have been incorporated, but problems remain.

Here are the five most important things university researchers need to know about Defence Trade Controls.

The original purpose remains: unregulated forms of scientific exchange have been criminalised The legislation creates obligations for Australian university and other non-military research sectors to monitor the exchange of not only defence technologies, but dual-use scientific technologies and research.

This applies not only to the physical exchange of these technologies but its intangible ‘supply’ and ‘publication’ such as through email, file sharing, and posting on the internet.

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

While these offences have been modified through the legislative amendments to exclude ‘verbal’ and ‘pre-publication’ supply, and to limit ‘publication’ offences to military goods, these are largely minor because the obligation upon academics is still ultimately to go get a defence permit.

The existence of these criminal offences compel university-based scientists, research staff and research institutions to have their research verified through the Defence Department’s permit system.

Just because you do not do military research, it does not mean you are exempt It is difficult to emphasise just how important the legislation’s potential implications are for many unwitting researchers in our sector. The legislation is actually designed to impact researchers well beyond those with established relationships with the Defence Department.

There are some important qualifications to who and what scientific research requires a permit. The starting point is the Defence and Strategic Goods List (DSGL). If your research or the research you are involved in is not covered by the DSGL, you do not need to worry. The nature of the DSGL means nearly all humanities and social science academics are excluded.

You are unaffected if your scientific research is exclusively ‘basic’ or ‘basic strategic’ as defined by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. To see if your research is covered, you can start with the Department’s Online DSGL tool. If you are unsure about whether or not the law applies to you,

vol. 56, no. 1, 20 14 NTEU

Published by

applying for a permit is the only way you will actually get peace of mind.

Permit systems are being developed at your university Compliance costs are estimated at $51.6 million per annum for all sectors, and $10.7m per annum for the university sector alone. This will involve each university developing a system of compliance to the Defence Department’s permit regime and this may lead to greater administrative burdens for you. Keep an eye on these.

Defence Minister’s new prohibitions power The amendments introduce a new prohibitions power for the Defence Minister.

They can now tap you on the shoulder and prohibit publication if it falls within the DSGL. They will have to give reasons as articulated in the Regulations, but the power is wide, arbitrary and can be applied to circumstances that are political and diplomatic in nature.

Legislative Review The door has been pried open for further stakeholder engagement through a 12 month implementation period, and then a legislative review two years from now, with a formal report tabled in Parliament.

The Amendment Act is not perfect and there remain concerns, acknowledged by Coalition Senators, which is why there is an ongoing consultation process.

Jen Tsen Kwok, Policy & Research Officer Dept of Defence online DSGL tool: dsgl.defence.gov.au NTEU Defence Trades information: www.nteu.org.au/defencetradecontrols If you have questions or concerns, contact the NTEU Policy & Research Unit: policy@nteu.org.au

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Australia n Unive rsities’R eview

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page 12 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate

NTEU members are entitled to receive a free subscription on an opt-in basis .

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Update ‘Earn or Learn’

Government once again targeting young people On 28 May 2015, the Senate referred the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015 to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry and report. Although the final report is yet to tabled, it is clear that this Bill is far-reaching in its impact. NTEU calls on the Senate to again reject the Coalition’s ‘Earn or Learn’ Bill In addition to lifting the age requirements to qualify for Newstart and Sickness Allowances from 22 years to 25 years and abolishing the low income supplement associated with the now redundant carbon tax price, the Bill would also extend the waiting period for all working age payments.

In particular, it will create a 4 week waiting period for anyone under 25 years applying for the Youth Allowance – in short, it is the Government’s second go at implementing its highly criticised ‘earn or learn’ policy.

Youth poverty and unemployment In order to understand the likely impact of the Bill, it is important to know what the current financial situation is for young people engaged in study or looking for work.

According to the submission made by the National Union of Students (NUS) to the Inquiry, a typical young single student, living away from home in shared accommodation and in receipt of the maximum level of Youth Allowance and rent assistance as their sole income, is currently living at 50 per cent below the Henderson Poverty line.

To reinforce this, Universities Australia’s most recent report into student finances (2013) found that: An average of about 17 per cent of students reported regularly going without

food or other necessities because they were unable to afford them, and there was an increase from 14.7 per cent of full-time domestic graduates in 2006 to 18.2 per cent in 2012 who were regularly going without.1 For young people who aren’t studying but looking for work, the outlook is similarly depressing. Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that more than 290,000 Australian aged 15 – 24 years were unemployed as of January 2015 and that youth joblessness has reached its highest peak since 1998, with 14.2 per cent of 15-24-year-olds looking for work and one in five (or 20 per cent) of 15 to 19-year-olds unemployed.

In looking at the bridge between study and work, the proportion of unemployed Australians who have an education level of less than Year 12 has fallen, while the proportion with some tertiary education has risen. People with less than Year 12 made up more than 44 per cent of the unemployed in every year from 2005 to 2010, then dropped sharply to 32 per cent in 2011 and 36 per cent in 2012.

However, the proportion of unemployed with some tertiary education rose over the same period. This is reflected in the data from the 2013 Graduate Destinations Survey, which found that the proportion of bachelor degree graduates seeking full-time work, and finding it within four months of completing their courses, has fallen to just 71.3 per cent – the lowest level since 1993, when just 71.2 per cent were in full-time work. In areas such as creative arts and life sciences, the figure was far worse, at only 48 per cent and 52 per cent respectively.

Impact of the Bill Clearly, any measures designed to delay or deny assistance to young people, either studying or looking for work, will have consequences. However, the Minister’s second reading speech on 28 May 2015 did not advance any arguments, beyond budget savings, as to why young people making the transition from study to work should be treated this way.

The explanatory memorandum for the Bill contains statements of compatibility with human rights (in this case, the ‘Right to an adequate standard of living’), noting that:

The Government’s policy is clearly based on the assumption that parents will support young people until the age of 25 years, unless the young person is in an emergency situation. For recipients of the Youth Allowance this is defined as a ‘personal financial crisis’, such as being subjected to domestic violence, and confined to purchase vouchers and part payment of things like rent. Those on income support don’t have a ‘personal financial crisis’ provision.

The Bill also freezes indexation for three years on the income bank used for student payments. The income bank determines the amount of paid income a student can earn before their Youth Allowance or Austudy is reduced, and allows unused portions of a student’s income free allocation to be accrued over the year rather than the fortnight. When the income bank was originally introduced in 1993, the limit was set at $6,000 but not indexed.

Over time, the real value of this limit decreased, until it had shrunk by around 80 per cent by 2008. In 2009, the Government announced an increase in the threshold to $10,300 from 2011, with indexation to apply. A three year pause will again erode the real value of the income bank and make it difficult again for students to escape the poverty trap.

Reject the Bill Clearly, the Government has shown that its determined to make those who can least afford it carry the burden of its economic reforms, targeting young people either looking for work or studying. It is another regressive measure from a neo-conservative government that has little regard or respect for young people. As such, NTEU calls on the Senate to again reject the Government’s ‘Earn or Learn’ Bill.

Terri MacDonald, Policy &Research Officer 1. Universities Australia (2013). ‘University student finances in 2012: A study of the financial circumstances of domestic and international students in Australia’s universities’, Centre for the Study of Higher Education, University of Melbourne.

2. Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment And Other Measures) Bill 2015 Explanatory Memorandum. p.12

The limitations imposed on the social security system by this measure, in focusing on young persons, acknowledges that young persons often have access to family support to enjoy an adequate standard of living. To assist claimants experiencing hardship, the measure includes $8.1 million in additional funding for Emergency Relief providers.2

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 13

Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander News ‘Selfish rabble’ rally in support of ‘lifestyle choices’ The proposed forced closure of Aboriginal Communities is an issue that has attracted a lot of media attention in the past few months. Following WA Premier Barnett’s claim last year that certain remote communities were ‘unviable’ and would therefore be shutdown with people forced to relocate to larger regional centres to access services, not to mention Tony Abbott’s offensive claim that the Australian taxpayer was not obligated to fund the ‘lifestyle choices’ of those living on remote communities (therefore reducing family connection and millennia worth of history to nothing), there have rightly been a number of protests held across the country to stop forced closures.

labelled a ‘selfish rabble’, yet complaining that you’re a bit late getting home due to protests blocking the streets is acceptable.

The NTEU has been proud to be a part of this so-called ‘selfish rabble’, and our members and staff have been at nearly every rally across the country, standing in solidarity with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people against the continuing displacement agendas of the Government.

In May, the NTEU National Executive adjourned their meeting to join the rally after posing for a solidarity photo and encouraging Branches and Divisions to do the same.

The NTEU has also taken the step of writing to the Prime Minister and current Minister for Indigenous Affairs to voice their opposition to any moves to close Aboriginal communities.

As well as calling on the Government to investigate the potential for treaties, the NTEU ‘call(s) on both Premier Barnett and the Federal Government to provide the ongoing funding and fundamental services to these communities, so they may enjoy the infrastructure and services that other people in Australia take for granted’.

It is an ongoing shame of this country that the most basic of services which most citizens take for granted are considered a luxury or a removable privilege in many remote communities, and the NTEU stands against the continuation of this institutionalised racism.

This in itself has been fascinating to watch unfold.

We are at a point in history where standing in solidarity with the most oppressed in the country can get you

page 14 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate

Forum 2015 The National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Forum will be held on 16–17 July in the Yarra Valley, with the theme ‘Holding our Ground’.

It is a theme that resonates not just with trying to protect jobs and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Centres on campus, but also our broader social justice movements in the community.

Each Branch is funded to send one representative and can determine to fund additional representatives at their discretion. National and Divisional Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander representatives are automatically funded to attend in their role as Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Policy Committee representatives.

Information regarding Forum has been circulated to all A&TSI members. Additional information can be obtained by emailing Celeste Liddle via cliddle@nteu.org.au.

We look forward to meeting all National Forum delegates in July.

Register online: www.nteu.org.au/atsi/ forum/2015/registration

Along with the ACTU, we call on all unionists to stand in solidarity with A&TSI people against the closure of their communities. We encourage members to join protest actions, and to write to their local politicians.

tolerated by anyone with a commitment to social justice.

These continual attacks on the self-determination of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people cannot be

Left: The Murdoch press reports on traffic inconvenience in central Melbourne. Below: NTEU National Executive’s solidarity photo.

Celeste Liddle, National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Organiser www.nteu.org/atsi

Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander News Palm Island’s Lex Wotton visits NTEU National Office In April this year, while touring various unions and social justice organisations on a speaking tour, Palm Island activist Lex Wotton called into the NTEU National Office to speak to the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Unit and call for solidarity from the NTEU. Mr. Wotton, himself a unionist, his wife Cecilia and his mother Agnes (on behalf of the Palm Island Aboriginal Community), have launched a class action against the State of Queensland and the Police Commissioner following the death in custody of Mulrindji Doomadgee in 2004.

The class action alleges, amongst other items, that police not only racially discriminated against community members, but

they allowed conflicts of interest to occur in their investigation into the conduct of Sergeant Chris Hurley.

It should be noted that despite the Queensland coroner eventually finding Hurley as being ‘responsible’ for the death of Doomadgee, only Aboriginal people who took part in the subsequent riot, including Wotton, were ever convicted and jailed. In addition, upon his release from prison, Mr. Wotton was subjected to a gag order for four years as part of his parole conditions.

At the May meeting of the NTEU National Executive, a motion was passed not only to support this class action, but also to write to the Queensland Government seeking an apology and reparation for the Palm Island Community.

The motion also commits the NTEU to ongoing support of campaigns to stop Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. We therefore encourage members to join in their local awareness actions.

Celeste Liddle, National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Organiser

Below: Lex Wotton and Celeste Liddle in the NTEU National Office.

From our A&TSIPC Chair Hi All, mid year already – tax time and taxing times.

ACTU Congress is over and there were some motions concerning Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. The true test of these will be whether any are actively implemented or just sit on the books giving the appearance of activity.

Celeste Liddle spoke at a lunchtime forum putting forward a case examining alternative views to Constitutional Recognition. On the same day, the Recognise team took a photo of the ACTU President with the co-directors of the campaign. Pity they didn’t name the non-Aboriginal co-director in the credits when it was posted to Facebook. Draw your own conclusions.

At the same time, I spoke at Victoria University on similar issues to Celeste at a Reconciliation gathering.

Both meetings resulted in many people gaining views they had not been exposed to before about Sovereignty, treaties and land rights.

Rosalie Kunoth Monks spoke at a Reconciliation meeting in Melbourne the same week. She opened the evening by asking the audience if Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal People had ever been reconciled. Although she also spoke of being uncomfortable about people burning flags and damaging property, she spoke very highly of, and in support of, the young people leading the campaigns against the forced closures of communities.

More A&TSI stories in this issue of Advocate: Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music at the University of Adelaide facing closure See report by Kate Gale, p.6

Budget cuts deep into A&TSI funding

In summing up her conversation at the end of the night, she spoke against Constitutional Recognition and emphasised that Sovereignty has never been ceded and this is the business that needed to be dealt with.

I look forward to seeing those of you who are attending the National Forum next month.

See report by Celeste Liddle, p.24

Cheers, Terry.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Higher Education Advisory Council (ATSIHEAC) abolished

Terry Mason, Chair, Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Policy Committee

See report by Celeste Liddle, p.25

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 15

Federal Budget 2015

Pretend policies & fiscal fantasies

Photo credit: amarosy, 123rf.com

At 7.30pm on 12 May 2015, Treasurer Joe Hockey rose to his feet in the House of Representatives to deliver the Abbott Government’s second Budget. Like last year, this year’s Budget had at its heart ‘budget repair’, but in 2015 it was all about repairing the political damage caused by the 2014 Budget’s unfair cuts rather than restoring the bottom line to surplus in the Government’s first term.

Paul Kniest NTEU Policy & Research Coordinator

page 16 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate

The centrepiece of this year’s Budget was a $5.5 billion jobs and small business package which included tax cuts, instant depreciation for assets worth less than $20,000 for small business, as well as making it easier for employers to take on job seekers by simplifying work experience arrangements and introducing greater flexibility into wage subsidy payment arrangements.

The Government is also spending an additional $4.4 billion on its Families Package which aims to encourage more parents back into the workforce in order to lift productivity. While the Government is planning to spend an additional $3.5 billion on a new simplified child care subsidy, it would appear that this is conditional on savings from changes to Family Tax Benefit B (announced in 2014 Budget and yet to pass the Senate) and the removal of socalled ‘double dipping’ or ‘rorting’ of access to paid parental leave. For a more detailed analysis of the impact of the Budget on women and families (see Terri MacDonald’s report, ‘13 ways the Budget fails women’, p.22) .

Based on broad media reaction, it seems that the Government has achieved its primary political objective and has by and large reversed the enormous public relations damage they copped through last year’s unfair and highly unpopular Budget.

3500

However, as the NTEU has stated in our media release on Budget night, people should not be fooled by this Budget, especially in relation to higher education because it is more of the same from an arrogant government that refuses to listen.

3000 LNP policies (Dereg Mk II)

The Budget refuses to acknowledge that the Government’s higher education policies, including fee deregulation and the 20 per cent cut to public funding, have been rejected twice by the Senate and as explained below still form part of the Government’s budgetary strategy and forecasts.

ALP policies

2500

Pretend policies and fiscal fantasies

1500

Unlike last year when higher education was a central component of the Government’s Budget repair strategy, the only mention in the Treasurer’s Budget speech was in the context of the loss of income as a result of the decline in resource prices and how he hoped that higher education along with tourism and health would contribute even more to our service export income.

But this year’s higher education budget is constructed on the basis that many of last year’s measures will be implemented, even though they have been rejected twice by the Parliament.

The Government’s commitment to its higher education policies are buried away in Budget Strategy and Outlook Budget Paper No.1, Statement 6 which says on page 6-23: From 1 January 2016, the Government will fully deregulate higher education by removing the cap fee caps and expanding the demand driven system to bachelor and sub-bachelor courses at all approved higher education providers.

Supported students will continue to be able to defer the costs of their studies through HELP. In addition, from 1 January 2016, the Government will rebalance student and Commonwealth contributions toward a new student’s course fees by reducing subsidies for Commonwealth-supported places by 20 per cent on average.

These statements are important to the Government because they allow the Government to continue to count the ‘savings’ associated with the 20 per cent cut to funding per Commonwealth Supported Place (CSP) and other savings measures to be counted toward the Budget bottom line. The NTEU would argue that these savings are based on nothing more than pretend policies because the legislation to enact them has failed to pass the Senate, and based on current indications is unlikely to do so in the current Parliament.

It seems that even the vice-chancellors have now given up on the Government’s agenda assuming that it has no prospect

$ millions

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201

Figure 1: Unlegislated savings associated with higher education measures, 2015-16 to 2025-16 Source: Parliamentary Budget Office (29 May 2015). Unlegislated measures carried forward from the 2014–15 Budget. www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Budget_Office/Chart_packs

of passing the Senate. Despite Universities Australia and individual vice-chancellors advocating the position since last year’s Budget that fee deregulation was the only viable or realistic policy alternative, it now seems that they no longer see fee deregulation as being essential for a sustainable and high quality university sector.

ings add to some $4.2 billion, which are comprised of $2.6 billion of savings from Labor’s efficiency dividend and associated policies for which legislation has never been passed. (In opposition, Labor has withdrawn support for the efficiency dividend whilst the Coalition Government has persisted with it.)

