Advocate, June 2016

Advocate vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au • ISSN 1329-7295

NO $100,000 DEGREES

DEFENDER OF HIGHER EDUCATION

Federal Election 2016 $100,000 degrees? No way. ɓɓNTEU’s 2016 federal election campaign activities ɓɓAnalysis and scorecards on higher ed policy, VET, IR, research & innovation, tax & super, A&TSI, women, refugees, marriage equality, climate change

ɓɓDefenders of Higher Education ɓɓNTEU member candidates profiled ɓɓFederal Budget’s masterly inactivity ɓɓRoz Ward suspension & reinstatement ɓɓSovereignty & Treaty, not Recognition

ɓɓUnpaid overtime ɓɓBluestocking Week 2016 ɓɓScience meets Parliament ɓɓThe social media election? ɓɓ... and much more.

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Contents 2

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 All text and images © NTEU 2016 unless otherwise stated.

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

Structural reform of UniSuper an urgent priority From the General Secretary

Cover image: NTEU’s election posters (an imagined landscape)

3

VCs must uphold freedom of expression

WILL DADDY BUY YOU A HOUSE AND A DEGREE?

Editorial, Jeannie Rea, National President

UPDATE 4

Defence Trade Controls: presumption of innocence under threat

Staff voices need to be heard in sexual assault research

5

Fixed term contract survey

FEDERAL ELECTION 2016 SPECIAL FEATURE

University governance in whose interest?

18 Federal Election 2016: This is real – your vote does matter

6

WA VCs’ ‘ aggressive new approach to industrial relations

7

Roz Ward reinstatement a cause for celebration and reflection

8

Talking science under the Canberra Big Tent

9 Brisbane Declaration against privatised universities

Oral history project of women in Australian unions

10 Bluestocking Week 2016: Furthering the Feminist Agenda

12 SuperCasuals stand up, fight back

In this long federal election campaign it is too easy to become cynical and disengage.

20 Higher education policy a major battle front The funding and regulation of higher education remain a highly contested policy area.

14 Fighting for Sovereignty and Treaties over Recognition 15 Wave Hill 50 years

A&TSI Forum

FEATURES Environment ISO 14001

In accordance with NTEU policy to reduce our impact on the natural environment, Advocate is printed using vegetable based inks with alcohol free printing initiatives on FSC certified paper under ISO 14001 Environmental Certification.

16 Federal Budget 2016: Masterly inactivity or a study in ineptitude?

Analysis of the 2016 Federal Budget’s higher education funding.

44 Unpaid overtime It seems like such a little thing – working just a snippet of unpaid overtime here and there.

45 Interns – a new frontier for exploitation

34 A&TSI policy no show A&TSI policies are striking in their absence.

35 Make equality happen July 2 is an opportunity for marriage equality.

36 Major parties target women voters What is the pitch to woman voters in 2016?

38 The tax & super pie The Coalition plays it safe, while Labor and the Greens get risky and innovative.

24 VET policy a failure Funding and regulation of VET has presented the Coalition with significant policy issues.

39 Climate policies lacking emphasis Where is the most challenging issue facing our nation and the world?

26 The Defenders of Higher Education NTEU has asked candidates to pledge to be a Defender of Higher Education.

40 Refugee policy hardline & heartless Academics are deeply concerned with Australia’s response to the global refugee crisis.

30 IR policy short on detail This double dissolution election was set to be fought on the well-trodden terrain of industrial relations.

32 Research & innovation – just a three word slogan?

41 Persecution, Jews and asylumseekers 42 NTEU members running in 2016 Profiles of NTEU members running in the 2016 federal election.

Research and innovation is a key policy area targeted by all major political parties in 2016.

13 Stop being so casual A&TSI NEWS

DEGREES?

no100kdegrees.org.au

11 For-profit schools researcher arrested in Uganda UNICASUAL NEWS

100,000

$

COLUMNS

YOUR UNION

50 A social media election?

54 Queensland Past Members Association lunch and launch

51 If you aren’t outraged by the Budget, you just aren’t paying attention

52 What do academic employers really want?

57 NTEU scholarships

News from the Net, by Pat Wright

Lowering the Boom, by Ian Lowe

Thesis Whisperer, Inger Mewburn

53 Privatising foundation studies treats international students as cash cows Letter from NZ, Sandra Grey, TEU

p. 7

NTEU elections in 2016

55 Join up a colleague

Poetry: Payable Thinking

Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea

58 New NTEU staff 59 Obituary: John Kaye, MLC p. 47

The increasing trend to exploit those seeking on-the-job experience.

Advocate is available online as a PDF at nteu.org.au/advocate and an e-book at www.issuu.com/nteu

46 The modern academix

NTEU members may opt for ‘soft delivery’ (email notification of online copy rather than mailed printed version). Details at nteu.org.au/ softfdelivery

47 Protesting posters

The culture and economics of Australian universities is moving toward an American mode: user pays.

Art addressing the corporatisation, casualisation and massification of higher education.

48 UK uni staff strike over real pay cuts 49 Kurdish School for War Orphans

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 1

From the General Secretary Grahame McCulloch, General Secretary

Structural reform of UniSuper an urgent priority In late April the management of UniSuper made a serious mistake in issuing a press release opposing the proposed Royal Commission into the Banking Sector announced by the Labor Party. The policy decision and accompanying press release was made by the company management without the authority of the UniSuper Board.

This was a very serious error of judgement and led to a storm of protest by UniSuper members. Within a week the company management received more than 2,600 emails registering strong complaint about UniSuper’s ill-considered intervention in a highly controversial political issue.

The company’s political misstep is a serious distraction from the Board’s current core strategic objective – to implement FlexiChoices – a retirement product that has the potential to be of great benefit to Fund members. Introducing this product is a very complex matter involving the interaction of many political, industrial, technical, investment and planning considerations, particularly because developing a consensus around the implementation of the product’s contribution flexibility component has still not been achieved.

Many Fund and Union members have well-founded suspicions that without a carefully crafted consensual approach, some unscrupulous employers will attempt to exploit the contribution flexibility element of FlexiChoices to permanently reduce the current 17% employer superannuation contribution.

The only way of guaranteeing that this does not happen is if there is a responsible tripartite approach to contribution flexibility with a common approach being recommended and adopted by UniSuper management, NTEU and the employers.

At present many Fund members have a reasonable suspicion that the company management gives preference to employers in stakeholder consultation.

The terrible misstep in entering the current charged political environment has set back the ability to deliver FlexiChoices to all Fund members in the immediate term.

At present many Fund members have a reasonable suspicion that the company management gives preference to employers in stakeholder consultation.

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

Susan Kenna

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

These complex issues will be discussed at the June and August UniSuper Board meetings and I will keep members posted on progress.

Grahame McCulloch, General Secretary

Despite these immediate barriers, I have confidence that the Board and the company management are conscious of the need for structural reform. If such reform can be achieved UniSuper will be in a position to

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

National A&TSI Coordinator National A&TSI Organiser

Paul Kniest Jen Tsen Kwok, Terri MacDonald Adam Frogley Celeste Liddle

National Organiser Michael Evans National Publications Coordinator Paul Clifton Media & Communications Officer Andrew MacDonald National Membership Officer Melinda Valsorda Education & Training Officers Ken McAlpine,

Helena Spyrou

page 2 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate

This should be possible because UniSuper is overwhelmingly the best managed and run Fund in Australia (it has a talented CEO Kevin O’Sullivan backed up by one of the country’s most astute investment managers John Pearce and a very effective Chairman Chris Cuffe), and the best possible governance model for any of Australia’s superannuation funds blending staff and union representatives, employer representatives and independent directors with deep superannuation knowledge/experience. And every one of them genuinely acts on what they perceive to be in the best interests of members.

The only thing it lacks is a proper voice for trade unions and Fund members in the core of its structure – the shareholding company (USL) and its Consultative Committee. Had there been such a voice in these structures then recent distraction over the Royal Commission into Banking would not have occurred. The fundamental issue is the need for a new stakeholder partnership based on NTEU having a genuine ownership share and deep reform of the Consultative Committee.

To do this effectively requires amendments to the existing Union Collective Agreements and many other technical steps. This is very unlikely to now be achieved unless the company rebuilds confidence amongst Fund members. A key element of re-establishing trust with the Fund members is a serious review of the company’s shareholding structure which at the moment gives monopoly ownership and control to the employers.

NATIONAL EXECUTIVE

offer the best range of retirement products in the national market place including a FlexiChoices option which fully protects the 17% employer contribution.

gmcculloch@nteu.org.au

Executive Manager ICT Network Engineer Database Programmer/Data Analyst

Peter Summers Tam Vuong Uffan Saeed

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 Organiser

Rifai Abdul

Editorial Jeannie Rea, National President

VCs must uphold freedom of expression Backed up by her university Vice-Chancellor, ‘Sandy’ has borne the brunt of public debate over controversial education, research and community engagement about the centre she manages. She has been vilified on a personal and professional level, particularly by sections of the media, politicians and commentators who are intractably opposed to the centre’s work.

As pressure intensifies and threats are made by private and government sources to withdraw funding to the University, the University turns on Sandy, threatens her job and suspends her. The charges made against her latch on to a left-wing political view privately posted on social media and leaked to right-wing media.

Fortunately, Sandy is a union member, so the union sends a threatening legal letter to the University accusing them of contravening freedom of political expression and academic freedom, as contained in the Collective Agreement and in state and federal legislation as well as international protocols. The University does not admit it was wrong on any count, but backs down and Sandy returns to work.

Sandy gets to continue her valuable work, albeit with the burden of repairing any damage to her standing with colleagues and the communities with whom she works, reassured by the massive public and academic support for her, but also well aware that her opponents still have her in their sights This narrative is based on what happened to Roz Ward, Coordinator of the Safe Schools Project at La Trobe University in early June (see report, p. 7).

But is this the end of it? What is the message sent to university staff around Australia? Is this the climate within which we now work? We may have achieved decent clauses in our Agreements on academic and intellectual freedom and we have industrial, human rights and equal opportunity law to call upon, but these mean little if university managements are prepared to acquiesce to external political pressure by acting against their staff.

It should be noted that La Trobe claimed Ward’s social media comment about the ‘racist Australian flag’ reflected adversely upon the University’s reputation. However, their website still contains, quite properly, a three-year-old article by an academic criticising the flag as representative of racist values. (This was reported in the mass media, so I hope it does not now expose another academic to charges from the University, but of course it will not because La Trobe management was clearly fishing for grounds to charge Ward.)

Even the right-wing Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) thought La Trobe had given into ‘moral panic’ (The Guardian 2/6/16). They are reported to have said that ‘La Trobe has abandoned the cause of intellectual freedom.’

Emeritus Professor Jane Kenway, ARC and Academy of Social Sciences Fellow, was quoted in the same article summing up the situation we now face. Kenway said that universities had ‘a moral and ethical purpose to defend intellectual freedom, and that means the university should be a safe space for brave speech.’ She argues that La Trobe’s actions in not only not supporting but actually turning on their staff member is contributing to a ‘culture of fear’ amongst academic staff.

‘People are afraid of putting their heads up for fear of losing funding, for fear of being disciplined by the institution, fearing they may be scapegoated,’ said Kenway.

Coupled with the predominance of precarious casual and fixed term employment, restructures and retrenchments, course closures and narrowing research options, freedom of expression and of intellectual inquiry can seem little more than words in Collective Agreements. They give us protections to fight back, but they do not dissipate the justified fear of attack not only externally, but apparently internally.

The NTEU is proud to stand up for academic freedom and freedom of expression. We will maintain that you can hold political views and also hold onto a job. I am appalled at the old Cold War hysteria that has manifested in attacking Roz Ward for holding marxist views. We expect our universities to be sites of vigorous and rigorous debate around varying viewpoints.

from the Abbott Government to house climate change denier Bjørn Lomborg and his Climate Consensus Centre. These cases are actually similar because they are about university independence being compromised in the constant search for funds.

In both cases universities faced pressure from outside political lobbies and seemed prepared to succumb. Being located in a university would give Lomborg’s pseudo-science credibility, which was exactly why staff and alumni at the University of Western Australia opposed the proposal that would have adversely impacted upon UWA’s international standing. That it was clearly just a political act was proven as the $4 million offer quietly disappeared as soon as Abbott lost the prime ministership.

La Trobe Vice-Chancellor Professor John Dewar, not Roz Ward, is in danger of damaging the University’s international reputation. Mike Jennings, General Secretary of the Irish Federation of University Teachers wrote to Professor Dewar, ‘I hope that your university has acted in this way due to external pressure but that, upon reflection, you will realise the damage that persisting on this course will do not just to academic freedom (which is prized and regarded as an essential by academics worldwide), but also to your university’s international reputation.’

The NTEU does expect academic leadership from vice-chancellors and they must be fundamentally committed to autonomy and independence and to creating conditions that enable academic freedom.

Jennings further wrote, ‘...that is the sacred duty of universities and those who have the honour to lead them. We simply must defend the right of colleagues to hold and declare unpopular beliefs.’

We need our vice-chancellors to assure us that they understand the vital role of universities in questioning conventional views and acting as critics and conscience of society. Collective Agreement clauses in support of freedom of intellectual inquiry must mean more than fulfilling a requirement under the Higher Education Act to ensure ongoing funding.

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

Interestingly, some have questioned the NTEU supporting Ward, whilst opposing universities bidding for the $4 million bribe

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 3

Update Defence Trade Controls

Presumption of innocence under threat In early April 2016, sources including the Sydney Morning Herald and Nature drew attention to what Advocate has been telling our members for a long time – that criminal offences in the Defence Trade Controls regime have become operational and there is a lot to be concerned about.

Media attention included Nobel Prize Winner Professor Peter Doherty warning Australian Academy of Science (AAS) colleagues that the law would both intimidate scientists and be ineffective given that ‘neither nature nor bad guys obey any such rules’. This follows on from the NTEU’s long-standing advocacy on these matters and the role of many individuals, including Dr Daniel Mathews, in bringing public attention to the concerns of Australian scientists (see report, p. 8).

Staff voices need to be heard in sexual assault & harrassment research NTEU has asked the Office of the Sex Discrimination Commission to consider how the experiences of university staff could be included in the research into the impact of sexual harassment and assault on university campuses, and offered the Union’s assistance in this.

In February, the NTEU commended Universities Australia (UA) on the launch of its Respect. Now. Always. campaign aimed at preventing sexual assault and harassment on university campuses. UA’s campaign will be rolled out at university campuses nationally and coincides

There are three key issues that members need to know about the Defence Trade Controls regime: 1. The new Defence powers will curtail academic freedom and the capacity of many Australian scientists to freely undertake their work. The legislation’s wording means that where a permit is necessary, the Department of Defence can effectively impose conditions as it sees fit, including restricting who a scientist can intangibly ‘supply’ research to.

2. The Australian regime captures more kinds of dual-use research than the US ITAR system and thus disadvantages Australian scientists by forcing many more of them to assess whether they should be part of the permit system.

The NTEU has joined and promoted a petition calling upon protection for all fundamental scientific research in line with the US. 3. In its review of the proposed amendment act in 2015, the Parliamentary Human Rights Committee found that the now legislated statutory exceptions (defences) reversed the burden of proof and limited the right to the presumption of innocence. The Committee actually found that this was inconsistent with Australia’s human rights obligations.

To help facilitate better information to members about the Defence Controls with the release of the film The Hunting Ground, which exposes the levels of sexual assault in US universities.

UA’s campaign also involves a national survey to collate data on sexual assault and harassment and a review of all university policies and processes, run in partnership with the Australian Human Rights Commission, the Office of the Sex Discrimination Commission and the UNSW Australian Human Rights Centre.

Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins recently announced the national survey. While NTEU supports both the UA campaign and survey, we have written to the Commissioner highlighting the impact of sexual harassment and assault on campuses upon university staff.

A 2015 NTEU Qld Division survey of 409 female university staff found that 36 per cent of respondents expressed concerns about their personal safety on campus.

Issues included the downsizing and outsourcing of security personnel, inadequate lighting at night on campuses, the use of ‘dummy’ security cameras instead of functioning ones, public access to campus grounds at night and reports of stalking and harassment of staff.

page 4 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate

regime, the NTEU has updated its public FAQ after consultation with the Defence Export Controls (DEC) group within the Department of Defence.

Our consultations have also revealed that no formal requirement exists for universities to address the legislation, and that there is no organisation monitoring the establishment of university compliance programs. These arrangements mean that both the criminal and administrative burden of the legislation will most likely be borne by university staff.

Universities may not have legal liability for breaches, even where they have not sufficiently engaged staff about the existence and requirements of the legislation, or where universities implement compliance regimes which damages academic careers.

The NTEU is seeking the assistance of Branches and members to ensure that we can build a proper picture of what is going on at universities around the country.

Jen Tsen Kwok, Policy & Research Officer Updated NTEU FAQ is available at: www.nteu.org.au/defencetradecontrols The online petition, now signed by 480 plus Australian scientists is here: www.gopetition.com/petitions/ support-science-and-technology-inaustralia.html

Many respondents stated their reluctance to report incidents or fears over their personal safety due to concerns over their job security, the perception that they just had to ‘manage their personal risk’ while at work, or because they didn’t think they would be listened to by management.

Those who perpetrate sexual harassment and assault do so because the opportunity arises. This means that the staff who work back late, or who have evening classes scheduled, are as much at risk as students in the same situation.

The NTEU has long been a vocal advocate for universities to better prioritise their handling of sexual harassment and assault. We also recognised there exists a broader culture of gender inequity, sexism, intimidation and violence from which universities are not immune.

While there are specific issues for students impacted by sexual harassment and assault which must be addressed, any investigation which excludes the experiences of university staff may inadvertently not reflect the entirety of what is a truly insidious problem.

Women’s Action Committee

Update Fixed term contract survey NTEU’s recent online questionnaire of over 500 members and other university staff on fixed term contracts (who had responded to our State of the Uni survey) sought to dig a little deeper into the employment conditions of fixed term staff in higher education.

The questionnaire was undertaken with a view to identifying any instances of improper use of contract employment, either isolated or on a systematic basis.

Responses have now been analysed.

The results showed that around 30% of respondents had an issue that could be legally pursued, pending further investigation and information. In the coming weeks questionnaire respondents will be accordingly contacted by Branches and employment issues identified and pursued.

Notably there were a significant number of respondents employed for very long periods of time on recurrent fixed term research contracts, which again emphasises the need for NTEU to focus on job security for research contract staff in upcoming negotiations for new Enterprise Agreements.

To get a real flavour of the employment circumstances and lived experiences of fixed term staff, here are some extracts from some of the respondents to the questionnaire: Very difficult and stressful as the main provider for family - you tend to work 110% all of the time in case your contract does not get renewed. You say yes to everything.

The uncertainty around extensions to contracts has resulted in having anxiety issues.

The insecurities which go with fixed term employment mean that I cannot fully commit to living permanently anywhere, as economic/financial circumstances might lead me to move where a job is offered. I am hesitant to join clubs or other organisations, to commit myself to any local projects I might like to involve myself in or to try and form strong and lasting bonds with people and places as I might be forced to ‘up stakes’ at any time in pursuit of employ-

ment elsewhere if my services are no longer required at [this university].

When I or my children are sick I feel like I cannot take a day of sick leave because it may impact on my future opportunity for a more permanent role. The uncertainty is very unsettling and makes it very difficult to do any planning (holidays or volunteering at my children’s school or childcare).

I’m moody, feeling stressed and concerned about money.

The lack of security means that it is impossible to plan our financial future.

I regularly worry about my future employability.

I haven’t been able to apply for a mortgage on a one year contract.

My employer has made it very clear that keeping my position is dependent on doing unpaid work and staying in [the university’s] good graces (rather than the quality of my work).

I am very reluctant to take accrued leave as it is my safety net if my contract does not get renewed.

Unable to plan long term. Anxiety issues every 12 months about security of position. Always spending time looking for other employment or sources of funding.

Lack of security and much uncertainty.

Don’t feel it is safe to take out a home improvement loan. Can’t really plan for a definite superannuation amount to retire on. Retirement will be forced when external funding dries up.