In an article in Fairfax by Matthew Knott (‘Deregulating university fees not essential’, 31 May 2015) the new President of Universities Australia, Professor Barney Glover of UWS conceded that ‘the Government is unlikely to pass higher education reform in this term.’ More importantly, however, he also acknowledged that ‘there are significant concerns in the community about the burdens placed on students’ and warned that ‘significant fee increases could deter some students from university study’.

The other $1.6 billion comes from the Government’s Deregulation Mk II policies.

Therefore, while one might argue that the importance of savings from the Government’s own policies are relatively unimportant in the short-term, Figure 1 which captures the full financial impacts of the 20 per cent cut to funding per student and less generous indexation arrangements, clearly demonstrates the importance of the Government’s savings over the longer term forecasts.

The size of the budgetary savings associated with these measures should also not be underestimated. According to a Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) publication Unlegislated measures carried forward from the 2014–15 Budget (29 May 2015), the total value of savings from unlegislated higher education related polices equates to more than $20 billion dollars over ten years.

Therefore, the 2015–16 Federal Budget is not only based on pretend policies which have never been or are likely to be legislated but also that they are little more than fiscal fantasy. By insisting that it remains the Government’s intention to persist with both Labor and their own higher education policies, the Government is counting over $20 billion of savings which are never likely to be realised.

Figure 1 shows that the over four-year forward estimates to 2018-19, total sav-

continued overpage...

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 17

Federal Budget 2015 NCRIS funding ‘fix’ While the 2015-16 Budget Papers contained a number of specific announcements in relation to research and higher education programs which are summarised in Box 1, it is worth making special mention of the Minister’s ‘surprise’ fix for funding the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).

Readers might recall that in a desperate attempt to usher his second round of higher education deregulation policies (Higher Education and Research Reform Bill 2014 or Deregulation MkII) through the Senate, Minister Pyne made funding NCRIS (and the 1,700 researchers jobs that went with it) conditional on the Senate passing his higher education legislation. The Minister however was forced to back-down on this threat as crossbench Senators made it clear that they would not be blackmailed.

The humiliating back-down came in the Minister’s now infamous ‘I’m a fixer’ interview with David Speers on Sky News on Monday 16 March 2015, the day before his higher education reforms were defeated in the Senate for a second time. In response to questions about how he would fund NCRIS the Minister replied ‘I’ve fixed it by funding it in another way which you’ll find out in the Budget.’

disallowed by the Senate . As the snakes & ladders graphic opposite shows, this is exactly what occurred and NCRIS was funded by cutting Sustainable Research Excellence (SRE) grants by $263 million over the forward estimates.

Sustainable Research Excellence As Figure 2 shows, the 2015-16 Federal Budget was not the first time the SRE has been targeted for budgetary savings. The SRE was introduced by the ALP Government in 2009 and formed part of Senator Carr’s Powering Ideas agenda for innovation and research. The SRE was intended to supplement funding universities received through the Research Infrastructure Block

How exactly he was to ‘fix it’, was to be a ‘surprise’. As the NTEU had anticipated in our pre-Budget analysis, there would be no surprises and the Minister took the path of least resistance and funded NCRIS by cutting other research block grants, which he achieved through Ministerial directive and therefore avoiding the possibility of having them blocked or

Actual SRE Funding 301.0

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Actual expenditure Forecast expenditure

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Figure 2: The Unsustainability of Sustainable Research Excellence (SRE) grants for universities.

Actual and forecast expenditure on the SRE $m 2009-10 to 2018-19 Source: Source: Federal Budget Portfolio Budget Statements (various years) page 18 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate

Grants (RIBG) to help universities cover the indirect costs associated with competitive research grants they received, with the aim of lifting the funding rate for indirect costs from 20 per cent of research grant income to 50 per cent of research grant income over four years. Figure 1 shows that when the SRE was first introduced in the 2009 Federal Budget the intention was that its value would be phased in over four years with the intention of reaching a value of just over $300 million by 2013-14. However, subsequent cuts imposed by different Budgets and Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) statements have seen the value of SRE cut persistently. Based on the latest Budget projections the value of the SRE is expected to be $225 million in 2018-19 which is a long way short of its originally projected value.

While the Minister may well have saved the jobs of 1,700 researchers whose jobs would have been lost as a result on failing to continue to fund NCRIS, we need to ask how many jobs might be lost as a result of cutting SRE funding which is used to support the indirect costs associated with competitive research grants won by universities. One of the dangers with cutting indirect research funding is that it puts greater pressure on university budgets to cover these costs from other areas including from teaching and international student fee income.

However, as Figure 2 illustrates, Mr Pyne was not the first Minister with carriage of the SRE to see it as an easy Budgetary fix.

When looking to save funds, one can only conclude that it is far easier to cut (or defer the increases in funding) to programs that have substantial growth built into to their forward projections. continued on p.20...

Federal Budget 2015 Budget winners and losers in research & higher education

ê $20.5m one-off to the Australian Synchrotron

CRCs funding cut by a further $26.8m over 4 years

ê $72.5m to be saved by streamlining a number of existing health workforce scholarship programs3

ê $300m over 2 years for the NCRIS

ê ê

ê

NCRIS funded by cutting SRE research block grants by $263m over next 3 years2

$16.9m to AITSL over 4 years1

ê

$131m saved over 4 years via a functional & efficiency review which includes abolition of ATSIHEAC & OLT

ê

Medical Research Fund, expected to deliver $10m funding in 2015-16, growing to over $200m by 2018-19

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Notes

Abbreviations

1. This is the Government’s response to the Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group’s 2014 report Action Now: Classroom Ready Teachers.

AIATSIS AITSL ATSIHEAC CRCs HELP HEPP NCRIS OLT SRE

2. $150m in 2016-17; $37.5m in 2017-18 and $75m in 2018-19. This represents a cut of almost one dollar in four (25%) to SRE funding over the forward estimates.

3. Savings directed to the Medical Research Fund.

4. Commercialisation Australia, Enterprise Connect, Industry Innovation Precincts.

5. According to the Budget papers.

6. The Government remains committed to establishing an Australian Consensus Centre, even after UWA decided not to proceed (see report, p. 31).

ê

ê $5m cut (on top of $51m last year) to HEPP. Has been redirected to the AIATSIS collection5

$26m over 4 years by recovering HELP debt from people who reside overseas for 6 months or more

$31.7m cut to industry grants/ programs4

$4m for an Australian Consensus Centre (led by Bjørn Lomborg) to be taken from current allocations and has no impact on forward estimates6

Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Australian Institute for Teaching & School Leadership Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Higher Education Advisory Council Cooperative Research Centres Higher Education Loan Program Higher Education Participation Program National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy Office of Learning and Teaching Sustainable Research Excellence

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 19

Federal Budget 2015 So what happens next?

The Government has made it clear that it intends to push ahead with its higher education polices, and will re-introduce its higher education policies into Parliament before the end of this year, which it will need to do especially considering that many of the policies including fee deregulation and funding cuts are scheduled to commence from 1 January 2016 . The question is whether the Government will: • Make a genuine attempt to get the Senate to pass legislation to implement the core element of its higher education policy, namely fee deregulation and opening up Commonwealth supported places to non-university providers, including for-profit private providers, or • After passing through the House of Representatives, the Government might elect to park its higher education legislation on the Senate Notice Paper without putting it to the vote which will allow it to continue to ‘count’ the budgetary savings and perhaps withhold university funding as is currently the case with Labor’s efficiency dividends.

Passing legislation Based on current indications, it seems highly unlikely that Government could get the numbers in the Senate to be able to pass the core elements of its higher education policies, despite the fact that the Minister has indicated he is prepared to negotiate on virtually any aspect of his package (including dealing with the 20 per cent funding cut separately) except fee deregulation and open access to non-university providers.

Crossbench Senators opposed to the Minister’s policies – including Senators Lambie, Lazarus, Muir, Wang and Xenophon – have made it explicitly clear that they cannot and will not support a policy that allows our public universities to charge domestic undergraduate students whatever they like for a degree. At this stage it is clear that neither the Minister nor any of our vice-chancellors have (either publicly or privately) been able to convince these Senators that such a policy would not result in some students paying $100,000 or more for a degree.

There are however, several other tactics that the Minister might use to push his legislation through the Senate. The first of these tactic might be to try to ‘buy off’ individual Senators with promises of special treatment for universities in their States.

This tactic has already been tried and

failed when Senator Jacquie Lambie from Tasmania made it very clear that her vote was not for sale in response to reports that the Government was prepared to provide hundreds of millions of dollars in special assistance to the University of Tasmania.

We also note that the possibility of the Government going off doing separate deals with individual universities prompted the Group of Eight to question its support of the Government’s policy following the second defeat of legislation in the Senate in March.

The second tactic might be to try to exert pressure on crossbench Senators by threatening to use the higher education legislation as a trigger for a double dissolution election, which would involve a full Senate election. In order for this to happen the Government would have to re-introduce (after 17 June 2015) the same legislation that was defeated by the Senate on 17 March.

Since the Government already has a number of double dissolution triggers available, and given the strong public opposition to fee deregulation, one might think that it would be a courageous Government to go to an election, where the $100,000 university degrees are a key issue.

Parking legislation on Senate Notice Paper While there is no doubt that it will be the Government’s preferred option to have its legislation passed before the end of this year, this seems unlikely. Another strategy they may be contemplating is that adopted in relation to the efficiency dividend, which is to ‘park’ its legislation on the Senate Notice Paper. This lets it continue to count these measures as budgetary savings.

The Higher Education Support Amendment (Savings and Other Measures) Bill 2013, which if passed would implement a series of originally Labor initiated savings announced in April 2013, including efficiency dividends of 2 per cent and 1.25 per cent on university grants respectively in 2014 and 2015, was passed by the House of Representatives and introduced in the Senate in November 2013.

The Bill has never been put to a vote in the Senate and remains sitting on the Senate Notice Paper. Even though these efficiency dividends have never been legislated, the Department of Education continues to withhold the monies from universities on the basis that they remain government policy.

page 20 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate

According to a story by Sarah Martin (‘Government’s $3 billion budget book-juggling hits universities’, The Australian, 4 May 2015) the efficiency dividend payments for 2014 amount to $129 million and $217 million in 2015. As Martin wrote, if the Government were to concede that they had no prospect of getting either of these two measures passed into law, this would not only be a major admission of policy failure, it would also have a significant impact on the budget bottom line by increasing the size of the Budget deficit by something in the order of $3 billion over the four year forward estimates (2015-16 to 2018-19).

The moral of this story, is that it is not necessary for the Government to have been able to implement its proposed policies by way of legislation for it to continue to count the savings associated with it.

Therefore, if the prospects of getting its legislation through the Senate seem unrealistic, the Government may instead choose to park it on the Senate Notice Paper. The question however, that this raises is that in addition to counting the budgetary savings (as discussed above) is whether the Minister or the Department would take a decision to in effect implement some the policies included in the Bill, as is the case with the efficiency dividend. For example, on the basis that it remains the Government’s stated policy, would or could the Department: • W ithhold 20 per cent of government contribution amounts to universities?* • P rovide Commonwealth supported place funding to non-university providers? And if so under what conditions?

• A llow universities to charge domestic undergraduate students whatever they like for a degree?

• A llow students to borrow as much as they need through the higher education loan programme (help) to pay these uncapped fees?

In other words, will the Government, for all intents and purposes, try and get away with implementing the major tenets of its higher education agenda without needing to have the necessary legislation in place? *Despite the Department of Education publishing CGS Australian Government Contribution Rates for 2016 [http://docs.education.gov.au/system/files/doc/ other/2016_indexed_rates.pdf] that include the Government’s intended 20 per cent cut to funding per student, Stephen Machett in Campus Morning Mail (26 June 2015) reported that a spokesman for Mr Pyne told him ‘there will be no reduction that has not been legislated.’

Federal Budget 2015

Overseas aid cuts reach new low In a particularly cynical and callous move on Budget night, the Coalition Government confirmed a further $3.7 billion cut to the foreign aid budget coming on top of the massive 2014 budget cuts. According to the Australian Council for International Development this means that the Coalition Government has cut $11.3 billion from the aid program since 2013.

The United Nations set the target for nations to contribute 0.7 per cent of their Gross National Income to international development aid. Australia is now down to 0.2 per cent.

Make no mistake, this means children will not go to school, will not have a roof over their heads, will not be safe from violence and predators, and some who could have had access to clean water and food will die. Government funded international aid is open to criticism about its efficiency and effectiveness, but the bottom line is that it is often the difference between life and death or a marginalised life that could, at comparatively tiny costs be made better.

I don’t want to act like an old fashioned charity appeal, with images of sick and hungry children and their haggard mothers, but maybe we do have to put these in front of our politicians.

This Government is crassly cynical in cutting international aid as they know it just feeds into racist and xenophobic

prejudices they are keen to nurture to suit their other agendas. ‘Foreign’ aid cuts do not garner the public sympathy that cuts impacting upon one’s immediate neighbours, families and friends do. For while Australians have a pretty good track record on private donations to international aid and development organisations and especially to emergency relief appeals, this does fluctuate.

These cuts go too deep to be made up for by private donations. And neither should they. It is a responsibility of governments to take on the leadership of popularising international development aid.

Oxfam Australia CEO, Dr Helen Szoke said, ‘The Coalition Government has laid out a path for Australia, the second wealthiest country per capita in the world, to give our lowest aid level ever. Australians want to

be proud of our government’s leadership on the world stage, not embarrassed. We have worked hard as a country to become one of the richest nations; we don’t want to be one of the meanest.’

For Union Aid Abroad–APHEDA, it means an even greater reliance upon unionists and other supporters. As chair, Angelo Gavrielatos said at the recent ACTU Congress, ‘Supporting Union Aid Abroad is not charity, it is solidarity.’

Jeannie Rea, NTEU National President Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA Nepal appeal: apheda.org.au Join many other NTEU members and become an APHEDA member: www.apheda.org.au/getinvolved

DONATE TODAY

APHEDA NEPAL APPEAL With over 8,600 people confirmed dead, and over a million children said to be ‘severely affected’, Nepal needs our help.

lives. Many of the world heritage buildings have been reduced to rubble. This is a huge disaster for one of the poorest nations which was already struggling to improve the living standards of the poorest of the poor.

Nepali unions are organising immediate assistance and are calling for global union support.

Your support is very much needed at this time. Whether large or small, every contribution counts in the effort to rebuild the lives of people in Nepal.

Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA is working with the General Federation of Nepalese Trade Unions (GEFONT) and Union Network Nepal Liaison Council (UNI NLC) to provide the following immediate support:

“The situation is really tough - no milk for the children, no water, very limited food and medicine. The rebuilding process of Nepal is going to be long and difficult. So many basic facilities are gone - homes are gone, schools are gone, our hospitals are overwhelmed.”

• Medical treatment for injured • Temporary tent and housing • Water and food supply A major 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal on April 25th 2015 causing unprecedented destruction of infrastructure and homes, as well as loss of thousands of

UNI Asia and Pacific Director, Rajendra Acharya

SOLIDARITY NOT CHARITY GIVE GENEROUSLY TODAY I want to support I want to do more, I want to become a

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a] Credit Card

NTEU ADVOCATE •APPEAL vol.

22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 21 NEPAL EARTHQUAKE GLOBAL JUSTICE PARTNER I PLEDGE THE FOLLOWING EACH MONTH: $10 $25 $50 $100 My own amount $_____ ( min.$10 )

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Federal Budget 2015

13 ways the Budget fails women The 2015 Federal Budget was not only a missed opportunity for the Government to actively address a number of important issues for women (such as family and domestic violence, and the ever growing gender pay gap), but in looking for budget ‘savings’, women are again bearing most of the budgetary burden.

Here are 13 reasons why the 2015 Budget is bad for women:

casually employed women are not eligible for either government or employer PPL. However, the current Government has seen fit to downgrade its existing scheme.

Although the PPL system is currently structured so that the government and employer PPL schemes work in conjunction, with the goal being that women should be able to access a total of 26 weeks PPL (as per the recommendations of the WHO and the ILO), the Government has now decided that PPL is an extravagance and, on Mother’s Day, announced their intention to downgrade paid parental leave.

The Department of Social Services has confirmed that, should the Government be successful, in the first year alone, 45,000 women will lose part of their PPL and 34,000 women will lose the full $11,500.

To add insult to injury, the Government and their supporters have labelled women who have accessed both PPL schemes as double-dipping, rorting and as fraudsters.

1. Higher education ‘reforms’ Higher education ‘reforms’ are still on the Government’s agenda, despite their repeated rejection by the Senate.

While these changes are likely to deter some, for most the greatest impact will be the significant increase in the costs for students and consequent debt. Deregulation would see many university fees skyrocket towards and beyond $100,000.

The resulting levels of accumulated debt, combined with lower earnings and the gender pay gap, mean that women will be paying their university debts for longer and as a result, be paying more. The flowon effects will also be felt in areas such as the rates of women returning to work and the amount of superannuation earned by women over their lifetime.

2. Paid parental leave NTEU has been campaigning for improvements to the Labor Government introduced Paid Parental Leave (PPL) scheme so that it is accessible to all who require it. Currently many sessional, seasonal and

...the Government has now decided that PPL is an extravagance and, on Mother’s Day, announced their intention to downgrade paid parental leave.

who need the most support, and access to early education care is vitally important for vulnerable children and their families.