Stressful. Cannot plan for the future. You have no stability and don’t know in 3 months’ time if you still have a job. Gaps of 5 weeks between contracts unpaid are very hard to live with. Bills pile up.

Lucky I have a supportive partner.

Clearly there is much more work for the Union to do in tackling universities’ preference for the ‘flexibility’ of fixed term contract employment over real, decent employment with a modicum of security and respect.

Sarah Roberts, National Industrial Coordinator

University governance in whose interest?

With the continuing assaults upon staff and student participation in university councils (or senates) – whether by collusion with governments to amend the university acts, or by direct attack on individual staff and student members of council, or attempts to curtail who can nominate and by holding meetings in secret with little or no accountability to the university community – the NTEU has decided to convene a national workshop on university councils.

The purpose of this invitation-only event, to be held in late August 2016, is to assist and support NTEU members of university councils, to analyse current attacks upon and the discourse on staff and student representation on governing bodies, and to hear from experts on key legal and ideological questions. This should better position NTEU local Branches to challenge university management and governance processes and decisions.

The workshop will start by unpacking the issues including the legislative environment, corporatisation of university governance, conflict of interest, funding and finances, commercial-in-confidence, and other issues.

Having established the context, the workshop will then focus on strategy and tactics for being an effective member of council.

Jeannie Rea, National President

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 5

Update WA VCs’ aggressive new IR approach The recent filing of applications in the Fair Work Commission seeking good faith bargaining orders against NTEU by the management of three WA universities is the latest in a series of signals that vicechancellors are taking a different and more aggressive approach to industrial relations than ever seen previously in the sector.

In the lead-up to the 2016 bargaining round they are acting collectively, perhaps for the first time, setting aside their natural antipathy towards collaboration and their claims to unique character and mission in what appears to be an attempt to challenge the influence and success of NTEU.

Confrontational approach This approach reflects not only a national position taken by their industrial arm, the Australian Higher Education Industry Association (AHEIA) as illustrated by its submissions to the Government and analysis of future workforce requirements, but also a more confrontational and less collegial approach to industrial relations at individual universities.

The groundwork is evident. In submissions to the Government’s Productivity Commission, the AHEIA called for long-established workplace rights to be prohibited from inclusion in enterprise agreements. These include removing disciplinary procedures along with getting rid of any restrictions on the use of fixed-term employment, allowing management to introduce individual flexibility agreements without limitations on their content and, perhaps not surprisingly, for all union rights to go.

To compound the depths of their mean-spiritedness, AHEIA has told the Government that if any more public holidays are to be granted then universities should not have to pay for such holidays, and neither should they have to pay penalty rates where staff are required to work.

A question that arises is whether this is just pre-bargaining rhetoric or the bluster of an industry organisation seeking to

impress its member vice-chancellors. The answer is probably not.

In support of AHEIA’s draconian wish list to the Productivity Commission, three of the four WA vice-chancellors told NTEU that they broadly supported the position. The fourth vice-chancellor, UWA’s Paul Johnson did not respond at all.

AHEIA’s Higher Education Workforce of the Future report commissioned from Price Waterhouse Coopers looks at options for what it euphemistically describes as a redesign of the university workforce, one that exhibits agility and flexibility. Behind the glibness of those words the purpose is clearly defined: a move away from the traditional 40:40:20 academic workload allocation, a change in delineation between academic and professional roles, an increase in the flexibility of working hours in alignment with the expectation that academic staff be available ‘24/7’ and a greater use of specialised and para-academic casuals.

Somewhat remarkably, the options include considering whether PhDs are necessary for academics as universities become more industry-aligned and seemingly prioritising industry engagement over research.

As an insight of how staff are viewed, the report notes that only 5 per cent of university leaders rate their employee value proposition as being very high. It means that 95 per cent say that their staff are not very high value.

The fingerprints of AHEIA are already all too evident in this bargaining round.

Its Executive Director twice insisted that NTEU retract statements about the vice-chancellors’ collective bargaining position and then filed proceedings on their behalf. Significantly, the authors of AHEIA’s workforce report, the international consulting firm PWC, are among those who have been at pre-bargaining roadshow meetings to university staff, preaching the need for a flexible and agile workforce.

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VCs’ bargaining manifesto At the end of April, one month after enterprise agreement negotiations were due to start at Edith Cowan, Murdoch and Curtin universities, the four WA vice-chancellors issued a joint communique entitled ‘embracing future opportunities’. It was described in some quarters as their bargaining manifesto, telling staff that they would be engaging with them directly to achieve agreements that are ‘simple, contemporary and fair’.

Despite the obligation to have started negotiations by the end of March, university management at the three universities have all decided they will not be in a position to present their claims until early June. UWA is not due to start negotiations until later in the year, and while normally a very slow starter, this year seem eager to get into the action.

In the meantime, at engagement meetings with staff university management are presenting a sugar-coated message that nevertheless carries significant implications. The first is that they will challenge a number of established conditions of employment and, second, that management are in our view attempting to undermine NTEU by going directly to staff for responses to their position.

As one vice-chancellor told his audience: I want to hear directly from you what pay increase you should have, not from the Union. Commonly, management have been all too keen to tell staff that redundancy processes are too complicated, there need to be fewer restrictions around fixed-term contracts and that enterprise agreements are too lengthy. At Edith Cowan the message is even more explicit they don’t want to see anything in a collective agreement that is already ‘better’ covered by legislative or policy instruments.

The message is clear; AHEIA’s future workforce report sets out a roadmap for implementation which includes redesigning existing roles and designing new ones, setting up diverse employment contracts

Update Roz Ward reinstatement a cause for celebration & reflection Two-and-a-half working days after being suspended from her job by La Trobe University, Victorian Safe Schools Program Coordinator and NTEU member Roz Ward returned to work on Monday 6 June.

To mark the occasion, supporters of the Safe Schools program were joined

by NTEU members, proudly flying the Union’s flag in a guard of honour, outside La Trobe’s Melbourne city offices.

The presence of flags was fitting. The previous week, following a flurry of publicity over a comment Roz made about the Australian flag on a private social media post, she was formally advised by her employer that she was suspended and charged with serious misconduct.

The extreme step followed not only the recent hysterical coverage of the flag comment, but months of attacks from politicians and right-wing media commentators on the Safe Schools Program – the initiative to tackle bullying, homophobia and transphobia in schools, that Roz was integral in establishing, organising and defending.

La Trobe’s move was immediately condemned by the NTEU, with Victorian Secretary Colin Long stating: ‘That La Trobe University has apparently allowed itself to be cowed into participating in this anti-intellectual, anti-democratic attack reflects the dismal state of intellectual capacity at the senior management level in some Australian universities.’ and implementing what is described as an academic pipeline over the next three years. The tune to which the vice-chancellors are collectively dancing is all too plain to see.

The warning signs are there and the risk that conditions of employment for future staff will be worse than current ones if

A storm of criticism followed for La Trobe. Rallies were arranged and free speech and academic freedom invoked – the latter two particularly pertinent given La Trobe’s purported championing of these principles in its Enterprise Agreement.

On Friday 3 June, NTEU instructed lawyers to write La Trobe Vice Chancellor John Dewar, giving him until Monday to reinstate Roz and withdraw the allegations. Possible contraventions of the University’s Enterprise Agreement, the Fair Work Act and Victoria’s Equal Opportunity Act were cited. Later that evening, La Trobe backed down.

In a statement issued too late to make many evening news bulletins, Professor Dewar indicated charges against Roz were withdrawn, and that she would be allowed to return to work on Monday.

‘The concerted campaign by the Union, the Safe Schools community and the wider community has clearly forced the University to come to its senses,’ said NTEU National President Jeannie Rea. ‘The NTEU now calls upon Australia’s vice-chancellors to stand up and make it very clear that this type of unwarranted attack upon both academic freedom and the right of employees to hold and express an opinion will never be repeated.’

While the fact Roz is back in her job doing her important work is a win, the incident has highlighted some concerning broader trends. Indeed, that Roz was suspended following a concerted campaign against the Safe Schools program and coverage of her private NTEU members are not vigilant and are prepared to defend their patch.

But along with the risks are also the opportunities. If vice-chancellors want consistent industry standards, let us set common conditions of employment across all universities which provide secure employment and clear career paths, 17 per

personal opinions, reflects the push in recent decades to turn universities into corporate businesses, and an obsession with ‘brand’.

Dr Long said this alarming trend is ‘perverting the fundamental nature of universities as places where communities of scholars (staff and students) express, explore and challenge ideas, seeking truth, being the critic and conscience of society and pushing the boundaries of knowledge. Universities should care about scholarly endeavour, fearless research and truth-seeking. Businesses care about their “reputations” and “brands”.

In fact, the obsession with brand means that universities like La Trobe are trashing what should be the basis of their reputations – intellectual freedom.’

While NTEU examines further legal options in relation to the treatment of its member, Roz is back at work. In a speech to supporters prior to resuming her job on Monday, she focused on the NTEU’s role. ‘Imagine being in this situation without having a trade union to back you,’ said Roz. ‘I would be in a much more difficult situation, so, I think it’s a reminder to all of us of the importance of unions. It’s a reminder to all of us of the importance of actually fighting back against these attacks.

‘I’m going to keep doing that and you’re going to keep doing that with me and I just want to say thank you for that.’

Andrew MacDonald, Media & Communications Officer

Above: Roz Ward receives a guard of honour upon her return to work. Source: Toby Cotton cent employer superannuation contributions for all staff and salaries which reflect the increases in productivity which have occurred right across the sector. It is now up to us not only to defend our patch but to improve it.

Marty Braithwaite, WA Senior State Organiser

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Update Science meets Parliament is an annual event organised by Science and Technology Australia, providing an opportunity for scientists to better understand and engage with politicians.

Talking science under the Canberra Big Tent I told my students I was off to the circus. And indeed, in many ways Canberra is an enormous ongoing unfunny spectacle – the Hill being less entertaining, more cruel and more detached from reality than the average big tent.

This zero-ring circus is far worse in its infliction of harm, particularly against the poor, asylum seekers and the victims of US-led Australian-followed aggression, than the harshest of animal-performance trainers. But, somehow the clowns/ politicians are elected, they have some democratic legitimacy, they are supposed to represent us, and the only thing worse than enduring harm done by the State is acquiescing in it. So I was pleased to head up to Canberra as a delegate of the NTEU, along with Dr Sara Beavis, Dr Jack Clegg, and Dr Kelvin Michael.

I was there also to bring to politicians’ attention the serious issues facing researchers under the Defence Trade Controls Act (DTCA). The NTEU has been warning for a long time about the potential impact of these laws; I have also written about them.

The central focus of the two-day event is a series of meetings arranged between scientists and Members of Parliament.

Each scientist attending is assigned to one or more meetings where two or three scientists discuss science with an MP.

group. But scientists are, on the whole, not particularly experienced or effective in such matters. And, accordingly, the first day of the event consisted of a number of keynote speeches, workshops and panel discussions, covering a wide range of topics relating to science, communication, lobbying, policymaking and the media.

The workshop on science communication I thought was particularly valuable.

Scientists are rather unique as a group to be meeting with politicians. Scientists are relatively free of vested interests -- except perhaps for a bias in favour of sources of research funding. They are critical thinkers.

They base their opinions on evidence and theory, not blind partisanship. They are highly intelligent and informed. They talk straight and to the point; they give straight answers. They are not afraid to disagree.

At least that’s the theory – and there are good reasons to think that a publish-or-perish culture with precarious job prospects and onerous performance metrics prescribing academic publications, student completions and grant income severely compromise that ideal. Nonetheless, to the extent scientists do live up to the ideal, they are everything a politician should be looking for: saying what’s true rather than what they want to hear, challenging faulty thinking, and acknowledging uncertainty. These are rare commodities in Canberra; and of course they are also largely just the traits of an engaged citizen and any good union member.

However, a contrary view was put at the first day’s events, most explicitly by Professor Ian Chubb, former Chief Scientist and Vice-Chancellor of ANU and Flinders University. He urged scientists never to disagree with a politician and, in general, to try to leave the politician with a good feeling about science, so that their positive disposition might translate into positive outcomes for science and research.

One can understand the argument: flattery, ingratiation and sycophancy do not exist because they are fun, but because they

It is therefore primarily an exercise in lobbying, communications, and the promotion of science. For any scientist, outreach to the public is important, to explain one’s research and why it is important. Outreach to a politician is only outreach to a single individual, but it is an individual who wields significant power and influence.

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often work. But it runs counter to the scientific spirit and method, I think it is undignified, and it is a dangerous game to play.

Scientists can rest assured that there will be many well-heeled lobbyists for more powerful interests who can play that game far better than they ever could. Dante reserved the eighth circle of hell for flatterers.

In any case, the question at Science meets Parliament is rather academic. The meetings arranged with politicians there are not negotiations over difficult or complicated issues; apart from exceptions where activist delegates like myself choose to raise potentially controversial issues, they are largely innocuous get-to-know-you meetings where scientists talk about what they love and enjoy doing. In my own meeting with Nick McKim, Greens Senator for Tasmania, together with two other scientists, in addition to the serious issues around the DTCA, we talked about encryption, molecular imaging, pure mathematics, electoral reform, and the Tasmanian fox population. It was a highly enjoyable affair.

But this is not surprising: any elected politician, if they are any good at all, will have developed an affable and charismatic persona which sets any interlocutor at ease. And regarding the DTCA, the Greens are not the problem; it is the bipartisan consensus of the major parties which is the problem.

However much we may need to hold our noses dealing with elected representatives, many of whom do not share our values or our commitments, it is worthwhile to engage with them where we can. Politicians, just like the rest of the public, need to hear more of the good work done by scientists, just as they need to hear more of the good work done by unions. Science meets Parliament provides a useful forum for this, and more.

And we did get to see the circus – question time was everything I expected it to be.

Dr Daniel Mathews, School of Mathematical Sciences, Monash University http://scienceandtechnologyaustralia. org.au/science-meets-parliament

Update Brisbane Declaration against privatised universities Arising out of the Challenging the Privatised University conference held last November (see Advocate March 2016) is the Brisbane Declaration, which organisers are now circulating for endorsement.

The NTEU has endorsed the Declaration which reads: Given the role of multinational corporations in contributing to the looming global environmental, social and financial crises, and their increasing influence on all forms of education, including university education, there has never been a more important time to rethink the meaning of a good university in Australia.

Good universities are: • Communities not for-profit corporations.

• Democratic public institutions for the social good.

• Fully funded by government.

• Independent of corporate influence.

• Dedicated to offering free, high quality education.

• Explicitly incorporate an understanding of Indigenous culture and history.

• Transformational not merely transactional.

• Recognise and integrate bodies of knowledge from the global south.

• Democratically accountable to society as a whole.

• Recognise academic freedom as a core value.

• Committed to an ethical and knowledge driven curriculum that foster critical reflection and creativity.

• Produce open, available and accessible knowledge.

Good universities: • Embrace multiple ways of knowing.

• Nurture public intellectuals.

• Promote the free exchange of ideas in the quest for truth.

• Actively value collegiality and collaboration.

• Uphold and support the role of student unions.

• Uphold diversity in the production of knowledge.

• Foster and develop mutual respect.

Two long term active NTEU members, Associate Professor Cathy Brigden (RMIT University) and Associate Professor Sarah Kaine (UTS) have initiated a project to construct a digital repository of the oral history of women’s union activism in Australia since 1968.

The project initiators believe this project is an important beginning to correct an imbalance in the narrative of recorded Australian union history. Our history has tended to be dominated by the stories of Australian male unionists with less attention given to the contributions of individual women.

• Empower students to become active citizens and not just job ready graduates.

• Transparent and accountable.

Oral history project of women in Australian unions

The project seeks to interview 50 women, across different unions, to tell their stories of their own lived experience as women activists in Australian unions.

• Participate in the development of a just, democratic and sustainable society which privileges ecologies over the economy.

• Include all academic and non-academic staff, and students as active participants in decision-making processes and culture.

• Invite alternative, non-hierarchical and respectful forms of performance review.

This declaration is intended to spark a national conversation about the nature, role and purpose of university education in a socially just, democratic society. We invite reflection, debate and dialogue in pursuit of the good university.

The upcoming edition of Australian Universities’ Review (AUR) features articles arising out of the conference.

‘One reason for this [imbalance],’ they say in their overview of the project, ‘has been the lower proportion of women in official leadership positions within individual unions and until the 1980s in union peak bodies. … the relative absence of women’s voices means the historical record does not reflect or acknowledge the contribution of the thousands of women (many working as rank and file activists or holding honorary positions) to the development and defence of workers’ rights in Australia.’

The project seeks to audio-record interviews with women from both capital cities and regional areas to capture a wide range of interview subjects, cultures and experiences in unions and peak unions. The time period – 1968 to the present – will enable the researchers to investigate both broader social change such as second wave feminism and internal movement change such as amalgamations and the ‘organising project’.

The NTEU is supporting the project including facilitating access to activists and leaders.

Helena Spyrou, Union Education & Training Officer Contact: Cathy Brigden, cathy.brigden@rmit. edu.au, Sarah Kaine, sarah.kaine@uts.edu.au.

Left: Equal Pay case, 1969. Source: Zelda D’Aprano

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Update Bluestocking Week 15–19 August 2016

Furthering the Feminist Agenda In the last round of enterprise bargaining, the NTEU successfully negotiated provisions to support people dealing with domestic violence, including extra leave and support in the workplace to ensure that people can hold onto their jobs. Australian unions have led the world in making domestic violence a workplace issue and, to their credit, many employers have agreed with instituting support for their staff as well as campaigning against violence towards women. Other countries are now picking up our lead.

However, the Minister for Employment and Women in the Turnbull Coalition Government, Michaelia Cash announced on 27 May that domestic violence leave provisions for female workers would be a barrier to women getting jobs (The Age 27/5/16). Senator Cash is currently actively intervening against the public sector union’s domestic violence support claims in their enterprise bargaining negotiations.

Disappointing, but not surprising. Only a few years ago, the argument sanctioned by both sides of politics was that paid parental leave would be a barrier to women getting jobs. When working women called for equal pay over a century ago they were also told it would be a barrier to women getting jobs.

These arguments founded in opposition to women’s workforce equity still regularly emerge even though we have had equal pay for work of equal value since the 1970s. Women are still discriminated against because they are women, and this is evidenced in the gender pay gap and lack of equity in employment and career opportunities.

Governed by our wombs When the first generation of women were forcing their way into universities in the latter part of the 19th century, they were challenging pseudo academic theories that women were incapable of higher education because our brains are too small and controlled by our ovaries or, my favourite, that we would render ourselves infertile as the finite ‘energy’ in our wombs would rush to our brains.

The new mental health theories labelled women ‘hysterical’ and decreed they should be locked up and violently assaulted in the name of treatment if they spoke out and said and did unpopular things – like wanting the vote, an education, a professional career or not wanting a husband.

Of course these theories were rubbish, but they were used to keep women out, and the remnants of these ideas hang about.

Today in Australia more women than men study and work in universities. More women hold degrees and yet women still face gender based adverse discrimination in the workforce and across public life. And women’s assumed reproductive biology is still used against us whether or not we want to, do or can birth children. Once deemed a woman, whether or not that is by one’s own choice, we face assumptions of our wants and behaviours. This has not changed. If it had we would not have to still argue about how to ‘balance work and family’, which remains a euphemism for women being difficult.

The other reality of today is that more women work and for more of our lives than ever before, and women’s workforce participation is increasing as men’s is decreasing. So the issue is not one of women working, but is still about in what jobs and for what salaries and under what conditions. Women will still be poorer

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when they retire. While the experiences of women are different because of race, ethnicity, class, sexuality and other identities, reliance upon women doing more and more in the paid workforce, in the home and community is widespread.

Challenging male power Those first generations of university women were dubbed ‘bluestockings’*. It was supposed to be an insult, to dismiss such women as not ‘real’ women, as real women would know their place. Their crime was being clever and wanting to learn. But they were women, mainly but certainly not exclusively white and middle class, who knew that they wanted education, but had no delusions that the education they were offered was constructed to maintain patriarchy and the power of their class and race brothers.

It is not at all surprising that those early women graduates and their descendants continued to not only break down barriers to women’s access to learning and professions, but were also often fervent feminists challenging the normality of male power.