While the Government has indicated that looking for work will be an ‘acceptable activity’ in order to access subsidised childcare, the new, three tiered Activity Test is complex. The uncertainty of how much care a mother will be eligible for is likely to make some women hesitant to re-enter the workforce.

Conversely, the increased subsidies will also be extended to high income earners, with no upper limit. The increases to child care subsidies (to cost around $3.5 billion over 4 years) are also to come from cuts to Family Tax Benefit payments (see below).

4. Family tax benefit cuts The Government’s unrealised cuts to the Family Tax benefits in last year’s disastrous Budget have resurfaced in this Budget.

These would see eligible families lose $7–10 per week, ceasing entirely when children turn six, and impacting most on sole parents.

While some of the savings are being reallocated to childcare, this is still a measure heading for a Senate that is unlikely to pass it, with Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen saying ‘Kids don’t get cheaper once they turn six’.

5. Community legal centres

3. Child care While the Government is championing its changes to childcare as a winner for families, it will also see the most vulnerable children being excluded from childcare subsidies.

Parents will be able to access up to 24 hours of the means-tested Child Care Benefit per child each week without the work or study test, but this is a marginal amount. It also ignores the fact that those women who are entirely marginalised from either work or study may be the ones

page 22 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate

Community legal centres, including those assisting women and families impacted by domestic violence, will see funding continue or slightly increase in 2016, but in 2017 the money will drop away.

The political reality is that the Government has deferred cuts to front line services until after the next Federal Election, but will still continue with plans to decimate free legal help and other front line community services.

Interestingly, the funding figures are being reported in an entirely different way this year for the first time, making it difficult to accurately compare year on year.

Federal Budget 2015 6. Women’s health The 2015-16 Health Budget will see $1.7 billion worth of cuts across funded programs over the next four years, particularly targeting ‘Health Flexible Funds’, which fund specific services for women, shelters and services that work to prevent violence against women. These cuts will directly affect the most vulnerable in the community, such as sole parent mothers who rely on the front line services.

7. Pharmaceutical benefits Cuts and changes to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) will include removing over-the-counter drugs like paracetamol, which will have an immediate and costly effect on those living in constant pain, who are more often women.

While the increase may be relatively small, for those living with conditions such as osteoarthritis, the changes will have an accumulative impact.

8. Public service cuts

Tony Abbott, Minister for Women, winking at at 774 ABC’s John Faine whilst taking a call from a female caller.

Credit: YouTube salary sacrificing at $5000, which is often used by the cash strapped sector as a way of compensating for the poor pay and long hours.

The Government is again looking to cut the public service, with the biggest job and service losses in the Department of Human Services. Leaving aside that the majority of the workforce in the Department are women, it is women who overwhelmingly rely on the services run by the Department, such as Medicare, disability care, Centrelink and family services.

11. Superannuation

The loss of staffing and additional workloads will do nothing to address already long waiting times, and pressures on remaining staff will increase with the changes around childcare and parental leave.

12. Foreign aid cuts

9. Gender inequality The Budget also fails to address the issues of gender inequality in the workplace or improve employment participation of women, which is particularly difficult for women who have caring responsibilities.

Indeed, the Budget appears to retain a punitive attitude to those who have been locked out of the labour market, such as those with disabilities or sole parents.

The Government’s small business stimulus package (essentially, a tax cut of $20,000 for small businesses) does nothing to promote employment, particularly for women. Indeed, the changes to the PPL and issues around childcare may actually see more women opting out of the workforce.

10. Charity sector cuts Cuts to funding and other changes around the charity sector will also disproportionately impact upon women, who dominate the not-for-profit and community sectors.

Of real concern is the decision to cap

While the Government’s self-praise over its inaction on super tax perks has been vocal, the gap between women’s and men’s superannuation has turned into a chasm.

Nothing in the Budget will address this issue – indeed, if anything, the gap is likely to increase further.

The foreign aid budget was hit again this year, with $3.7 billion to be slashed from aid over the next four years – making this area the single largest source of savings unveiled. This follows on from a $7.6 billion blow to foreign aid late last year, regressing to Howard-era levels at just 0.2 per cent of national income.

Analysis of the 2014 cuts by aid organisation Plan International found that decreases in Australia’s foreign aid programs could see 220,000 fewer girls enrolled in school, 400,000 girls not immunised, 3153 fewer classrooms in which girls can learn, 157,000 fewer girls to receive improved access to safe drinking water, and 750,000 fewer textbooks made available for girls.

Further cuts in this Budget are at odds with Government rhetoric of helping women in developing nations.

13. Tony Abbott, Minister for Women Prime Minister Abbott, as the Minister for Women, is essentially the biggest failure of this Government. Despite the rhetoric over how he is essentially ‘a feminist’ and that his ‘rolled gold Paid Parental Leave Scheme’ showed how much he valued women’s participation in the workplace,

he has failed dismally.

Indeed, he lists his greatest achievement in the portfolio for women as the repealing of the carbon tax, stating: ‘Well, you know, it’s very important to do the right thing by families and households and, as many of us know, women are particularly focused on the household budget and the repeal of the carbon tax means a $550-a-year benefit for the average family.’

However, issues such as women earning one million dollars less than men over a lifetime, or the fact that one in three women are subject to physical assault, or that more than half of elderly single women are living below the poverty line – are ignored.

Noting that Tony Abbott also has the portfolio for Indigenous Affairs, the Prime Minister fails Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women too – ignoring the discrimination that leaves Indigenous women 23 times more likely to be imprisoned than non-Indigenous women, making them the fastest growing prison population.

To cap it off, in March 2015, the Prime Minister released a YouTube video highlighting his Government’s achievements over the last 18months. He didn’t say the word ‘women’ once. He also didn’t mention gender equity, or violence against women, or any other issues related to women, at all.

If any Minister conducted themselves in such a manner there would be an outcry, but for the Prime Minister, it’s apparently acceptable not to mention the portfolios you have given yourself responsibility for.

That, put simply, is why this Government has failed women.

Terri MacDonald, Policy &Research Officer

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 23

Federal Budget 2015

Budget cuts deep into A&TSI funding The effects of the 2014 Federal Government Budget cuts to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (A&TSI) programs are still impacting our communities quite dramatically. In the 2015 Closing the Gap report it was shown that on most indicators, there has been no improvement, with some even going backwards.

News that more A&TSI students were completing year 12 was tempered by the news that numeracy and literacy rates had barely changed. As the cuts to many services continue, it is felt that the 2016 report will read much the same.

While lobbying from the community has been successful in reversing plans to cut funding to Aboriginal Legal Services, it is of little comfort considering that the existing funding had barely been adequate.

Many of these legal services are already stretched to their limits. A&TSI incarceration rates continue to be a national shame and with the government maintaining their restrictions on legal advocacy, the capacity for legal services to work with communities to decrease legal problems is diminished.

of the Government’s Indigenous Advancement Strategy applications.

It was recently revealed in a Senate Inquiry that of the successful funding applications, over half had been granted to non-Indigenous organisations before the funding round had actually opened.

At the other end, funding applications for programmes such as the Thumbs Up program, run by the Jimmy Little Foundation and geared around nutrition for young Aboriginal people, and the Djarindjin Safe House, a women’s shelter servicing 50 communities in Northern WA, were rejected despite the vital work they do. It appears that the Government is not focussed on the continuation of programs geared around self-determination.

being strong-armed into support for this campaign by the Government. There are many reasons why a lot of A&TSI people do not support Constitutional Recognition, and the NTEU maintains that as a sovereign and diverse people, they have the right to form their own judgements without governmental bullying.

When the Government announced their 2014 cuts, they were playing the long game. The impacts of these cuts will continue to be felt keenly in A&TSI communities for many years to come.

Finally, recent reports suggest that some funding applications for Aboriginal Health Organisations were contingent on that organisation being able to show support for the Government campaign to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Constitution.

Celeste Liddle, National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Organiser

As a union which has maintained a questioning stance on Constitutional Recognition, it is deeply concerning to hear that some needy organisations are effectively

Below: Some of the women who help run the defunded Djarindjin Safe House. Credit: ABC News, Erin Parke

In addition, with recent news that funding for the Tasmanian Aboriginal Legal Service had been transferred to the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, it is reasonably clear that the Government does not see community-based legal services as being at all important.

More chilling though have been the tales coming out of the last round of funding page 24 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate

www.nteu.org/atsi

Above: Examples of health posters for kids developed by the now defunded Jimmy Little Foundation.

A&TSI

ATSIHEAC abolished The recent announcement from the Abbott Government that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Higher Education Advisory Council (ATSIHEAC) is to be abolished is of deep concern and raises a number of questions with regards to the future of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (A&TSI) participation in higher education in the coming years.

The NTEU was crucial in lobbying the Federal Government to create ASTIHEAC (originally called IHEAC), a consultative body designed to oversee and feedback on higher education policy for A&TSI people in the higher education industry – students and staff. Noting that the industry is a long way off reaching parity participation rates for A&TSI people, the move to abolish this body is nonsensical and clearly premature.

Additionally, the choice by the Government to abolish ATSIHEAC makes little sense from a budgetary perspective.

The cost associated with maintaining ATSIHEAC is minimal considering there are only a few meeting commitments per year. Therefore, the NTEU has to conclude that the only real motive here, as outlined

by Jeannie Rea in the June edition of edXpress, is the removal of alternative voices to the Government and specific expertise.

While the Government continues to push an agenda of cuts both in higher education and in Indigenous Affairs, critical views from the people affected are not welcome.

Original members of the Indigenous Higher Education Advisory Council (IHEAC) with then Education Minister, Julie Bishop, in 2006.

Most concerning though is the fact that the ATSIHEAC had carriage from implementing the Behrendt Review recommendations. This review, released in 2012, was an incredibly comprehensive document containing within it student and staff targets, plans to grow educational pathways, expansions of financial assistance programs for A&TSI students, and, most critically, a ‘whole of university approach’ to student support and education. Additionally, the report maintained that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Centres were a crucial component when it came to ensuring student success and needed to be strengthened.

Yet in practice, we have continually seen universities weaken and sometimes mainstream student centres. Student and staff loads remain at about one per cent of the total numbers at universities, and staff continually battle to get their cultural expertise recognised as important knowledges for the benefit of the education system. Without a committee with core responsibility to oversee these recommendations, there are real concerns that things will continue to slip backwards

and any aspirations to ensure universities are welcoming and collaborative places will be lost.

Universities have real responsibilities to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the holders of the oldest knowledge systems on the planet, yet need to be held accountable as practice shows our universities rarely live up to these responsibilities.

The NTEU considers this a cynical move by a government who clearly wish to not be held accountable for their actions, as well as a clear lack of commitment to closing the educational gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and the rest of Australia.

We call on the Government to reconsider this decision.

Celeste Liddle, National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Organiser

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 25

Defend our universities

No $100K degrees The NTEU is in a unique position to change the nature of the debate about the future of higher education in Australia, and we don’t intend to miss the opportunity.

The Union is planning to actively engage in the next federal election to entrench higher education funding as an issue that changes votes.

The next federal election may well determine whether or not the country will move to privatise the sector and deregulate student fees leading to $100,000 degrees and increasing the divide between the wealthy and the rest of the population.

But our opportunity arises from our past, and the unique set of political circumstances that now apply.

Despite having had their plans rejected twice by the Senate, Christopher Pyne appears determined to continue to pursue his aggressive agenda. An agenda that will: • Cut 20 per cent of funding to universities.

• Shift Government funding from public universities to private providers.

• Deregulate student fees, leading to some degrees costing more than $100,000.

Matt McGowan National Assistant Secretary

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While this has not received as much attention in the 2015 Budget as it did in 2014, even though it was included again, the Government has remained steadfast in their intent to push this agenda through.

The proposals were again incorporated into the 2015 Budget and the Minister has declared his intention to re-introduce legislation this year that will contain all these elements. It seems the only way to change the nature of the conversation is to change the Government.

Holding politicians to account It has always been difficult to get public attention to issues around university funding. The common refrain of backbench parliamentarians for years has been that while they are sympathetic, there are no votes in it. The implication being that if there are no votes in it, it would not be a priority for the political parties.

This view was reinforced by Union polling in 2013 that showed that, while people saw university funding as important, there was no urgency or sense of crisis about the situation and other issues were seen as more important.

In 2013, the NTEU took a difficult and contentious decision to campaign against the then ALP Government after its decision to take $2.3 billion from higher education to fund the Gonski school funding reforms.

While supporting the Gonski plans, the union strongly opposed the ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’ approach of shifting much needed funding out of higher education.

Campaign objectives The 2014 NTEU National Council meeting established the Union’s campaign planning objectives as follows.

Short term: To defeat the current deregulation and privatisation policy and legislation of LNP Coalition Government Medium term: To organise to defeat of the LNP Coalition Government, making higher education an election issue (noting this includes pushing an alternative government (ALP) to adopt better policies and commitments.)

Longer term: Shift the neo-liberal discourse by intervening in the public debate on the role of government.

At their April 2015 meeting, NTEU National Executive recognised that the Abbott Government will continue to pursue the reduction of funding to universities, and shifting the funding burden onto students. Therefore, the National Executive endorsed the following key objectives for the federal election campaign, which will inform the planning, focus and branding of the campaign.

Political objectives: • To defeat the LNP Coalition Government.

• To make higher education an election issue which influences voting intentions.

Policy Objectives:

As a result, the Union ran a campaign supporting a vote for the Greens and Independent Andrew Wilkie as unambiguous supporters of increased funding. No political donations were made despite press reports to the contrary. At the time, the Union was also conscious that we would soon face a hostile Coalition Government and consistency was required. The NTEU will oppose bad policy decisions regardless of who makes them.

• To ensure everyone has access to high quality higher education on an equitable basis and to prevent any further increases in student contributions to education funding.

Following the election, the Labor Party recognised the damage it had done and reversed its earlier decision, joining with the cross benches and the Greens to oppose the cuts they had introduced.

• To achieve recognition of higher education as a public good not just a private benefit.

Building on our success The Union campaign went directly to the impact of these changes on ordinary Australians, highlighting that many people would no longer be able to afford to go to university.

Since the 2014 Budget, polling and other research conducted by the NTEU and others has shown widespread community concern about any changes that will increase the cost of education for students. Depending on the poll, between 60 per cent and 70 per cent of people are opposed to the changes, and there is urgency in these views. Even a majority of Coalition voters oppose the changes.

If there was one thing to thank Christopher Pyne for, it would be for creating the environment that has seen university funding become one of the most talked about issues in the community. Unfortunately, this environment is one that starts from an assumption of a reduction of the public commitment to education, and an attempt to privatise university education.

This is an issue that people care about.

We have the opportunity to change the

• To increase government higher education funding to at least 1% of GDP, consistent with the average public commitment of other OECD countries.

• As an initial step to demand an immediate of 10% increase in base funding.

• To prevent fee deregulation.

• To prevent the subsidising of private HE providers through CSP allocation (or other means).

Organisational Objectives: • To recruit, develop, identify and engage activist members in each Branch.

• To increase awareness amongst members of the link between public funding outcomes and poor working conditions including workload intensity and job insecurity.

nature of the discussion about university funding and promote public provision education as a key responsibility of Government.

The high profile of university funding will provide us with the opportunity to talk to the community about issues faced by the sector at a time when they are listening. We must take the opportunity while it exists and press the point home.

We can change the discussion about funding, but we must change the Government to do this.

How to get involved Each NTEU State and Territory Division is working to establish campaign groups to take our campaign onto our campuses and into the community.

These groups will work to prepare the necessary groundwork required to run an effective federal election campaign.

You can help build our campaign. Find out how by visiting our campaign website:

www.no100kdegrees.org.au

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 27

ACTU Congress 2015

Education for all NTEU National President Jeannie Rea addressed the opening session of ACTU Congress 2015 in support of the ACTU ‘Build a better future’ campaign and union charter.

My university story is typical of those told at meetings and rallies across the country rejecting the Government’s plans to impose $100,000 degrees and the Americanisation and privatisation of our higher education system.

When I was invited to speak in support of our call for high quality education for all, I initially thought, that is a pretty safe and obvious demand.

Over my lifetime we have moved towards a mass system. This has changed what we teach and research at universities - not just who studies and works there. Our mission must be to democratise knowledge, and the power that comes with knowledge.

Then I reflected upon the past year, as my union with the students, other unions, professional, community and even business organisations mobilised against the Abbott Government’s plans to cut higher education funding and then force students to make up the gap by deregulating university fees.

When the Coalition Government thought they could divide us by arrogantly declaring that workers didn’t want to pay taxes for middle class kids to go to university they miscalculated, as parents do want their children, and other people’s children, to go to university. They want them to have the opportunity to get degrees, and make a good life for themselves, and to contribute back to their communities.

I was the first person in, not only my family, but my street to go to university. Only very few of us finished school. These days there is an expectation in my street, and probably yours, that the kids should finish school. Some tertiary level vocational, further or higher education qualifications are widely understood to be necessary for most decent jobs.

This means children must also get the best start from early childhood education, but still school outcomes remain fundamentally unfair. That is the point of the Gonski plan to fund school education based on need. The idea is to create a system where a student’s success at school is not jeopardised by where they live, their family background or if they have a disability.

But this rotten Government refuses to see through the Gonski reforms.

Access to and success at university must be available for all to aspire towards.

Last year’s Budget announcement to deregulate university fees shocked not just lower, but middle income households. It is already often a struggle supporting oneself or children through university, and the HECS debt is a burden. Australia already charges some the highest university fees when compared internationally. However, this has not stopped people investing in their education.

It is not surprising that Labor, the Greens and crossbench Senators have twice rejected the Government’s attempts to corrupt our system so that wealth not merit would determine what university you could attend and what course you could do. The Australian higher education system is internationally envied because whatever university you go to, in the end, it is your degree that matters. Therefore, maintaining academic standards across the system is critical.

The NTEU’s modelling following last year’s Budget (undisputed except by Education Minister Pyne) found that the cost of some degrees would triple and keep climbing towards and over $100,000. People could still be paying back their HECS debts as their children wanted to go to university.

People would give up their dreams of higher education if the cost was too daunting. Soon universities outside of the favoured few would start dropping their prices leading to a downward spiral as staff are sacked and courses and campuses abandoned.

This is the reality of higher education in the United States, a deeply unequal society.

Americanisation means quality university education for the rich and lucky, but increasingly desultory and sub-standard options for the rest. But the Abbott Government is unrepentant. Despite being voted down twice in the Senate, the Federal

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Budget released two weeks ago reiterated explicitly that their intention is still to fully deregulate fees and to cut funding of student places by 20 per cent by 1 January 2016. But there is more. While cutting funding to public universities the Government also intends to start subsidising places in private, including for-profit, providers.

We unfortunately only have to look at the disaster of public TAFE taking on the contestability model to see what this could mean. In Victoria this ‘contest’ has just meant the hollowing out of cheap and popular courses by profiteers, while draining funding from the public TAFE system to the point of collapse. We have seen the handover of public money to shonks praying upon disadvantaged people who yearn for education and opportunity, but are conned into signing up and then find themselves liable for thousands of dollars.

Australia’s pioneering TAFE system, copied around the world, is in deep crisis. The last thing we want is anything like this in higher education. Too much public investment has gone into our universities to squander it. And the TAFE system must be rescued, restored and strengthened.This is the role of government. Education is far too important to be left to the market.

If we are fair dinkum about a fair go, we have to keep challenging the very idea that as more people gain access to tertiary education, that they have to pay more than when these opportunities were only for the privileged.

The Australian education system should be able to provide quality education for everyone from early childhood through to university. This is not too much to ask. But we currently have a government who do not support this.

They want a divided, unfair society where the rich end of town and their cronies continue to prosper at the expense of the rest of us. The last thing they want are more lower income families, recent immigrants, women and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders armed with higher education challenging their power.

That is why we have to demand - The highest quality education for all.

Jeannie Rea, NTEU National President www.australianunions.org.au

ACTU Congress 2015

Build a better future The 2015 ACTU Congress, held on 26 – 28 May in Melbourne, and attended by almost 1000 union delegates from around Australia, saw the launch of the ‘Build A Better Future’ campaign which will target over 30 marginal seats across the country in a bid to end the anti-worker agenda of the Abbott Government. The campaign aims to build greater momentum than the 2007 anti-WorkChoices effort.

The campaign has six pillars: • Workers’ Rights – protecting wages, conditions including penalty rates, and campaigning for secure jobs.

• Defending Medicare – protecting Medicare, stopping new fees for visiting the doctor and properly funding hospitals.

• Highest Quality Education – restoring funding to schools, TAFE and ensuring we never have $100,000 university fees.

• Public Ownership of Public Services – proper funding to make them work, ending privatisation which has brought job cuts, higher prices and helped only the companies running them.

• A Secure Retirement – decent pensions and superannuation.

• A Fair Go For All – supporting our industries generating skilled jobs, making multinationals and the wealthy pay fair taxes.

NTEU National President, Jeannie Rea, outlined to Congress the importance of defending public universities from the radical policies favoured by the Abbott Government (see opposite).

‘People would give up their dreams of higher education if the cost was too daunting,’ Rea said. Her speech also hinted at the job cuts that some universities would likely pursue under a deregulated funding model, as rural and outer metropolitan universities struggle to compete with more prestigious institutions.

With women workers making up a larger proportion of the workforce overall, women’s trade union membership is also increasing. This has led to many women-friendly initiatives, such as paid parental leave being incorporated in the union movement’s demands of employers.

One such demand is for domestic violence leave to be enshrined in Awards. The claim, which was lodged with the Fair Work Commission on 28 October last year, would give more than 4 million workers covered by an Awards access to ten days paid domestic violence leave for permanent staff and 10 days unpaid leave for casuals. Domestic violence campaigner and Australian of the Year, Rosie Batty, added her support to the push during the women’s lunch at Congress.

ACTU Congress also passed a motion committing to an affirmative action objective of at least 50-50 representation of women for all elected positions at the ACTU, and affiliates, acknowledging the need to better reflect the representation of women employees in their industry and the proportion of female membership of their union. It also voted to support and participate in an ACTU mentoring program to support women in the union movement to reach their potential and ensure the movement continues to grow and evolve.

ACTU Secretary, Dave Oliver and President, Ged Kearney were re-elected unopposed to their positions. Michael Borowick and Scott Connolly from the TWU were elected Assistant Secretaries.

Courtney Sloane, Media & Communications Officer Join the campaign at www.australianunions.org.au/ volunteer_to_build_a_better_future

65%

% OF UNION MEMBERS % OF ALL WORKERS

60% 55%

MEN

50% WOMEN

45% 40% 35%

1991

1993

1995

1997

1999

2001

2003

2005

2007

2009

2011

2013

Proportion of women in the labour force and in trade unions, 1991-2013 NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 29

Bjørn Lomborg

What price consensus?

Photo: Bjørn Lomborg. Credit: World Travel and Tourism Council, flickr

As we look back on the fire-storm that was the Australian Consensus Centre proposal at the University of Western Australia (UWA) there are still many questions that remain unanswered.

Much has been said about this being an issue of climate change beliefs, a conflict between those who support action on climate change and so-called climate deniers. While much of the social media storm that ensued was hijacked by these two camps, and while Dr. Bjørn Lomborg’s views on the relative importance of climate change are offensive to many, (especially those researchers at UWA and elsewhere who are at the cutting edge of climate science and climate change impact and mitigation research), this was not in fact the core issue.

What was at stake in this debate was bigger than Lomborg and the Consensus Centre. It was what value we put on the reputation of our universities and staff, what value we put on ensuring that Australian taxpayers’ funds are spent on quality research, about accountability and standards, about the role of academic staff in public debate, whether staff should engage with politically sensitive issues, and ultimately, who is the university? As the NTEU WA Division put it at the time in response to the Vice-Chancellor’s statement of withdrawal:

Gabe Gooding NTEU WA Division Secretary

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‘ … NTEU WA is glad that the Vice-Chancellor has reaffirmed the right of staff to express their views and we agree that the University should be a place for open and honest sharing and discussion of ideas. However, the latter part of the

statement indicates the disconnect between the university management and the university community. The University is not the management, it is, by definition, the staff, students and alumni, and where they express a view that is contrary to that of the management they should not be made to feel that in doing so they are placing ‘the University’ in a difficult position. It is the university management that has placed itself in a difficult position.

We expected the ‘passionate emotional’ reactions from UWA staff that have apparently surprised the University management. UWA staff are committed to their institution, their career and the upholding of academic integrity. Anything less would have been an abrogation of their responsibility to their institution and their profession. What is surprising is that the University management did not also expect it.

This issue has never been about censorship or intolerance of divergent views, it has always been about propriety, integrity and standards. A more public risk assessment process, peer review, and broad academic consultation through the Academic Board may have led to a very different outcome ...’

For the Union, the key issues were accountability, transparency and process.

Questions that NTEU members were asking (most of which were either never answered or have only recently been revealed) were: 1. How was the funding granted and by what process of evaluation did the Government decide that it was appropriate to spend $4m of scarce public funding on this Centre in the absence of peer review?

2. What conditions did the Government put on the grant?

3. How much of the money was to be paid to Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Centre to license use of their claimed intellectual property?

4. What was the decision making process at UWA and how were the Senate and Academic Board involved, if at all?

We know that the price that the Federal Government (and perhaps more accurately the Prime Minister’s Office) was prepared to pay for this exercise was $4m.

What we don’t know is how this figure was arrived at. Who decided on $4m? Was it what Lomborg asked for, was it offered by the Government, or was it negotiated by UWA? Apparently the price that UWA was prepared to pay was the risk of significant reputational damage. When the announcement was initially made it was a low-key addition to the University’s media statements page which has no mention of the value or source of the funding . On most occasions when UWA (or indeed any

of our universities) secures a $4 million grant it makes front page news on their website. The fact that it did not can lead to the conclusion that the University was aware of the controversial nature of the project, had decided to wear the potential cost of controversy, and may have been seeking to limit exposure to that risk.

At the time that the Minister’s Office was announcing the project, and subsequently in the Minister’s own statements, the claim was made that the Government had contributed $4m and that matching contributions would also be made. The clear implication was that the matching funding would come from UWA. It was only after the controversy gained momentum that UWA publicly announced that its contribution would be ‘in kind’.

While this removed the question of committing cash to the project, there is an opportunity cost to the University committing resources to this project that will then be unavailable for peer reviewed projects. This was disturbing to existing staff struggling to support their research with dwindling resources and high ‘infrastructure’ charges being levied by the University on their grants.

We now know that the project was established to provide commissioned research for the Federal Government, but at the time the Vice-Chancellor was stating to staff forums that once the money came to UWA it would entirely be UWA’s decision what to spend it on. These conflicting views on the nature of the arrangements were not reassuring to UWA staff and students who were expressing concern at the potential risk to their University’s independence in accepting funding for what was clearly a controversial and politically motivated project.

In the end we know that sustained pressure from staff, students and alumni, and perhaps more importantly the threat to the University’s collection of donations and bequests was too high a price for UWA to pay (some press reports stated that $3m in donations was at risk as high value contributors questioned the merits of the decision ).

Apparently UWA staff, students and alumni valued the University’s reputation more than the management did, for they mounted a vigorous defence of their institution. They did not deny Bjorn Lomborg the right to hold his views or to publicly debate them, what they expressed concern about was that UWA would lend the considerable weight of its reputation to Lomborg by appointing him to the staff of the University (noting that it was only after considerable protest that the University announced that Lomborg was to be appointed to an adjunct position).

Predictably the Government and conservative commentariat accused those who opposed the appointment of Bjorn Lomborg at UWA of stifling debate and engaging in academic censorship . This

demonstrates a fundamental misreading of the debate and a complete misunderstanding of the nature of free speech and academic freedom. Disturbingly the Vice-Chancellor seemed to buy into this argument in his email to staff announcing withdrawal from the project, when he claimed that the open expression of ideas by staff had put the University in ‘a difficult position’ .

So when academic staff at UWA were objecting to their institution giving Lomborg a platform and lending him credibility were they engaging in academic censorship or were they rightly defending the reputation of their institution and their profession?

Bjorn Lomborg had previously delivered a lecture at UWA, by all accounts it was interesting, entertaining, and stimulated discussion. There was no protest. The UWA community was supportive of his freedom to speak about his views.

Academic freedom gives an academic the right to study, research, teach and engage in debate on topics of their choosing, including matters of institutional governance and relevant public policy without interference and censorship. What it does not guarantee is the right to engage in highly selective use of data and failure to acknowledge data that does not support their view, the complaints that are most frequently made about Lomborg’s work.

Most importantly what academic freedom does not guarantee is the right to be funded or published irrespective of merit or quality of work.

As Will Grant put it in the Guardian ‘Great idea? Hurrah, you get published in Nature.

Crap idea? You’ll be rejected by the journals that have a reputation for quality.

You don’t get to have your ideas heard just because you really like them, because you say them over and over again, or because you’ve got powerful friends in the government.’

At its heart this was an arrangement between the Prime Minister’s Office, a university and Bjorn Lomborg to pay $4m for his views to be heard.

UWA has paid a price for being involved in this partnership. But for some at UWA there has been much gained, most notably an energised university community that now knows that if it works together it can demand and win a better standard of decision making. It has also reminded all at UWA that there is a collective responsibility for protecting the integrity of their institution and their profession that they can and should exercise.

At the time of writing the Government was looking for another Australian university to house the Australian Consensus Centre.

It remains to be seen whether any other university will be prepared to risk the price.

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Ivory Tower documentary

A cautionary tale of deregulation

Photo: Still from Ivory Tower documentary. Credit: Andrew Rossi/CNN Films

Against a backdrop of the Abbott Government planning widespread changes to the way Australian higher education is funded, the NTEU has been screening Ivory Tower around the country – a film exploring the changes in America’s university system that have led to a more marketised model of education.

The documentary, created by filmmaker Andrew Rossi, explores modern higher education in an era marked by economic challenges and globalisation. Moving from Ivy League institutions, through to state universities, private colleges and the growing movement of “hackademic” startups in the Silicon Valley, the documentary asks the fundamental question, is college worth it?

NTEU analysis of the Abbott Government’s university deregulation policy showed that the cost of some degrees would grow to over $100,000, effectively pricing many out of a university education. We argued that these policies would ‘Americanise’ Australia’s higher education system by creating a two-tier university system where those from disadvantaged background, such as first-in-family students, students from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds, women and mature age students, would be unable to afford an education at Australia’s most prestigious institutions.

Courtney Sloane Media & Communications Officer M@NTEUNational

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This Americanised system is fully explored in Ivory Tower. Rossi interviews a range of A sobering look at how academics, students, exeducation became a perts and administrators to tease out the ways commodity for sale. higher education has Susan dramatically changed over recent decades to

Ivory Tower didn’t just tell us about debt. We know that’s a problem. I learned about other issues to do with the privatisation of universities; the part about the limitations of MOOCs was particularly interesting. There are many similar things already going on in Australian universities.

It really brings home that neoliberalism is a worldwide project and needs to be stopped.

Mali, student

become a system that saddles students with enormous debts and leaves them illequipped to repay this in a shrinking jobs market. Student loan debt now exceeds mortgage debt in the US, and at US$1 trillion, is second only to credit card debt in magnitude.

Rossi provides excellent graphs showing the explosion of spending on administration alongside the small growth in spending for teaching and research, a pattern already mirrored in Australia. Like Australia, executive salaries have grown substantially, while more and more staff are pushed into increasingly casualised work.

One of the core themes of the documentary is the changing role of the university away from institutions of knowledge generation and preservation, and more towards ‘experience factories’, where students pay for state-of-the-art recreational facilities and accommodation in order to gain the American college experience.

A disturbing warts and all expose of the corporate influences that are driving American university students into ever deepening debt Peter

The parallel statistics on completion rates are alarming with 68% of students at one such university failing to complete their course within four years. It’s a picture of students accumulating eye watering debts for courses that, due to administrative decisions, have lost a commitment to academic rigour and student support. It is the worst of both worlds – students accumulate debt they will struggle to repay, and the qualification they have studied toward is uncompleted or uncompetitive.

These institutions are contrasted against the ‘gold standard’ of Harvard. The documentary tracks the story of one student from a disadvantaged background who

Debt and defraud: another glimpse of the US higher ed crisis It is three years now since US student debt hit $1trillion. It is now $1.3 trillion and unpaid student loans are a burden on more than 40 million American families. Students are now threatening to ‘strike’ and refuse to pay back their student loans.

The education unions have joined a broad coalition, which includes such diverse organisations as Student Veterans of America, National Young Farmers Coalition, Jobs with Justice and the Centre for American Progress. They are demanding that elected officials take action to address college affordability within the next six months and are seeking signatures to a pledge ‘to act before debt strikes back’. The threat is that otherwise students may start refusing to pay back their loans.

It has already started. One hundred students at the for-profit Corinthian College have launched a debt strike refusing to pay back their student loans claiming their education was sub-standard and they have no job prospects. They have requested loan forgiveness from the Department of Education using a provision triggered when a college defrauds students. The Department has fined the College, but there is no decision yet on the student loans. Corinthian has closed down.

The president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), which also covers academic faculty and professional staff said, ‘Students shouldn’t face a double whammy of sky rocketing higher education costs and high interest rates that will lock them into debt even longer.’ The AFT reports that they have many members who are struggling and living from week to week on their teaching salaries because of long-term debt repayments. Stopping payment is not an option, as some states have laws that can strip teachers, health professionals and others of their practising licences if they default on student debt.

The pledge against student debt calls on the Government to: • Restore public funding to higher education and pass policies such as free community colleges so college is accessible to all.

• Provide support to borrowers with policies such as student loan refinancing.

• Stop Wall Street’s privatisation of higher education by holding those who profit off the higher education system accountable.

Sources: AFT on Campus, Summer 2015, www.aft.org/column/preying-promise-higher-education was able to secure one of the very rare support scholarships for students from poorer backgrounds. With university resources dedicated to supporting students through their course, this student was able to receive the assistance he needed to successfully complete the course – an outcome perhaps not achievable at other universities where student support services have been cut, moved online or outsourced.

High graduate unemployment and crippling debt has left many students in the US questioning whether college is even worth it. The lure of Silicon Valley has been convincing for some high school leavers in the film who pursue technical training in start-up co-ops. One such program is that of billionaire Peter Thiel, which offers students $100,000 to skip college altogether and instead use their skills to pursue a tech start-up.