Today as the diversity of women entering universities has expanded, due to well-founded policies of massification, the university, including those feminists who have wrenched out some space within it, are also being challenged by those who question the platitudes of ‘inclusivity’ of some second wave feminism.

The current contentious debates within and beyond feminism should be vigorously pursued in our universities, in all their messiness. The irony though is that as women want to use the space and opportunities of universities to try and figure it all out, we are being confronted by an environment increasingly antagonistic to feminism.

Update For-profit schools researcher arrested in Uganda Curtis Riep, a Canadian PhD student, was arrested in June while researching the activities of Bridge International Academies in Uganda.

I am not interested in debating who is and is not a feminist, but what we are facing is a sustained attack on being feminist at all, if feminist means contesting male power and control. The obvious attacks are not just those upon the continuation of women’s or gender studies courses, but also upon the ideas and the jobs of feminist academics.

Gender equity in the neoliberal university The neoliberal university is embracing of ‘gender equity policies’ yet women staff are finding that the gains we had made in academic and professional career advancement seem to have stalled and we are still often speaking into a vacuum when we speak out. Young feminist academic and professional staff are told to take care with being too overtly feminist or loud. Aspiring post graduate students are advised to pick their disciplines and topics carefully, to make sure they meet all the criteria safely and to over perform.

The reality is that too many younger women academics find that all that dedication has left them with casual teaching or fixed term research jobs with few prospects, but they keep on researching and publishing to meet the criteria. Being a ‘good girl’ did not work for feisty clever girls at school and it does not work in the university.

(Or maybe it does for a few mainstream women, but leaves most women working twice as hard to get half as far, and that quadruples if you are Aboriginal or queer or have a disability…).

It is a sad indictment that the focus of student feminists has to be upon safety, as violence and sexual violence against women on campus is as bad as ever and now compounded by cyber space. The threat of male violence against women is circumscribing women’s agency at university and outside, including in the home. I wonder

what those old bluestockings would have thought about all this. I suspect the more optimistic would have hoped for better, and the more knowing would sagely advise us not to be deterred or let up our vigilance.

So when the National Union of Students and NTEU decided to revive NUS’s 1990s Bluestocking Week initiative five years ago, we said that we wanted to carve out some space on campus to both celebrate what women had achieved in higher education and also to highlight current issues and campaigns.

Get organised As we establish Bluestocking Week as an annual event in August, staff and students are focusing upon broadening our activities from the all-important get togethers to forums, competitions, exhibitions, debates and more. It is not all about debating who the original bluestockings may have been and focussing upon paying homage in blue leg attire, but it is about loudly and vibrantly asserting women in higher education. I am not suggesting for a moment that signifying attire and blue cakes should not be enjoyed, but so should activities that take on the current issues that confront women in higher education – many of which would be sadly familiar to the original bluestockings.

Contact your local NTEU Branch office to find out what is happening on your campus during Bluestocking Week 2016, 15–19 August.

Jeannie Rea, National President *Read about the original Bluestockings and also catch up on events around the country at:

www.nteu.org.au/bluestockingweek

Images: Members taking part in events during Bluestocking Week 2015

As reported by Education International (EI) Global Response Project Director Angelo Gavrielatos, Bridge is backed inter alia by global edu-business Pearson, billionaires Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, DfID-UK and the World Bank amongst others. It has established low-fee for-profit schools in Kenya and has now expanded into Uganda. Recently the Liberian Government announced that it will outsource primary schools to Bridge.

Riep was in Uganda on behalf of EI, continuing his research on the ugly and murky activities of edu-businesses, and has previously undertaken research in The Philippines and Ghana.

He was investigating Bridge’s failure to meet regulatory requirements applicable to schools.

His arrest was at the instigation of Bridge, who went so far as to publish a ‘wanted’ poster with a photo of Riep in the Ugandan press. Bridge also arranged to have media present when Riep was arrested. Following a police investigation the charges could not be substantiated and Riep was released.

However, he has returned to Canada, cutting short his work.

The scourge of edu-businesses and their inroads into schools and teacher training colleges attracted condemnation of NTEU Council last October.

Since then it has been revealed that Pearson is involved in NAPLAN testing in Australia, so our governments are also falling into this trap of outsourcing critical public education services to these profiteers. What is going on in our universities where managements have demonstrated a blithe preparedness to hand over teaching to private providers?

Jeannie Rea, National President

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 11

UniCasual News SuperCasuals stand up, fight back SuperCasuals have been extraordinarily busy. Here is an update of our wins and activity.

At Victoria University the local SuperCasuals team recently secured a major win in the ‘Late Contracts and Paid Induction’ campaign. Vexed NTEU casual member activists wondered why they had to keep up to date with hundreds of pages of university policy in their own time and why they couldn’t a get a contract on time. Through collective action the local SuperCasuals group secured 3 hours of paid induction training and a fix to the late contracts mess. Well done VU SuperCasuals!

At the end of 2015 the NTEU launched a bold job security campaign with Professional and Vocational Education staff at Swinburne University. NTEU casual members came together to collectively demand conversion from casual to fixed term contracts. The preparedness of members to take action and stand together left senior management with no choice but to offer all casual applicants fixed term contracts of up to 14 months. In addition,

casual members won a new right to the next contract where the work is required.

Congratulations to the dozens of casual members involved and to local organiser Linda Cargill on leading the charge.

Current SuperCasuals conversion to secure campaigns are up and running at both the University of Melbourne and Monash.

If you are a casual employee at either of these institutions we encourage you to check in at Supercasuals.org.au for details on how to participate. Alternatively, contact Dustin at dhalse@nteu.org.au for more information.

In other news, a large group of SuperCasuals recently visited Victoria’s Parliament House to participate in the Victorian Trade Hall Council workers’ delegation (pictured above). SuperCasuals met with Government MPs and crossbenchers to press the

NTEU’s claims for greater job security in the higher education sector.

MPs were genuinely stunned to hear the stories of hardship and exploitation that are pervasive in the sector. In the coming months SuperCasuals will continue to lobby state MPs and Ministers to pass new public sector secure work legislation.

Finally, on 4 June, the Victorian Division held its first state-wide SuperCasuals Activist Day. Forty casual members from across all Victorian Branches assembled to discuss how to build power in the workplace and how casuals can actively participate in the structures of the NTEU. Dustin Halse, Recruitment & Campaign Organiser, Victorian Division For more info: supercasuals.org.au Follow us on Twitter @thesupercasuals

NTEU partners with Victoria Teachers Mutual Bank (and it’s not just for Victorians!)

highly competitive interest rates, low fees and a broad range of products and services.

‘Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.’ – Nelson Mandela.

That’s why NTEU has partnered with Victoria Teachers Mutual Bank, so you have access to financial products that strengthen both the education sector and your financial wellbeing.

The founding educators of Victoria Teachers Mutual Bank recognised this wisdom and wanted to create a better economic life for people working in education, as well as their families.

The Mutual Bank was started in 1972 by 48 educators who each contributed $10 in start-up capital. Today, it has more than 100,000 customers, over $2 billion in assets and is known for a better value banking experience.

So what sets Victoria Teachers Mutual Bank apart from other banks? Staying true to its heritage, the Mutual Bank is still dedicated to supporting the education sector through a range of corporate social responsibility activities, from preschool through to tertiary.

But one of its greatest assets is that it’s owned by its customers, not external shareholders. Each customer owns an equal share of the organisation and profits are reinvested so the Mutual Bank can provide continuing value through

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It also means that the Mutual Bank is in business to benefit customers, putting their financial wellbeing first, which has culminated in it having one of the highest satisfaction ratings of any bank, building society or credit union in Australia.

Through their understanding of the financial needs of educators, the Mutual Bank has tailored a range of special banking offers available to tertiary staff, from everyday banking, to loans and financial planning. Anyone, nationwide is welcome to open an account and take advantage of the special offers.

Find out more at victeach.com.au

Or contact Victoria Teachers Mutual Bank Workplace Banker Fiona Lock on 0438 559 431 or flock@victeach.com.au.

UniCasual News Stop being so casual

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promoting the discipline in the media and public discourse, or reading a draft chapter of a colleague’s book or even their student’s thesis just to get some feedback. Casually employed academics get drawn in to doing many of these things without remuneration in the hope it positions them well if any jobs come up, and because they too are committed to their discipline and intellectual inquiry.

Over the past few months, new posters have appeared over photocopiers, in tea rooms, on doors and noticeboards reminding academics in ongoing and contract positions of their casually employed academic colleagues.

Casual academics, particularly as they gain more experience want to contribute to moderating, reviewing and developing new content and pedagogy in their subjects and courses, but are rarely offered a properly constructed and remunerated opportunity. More likely casuals are brought in, paid or unpaid, at the last minute to take over a course, rewrite the content and post it on the learning management system.

‘Hey you,’ says one poster, ‘Don’t exploit their commitment by expecting free labour’. Another reminds ‘Invite them to meetings and make sure they get paid to attend’. A third says ‘Recognise casual staff give you the time and space to do research and engagement’.

These are provocative and have caused some blowback, but hopefully they will provoke the very conversations that are needed in corridors and staff rooms and meetings.

Besides lack of ongoing work; only getting paid for a few hours of the work actually done; worrying about paying the rent and keeping food on the table; delaying starting a family; and fretting about the students’ learning; casually employed academics have to deal with the constant nagging frustration of lack of collegial support – or even acknowledgement.

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Unfortunately, the reality is that unless they started their careers as casually employed or are on fixed term contracts, too many academic staff, even Union members, often do not consider casually employed academics as their colleagues even when they work alongside or supervise them. Such attitudes go against both the tenets of unionism and of academic collegial practice.

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We are saying stop being so casual in your attitude and behaviour towards casually employed colleagues.

There must be solidarity and understanding of our common cause of supporting job security for all. There is consensus that casualisation of university teaching is bad for the casually employed academics, for the quality of education, for the health of academic disciplines and intellectual inquiry, and for the student experience.

Some disciplines in some universities are so heavily casualised that many tasks of academics can no longer be done; from contributing to journals through peer reviewing and editing, to sitting on advisory boards, organising conferences,

These inequities and gross exploitation cannot be kept hidden as the dirty secret of the contemporary academic profession.

So let’s provoke conversations and debate and even arguments. This is a start.

Jeannie Rea, NTEU National President To put up posters in your work area, contact your local Branch office, or download PDFs here: unicasual.org.au/istandwithcasuals

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 13

Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander News Fighting for Sovereignty and Treaties over Recognition Australia stands at a significant point in history. A point where it can step out from the cloud of disappointment and dysfunction that it currently struggles under and move into a truly egalitarian position concerning Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (A&TSI) Peoples.

A step forward in Victoria Since the beginning of this year, the Victorian Government has been holding community-based consultations with A&TSI Peoples on the topic of self-determination.

In February, at the first of these consultations, landmark motions were passed by the 500 Aboriginal community members present, which made national news.

The first of these motions rejected outright the notion of ‘Constitutional Recognition’, as championed by the Federal Government and Opposition, on the basis of Aboriginal sovereignty.

The second called on the Victorian Government to resource and commit to a series of community consultations to establish treaties between the Sovereign Peoples of south-eastern Australia and the Victorian Government. The third called for the establishment of an Elders’ council across the south-east.

These motions from the community were significant as they made plain to the State Government and indeed, the voters of Victoria, that Aboriginal sovereign rights take priority over Aboriginal recognition and indeed recognition is hollow without the protection of these rights. The treaty discussions in Victoria are therefore landmark and set a requirement for other State, Territory and Federal Governments to follow.

Two steps back in Canberra Yet, while the Victorian Government appears to be leading the way when it comes to open and progressive discussions and outcomes with the Aboriginal community,

it appears the Federal Government is dedicated to the perpetuation of ignorance.

The Federal Budget handed down in May this year showed once again that a series of cuts had been made to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander services while at the same time more funding was committed to the Recognise campaign.

a dissenting stance in order to stress the importance of listening to Indigenous debate on this issue. It is finally hoped that this stance by the NTEU will lead to more focussed discussions with Indigenous unionists in the broader union movement.’ NTEU, A&TSI Bulletin 8/10/2015.

Despite this, university managements are currently undertaking partnerships with Recognise and committing their campuses to promoting this view. The National Union of Students also endorsed Recognise last year despite opposition shown by Indigenous officers at their Council.

Getting our voices heard

In addition to this, and despite knowing that there is broad community opposition to Recognise, the Federal Government made ‘demonstrable support for Constitutional Recognition’ a criteria of its Indigenous Advancement Strategy round.

This means that community organisations who are reliant on this funding to operate could lose their support if they do not sign on to Recognise.

NTEU leads in higher education, others fail to follow In 2015, the NTEU National Council unanimously passed a motion opposing Recognise and committing to the platforming of alternate viewpoints to that provided by the constitutional recognition movement, along with the lobbying of government to fund a ‘no’ campaign.

‘C2b - Constitutional Recognition: The NTEU has now formally adopted a dissenting, rather than questioning, stance on the issue of Constitutional Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This motion notes the broad bipartisan support of Constitutional Recognition in Australian Politics and the deliberate funding of a ‘yes’ campaign by the Federal Government despite there being a lot of dissent in the Indigenous community.

Additionally, this motion pushes the need for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rights to be recognised first via treaty negotiations before being written into the Constitution. Finally, this motion notes the lack of priority given to the need for A&TSI community conventions on this topic by the Government and therefore, as a union which reflects the principle embodied by our membership of critical thought, feels the need to take

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There is an issue of concern here. Many members of the NTEU have not had the opportunity to be informed of the alternative views from Aboriginal Communities to constitutional recognition and be made aware of the positive and respectful moves towards treaties in Victoria.

Recognise and other bodies are now actively taking on board the talk of treaty (singular) as being able to travel alongside constitutional recognition. This puts pressure and a time limit on realistic negotiations on the range of treaties that would be required to represent adequately the diverse situations of A&TSI Peoples across the nation. There are communities that will be negotiating robust treaties including Land Rights with resources included and other treaties that acknowledge the sovereign rights of ‘remnant’ groups/individuals. For example, some of the Stolen Generations who may not be able to trace family back to land.

This lack of knowledge and the pressure to accept an unrealistic time frame nationally is certain to bring division to A&TSI Peoples and between many of them and the wider community.

NTEU members and Branches need to strongly object to such pressure and to universities undertaking partnerships with Recognise and begin organised information sessions on Sovereignty and Treaties now. The agenda needs to be driven by the sovereign rights of A&TSI Peoples and be conducted in a respectful manner.

This is not about the outcomes for anyone but for future generations and needs to ensure they do not live under a poorly constructed ‘reform’ to the Constitution nor a hastily cobbled together treaty.

Celeste Liddle, National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Organiser Terry Mason, Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Caucus Chair www.nteu.org.au/atsi

Image source: nationalunitygovernment.org

Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander News Wave Hill 50 years This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Wave Hill Walk Off. This historic event began when 200 mainly Gurindji cattle station workers at the Wave Hill Station, who were working under sub-par conditions and for a fraction of the wage paid to nonIndigenous workers, walked off the job eventually establishing a protest camp in the bed of Wattie Creek.

This strike, which lasted for 9 years, culminated in the handing back of some lands to the Gurindji which was symbolised by the then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam pouring sands into the hands of strike leader Vincent Lingiari. This strike was also important due to the support and solidarity given to the striking cattle station workers by the Communist Party as well as unions across the entire country.

The Walk Off happened at a particularly potent time for the Indigenous rights struggle in Australia’s history. As well as the tide of public opinion turning and the union support shown via solidarity actions and fundraising activities, activists were mobilising in other areas of the country through this period.

The Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra was set up in 1972 in response to the McMahon Government’s refusal to recognise land rights favouring instead a lease system which gave traditional owners no claim to mineral and resource rights.

In the Top End, the Yolngu people had presented the Federal Government with a Bark Petition in 1963 after the Government had sold off part of their lands without consultation to Nabalco mining company.

They then took Nabalco to court in 1968 arguing their collective land rights which, while not successful at the time, laid the groundwork which eventually led to the 1976 Aboriginal Land Rights Act passed by the Fraser Government.

The Gurindji Walk Off is commemorated every year in Kalkarindji. In honour of the fifty year anniversary of this significant turning point in Australia’s history, the celebrations being held in August are particularly substantial involving a detailed community program including concerts, education and cultural activities.

In honour of the partnership forged between black and white workers during this struggle, many unions are sending contingents along including an official contingent from the ACTU and a delegation from the NTEU. The fight for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Land Rights in this country is far from over. Indeed, only last year the NTEU marched in solidarity against the proposed forced closure of Aboriginal communities in Western Australia. The 50 year anniversary of Wave Hill therefore serves as a poignant reminder, not just of how far we have come, but how this fight is not yet over.

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

Below: Vincent Lingiari and Mick Rangiari on Gurindji land, 1966. Source: National Archives of Australia

A&TSI Forum NTEU’s National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Forum 2016 will be held on 21–22 July at the Narana Aboriginal Cultural Centre in Grovedale, Victoria.

This year’s theme is ‘Our Sovereignty – Our Culture – Our Claim’. It has particular resonance in light of recent developments from Victoria on Treaty discussions and for all A&TSI trade unionists as we enter into negotiations for Round 7 bargaining.

Forum will discuss a range of issues relevant for A&TSI academic and general/professional staff: • Yarn session. Delegate introductions and discussion on issues of importance to you.

• Budget 2016-17. Overview of the Federal Budget and how it affects A&TSI higher education funding.

• Bargaining. Review of outcomes achieved across Round 6 bargaining, and a view to Round 7.

• A Path to Recognition – or is it?

Discussion on the current status of the Recognise campaign and the moves by the Victorian Government to enter into a Treaty.

• P lenary & National Council 2016.

Issues and potential motions for NTEU National Council in October.

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

Information regarding Forum, including a link to online registrations, will be circulated to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members via email. Additional information can be obtained by contacting Adam Frogley afrogley@nteu.org.au.

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

Adam Frogley, National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Coordinator www.nteu.org.au/atsi/forum/2016

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 15

Federal Budget & higher education policy

Masterly inactivity or a study in ineptitude?

When analysing the 2016-17 Federal Budget, one might be forgiven for thinking that the Government had adopted a position of ‘masterly inactivity’ when it came to higher education.

Other than funding cuts to two specific programs (equity and teaching and learning excellence) the primary policy announcements in relation to higher education were: 1. To delay the implementation of Government policies until 2018 to allow for further consultation, and 2. Not to proceed with the Government’s plans to fully deregulate university fees.

Paul Kniest Policy & Research Coordinator

After being in power for almost three years, and twice having failed to get unprincipled, unfair and unsustainable higher education policies through the Parliament, it seems that Christopher Pyne’s successor as Education Minister, Senator Simon Birmingham, has come to the inevitable conclusion that the Government’s higher education policies were in serious need of a system reboot.

The irony of the Government’s position in relation to higher education in the lead up to the 2016 election, is that they have arrived at the same position as that advocated by Tony Abbott when, as Opposition Leader, he said to the Universities Australia Higher Education Conference in February 2013 that ‘higher education is one area where government’s role is more to be a respectful listener than a hands-on manager’ and that ‘government officials are neither wiser nor better informed than the people with long practical experience at running our universities.’

The tragic thing about the current position however, is that rather than having arrived at this position through ‘masterly inactivity’, the Government has wasted three years ham-fistedly trying to ram its unfair and unsustainable policies through the Parliament. Bernard Keane in Crikey recognised the folly of the Government’s approach as far back as 3 December 2014, when he described the debacle of then Education Minister, Christopher Pyne’s travails as ‘the crashing and burning of the Government’s higher education deregulation reforms as a study in this Government’s ineptitude’.

page 16 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate

However, the Government’s policy ineptitude was not the only reason for it to hit the reboot button on higher education policy. A more important reason is that the Government is trying to neutralise higher education, and in particular fee deregulation and $100,000 degrees as an election issue. This is evidenced by the fact that the only policy position that the Government has completely abandoned, is ‘full’ fee deregulation.

Objectives have not changed Despite its decision to delay implementation and engage in further consultation, to be guided by the release of its Driving Innovation, Fairness and Excellence in Australian Higher Education discussion paper, the Government remains committed to the following broad policy objectives: • Cutting public investment in higher education by about $2.5 billion over the next four years.