Despite the gloomy picture painted by the film, the action taken by students at New York’s Cooper Union will no doubt enliven the audience. Despite its establishment as a proudly free college, Cooper Union’s administration in 2011 took the decision to begin charging its students tuition.

The subsequent protest and occupation

A truly thought provoking movie that should get the alarm bells ringing in Australian higher education.

Rob

by students highlights some of the more controversial aspects of the college’s management, including its President’s handsome remuneration.

Ivory Tower provides an excellent overview of the challenges facing American higher education and a great explanation for those seeking to know more about the problems of corporatised education. It paints a worrying picture of the sorts of things we can expect if our own government moves more towards a marketised higher education system, where profit is maximised at the expense of quality and equity.

Screenings are being held by the NTEU around Australia until August. www.nteu.org.au/ivorytower

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Free trade & the high cost to democracy

Goddess of Democracy, University of British Columbia, Canada. Credit: Hendrik Kueck, flickr

‘If the prophets of the demise of the nation-state are right, we should be thinking about making international decision making itself more democratic, open and transparent.’

– Sir Anthony Mason, former High Court Chief Justice

Mason made this statement on 4 March 1998 to the Melbourne Convention at the height of international debates about the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). In that speech, he extensively critiqued Australia’s treaty-making process, saying: ‘But at the end of the day it is possible that the terms will be set in concrete leaving Australia with very limited choices to make, the effective choices having been made by Treasury and Federal Cabinet during the course of the unpublished negotiations.’

The MAI was another agreement negotiated in secret; another plurilateral agreement that was the worst the world had ‘never seen’. The Agreement was comprehensive in breadth. It also contained clauses that would enable corporations to sue nation-states where new investment conditions resulted in loss of profit, as well as providing access to secret arbitration tribunals as the arena for the recovery of costs. Sound familiar?

Jen Tsen Kwok Policy & Research Officer

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In 1998, the anti-globalisation protesters won. By October, the host nation France announced it could not support the Agreement, effectively ending negotiations. In a little over a year, anti-globalisation groups would coalesce in the ‘Battle for Seattle’ bringing together tens of thousands of civil society protestors, trade unionists and environmentalists. The

victory should have been the end of this story. But if anti-globalisation activists won then, why does the MAI sound so similar to some of the bilateral and plurilateral agreements being negotiated now and including the Australian Government?

Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)

Based upon what is publicly available, it appears there are few aspects of our everyday lives that would remain unaffected. It would shape regulatory standards that have long been the province of government, from the plain packaging of tobacco; to the affordability of medicines with the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS); to the operation of mandatory food labelling laws; and to the ability for state governments to set moratoriums on Coal Seam Gas (CSG) projects.

At the moment, the US is throwing all of its diplomatic might into resolving the TPP, rushing to get the deal done before the presidential primaries begin. President Obama has recently lost one skirmish in the US Congress to ‘Fast Track’ the final agreement. But through the US’s Industry Trade Groups, 600 U.S. based multinationals remain equipped to advocate trade liberalisation in the Asia-Pacific region, and their political influence will continue unabated throughout 2015 and even if in the off-chance the TPP is derailed.

Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) In comparison, the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) involves 24 nation-states from around the world, covering 70 per cent of the global services economy. It aims to liberalise trade in services well beyond any existing or proposed trade agreement.

Although there appears to be no ISDS mechanism under negotiation, the Agreement will make it impossible for future governments to restore public services to public control, and also put public healthcare, broadcasting, water, transport and other services at risk.

The NTEU is concerned, along with the global federation of education unions Educational International, about the Australian Government’s position on privatising public education, and whether it is prepared to negotiate on ‘liberalising’ private education. Considering Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s enthusiastic response to the P-TECH private-public school model dur-

Credit: www.nationofchange.org

While the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) is not the only trade deal in town, it remains the most immediate, the most comprehensive, and likely the most dangerous.

Under the wing of the United States, the Agreement is considered ‘ambitious’ and the economic architecture necessary for the United States and US based multinational companies to dominate the Asia-Pacific region in the 21st century. ing his New York trip last June, the threat is that TISA may force future Australian governments into extending public subsidies to private education providers, particularly at secondary and post-secondary levels.

The threat is particularly ominous considering that the Australian Senate has now twice rejected the deregulation legislation that included extending Commonwealth Supported Places (CSPs) to the private sector. The salient issue is that we do not know what they are discussing in secret.

Behind closed doors The Australian Government is currently negotiating other plurilateral agreements abbreviated as RCEP and PACER Plus. They have also settled a litany of bilateral FTAs (Korea, Japan, currently with China, and potentially India) which has demonstrated not only an enthusiasm for narrow trade outcomes, but a willingness to bind future Australian generations to the litigious appetite of foreign corporations, with ISDS clauses included or triggered in all agreements.

Concern within the union movement reached a new height at ACTU Congress in May, where trade motions that opposed the TPP, TISA, and the presence of ISDS in any future Australian trade agreement found unanimous support across the floor.

Nonetheless, the Groundhog Day scenario we now find ourselves in, where our government is considering ambitious, comprehensive trade agreements like the TPP that empower corporations to sue governments and are again being negotiated in secret. This is because the laws around public transparency and parliamentary oversight never changed.

The result is that as a nation we are in a poorer bargaining position than our trade partners. Our parliamentarians let alone the wider public do not have access to draft texts (unlike the US House of Congress or the European Parliament with the TTIP). Our parliamentary committee has merely 20 days to review treaty agreements after they are signed. National

Interest Analyses (NIA) are composed by DFAT, not by an independent authority.

Parliament cannot review or vote on treaties, just the implementing legislation.

How is the Commonwealth Government meant to arrive at optimal trade outcomes, when civil society, the media and independent experts are brushed away through secretive and undemocratic processes? How do we even know that the national interest is being served? As is evident in the TPP and TISA, Australian treaty making lags behind the role trade agreements now play as a source of domestic, non-parliamentary law making.

Improving the Commonwealth treaty making process These and other concerns were brought before the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade (FADT) Committee by the NTEU in May this year, where we presented the trade union case, with ACTU President Ged Kearney and AMWU President Andrew Dettmer.

The trade union movement argued that the external affairs power does not constitutionally preclude both houses of Parliament from first voting on the text of a treaty, a view agreed by constitutional experts. We also outlined that this reform must be enshrined in law, a recommendation previously made in the Senate Committee report Voting on Trade back in 2003, but declined by the Australian Government at the time.

Legislative improvement on the treaty making process is the most unequivocal means Australian democracy has to ensure we are not led down the same path in the future. In the meantime, there is an immense need for engagement and mobilisation about the risks of the TPP, and in the least, the right of Australians to see the Agreement text, before we and future generations of Australians are signed up to it.

Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network (AFTINET) www.aftinet.org.au

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Bluestocking Week

Spin a yarn, start a fire In the opening scenes of the new film of Vera Brittain’s first world war memoir, Testament of Youth, Vera’s father tells her he won’t support her to go to Oxford as she will become a bluestocking.

Instead she should marry, or stay home and look after her parents.

Brittain a clever young woman, smarter than her brother who has the path smoothed to university when he would rather play the piano, epitomised those first generations of women who insisted on gaining an education. To be named a bluestocking was meant to conjure up images of shrunken, sexless, bitter women who preferred books (and the company of women) to husbands and children. Not surprisingly the Bluestockings grabbed the term as naming just what they were – clever, serious and scholarly women often also driven to political and social reform.

Their opponents not wrongly considered them dangerous.

The term bluestocking was first applied to salons of wealthy women back in the late 1700s, who got together to read and have intellectual conversations, which were also sometimes heretical. Some of the first wave feminists came out of these groups and started the campaigns for education, professional jobs and universal suffrage. A few even joined and initiated campaigns against slavery and for workers’ rights.

Through reinstituting Bluestocking Week four years ago, NTEU with the National Union of Students are demanding some physical space and time to reflect upon what women have achieved in higher education and to gather strength for those battles we still have to fight. But let’s not ignore the radical tradition and the transgressive bluestockings that have come before us.

One of the features of women university pioneers in Australia, as elsewhere, is that

so many speak of their intention to use their learning and qualifications to try and make the world a better place. There is a yearning to learn to make change, not just for personal advantage. We should be encouraging this thinking amongst current women students and staff.

that holding onto one’s job is critical for women trying to get out of domestic violence situations surely was convincing, but many universities refused to take it on board. However, retrospectively at least one woman vice-chancellor has congratulated the union for making this an issue.

We have fought so hard for gender equity in education access and in employment and yet the reality remains not only gender discriminatory, but also race and class weighted. The point is that we always need not just a gender lens but a wide intersectional lens – and maybe, keeping with the analogy, a fish eye lens to focus us upon where a problem may be concentrated.

Universities are getting bigger and bigger and the proportion of women students increasing, but they getting narrower at the same time. Bluestocking Week is an opportunity to be questioning what is being taught and researched, and in whose interests.

Safety on campus from the provision of lighting and shuttle buses to making sexist behaviour and sexual violence legally and socially untenable are part of making real women’s equal participation in campus life. Yet universities hide behind neat policy frameworks, while the veiled student minding her own business in a lecture feels the man next to her fiddling with her clothes and quietly insulting her; the transgender student has to explain the disparity between names on forms in front of a crowd of strangers; the feminist lecturer has fight to hold her position because of her controversial views while others are never even questioned on theirs; the young woman manager has to put up with grumpy older men mumbling about how she shouldn’t be telling them what to do even though she is the supervisor; and whilst in no way condoning vice-chancellors outrageous salaries there is still a gender pay gap. I could go on, but these are just a few examples that have come to my attention whilst writing this article.

Good policies are just that, good policies.

What is done with them is what matters.

So we in the university system do have to demand that the universities are better, and we will continue to campaign to make universities take a lead. It is somewhat ironic that now managements take credit for decent parental leave, yet the union had to fight for these provisions. In this last bargaining round, we put on the table claims for paid leave to deal with matters around ‘domestic/family’ violence. The NTEU, along with a number of other unions, forced this onto the agenda naming it as an industrial matter. The stark reality

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Women will still, despite being brilliant at university, earn less over a life time than their male peers and end up poorer in old age. If they have children they will still be principally responsible for their care. A woman still cannot walk down the street without fear, in her own neighbourhood and far too often in her home. We still have a prime minister that thinks that global warming matters to women because we do the ironing (see Terri MacDonald’s report, p.22) and a tax on tampons. The Coalition Government is still pursuing an agenda of funding cuts and deregulation, which will price many women out of university. There are big and small things, but far too many that would have been recognisable to Vera Brittain a century ago.

Every NTEU Branch is organising activities on campus. Many of these will be in conjunction with NUS and CAPA and other campus women’s groups. Contact your local Branch for details and visit the Bluestocking website to see what is going on around the country – and get some more ideas.

One thing we are encouraging is to tell your stories and give voice to other women’s experiences. An important tenet of feminist education and research is that we value and validate what women say about their lives and how they interpret what has happened to them and those around them. Tell a yarn and hope it fires others up to act!

Jeannie Rea, National President www.nteu.org.au/bluestockingweek

Storylines of women in higher education and research

Authorised by G McCulloch, National Tertiary Education Union, 120 Clarendon St, South Melbourne VIC 3205

NTEU Women’s Conference 2015 The biennial NTEU national women’s conference is being held in Melbourne Friday 7 and Saturday 8 August.

Delegates, participating from all Branches, will have the opportunity to discuss with guest speakers, and then together

in workshops, the salient issues facing women in higher education today.

This year’s conference theme is Women in Higher Education. Now. While women are now the majority of staff and students in our universities, women continue to face petty and serious sex and gender based discrimination. We have made tremendous gains in participation across disciplines and occupations and yet both women students and staff still report feeling they are a minority with limited voice and agency. What do we want now? What changes do we need

to make? How can we be more effective? Our final plenary session will be a Q&A on the topic of ‘If we ran the university.’

Organised by the national Women’s Action Committee, which has an academic and general staff representative from each Division as well as a nominee from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy Committee, the conference will also launch the 2015 Bluestocking Week on Friday evening. nteu.org.au/women/conference/2015

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Performance management in universities

A scourge or an opportunity?

This article has arisen out of a growing concern for staff in the modern university. Despite loads of papers criticising the change, universities are now in the control of a managerial class, as predicted by Lyotard (1979). In fact Ryan (2012, p.4) goes so far as to say we are experiencing (or suffering?) a ‘fifth wave’ of managerialism which is clearly here to stay. So, the war is over! Or is it?

Photo credit: bilderpool, 123rf.com

As also predicted by Lyotard (1979), in conjunction with the rush for efficiency and cost cutting is the desire is to get more with less and to drive performance. Importing practices common in the corporate world was seen as the way to go, but these tend to be based on an assumption of extrinsic motivation, that is, that staff will only perform if given the right incentives. A carrot and stick approach. That’s how business operates: success means more sales and more revenue. This fits with the logic of competition for business in the demand driven university system and uncapped student places.

John Kenny Faculty of Education University of Tasmania

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What this thinking fails to recognise is the characteristics of work in the higher education sector is largely driven by higher ideals and staff are largely intrinsically motivated. I have many colleagues for whom the good of the students or their research is often placed above their own welfare.

Granted we are seeing more and more the rise of the entrepreneurial academic, looking for a meteoric rise as universities shop around for individuals to raise their score on the international rankings.

To facilitate this process, what the fifth wave of managerialism is bringing with it is a flood of academic performance measures.

While it has been around for a long time, if the trend at my university is any indication, university managers are going to ‘beef up’ their performance management (PM) processes to drive even greater performance and justify changing their staffing profiles.

Two years ago the University of Tasmania (UTAS) produced a 60 page document linked to the strategic plan, which overhauled the performance management process to include benign sounding ‘career conversations’ for all staff. For academics, this was accompanied by a document called The UTAS Academic which outlined performance expectations for academic staff, by academic level and discipline to be met over a three year period. Initially it detailed ‘minimum expectations’ in research, with expectations in teaching and com-

munity engagement (both internal and external) added over the next two years.

Much as we may not like it, in a managerial university, PM is inevitable. But arguing against PM process is like arguing against such notions as ‘quality’. Academics likely to be accused of not wanting to be accountable. So the question we have to face up to as a union is how do we deal with this situation, which has largely until now been the purview of managers? What is the actual state of performance management in our universities?

In 2014 a survey of 22 universities, the evidence shows that our universities have not done very well. The results show that 13 (nearly 60 per cent) set-up a process with a subjective a rating scale for academic performance in research in which no minimum performance criteria were outlined. A further seven universities had a performance rating scale for academic performance with some degree of transparent minimum performance criteria. In none of these 19 universities (91 per cent of those surveyed) was there any definitive link between research output expectations for individual academics and the amount of time actually devoted to their research in their allocated workload.

It is not all bad. In a survey of academic staff at UTAS in 2013, it was clear that many felt some transparent research expectations were a good thing. At least, they said, they would know where they stood and what to aim for. This was seen as a far better situation than the previous nebulous process where the managers could basically ‘set the bar’ wherever they wanted with impunity.

The rider was though, that 97 per cent of respondents thought any such process must be clearly linked to a transparent and fair workload allocation process. The outcomes, once set, must be adjusted proportionately to research workload. This is what we worked towards in our Agreement.

If we accept that the university managers hold most of the aces: they can dole out study leave, promotion, and other forms of largess to entice compliance. We want to avoid the rapidly approaching situation that Spicer (2015) describes where ‘universities will cease to be knowledge creators and instead become metric maximisers.’

Do academic staff have to accept a subservient state as ‘Zombies’ (Ryan, 2010).

Are we totally powerless in this space, or is there another way?

In my view, since PM is here to stay and its growth is inevitable, we have only one choice and that is to be strategic and use what industrial levers we have to make sure that we get into the debate and shape the PM systems so they are fair and work in this sector from the perspective of academics and managers. This involves several things: • Empowering staff with mechanisms to control their workload.

• Ensuring minimum expectations that are reasonable within a given workload.

• Insisting that the process is transparent.

• Ensuring the academic voice is part of the design of the process.

Only with all of these factors in place can we be confident that what is implemented will account for the inherently intrinsically motivated academic at the heart of the university, where staff greatly value their professionalism, autonomy and the feeling they are doing worthwhile work above much else. In fact, on this last point, Daniel Pink (2010) argues it may well be counter-productive to design a PM system based on any other assumptions.

To emphasise the claim that PM systems are set to grow in sophistication and delineation, the Tasmanian experience is already influencing others. Recently, Adelaide and Flinders have also developed minimum research expectations for their academic staff.

Thus we need to consider what the term ‘minimum expectations’ means in this context. Minimum levels of performance should, by definition, be achievable by a competent practitioner in the course of their normal employment AND within the control of the academic and this has several implications.

Firstly, they cannot therefore be set on the assumption of a 60 hour week. If as occurred at our university, they were determined by a benchmarking process, then clearly the danger is this will entrench overwork into the system.

Secondly, while universities going down this path are currently stipulating winning competitive grant income and research completions as components of the minimum expectations, it must be recognised that these expectations, while desirable, are not suitable as minimum expectations as they are beyond the control of the individual academic. They may be more appropriate as targets at a school or department level.

There are ways to alleviate some of these problems. At UTAS, for example, staff can substitute publications for other activities not completed. A tougher, but still reasonable argument is that, while it is reasonable to expect an academic to apply for grants and be open to supervision, achievement of these outcomes is more appropriately categorised as aspirational performance expectations.