• Making all students pay more by increasing the average student contribution by at least 25 per cent.

• Allowing the level of fees (as opposed to academic merit) to determine who gains entry into some degrees, through the establishment of ‘flagship’ or similar programs.

• Expanding the demand driven system to non-university providers.

This amounts to a reboot of the policy process to find a way to achieve the Government’s objectives rather than a rethink of the market based ideology or objectives underlying their higher education policies.

MYEFO December 2015 and BUDGET May 2016

5,000

What is in the Budget?

Before trying to untangle how the decision to undertake further consultation is going to contribute over $2 billion in savings, the Budget did include the following savings over the next four years: • $152 million by further cutting the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program (HEPPP) funding.

• $20 million through cutting excellence in teaching and learning programs administered by the Office of Learning and Teaching.

The Budget doesn’t add any substantial new funding or cuts to the broader research and innovation agenda. The Government’s $1.1 billion National Innovation and Science Agenda (NISA) was included in the 2015 Mid Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO).

Unpacking the costs So the bulk of government savings in relation to higher education is to come from a one line policy initiative labelled: higher education reform – further consultation.

This is a ‘catch all’ measure that captures net impact of the various savings and costs associated with the delayed implementation of the Government’s policies and its decision not to proceed with full fee deregulation. Budget Paper No.2 says: (T)his measure is estimated to achieve savings of $2 billion over five years from 2015–16 in fiscal balance terms and cost $596.7 million over five years from 2015–16 in underlying cash balance terms.

Hypocritically, from a government that insists on greater transparency from universities, the Budget papers do not provide sufficient detail to allow one to unpack or reconcile how various aspects of the Government’s policies, originally proposed in 2014 and subsequently amended, contribute or subtract from the overall $2 billion in savings.

It seems apparent (but impossible to verify from data) that the increased costs are accounted for by the decision to delay by a further year the proposed (but yet to be legislated) policies of the 20 per cent cut to funding per Commonwealth supported place (CSP), the 10 per cent cut to Research Training Scheme funding, and the revised indexation arrangements by replacing current Higher Education Grants Index (HEGI) with Consumer Price Index (CPI).

However, the latest Budget forecasts for total government expenditure on higher

HELP MYEFO 2015

4,500

4,445

HELP BUDGET 2016

4,000

$million

The 2016-17 Budget papers reveal that a policy called ‘Higher education reform – further consultation’ will provide savings of about $2 billion over the next four years. Considering the magnitude of the ‘savings’, it is somewhat curious that higher education did not even rate a mention in Treasurer Scott Morrison’s first Budget speech delivered on Tuesday 3 May 2016.

3,779

3,500

2,990

3,000

2,500

2,000

Total savings = $3.3b 2,817

2,591

2,619

2,444

2015-16

2016-17

2,577

2017-18

2018-19

Fig 1: Change in Forward Estimates for Higher Education Loans Program (HELP) Costs ($m) Source: Department of Education and Training Portfolio Budget and Additional Estimates Statements MYEFO 2015 and BUDGET 2016

Source: Dept of Education and Training Portfolio Budget and Additional Estimates Statements MYEFO 2015 & Budget 2016

education (which incorporate the decision to delay implementation) shows a fall from $9.62 billion in 2015–16 to $9.46 billion in 2019–20.

intended to give the public the impression that the Coalition is not going to allow universities to charge whatever they like for a degree.

So how can an actual fall in expenditure be represented as a cost to the Budget?

The smoke and mirrors explanation is that the latest savings from cutting public expenditure on higher education are not as large as originally intended which show up as cost in budgetary accounting terms.

The reality, however, is that the Coalition will still be spending less on higher education in 2019–20 than it has in 2015–16.

This is not strictly true. In the Driving Innovation discussion paper the Government makes it crystal clear that it is still committed to giving institutions ‘the freedom to set fees for a small cohort of their students enrolled in identified high quality, innovative courses’ (p. 13). The discussion paper proposes that universities could enrol up to 20 per cent of students in so-called ‘flagship’ degrees for which they would be allowed to charge premium fees.

Finding the savings It is assumed (but again cannot be verified from the data) that the major sources of savings relate to the reduced costs of operating the Higher Education Loans Program (HELP) as result delaying the policy to abolish the 20 per cent and 25 per cent administrative fees that attach to some forms of FEE-HELP loans of the above policy as well as the decision not to proceed with the full fee deregulation.

The extent of the savings in relation to the HELP Program are shown in Figure 1 which compares the forward estimates of HELP costs published in the 2015 MYEFO with those published in the 2016-17 Department of Education Budget portfolio papers. The data shows there has been a considerable downward revision of costs, amounting to a total of $3.3 billion over the forward estimates.

The NTEU understands that the fall in HELP costs is largely based on the totally disingenuous assumption that the 20 per cent cut in funding per student will not result in any increases in student contribution amounts because this matter is subject to further consultation.

Flagship courses ‘code for fee deregulation’

A story by Julie Hare, higher education editor at The Australian on 11 May 2016, entitled ‘Flagship courses code for deregulation’ reports a number of vice-chancellors as saying that flagship courses is nothing but a code for deregulation. It seems clear that universities will want to nominate those courses with high demand and high cut off scores, like medicine and law, as flagship courses. These are also the courses where they will be able to charge the highest fees, and it is hard to conceive any ‘flagship’ medical degrees being offered for less than $100,000.

NTEU concerns about the flagship proposal are not only limited to the very real potential for $100,000 degrees but also that they will establish a two tier system.

Students who are in a position to, or willing to, incur a higher debt will be able to enrol in high quality innovative courses, while others will be enrolled in what will rapidly be seen as inferior courses.

The Union’s view remains that all students should have access to highest quality courses based on academic merit and not on their capacity to pay a higher price. no100kdegrees.org.au www.nteu.org.au/defendourunis

The Government’s decision not to proceed with full fee deregulation is clearly

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 17

Federal Election 2016 Special Feature

This is real – your vote does matter In this long federal election campaign it has become far too easy to be cynical and to disengage other than to ‘like’ the occasional witty meme on Facebook.

As we enter the final weeks of the election campaign will intensify and the big money will start advertising. The alcohol and gambling lobbies will go for Xenophon.

The coal miners and their mates, including the nuclear industry, will throw their massive resources against the Greens, to not only stop Green electoral gains, but to send the message to Labor and to Turnbull to watch their step. The relatively benign coverage given to the minor players will switch off. Wilkie, Lazarus, Lambie and other recontesting Independents and new candidates will struggle to be heard at the very time their voices are needed against the cacophony of the two party contest.

This election does matter. This is very clear to us in the education sector. The Coalition has been shocking with policies from early childhood through to universities which destroy opportunities for decent education for not only the most disadvantaged, but even the ordinary middle class who dared to presume that university was open to their kids.

Labor’s policy recognises that quality education should be available to everybody wherever they live, whatever their capacity and whoever they are. This is an area of critical difference with the Coalition. The NTEU has and will continue to have our differences with Labor’s tertiary education policies, but let’s get real. It would be far preferable to be arguing with them in government, when implementation is actually possible.

The NTEU has applauded Labor for their steadfast rejection of the Abbott/Turnbull Coalition higher education package of deregulation and privatisation, and we have relied upon the Greens to keep pushing the free accessible quality education agenda further.

Jeannie Rea National President M@NTEUNational

page 18 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate

The NTEU’s campaign support of the Greens in the Senate, and Bandt in Melbourne, in the 2013 federal election was controversial. However, we were not wrong in our judgement call that the Senate was going to be critical with a probable Coalition victory, and we

Federal Election 2016 were confident of the Greens’ education policies.

Labor had done the wrong thing in seeking to divide the education sector and our unions by taking funds from higher education to fund the ‘Gonski’ needs based funding model. No supporters of the ‘Gonski’ plan, including David Gonski, thought it made any sense to support disadvantaged kids through to the end of school and then make cuts to higher education that would impact upon those very kids succeeding at university.

I hope I can confidently declare that Labor will not do that again. An incoming Labor Government will talk with the ‘stakeholders’ on higher education, and while that includes the vice chancellors who have as a group done the sector a massive disservice in their acquiesce to funding cuts and deregulation, it also means seriously talking with us as the industry union of higher education staff.

In the last election we also backed Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie. Wilkie has been a very consistent and admirable defender of higher education and research in the lower house, along with Adam Bandt of The Greens.

And there are also those unfair industrial relations bills that were used to trigger this double dissolution election – and plenty more where that come from with the Coalition backing cutting the wages of workers reliant on penalty rates, and continuing to attack trade unions for advocating for decent work with good pay and conditions.

NTEU’s campaign activities NTEU Divisions and many Branches are actively engaged in the 2016 federal election campaign through participation in the ACTU/Trades and Labour Councils targeted seats campaign. Last September we started activities in some key targeted seats and this has rolled on. Activities are set to ramp up in the weeks leading to the July 2 poll.

The theme, as it has been for much of the Abbott/Turnbull Government’s three years in office, remains – No $100,000 degrees: Put the Coalition last.

NTEU endorsed Defenders of Higher Education The NTEU has invited those politicians with a track record of defending higher education to sign on to a statement and become an officially endorsed Defender of Higher Education. The candidate/recontesting member can then use their NTEU endorsement in their election campaign.

The big and very welcome surprise, in the Senate in this Parliament, was the crossbench senators. Palmer United leader Clive Palmer came out early advocating free tertiary education and opposition to fee deregulation. Later running their own show, Glenn Lazarus (Queensland) and Jackie Lambie (Tasmania) became knowledgeable and articulate campaigners against ‘$100,000 degrees.’

Nick Xenophon has maintained his opposition to ‘$100,000 degrees’. Ricky Muir (Victoria) came on board and has had much to say about access to education for regional and financially struggling families.

We now have higher education advocates in the Parliament and it would be advantageous to have them re-elected and joined by others prepared to not just maintain opposition to ‘$100,000 degrees’, but also to advocate for good higher education and research funding, legislation and implementation. In this election we have invited recontesting parliamentarians and candidates to sign-on to the NTEU’s statement as higher education defenders and receive our endorsement (see report, p. 26).