Finally, there should be comparability and consistency about what is fair and reasonable at each level and discipline. The survey uncovered a lot of variation: • Some institutions award points associated with research activities.

• Some award the dollar value of a grant to all investigators, some only partial amounts.

• In some cases, all authors on a multiple authored paper get credit for the publication, in others credit is apportioned across all authors.

• Some institutions award bonus points for publication in higher quality journals.

• Performance cycles vary from one to five years.

So where does this leave us? The concept of minimum expectations is central to any industrial way through this minefield.

While these might not be sufficient to earn a promotion, meeting minimum expectations should be recognised as an acceptable performance across the industry and make your job safe. They would provide transparent performance standards for all and contextual meaning to higher aspirational levels of performance. Maybe this is what the Minimum Standards for Academic Levels (MSALs) were originally meant to achieve?

The re-design of the PM process for academic staff is underway, whether we like it or not. Our voice must be heard. To be carefully and thoughtfully designed to be fair to all, this process must involve the voice of the profession.

At the time of writing most universities are a long way from the level of development in the design of their PM processes discussed here. UTAS began the process three years ago, but others are starting to move in this direction too. In the survey, only three had a PM process that included a rating scale for academic performance in which objective, transparent minimum performance criteria were provided or well developed, but only one of these (UTAS) had a direct connection to workload allocation. Since then, as already mentioned, Adelaide and Flinders have moved in the same direction.

Most universities are all over the place in this regard. Some have academic work expectations based on the MSALs. This state of under-development for PM means the NTEU has an opportunity (and an obligation) to step in and shape the development of fair and reasonable PM processes so that we get the best deal we can for our members. If we stay silent, we will get what we do not deserve.

References Lyotard, J-F. (1979). The Postmodern Condition.

Manchester University Press, 1984. http://www. marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/ works/fr/lyotard.htm Pink, Daniel (2010), Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us. Canongate Books.

Ryan, S. (2012). ‘Academic Zombies: a failure of resistance or a means of survival’. Australian Universities’ Review, 54(2), 3-11.

Spicer, A. (2015) The Conversation. http:// theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-an-hindex-and-how-is-it-calculated-41162 John Kenny will be one of the speakers at the next NTEU Expert Seminar on 22 Sept 2015: ‘Not waving, drowning: Academic workload and autonomy in Australian universities will look at the problems and possibilities of fairly regulating academic workloads.’ www.nteu.org.au/seminars

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 39

Universities and fossil fuel divestment

Photo: National Day of Campus Divestment Action, Melbourne, April 2015. Credit: 350.org, flickr

Leading the biggest debate of our time?

Just a few years ago, the idea of universities taking a principled stance on fossil fuel investments seemed like a big deal. Soon it may be a bigger deal when they do not.

Consider their efforts to secure a reputation for leading the big debates, it’s only fitting universities should want to lead on the biggest debate of our time. As community expectations rise and the global debate moves on, Australia’s sector risks falling behind.

Starting out in 2011 as a few scattered campus campaigns, students and staff are now calling for leadership on hundreds of campuses and a growing list of commitments. A 2013 Oxford study found fossil fuel divestment was already the fastest growing movement of its type in history.

Now 33 universities have made that choice, including some of the most prestigious. In 2014 Stanford dumped coal.

This year Oxford and Edinburgh publicly excluded thermal coal and tar sands oil.

Sweden’s Lund University is divesting all fossil fuels. By the time you read this, MIT may have joined them.

These forward thinking universities join hundreds more, including the World Council of Churches, the British Medical Association, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and The Guardian. Norway’s parliament recently directed its $900 billion sovereign wealth fund – wealth derived from oil – to divest from coal companies which it deemed ‘unethical’ investments.

Tom Swann The Australia Institute M@TOM_SWANN

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In Australia too there are similar decisions, from religious groups, foundations, super funds and the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. But despite the efforts of students and staff, Australia’s universities remain unenthusiastic. Only two universities have made modest announcements.

Following one of the world’s longest running campaigns, ANU last year screened out two fossil fuel companies and five oth-

er miners deemed ‘socially irresponsible’ (it held on to major oil and coal producers).

USYD later said it will cut carbon in its portfolio by 20% over three years.

Others decline to go even this far. University of Adelaide, UNSW and University of Canberra all said ‘no’. So did Melbourne University, at first. Now Melbourne plans for a ‘Charter of Sustainability’, leaving space for ethical investing. Others are considering their options, including UTS and University of Tasmania.

Those realigning portfolios with values are not just leading ‘from the bottom up’. They are focusing debates in finance about risks to fossil fuel investors.

A FTSE managing director called it ‘one of the fastest-moving debates I think I’ve seen in my 30 years in markets.’ HSBC recently argued on financial terms that divestment is a serious option. Bloomberg and Forbes both ran headlines in recent weeks flatly asserting that fossil fuel investors will lose money.

Why wouldn’t our university leaders want to lead these debates? Is it fear of backlash?

Certainly, the mining lobby and mates delivered a month of backlash to the ANU’s small divestment decision. The Australian Financial Review issued 53 stories, including 12 front pages. The Prime Minister, Treasurer and four Cabinet Ministers weighed in. The ridiculous over-reaction backfired.

It put divestment up in lights, made the decision much bigger than it really was and triggered an outpouring of support – including from the local Branch of the NTEU. USYD appears to have learnt from the episode. Their announcement focused on carbon rather than companies. But the real lesson is deeper. People are hungry for leadership. If universities take a principled position, and defend it, they will find broad public support.

Students and staff have long been saying this, running petitions, open letters, student referenda resulting in a resounding majority voting ‘yes’. But critics belittle the campaigns as sheltered idealism driven by a minority.

It turns out that divestment is what most people expect – according to a new report from The Australia Institute, Leading By Degrees, outlining the first national polling on the topic. Four in 5 people agree universities should invest ethically, while three in 5 agree that this means avoiding fossil fuels, with only one in 5 disagreeing.

Agreement is higher with younger people and those who accept the climate science.

What’s more, most alumni said that they would be more likely to donate if their university divested – a net increase of 1 in 10 being much more likely. Two in 5 even said that university decisions would make them more likely to switch superannuation funds to avoid fossil fuels.

To some within the university leadership, divestment may seem controversial. They

should realise it’s what most of the public believe universities should be doing.

Indeed, university leaders should be thinking deeply on what it means to lead a university at this point in history, and decide how they will lead.

University research has issued decades of increasingly dire warnings. Current trajectories mean students will see serious disruption within the careers for which they are studying.

The energy transformation is well under way, again driven by university expertise.

But it needs turbo-charging. This is no merely technical problem.

Doing anything serious about climate means keeping most fuel reserves – assets booked for extraction – unburnt and in the ground. So says the World Bank, the OECD, the International Energy Agency, the Bank of England, most major financial analysts... even the US President.

Industry could stop resisting and aid that transition. Fossil-fuel companies could diversify into cleaner energy or prepare to return what would be capital expenditure to shareholders. Yet they continue to lobby for the status quo and pour hundreds of billions every year into finding and developing new reserves.

Despairing, an ex-chairman of Shell recently said that divestment is now a ‘rational’ response. Of course, that’s what the campus advocates have been saying.

The most common objection is that universities don’t do politics. Harvard rejected divestment because it ‘would appear to position the University as a political actor rather than an academic institution’. UNSW cited this when rejecting divestment.

Yet the premise is absurd. Any decision is political, even if it endorses the status quo.

As economist Jeffrey Sachs argues, the ‘academic’ or merely technical view of university is ‘morally wrong’ and ‘corrosive’. We should embrace a ‘moral university’ that fosters debate and leadership, including on fossil fuels. As the polling shows, most people agree.

Others doubt the divestment debate is worth it. The real game is making polluters pay, cutting perverse subsidies and bringing down the cost of clean energy. But this is a category error. An investment policy is not an attempt at public policy. It’s an investment in conditions for policy.

Of course divestment is symbolic. If you sell shares, someone else buys them, with no impact on emissions. But symbols can be immensely powerful. Universities, of all institutions, should find this obvious.

As the 2013 Oxford study found, divestment movements have a track record of mitigating damaging activities. In particular, they build political support for regulation, increasing financial risk. Swiss banking giant UBS agrees this makes divestment potentially transformative:

Many of those engaged in the debate are the consumers, voters and leaders of the next several decades. In our view, this single fact carries more weight than any other data point on the planet for this issue: time, youthful energy and stamina are on the side of the fossil fuel divestment campaign.

But the best evidence is the reaction from industry and its supporters. The ANU’s reaction will forever serve as proof of the strategy’s potential.

If not divestment, then what? Universities can invest in cutting emissions and energy use, mainstream climate into curricula, or prioritise energy and climate research.

These are all important contributions. But they do not abrogate the need for investment leadership.

Universities hiding behind ‘fiduciary duty’ must show they are actually fulfilling their duty on climate risks. Divestment is one among a range of approaches. But even on these terms we see little leadership.

The Asset Owner Disclosure Project, ranking global funds on climate risk management, found universities are possibly the worst class of investors when it comes to climate risks.

Reluctant universities often say they want to ‘work with industry’, engaging as shareholders. Typically left without content.

That is simply evasion.

As Sachs notes, universities could set up clear benchmarks, principles for a ‘responsible fossil fuel company’ consistent with global climate goals. Companies that fail for too long would face divestment. Unfortunately, this path is still untaken.

On the biggest issue of our time, universities can be a moral compass for society.

As the storms gather, it matters which way they are pointing.

How they rise to this challenge is ultimately up to students and staff, in the campus ‘contest of ideas’. University leaders should take them seriously. The Australian’s Higher Education Supplement warns: look overseas and all the evidence points to the fact that this movement is here for a long haul – and they are not going to be intimidated by the status quo... This mob reckon they are on the right side of history.

Join university staff calling for university leadership on fossil fuels: www.tai.org.au/unilead Leading By Degrees and earlier research Climate Proofing Your Investments are available online www.tai.org.au Superannuation with low or no exposure to fossil fuels include Australian Ethical, FutureSuper, or fund options with UniSuper.

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 41

UK election

Cameron clutches surprise second term

Photo: UK Prime Minister David Cameron. Credit: European Council, flickr

The Conservative Party remaining in government after this year’s general election may not have been a surprise to some, but it’s fair to say that the scale of the victory caught many people, pundits, pollsters – and perhaps even the Prime Minister – unawares.

Up until election night most were expecting a close result followed by days, possibly weeks, of political wrangling to establish what form the new government would take, with talk of minority governments or newly created coalitions.

Polls throughout the campaign showed Labour and the Conservatives almost neck and neck, but when the official exit poll was released it predicted stronger than expected support for the Tories and near wipe-out for their coalition government partners, the Liberal Democrats.

Whilst the final vote share of the Conservatives and Labour Party was fairly close (36.9 per cent and 30.4 per cent respectively), due to the UK’s first past the post electoral system, this saw Labour end the campaign on 232 seats (26 losses) and the Conservatives on nearly 100 more with 331 (24 gains) and a clear, albeit small, 12 seat majority, giving them a mandate to govern alone.

Will Pickering Public Affairs and Press Officer UCU M@ucu

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It is rare for governing parties to increase their vote at a general election (Lord Palmerston in 1857 was the last incumbent to do this). David Cameron’s Conservative led government has made painful cuts, promised more to come and yet the electorate has handed the Prime Minister a majority government, extra seats and a result which led to the resignation of the two main opposition leaders.

Some commentators raised questions about the party’s leadership legitimacy given that they failed to win more than one seat in Scotland; however, with key gains in England and Wales, and a clear plan for further devolution to each of the home nations, this is unlikely to trouble the Prime Minister as he sets out his stall for the next five years.

Winners and losers Having entered the last session as coalition partners and conceded key pledges, not least to oppose tuition fees rises which then trebled under their watch, the Liberal Democrats faced near total wipe-out, losing 49 MPs and entering the new parliament as a minority party with only eight members of parliament. As one pundit put it, they’ve gone from a party of government to a party that can fit into two London taxis, with seats to spare.

Narrowly failing in the recent referendum on Scottish independence, the Scottish National Party (SNP) were the other major winners of the Westminster election, securing a landslide 56 seats (up from 6) and an average swing of over 30 per cent. There are now only three non-SNP constituencies in Scotland, with one each for Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives.

Although many have questioned what impact they will realistically be able to make at Westminster as a minority opposition party, there is no doubt they will be a thorn in the side of David Cameron’s Government as they push for further devolution of powers to Scotland.

Higher education agenda From a manifesto point of view, much of the Conservative agenda relating to further and higher education has already been set in train under the previous coalition government, and they have not made higher education one of their key policy priorities, although reforms within the sector as a result of the continued funding squeeze are inevitable.

The Conservatives have, however, placed a great degree of emphasis on securing an extra three million apprenticeship places during this parliament. Unfortunately, this narrow focus on expanding one type of qualification is likely to be at the expense of other areas of adult learning, and cuts of up to a quarter of non-apprenticeship funding for 2015/16 were announced before the election.

They were described by the University and College Union (UCU) General Secretary, Sally Hunt, as an ‘act of wilful vandalism that will decimate further education as we know it today’.

The Government’s myopic obsession with apprenticeships at the expense of other forms of adult learning risks leaving many courses unsustainable and UCU is

campaigning hard with our members, stakeholders and other unions to ensure that cuts are limited and where possible, reversed.

On top of these specific cuts to adult learning, Chancellor George Osborne has recently announced further departmental ‘efficiency savings’ across government that will see the department responsible for further and higher education have its in-year budget slashed by a further £450 million.

Most government departments are affected, but non-school education has been hit hardest with cuts of £450 million from the Department for Education’s non-schools budget (which includes sixth-form colleges) also announced. So the funding picture for further and higher education is acutely challenging with possible further cuts to student maintenance grants that are aimed at those from the most disadvantaged background.

A step to the right The first Conservative majority government for nearly two decades will also allow Cameron to set in train many of the policies that he was unable to enact whilst working in coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

On immigration, policy will inevitably get tighter and more restrictive with the Government promising more control on immigration and a focus on putting ‘hard working British families first’. In practice this will mean even tighter border controls, cuts to benefits for migrants, reforms to student visas, sanctions on institutions which fail to adequately monitor student visa compliance, the introduction of ‘deport first, appeal later rules’ and an increase in rhetoric that will do nothing to promote the benefits of immigration that those in our movement are so keen to extol.

Although dates have yet to be finalised, a referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union could happen as soon as 2017, which will have obvious implications for our universities given the importance of EU research funding and international students.

While many senior Conservative figures such as David Cameron and George Osbourne will be keen to stay in Europe it remains to be seen how far the more Eurosceptic members of the Party (and Cabinet) will be prepared to push for withdrawal.

Trade Union Bill

per cent voting threshold for strike ballot turnout and an additional requirement that 40 per cent of voters must back action in ‘essential public services’ for strikes to go ahead.

This is all at a time when strikes are at an historic low and seems designed more to appeal to the right wing of the Party, and country, than to actually help the problems faced by millions of working people every day. As columnist and Professor of Economics, David Blanchflower put it, poking workers in the eye with a sharp stick is not the best way to improve relations between bosses and workers. This is true but is something the Tories have always done and now have free reign to continue to do.

Security and terrorism UCU led the fight in the last parliament against the application of the pernicious Counter Terrorism and Security Act in educational institutions, which criminalises our students and threatens academic freedom in our colleges and universities.

An Act which will lead to mistrust between teacher and learner and will chill debate and undermine the mission to educate.

We have fought with many across the education sector and beyond and despite winning amendments to the final legislation we will continue to fight for its repeal.

Future focus So we enter the new parliament with a Labour Party nursing the wounds of a surprise and disappointing defeat, electing a new leader and facing at least five years in opposition, while an invigorated, majority Conservative government has more of a free reign than ever to introduce regressive policies to cut welfare, education funding and trade union rights. Our members can feel beset by many problems: increasing workloads, a decline in value of pay and pensions, job insecurity, casualisation and deskilling.

Whilst this may not seem a time to find many positives, the union movement must stand strong and united as workers will rightly look to us to defend them.

Our response will be to redouble our organising efforts, maximise our turnout and campaign against any unfair legislation and policies that threaten our members, students, the education sector and wider community as a whole. Only if we do this will we win the battle for education that is key to a successful economy and a fairer society.

An area of great concern for all trade unions in the UK is the Government’s regressive legislation aimed at curtailing the rights of working people to withdraw their labour as part of legitimate industrial action. The main elements of the Trade Union Bill are time limits on ballots, a 50

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News from the Net Pat Wright

Screen Reading Reading from a book and reading on a screen, such as on a computer or iPad, are different experiences.

The book came first, of course, and the iPad has sought to emulate its elders and betters with book-like facilities, but screen-reading remains a poor relation to its progenitor in the eyes of book-lovers. This prompts some to dismiss screen-reading altogether, but lovers of reading appreciate the different merits of books and tablets.

Tablets such as the iPad will never match the tactile and olfactory pleasures of a good book, but already they have overcome many of the shortcomings of early editions of screen-reading software.

Bookmarks are easily applied to keep your place when reading is resumed (and the place is kept on every device with which you access the text from whatever location), particular passages can be selected and highlighted or annotated, and eBooks can be lent to five others through sharing with family and friends.

Screen-reading has other advantages which books cannot match. Most software includes a built-in dictionary and spell-check for your annotations; passages can be copied and pasted into a document of your own or into an email message to a friend; the number of books, research reports, articles etc. which can be stored on one portable device is enormous; and, most importantly, the size and style of the text can be adjusted for easy legibility.

This last advantage is invaluable for even the most slightly visually-challenged – i.e. those of mature years. Most devices can

also switch to white-on-black for reading in difficult light conditions.

Most computer screens will allow you to zoom in and magnify on-screen text, but it usually gets fuzzier the bigger it gets, and

The proliferation on web pages of cool pastel colours, such as dove grey text on a pale blue background, may be effective at communicating mood, but is terrible at communicating information because of its illegibility.

it often runs off the side of the screen and requires much scrolling. Most word-processed documents can have enlarged fonts and line-spacing and will word-wrap at the end of each line so that the text does not run off the edge of the screen, and the document margins can be adjusted, unless the document is read-only (like many government reports).

Portable Document Format (PDF) documents are an image of a page, so they don’t word-wrap, but at least one can zoom in to the limits of the screen. EPUB document format documents allow large, sharp fonts and automatic word-wrap.

Web browsers, such as Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, Chrome etc., are incorporating an increased legibility feature for viewing web pages. It is usually triggered by clicking (or touching) a list-of-lines icon at the left-hand end of the web address box of the browser. This provides a new page with only the plain text of the lead article on a white background, without all

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the ads, graphics, animations, bells and whistles, and other visual pollution which is so popular nowadays. Such readily readable pages often offer three sizes of font and are ideal for printing out in hard copy. This is particularly useful for online newspaper articles.

This feature of web browsers goes some way to countering the obfuscating explosion of light and colour which out-of-control graphic web designers have foisted upon us in recent years, at the expense of legibility, thus giving screen-reading a bad name. The proliferation on web pages of cool pastel colours, such as dove grey text on a pale blue background, may be effective at communicating mood, but is terrible at communicating information because of its illegibility.

Then there are the distracting pop-ups, sparkly animations and Russian-doll links to sub-folders, which seem to have been used just because they can be – they add nothing but webedazzlement to the experience of screen-reading.

A good way around the problem, of course, is to store a plain text version of a web page article in an online reading list, such as Instapaper or Readability.

These apps can be downloaded to an iPad for free and their applets inserted in the bookmarks bar of your browser, not only on your portable device but also on your desk computer, be it PC or Mac. Thus, whenever you come across an article which looks interesting, but might be buried in a glitzy, cluttered web page, you can send it to your online store to Read Later on whatever device.

Such apps now provide for highlighting and annotation, links with what your Friends are reading, and Instapaper can store your own documents written with the Plain Text app. More sophisticated versions of these functions are provided by the EverNote and Zotero apps, both available for free download (and inexpensive in-App upgrades).

Hence, the facilitation of Screen-Reading and Research Collaboration.

Pat Wright is an NTEU Life Member. pat.wright@adelaide.edu.au

Lowering the Boom Ian Lowe

Captain’s picks trump competitive grants The Abbott Government has taken a leaf out of John Howard’s book.

Howard saw John Hewson lose what was seen as the unloseable election in 1993, largely because he said openly what he would do if elected and the voters didn’t like it. So in 1996, Howard was careful not to tell the electors that he was planning the same extreme approach, riding to the Lodge on disenchantment with Paul Keating and a misleading image of reasonableness.

losing out last year, while the Defence Science and Technology Organisation also lost $120 million.

Last year, Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey spelled out in blatant detail their unfair Budget and the voters did not like it, as the opinion polls showed. So this year they were careful not to tell the electorate what their Budget entailed, instead giving us facile nonsense about encouraging small traders to ‘have a go’, as if they were batsmen putting the SCG crowd to sleep. But the worst features of last year’s disastrous Budget remain: the attack on Medicare, $100,000 degrees, the treatment of the disadvantaged and subsidies of high-end superannuation. There were also some new shockers, like the further cut to our foreign aid, now a shameful 0.22 per cent of GDP compared with the UN target of 0.7 per cent.

The Budget papers celebrate the establishment of a Medical Research Future Fund, potentially providing significant additional money for research projects. However, the fine print reveals the fund depends on the Senate passing the Government’s proposed changes to the healthcare system, including the discredited Medicare co-contributions.

Like last year, there was little joy for higher education and research. Hundreds of millions more have been cut from key science and research agencies, while the promised increase for medical research depends on controversial savings in the health-care system. The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation received a multi-million dollar allocation for new infrastructure at Lucas Heights, but all other large agencies suffered. CSIRO’s funding was cut by another $110 million after

The outlook is gloomy for basic research.

The Australian Research Council’s triennial budget was cut by $75 million. The cut was called an ‘efficiency dividend’. Presumably the Government expects the ARC to allocate its funds more efficiently! Perhaps by eliminating tiresome procedures like peer review and going straight to the sort of captain’s pick the Prime Minister clearly prefers?

As in other areas, like the arts, the Government is taking money from the ARC’s budget for competitive grants to fund specific projects like the Institute for Tropical Health and Medicine at James Cook University. All these direct grants reduce the funds available for the best research, evaluated by peer review. The funding for ARC discovery and linkage grants won’t keep up with inflation. It will decline from a total of $869 million in the 2014-15 Budget to $783 million in 2017-18. Universities have permission to charge postgraduate students fees of up to $3,900: hardly a good way to encourage bright students into research careers.

[Lomborg’s] book bordered on dishonesty, cherry-picking data and quoting reputable scientists out of context to give the impression that the world’s serious environmental problems could safely be ignored...

Speaking on behalf of the relevant professions, Science and Technology Australia (STA) expressed concern about the uncertainty of money for the proposed fund.

STA also said that ‘the other cuts across the sector’ are likely to reduce our capacity to conduct world-class research. If the funding does materialise, medical researchers

will be in a much better position than those doing basic science.

While the ARC’s projected 2018-19 budget for all human knowledge is $792 million, the NHMRC is projected to have over a billion dollars for medical research. At least that should improve the success rate for NHMRC grant applications. In 2010, 24 per cent of applications got funded. By 2013, when the peer review process assessed 73 per cent of applications as worthy of support, only 17 per cent were actually funded. The success rate dropped further to 15 per cent last year. It is absurd that the system encourages the best biomedical researchers to apply for support, but sends 85 per cent of them away empty-handed.

As if to add insult to injury, at the same time as cutting funds for the best peer-reviewed research, the Government tried to make another dubious captain’s pick by allocating $4 million to University of WA to set up a ‘consensus centre’. The outrage from local academics caused a red-faced UWA VC to back down and return the money to Canberra.

The concern was totally justified. The exercise was an attempt to set up a local platform for Bjørn Lomborg to tell the Abbott Government what it wants to hear. Lomborg rose from the obscurity of teaching statistics to politics students at a Danish university when he published The Skeptical Environmentalist. I reviewed the book and suggested a more appropriate title would have been The Gullible Statistician. The book bordered on dishonesty, cherry-picking data and quoting reputable scientists out of context to give the impression that the world’s serious environmental problems could safely be ignored and would be solved by economic growth.

Because it said what the big end of town wanted to hear, Lomborg was feted and funded to say more of the same. His consensus conferences brought together economists to advise on priorities and, unsurprisingly, they concluded that economic growth is the solution to all the problems that have been caused by recent economic growth. It was a scandalous misuse of public funds to propose funding the centre. Let’s hope we’ve heard the last of it.

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

M@AusConservation

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The Thesis Whisperer Inger Mewburn

#distractinglysexy I always write my Advocate columns at the very last minute. This month I’m so glad I did, otherwise I would not have been able to reflect on the social media storm #distractinglysexy.

For those of you who have been, I don’t know, actually working this week and not reading the social medias, the famous Nobel Prize winner Professor Tim Hunt got up at the world conference of science journalists and did the verbal equivalent of shooting himself in the foot – or was it the head?

Hunt, who apparently knows he has a reputation for being ‘a bit of a chauvinist’ spoke in favour of single sex labs and told the audience of JOURNALISTS that his trouble with girls was that: ‘… three things happen when they are in the lab … You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you and when you criticise them, they cry.’ www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/ jun/10/nobel-scientist-tim-hunt-femalescientists-cause-trouble-for-men-in-labs Apparently his speech was greeted with polite applause, so he initially didn’t think anything was wrong. Clearly he wasn’t on Twitter, where the outrage was in full flight and the mocking had begun.

Female scientists started posting pictures of themselves in all kinds of unglamorous outfits and situations with the hashtag

#distractinglysexy. The photos reflected the everyday life of a working scientist and perfectly demonstrated the folly of Hunt’s remarks. Some women posted pictures of themselves hugging machines which they claim to have fallen in love with, or posted safety diagrams warning men that lady tears might be a slip hazard.

What happened next was interesting.

I thought the relevant institutions would have to be shamed into taking action, but Hunt was swiftly asked to resign from prestigious positions at both the University College London and the Royal Society. You can’t help wondering if his ‘reputation as a bit of a chauvinist’ was coming back to haunt him.

Management can be well aware of the bigots inside their operations, but often lack the grounds to take action because the people who are victimised remain silent.

Everything changes in the full glare of the media spotlight. Justice, however much delayed, can be swift and terrible. Hunt was apparently dismayed and bewildered by the shit storm he created.

In my view Hunt should have learned to discipline himself way before this happened. Perhaps if he’d encountered enough outright rebuffs from his casually sexist comments things might have been different the other day in Korea, but I’m not surprised he didn’t. People are usually polite, especially to Nobel Prize winners, and it’s hard to speak back to power.

Actually - it’s just hard to speak back.

Just the other week I was running a workshop where a couple of 55+ men made a series of sexually charged ‘jokes’. There was uneasy, embarrassed laughter from the class, they looked to me for guidance, but I froze. Inside I was 10 years old again, feeling outraged by a boy snapping my bra strap, then calling me ugly when I told him to stop.

I was 13 again, listening to the boys behind me cataloguing who was hot and who wasn’t and enduring the mocking laughter when I asked them to stop. I was 16 again, mentally preparing myself to be verbally

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harassed by random men when I got on a train, or walked past a building site, or just basically existed in a public space. I was 18 again, listening to men at a party tell sexist jokes. ‘What’s wrong, don’t you have a sense of humour?’ they would say if I didn’t laugh right away, ‘you know that no one wants to screw a feminist?’

All these years in a female body taught me to say nothing, to back down, to avoid the fight. I’ve learned not to call out sexist behaviour, or draw too much attention to myself. I’m ashamed to say that faced with being mocked by a group of men in the classroom I did what so many women probably did when Hunt was developing his reputation as a bit of a chauvinist – I kept the peace by laughing it off. I turned the subject. I pretended it didn’t happen.

I would love to say that from now on I will always speak back, but I know I wont.

Change is hard.

I know many men worry that the workplace is becoming a politically correct minefield. Maybe it is – but that’s only because change is hard for everyone.

Listening and asking questions are the first step. All men should listen carefully to the laughter of women. Does it come from the belly, or is it just polite? Does the woman look embarrassed and change the subject?

If you are worried you’ve caused offence, just ask: ‘was what I said ok?’ If not, apologise. Try to avoid saying it again. There’s no need to become a hashtag.

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

M@thesiswhisperer

Letter from Aotearoa/NZ Sandra Grey

Money saving mergers ignore student needs Aoraki Polytechnic is a regional polytechnic based in the South Island town of Timaru.

It has been struggling financially for a few years now and it is currently considering merging with its big cosmopolitan neighbour, Christchurch Polytechnic and Institute of Technology (CPIT).

At present in New Zealand there are talks or merger processes underway involving six of New Zealand’s 18 polytechnics; Weltec and Whitireia, Waiariki and Bay of Plenty, and Aoraki and CPIT. But I reckon it is time for everyone to take a step back and ask, what do students get from all these mergers?

Mergers might save money, but if in the long term students in regional communities lose their face-to-face course to online provision, or end up travelling further, or do not have the same number of local support staff to help them learn, then we need to ask, ‘why are we doing this?’’

Mark Wheatley teaches automotive skills at Aoraki to 17-year-olds (pictured, above), some of whom struggled to learn to read and write. Those kids come not just from Timaru but a catchment area that stretches over 100 miles from Oamaru in the south, up to Ashburton in the north and Methven to the west.

They are all on their way to a level two certificate that will probably get them a job and the chance to build further qualifications, maybe even a career.

‘As long as they go out of here with a level two, I’m happy. They’re employable’, says Wheatley. Before this course, those kids had a lot fewer options. Maybe the freezing works. Maybe leaving the district.

Mark says he will not be staying at Aoraki if they close down his course. There is no reason to believe his course would close.

It is successful. Students and colleagues regard him highly, and he is getting young people into jobs.

closely linked to local community groups and youth services – often they are sharing office space and resources.

And yet…

Aoraki has struggled to survive. The staff say the polytechnic can survive, but it needs stability. Students do not come, they say, if they think the course they want will not be around next year.

Why would a big urban polytechnic like CPIT take on a partnership with Aoraki unless it thought it could run things more cost effectively? Therein lies the heart of Aoraki’s fear.

Merger feels like the wrong word. Aoraki is a small, regional polytechnic that has struggled to hold its head above financial waters for many years now. CPIT is a big urban polytechnic, currently booming in post-quake Christchurch.

For most Aoraki staff, their overwhelming concern is whether they will be able to continue doing the things they believe makes their little polytechnic special. Will their culture and philosophy be financially sustainable, or will a new behemoth-polytechnic, stretching from Kaikoura to Dunedin, discard them because they are no longer ‘cost effective’.

Kerry McAllister, Aoraki’s international student services officer who drives her Pacific Island students to the local second-hand shops to stock them up with blankets and jerseys, says that small town culture is important to the polytechnic.

Aoraki teaches courses that others are not prepared to deliver. Many of its courses in Dunedin for instance, such as massage and hairdressing, are ones Otago Polytechnic handed over, unprepared to deliver them to the small number of students they attracted.

Aoraki is now the only tertiary education provider, public or private, operating in Oamaru. Oamaru’s level 1 and 2 courses are well regarded and the staff there are

‘They want to know their course will continue, and that it will staircase into something else,’ says Student Support Officer Carol Soal. ‘They want their course confirmed when they enrol, not at the last minute before it starts.’

‘Where do small communities like Timaru and Oamaru fit into this new business model?’ asks Soal. ‘They don’t.’

The business model she refers to is the shift towards ‘blended learning’ with a large component of self-directed online learning. ‘[Blended learning] is cheaper, and it is easier for a polytechnic trying to cover such a wide geographical area, but it is not a suitable method of education for many of these students. They need significant tutor support’, says Soal.

It is very common to deliver a course to ten students or less at Aoraki. It is often just not possible to recruit more students than that in the area, but there is still a need.

‘That course running could be the difference between another four people on the dole’, says Soal.

Sandra Grey is National President/Te Tumu Whakarae, New Zealand Tertiary Education Union/Te Hautū Kahurangi o Aotearoa www.teu.ac.nz

M@nzteu

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 47

My Union Agreement implementation

their rights and entitlements and save time when queries come in to the Branch offices. Once set-up it’s a simple matter to drop the relevant clause from each Branch into the sheet and tweak the details.

The WA Division developed an implementation plan prior to the conclusion of bargaining as we were keen to make sure that we held the university managements to their commitments, and to ensure we maximised the benefits to members.

The next step was to get together a list of all clauses in the Agreements that require the University managements to do something, and to establish a schedule of when we were going to seek responses, either through letter or listing the items on the agenda of the relevant consultative committee. The final step is to hold management to account when they fail to deliver on commitments and to publicise the matter when they do.

We spend an extraordinary amount of time and resources in bargaining and we can’t afford not to ensure that we get the best return from that effort.

One obvious example in WA where keeping an eye on implementation has delivered benefits to members is the Professional Staff Development Fund at ECU. We had negotiated for a $200,000 pa fund for general staff career development, we pushed management to establish the Fund and they prepared guidelines and criteria for applications.

Implementation commenced with the preparation of fact sheets on key elements of the Agreements tailored for each Branch. These educate the members about

Global survey on academic freedom NTEU academic members were recently invited to participate in the first international online survey to gather data on the knowledge, experience and opinions of academic staff on academic freedom.

The survey was conducted through Education International (EI), the global federation of education unions covering early childhood, primary, secondary and tertiary education workers. The NTEU is an affiliate of this 30 million strong advocacy organisation of educators and researchers.

While the survey was directed solely at academics and did not include general and professional staff, the NTEU welcomed the focus of EI on this fundamental issue for university staff and students.

As EI General Secretary Fred Van Leeuwen noted: ‘Academic freedom is a universal right that all staff working in higher education acknowledge as being an essential component of academic life, both as an individual liberty with respect to their teaching and research duties,

The Branch was not happy that the criteria were in the spirit of the clause (although they were technically not in breach), the matter was raised at the JCC, letters were written and the Union was able to negotiate both the guidelines and criteria for the Fund from now on. As a result members who had their application rejected in the first round are now eligible and we can advertise to members that the Union has brought them this career opportunity.

Almost always straight after bargaining, management hits us with organisational change as they hold off until there is no threat of protected industrial action. As a result we move instantly from one intense situation to the next crisis and it is difficult to find the time and energy to do the longterm follow-up. As always the urgent tends to displace the important, but we must continue our focus on implementation if we are going to ensure that all our work in bargaining actually results in real benefits for members.

Gabe Gooding, WA Division Secretary

and in terms of institutional autonomy and governance.

At institutional level, the right of universities to self-governance and autonomy, with freedom from governmental control over decisions about what should be taught and researched, is seen as vital for their successful working.

‘However, in many nations, the de jure constitutional and legislative protection for academic freedom is either limited or not well defined. Consequently, institutional policies and norms, allied to departmental culture, are often as important in providing de facto protection for the academic freedom of staff, as legal instruments,’ Van Leeuwen said.

‘All research so far completed into academic freedom concentrates on legal frameworks, and as yet no empirical work has been undertaken on the de facto protection for, and staff experiences of, academic freedom and institutional

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autonomy in higher education in the EU states, and elsewhere.’

This research is being undertaken by academics at the Lincoln University in the UK. NTEU members will be kept informed of the outcomes. Even in completing the survey, members reported that it made one think about the commonalities of our experiences, but also the high levels of personal risk that colleagues encounter in more dangerous political and cultural environments.

Jeannie Rea, National President

My Union NTEU Expert Seminar Series

Can we go home now?

The first NTEU expert seminar for 2015 was held on Thursday 21 April in Melbourne. Chaired

by NTEU National Vice President (General Staff), Michael Thomson, the seminar investigated unpaid overtime for general/professional staff in Australian tertiary education by examining causes and possible remedies, including effective strategies and campaigns we can undertake as unionists.

Iain Campbell, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Applied Social Research (CASR), RMIT University, set the context for Australia by outlining that unpaid overtime is more than in other OECD countries, that nearly 30 per cent of overtime was unpaid and that most who work unpaid overtime are professional, managers and clerical and administration staff. He pointed to weak labour regulation, employer pressures, and too much work to be done as key factors.

Having worked at Deakin University in a variety of general staff roles for 24 years, including as the Executive Officer to the Vice-Chancellor, Andrew Giles highlighted two broad categories that explain why people work overtime – the ‘feel good factors’ (care for students, feeling valued, pride in the project, a focus on outcomes rather than time, being of service, maintaining personal relationships, developing opportunities for potential career advancement) and the ‘fear factors’ (worry about job security, unhealthy competition, fear of saying no).

Andrea Brown, who worked in equity and diversity at Victoria University for nearly 20 years, explained that her research on general staff hours of work confirmed that nearly 50 per cent of general staff work up to 45 hours a week, yet only a small proportion receive compensation for extra hours worked.

Joan Hardy Scholarship for Postgraduate Nursing Research This scholarship was established in memory of the late Joan Hardy, a long-time higher education union activist who died in 2003.

Worth $5000, it is for postgraduate nursing research. The scholarship will be available for any student undertaking a study of nurses, nursing culture or practices, or historical aspects of nursing as a lay or professional practice. The student need not therefore be or have been a nurse and can be undertaking the study in disciplines/schools other than nursing.

Applicants must be currently enrolled in an academic award of an Australian public university, and expect to submit the thesis within one year of being awarded the scholarship. Applications close on Friday 31 July 2015, with a decision on the awarding of the scholarship due in late August 2015. www.nteu.org.au/myunion/scholarships/joan_hardy

Bringing her 26 years’ experience as an Industrial Officer for the NTEU, Linda Gale discussed the Union’s Award Review claim to regulate general staff hours of work.

She explained that the proposed clause will impose an obligation on employers to take active steps to ensure that staff are only working additional hours if they are appropriately compensated through overtime payments, time off in lieu or similar arrangements.

The discussion following the panel presentations clarified that while we need to hold employers accountable for unpaid overtime, we also need to actively involve members in campaigning around it.

Helena Spyrou, Education and Training Officer A video of the seminar can be viewed at: www.nteu.org.au/seminars/2015/ can_we_go_home_now/video

Carolyn Allport Scholarship for Postgraduate Feminist Studies by Research This scholarship was established in recognition of the contribution of Dr Carolyn Allport to the leadership and development of the NTEU in her 16 years as National President.

Worth $5000 per year for a maximum of 3 years, the scholarship is for postgraduate feminist studies. It will be available for a woman undertaking postgraduate feminist studies, by research, in any discipline, and will be paid in yearly instalments for a maximum of 3 years. Applicants must be currently enrolled in postgraduate studies, by research, in an academic award of an Australian public university.

Applications close on Friday 31 July 2015, with a decision on the awarding of the scholarship due in late August 2015. www.nteu.org.au/myunion/scholarships/carolyn_allport

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 49

My Union New NTEU staff Welcome to new NTEU staff in the Divisions and Branches.

Stewart de LacyLeacey Branch Organiser Griffith Stewart started as Branch Organiser for Griffith University in November 2014. Prior to this he was an Organiser for the Finance Sector Union (FSU) for over 3 years. His working life prior to unions was in the music industry working for independent record companies for over 12 years in a licensing and acquisition capacity.

Stewart keeps sane by playing guitar in local indie rock band Dr. Bombay. His band mates are of a similar vintage and they play regularly in around Brisbane, they hope to gig down in Melbourne and Sydney later in 2015.

Unionism runs in his family, with his partner Danielle organising for the CPSU and his 11 year old son Oliver, regularly advocating for himself and friends during his school days. Stewart’s passion for the higher education sector is heightened by the fact he would like his son to be university educated albeit, without being saddled with a ridiculous debt. Stewart works in the union movement as he sees this as a way of making a real difference for workers and society as a whole. Power to the people, right on.

John Kirkham Branch Organiser Adelaide John Kirkham has recently been appointed as the Branch Organiser for the University of Adelaide on a 1 year replacement contract. He brings over 25 years’ experience in the labour movement, having previously worked for the CPSU, United Voice, and most recently the Finance Sector Union, as well as a stint as a staffer for Senator Penny Wong. In 2012, he participated in an International Labour Organisation project in Geneva to improve working conditions for South East Asian outworkers in the textile industry. During the course of his career he has worked with union members from a broad cross section of our community, from cleaners and trolley collectors, to CSIRO scientists and workers in banks and insurance companies.

Outside of work, most winter weekends he can be found at the Adelaide Oval having his heart broken by the Port Adelaide

ACT welcomes new Division Secretary Rachael Bahl was elected to the role of ACT Division Secretary in April.

When running for election Rachael outlined her plan to campaign against increased workloads and the negative impacts of research intensification on university staff; to improve delegate and activist networks; to strengthen regular communication with members; and to effectively enforce our Enterprise Agreements in each university. She also promised to campaign against policies which undermine public education or erode appropriate funding of the higher education sector.

Rachael has held elected positions in the NTEU at all levels, including as a National Executive Member and ACT representative on the national Women’s Action Committee (WAC); ACT Division President; and ACU Vice-President, General Staff.

One of Rachael’s highlights in her involvement with the NTEU was being part of the WAC group that develped the Union’s original parental leave claim. Gaining twenty-six weeks’ parental leave at ACU was a first for the sector and was far beyond what most Australian workers could access. ‘The NTEU led in recognising that parental leave, and the improvement in gender pay equity resulting from it, are an industrial issue. - that becoming a parent is not just a lifestyle choice.’

Rachael Bahl has been a key leader in the Canberra Sub-Branch of ACU for many years, both as a delegate and Sub-Branch President. On hearing that Rachael had nominated for the role of Division Secretary, ACU’s Industrial Officer simultaneously complimented the Division on a strong candidate and mourned Rachael’s potential departure from the ACU Branch.

Rachael Bahl’s professional background is as a librarian and she has worked both at the Australian National University and ACU Canberra, as well as the University of Melbourne, in that role.

She is a foundation member of the NTEU and first joined one of its predecessor unions, the Victorian Colleges and Universities Staff Association, 26 years ago. She joined because ‘It was the right thing to do. A friend pointed out to me that it was thanks to the unions that we had all the rights - leave and so on.’ Although Rachael’s father had been a union official in a textile union, it was this friend who made her realise the importance of being part of the union. Perhaps that is one reason why Rachael sees members themselves as the real power in a union.

A couple of months into the role of Division Secretary Rachael sees the key strategy for implementing the plans she outlined as building the ACT Division’s capacity by increasing membership numbers, engagement with members, and the skills of those who lead the Union at all levels. In this way the Division can continually increase its power to fight for fairness by supporting members, holding university managements to account for doing what they promise to do in Enterprise Agreements, and influencing broader higher education policies.

Jane Maze, Communications Officer/Organiser, ACT Division

Football Club. During the summer, he spends the early hours of the morning in front of the television watching his other sporting love, serial English Premier League winners Manchester City, the only football team from the city of his birth.

John has been surprised and disappointed at the similarities he has noticed between the banking industry and the tertiary education sector in terms of the setting of unachievable KPIs and the use of performance management as a tool to pressure

page 50 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate

members into supporting their agenda. He looks forward to working with members in building their power at the University of Adelaide and campaigning to ensure they continue to work in an institution that serves the public good through high quality teaching and research.

Staff movements Simon Kempton has returned to NSW Division, from WA Division, to work as an Industrial Officer.

My Union Free NTEU membership for postgrads NTEU is now offering free membership to postgraduate students, with access to some the benefits enjoyed by Union members who work within the sector.

Tax Guide 2015 nteu.org.au/tax

DOWNLOAD AT NTEU.ORG.AU/TAX

NTEU understands the pressures of being a postgraduate student surviving on a low income – many of our full members have been there themselves. Because we understands the problems faced, we have created the Postgraduate Membership category to give postgrads access to some of the benefits of NTEU membership without having to pay a fee.

Postgraduate membership is a form of Associate Membership of the Union.

Postgraduate members will get access to selected membership discounts offered by the Union to its members, as well as

to electronic copies of NTEU publications such as Advocate, Australian Universities’ Review, Agenda and Connect.

However, postgraduate students with casual or other work in a university should join as full members.

NTEU Postgraduate membership is endorsed by the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA), the peak body representing university postgraduate associations. nteu.org.au/postgrad

National Twitter Conversation about Insecure Academic Work Friday 17 July 2015, 11am AEDT M #securework Whether you are a casual academic teacher, a contract research academic, or a champion for less toxic university workplaces, join us for an Australia-wide tweet-up exploring the character of insecure work at the Australian university.

More info at securework.org.au

Your NTEU membership details When and how to update them Have your workplace address details (office, building, campus) changed?

Have you moved house?

Required if your home address is your nominated contact address.

Has your Department/ School changed its name or merged?

Update online:

Has your name changed?

Go to ‘My Home’

Go to www.nteu.org.au Click on ‘Member Login’ ID = Your NTEU membership number Password = Your surname in CAPITALS Select ‘Your Profile’ then ‘View Details’

Have you moved to a different institution?

Have your employment details changed?

Please contact:

Have your credit card or direct debit account details changed?

Are you leaving university employment?

Please contact:

Transfer of membership between institutions is not automatic.

Please notify us to ensure you are paying the correct fees.

Deductions will continue until the National Office is notified.

Have your payroll deductions stopped without your authority?

Melinda Valsorda, Membership Officer (03) 9254 1910 mvalsorda@nteu.org.au

Tamara Labadze, Finance Officer (03) 9254 1910 tlabadze@nteu.org.au

Contact your institution’s Payroll Department urgently

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 51

NATIONAL TERTIARY EDUCATION UNION

MEMBERSHIP FORM

 I want to join NTEU  I am currently a member and wish to update my details The information on this form is needed for aspects of NTEU’s work and will be treated as confidential.

YOUR PERSONAL DETAILS

|SURNAME

TITLE

|GIVEN NAMES

HOME ADDRESS CITY/SUBURB PHONE |WORK INCL AREA CODE

HOME PHONE INCL AREA CODE

|DATE OF BIRTH

EMAIL HAVE YOU PREVIOUSLY BEEN AN NTEU MEMBER?

 YES: AT WHICH INSTITUTION?

YOUR CURRENT EMPLOYMENT DETAILS

|DEPT/SCHOOL |CLASSIFICATION LEVEL LECTB, HEW4

POSITION

|POSTCODE | MALE  FEMALE  OTHER _______

|ARE YOU AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL/TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER?  YES

 PLEASE USE MY HOME ADDRESS FOR ALL MAILING

|CAMPUS

INSTITUTION/EMPLOYER FACULTY

|STATE |MOBILE

STEP/ |INCREMENT

|ANNUAL SALARY IF KNOWN

YOUR EMPLOYMENT GROUP

 ACADEMIC STAFF

 TEACHING & RESEARCH  RESEARCH ONLY  TEACHING INTENSIVE

 GENERAL/PROFESSIONAL STAFF

I HEREBY APPLY FOR MEMBERSHIP OF NTEU, ANY BRANCH AND ANY ASSOCIATED BODY‡ ESTABLISHED AT MY WORKPLACE.

 RESEARCH ONLY

SIGNATURE

DATE

OTHER:

YOUR EMPLOYMENT CATEGORY & TERM

 FULL TIME

 PART TIME

 CONTINUING/  FIXED TERM PERMANENT

CONTRACT

HOURS PER WK

DATE OF EXPIRY

 SESSIONAL ACADEMIC  GENERAL/PROFESSIONAL STAFF CASUAL

You may resign by written notice to the Division or Branch Secretary. Where you cease to be eligible to become a member, resignation shall take effect on the date the notice is received or on the day specified in your notice, whichever is later. In any other case, you must give at least two weeks notice. Members are required to pay dues and levies as set by the Union from time to time in accordance with NTEU rules. Further information on financial obligations, including a copy Office use only: Membership no. of the rules, is available from your Branch.

IF YOU ARE CASUAL/SESSIONAL, COMPLETE PAYMENT OPTION 4 ONLY

IF YOU ARE FULL TIME OR PART TIME, PLEASE COMPLETE EITHER PAYMENT OPTION 1, 2 OR 3

Membership fees = 1% of gross annual salary

OPTION 1: PAYROLL DEDUCTION AUTHORITY

Office use only: % of salary deducted

| STAFF PAYROLL NO.

I INSERT YOUR NAME

IF KNOWN

OF YOUR ADDRESS HEREBY AUTHORISE INSTITUTION

|DATE

SIGNATURE

OPTION 2: CREDIT CARD

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

EXPIRY

OPTION 3: DIRECT DEBIT

 QUARTERLY  HALF-YEARLY  ANNUALLY

|DATE

Choose your salary range.

Select 6 month or 1 year membership.

Tick the appropriate box.

Pay by cheque, money order or credit card.

Salary range

6 months

12 months

$10,000 & under: $10,001–$20,000: Over $20,000:

 $27.50  $38.50  $55

 $55  $77  $110

 PLEASE ACCEPT MY CHEQUE/MONEY ORDER OR CREDIT CARD:  MASTERCARD  VISA

Processed on the 15th of the month or following working day

FINANCIAL INSTITUTION

|ACCOUNT NO.

Full text of DDR available at www.nteu.org.au/ddr

REGULARITY OF PAYMENT:

BRANCH NAME & ADDRESS

 MONTHLY  QUARTERLY  HALF-YEARLY  ANNUALLY

ACCOUNT NAME

5% DISCOUNT FOR ANNUAL DIRECT DEBIT

|DATE

page 52 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 22 no. 2 • June 2015 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate

CARD NUMBER — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

EXPIRY

|$

SIGNATURE

I hereby authorise the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) APCA User ID No.062604 to arrange for funds to be debited from my/our account at the financial institution identified and in accordance with the terms described in the Direct Debit Request (DDR) Service Agreement

I INSERT YOUR NAME

SIGNATURE

1.

2.

3.

4.

NAME ON CARD

I hereby authorise the Merchant to debit my Card account with the amount and at intervals specified above and in the event of any change in the charges for these goods/ services to alter the amount from the appropriate date in accordance with such change.

This authority shall stand, in respect of the above specified Card and in respect of any Card issued to me in renewal or replacement thereof, until I notify the Merchant in writing of its cancellation. Standing Authority for Recurrent Periodic Payment by Credit Card.

|  MASTERCARD  VISA |PAYMENT:  MONTHLY

SIGNATURE

BSB

I hereby authorise the Institution or its duly authorised servants and agents to deduct from my salary by regular instalments, dues and levies (as determined from time to time by the Union), to NTEU or its authorised agents. All payments on my behalf and in accordance with this authority shall be deemed to be payments by me personally. This authority shall remain in force until revoked by me in writing. I also consent to my employer supplying NTEU with updated information relating to my employment status.

OPTION 4: CASUAL/SESSIONAL

Processed on the 16th of the month or following working day

NAME ON CARD CARD NO.

|MAIL/ BLDG CODE MONTH NEXT | INCREMENT DUE

DATE

Description of goods/services: NTEU Membership Dues. To: NTEU, PO Box 1323, Sth Melbourne VIC 3205

‡Associated bodies: NTEU (NSW); Union of Australian College Academics (WA Branch) Industrial Union of Workers at Edith Cowan University & Curtin University; Curtin University Staff Association (Inc.) at Curtin University; Staff Association of Edith Cowan University (Inc.) at ECU

MAIL TO: NTEU National Office PO Box 1323, South Melbourne VIC 3205 T (03) 9254 1910 F (03) 9254 1915 E national@nteu.org.au

Make the most of your member benefits

To discover all your benefits, contact NTEU Member Advantage: call 1300 853 352 or visit www.memberadvantage.com.au/nteu

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