The composition of the Senate will matter and it is in our interest to have progressive crossbench Senators (and MPs), who will listen to our arguments from the higher education sector, but also on wider issues which concern members, including social and economic inequality, discrimination, ongoing denial of rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, inhumane refugee policies, climate change and the need for a real transition economy.

coordinated campaign.

As an ACTU affiliated union, the NTEU is contributing through a campaign levy, but the most important work is the participation of members at a grassroots level in practical targeted seat campaign activities. These include phoning, door knocking, leafleting, and organising and participating in election events on and off campuses.

The Turnbull Government’s higher education plans announced in the pre-election Federal Budget are to cut funding; introduce deregulation by stealth (flagship courses); and make students pay more for a degree. This is despite the reality that Australian public investment in tertiary education ranks amongst the lowest of all developed economies and our students pay amongst the highest fees to attend a public university.

Research policy has been upended and, to use Turnbull’s own words, it is no longer about ‘publish or perish but collaborate or crumble’. Proof of commercialisation will dictate ongoing and new research funding.

In summary, NTEU’s election campaign activities include:

ACTU Build a better future: Fight for our living standards Most of the NTEU’s commitment is through participation in this ACTU/TLC

In the first instance we invited the ALP and the Greens and those Independents and crossbenchers who opposed the Coalition’s higher education ($100,000 degrees) package in the Parliament. Then we extended the invitation to other candidates recommended by our Divisions and Branches.

While the invitation to Labor and the Greens is at the national level, we have encouraged Labor, Greens and Independent candidates to avail themselves of their endorsement stamp – and NTEU local support (see report, p. 26).

Social media campaign NTEU is running a concerted social media campaign in the lead-up to the election.

Members are encouraged to share materials posted via the NTEU National Facebook and Twitter accounts and get involved in the discussion online. Our elections memes are witty, so do ‘like’ them! no100kdegrees.org.au www.facebook.com/ NationalTertiaryEducationUnion @NTEUNational

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 19

Federal Election 2016

Higher ed policy a major battle front Scorecard: Higher Education policy

The funding and regulation of higher education remain a highly contested policy area in the lead up to the 2016 Federal Election. While the Coalition Government has tried to neutralise the debate by taking full fee deregulation off the agenda, in undertaking further consultation, it remains fundamentally committed to the core of the policies it announced in 2014.

These include significant cuts to public investment, increases in student contributions and the expansion of publicly funded places to for-profit providers and sub-degree programs.

The ALP and Greens on the other hand are committed to increasing public investment and not making students pay more.

Liberal National Coalition The release of the Driving Innovation, Fairness and Excellence in Australian Higher Education discussion paper makes it very clear that any policy options that government might adopt must achieve the budgetary savings, which were at the core of its higher education policy announced

by Christopher Pyne in the 2014 Budget, which included: • Cutting funding per Commonwealth supported place (CSP).

• Cutting Research Training Scheme funding per higher research degree students.

Policy

LNP

ALP

Cut public funding per government supported student

✔

✖

✖

Increase student tuition fees

✔

✖

✖

Cut research training funding per student

✔

✖

✖

Expand public funding to for-profit private providers

✔

✖

✖

Reduce HELP repayment threshold

✔

✖

✖

• Introducing less generous indexation arrangements for higher education grants by replacing current Higher Education Grants Index (HEGI) with Consumer Price Index (CPI).

• Reining in the costs associated with the operation of the Higher Education Loans Programme (HELP).

• Expanding the demand driven system to sub-degree places and non-university, including for-profit providers.

• Aabolishing 20 per cent and 25 per cent loan fees that apply to some forms FEE and VET-FEE HELP loans.

Reducing govt contributions, increasing student contributions The Government remains intent to achieve considerable savings from higher education by reducing the level of public investment per Commonwealth supported places (CSPs) and allowing universities to offset that reduction in public investment with an increase in student fees. The only question is how this will be achieved.

The Driving Innovation discussion paper provides a number of alternatives including the original formulation of realigning some of the funding clusters and an average 20 per cent cut per student or moving to a model where the Government contribution falls from the current average level of 60 per cent per student to 50 per cent and the student contribution rising from about 40 per cent to 50 per cent.

Fee deregulation The decision not to proceed with plans to allow universities to charge whatever they like for a degree (full fee deregula-

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Greens

Higher education policy statements from Senators Carr, Birmingham and Simms are printed on pp. 21–23. tion) does not mean the Government has given up on its desire to allow flexible fees (price), as opposed to academic merit, to determine who gets to enrol in some degrees.

The discussion paper is proposing that universities be allowed to charge premium fees for so-called ‘flagship’ courses which could be offered for up to 20 per cent of students.

Reining in the cost of HELP The discussion paper also floats a number of proposals for recouping debt from students who don’t repay any or all of their HELP debt. This includes: • Not allowing retirees access to the HELP loans to undertake ‘recreational’ degrees.

• Introducing a household income test in an attempt to get repayments from ‘wealthy’ mothers who work part-time or not at all.

• Recouping debt from deceased estates.

While a lifetime cap on FEE-HELP loans will be retained, there is a proposal that the amount could be refreshed or topped-up as students pay off their debt.

Expansion of CSPs The Government remains committed to extend Commonwealth supported places to non-university, including for-profit providers as well to sub-degree places. It does however; leave the door open in regard

Federal Election 2016 Labor policy statement Whatever the trials of this long election campaign, it has one clear virtue: the people of Australia are being offered a genuine choice.

As Bill Shorten said in his Budget Reply: ‘We might be the underdogs in this election, but we have never sought to be a small target. We are offering a social and economic program for the betterment of this nation.’

There is plenty of daylight between the Turnbull Liberal Government and Bill Shorten and Labor in this campaign on all sorts of issues, especially education. Bill Shorten noted that ‘Australia cannot be an innovation nation without education’. That’s as true of universities and TAFE as it is of schools. Labor believes that investing in education is the single most important thing a society can do to secure its future prosperity, and to share the benefits of that prosperity fairly.

In higher education, Labor released a detailed, fully costed policy last year that mapped out how we plan to: • Remove the need for $100,000 degrees and a lifetime of debt for Australian students.

• Lock in proper funding for universities to teach our future workforce.

• Improve the quality of education across the university sector.

• Bring higher education opportunities to a greater number of disadvantaged Australians.

• Address high attrition rates to ensure more students complete their studies.

• Establish a Higher Education Commission to provide longterm policy continuity and expert advice.

In 2018, Labor’s legislated and indexed student funding guarantee will deliver $2,500 more per undergraduate place than the Turnbull Liberal Government would provide, without capping or cutting elsewhere. Within ten years, Labor’s funding will be 47 per cent greater.

We found the money to pay for it, with all our budget improvements verified by the independent Parliamentary Budget Of-

to what restrictions might be placed on such an expansion. The Government is no doubt very conscious of the complete and utter policy failure that such a framework has had in vocational education and training (see report, p.24).

International education The Government has provided $12 million in the Budget to fund its National Strategy for International Education 2025 (released on 30 April). The strategy has three parts: 1. The National Strategy for International Education 2025 that sets a 10-year ‘whole-of-sector’ plan for further developing Australia’s position as a ‘global

fice. It is a fair, responsible and achievable plan. On Budget day, by contrast, the Minister for Education and Training released an options paper. An options paper! It would be a joke if it were not such an insult to the sector and to the Australian people. Its oblique, evasive language is designed to obfuscate rather than illuminate, just like the opaque budget papers.

But notwithstanding all the funny numbers and the vague terminology, in essence this is the same old unfair, irresponsible package that the nation was shocked by at the 2014 Budget, and which the Senate rejected twice.

We know the Liberals remain fully committed to former PM Tony Abbott’s punitive package because a forensic analysis of the Budget shows that the Government is planning either a serious hike in student fees or an enormous cut to university revenues – in the order of $3.75 billion. The Liberals clearly intend to claim a mandate for their deregulation agenda. They will say, ‘Well, we had all this in the policy paper and the budget tables, and we were elected on that platform. Bad luck, sunshine’.

Just like the promise they made before the last election, to make no cuts to education. If re-elected, the Liberals will dismantle our public university system, putting tertiary education beyond the reach of all but the wealthy and those able to incur colossal debt. It will be a version of Malcolm Tunbull’s approach to the property market – if you want a decent education, then you had better choose your parents wisely.

The Liberals yearn to steer higher education back to their golden era when access to university – and the future it unlocks – was the preserve of the wealthy and the privileged, and when working Australians knew their place and harboured only modest aspirations for their children. Australia must not let them. Instead, we must take this opportunity to build a more harmonious, far-sighted, inclusive, knowledgeable, innovative and inventive society.

This election is a crucial moment for the future of our higher education system and our nation’s future. Australia’s choice on 2 July will either defend the expansion of opportunity to all Australians and the proper resourcing of our universities; or license the gutting of our universities and the imposition of $100,000 degrees with a lifetime of debt.

Senator Kim Carr, Shadow Minister for Higher Education, Research, Innovation & Industry, Shadow Minister Assisting The Leader for Science, Senator for Victoria

leader in education and training’.

2. The Australian International Education 2025 market development roadmap, will provide a 10-year market development framework for Australia’s education exports.

3. The Australia Global Alumni Engagement Strategy 2016-2020 outlines a five-year plan to strengthen and engage Australia’s foreign alumni in order to improve diplomatic access and influence and build trade and investment links.

While the strategy is full of desirable goals it is very thin on detail as to how these are to be achieved.

Australian Labor Party The ALP released its higher education policy platform, Getting More Students to Graduate, in September 2015. At the heart of the ALP’s policy is its intention to increase by more than 20,000 the number of people graduating from Australian universities by 2020. This will be achieved not solely by increasing student intake, but through policies aimed at improving the retention and completion rates.

The ALP has committed to undertaking consultation prior to developing its policies through the traditional White/Green Paper process. continued overpage...

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 21

Federal Election 2016 Funding and regulation The core elements of the ALPs proposed funding and regulation policies for Australian higher education, include the: • Establishment of a student funding guarantee.

• Establishment of an independent Higher Education Productivity and Performance Commission.

• Replacement of the Higher Education Participation and Partnership Programme (HEPPP) with a new Higher Education Access and Growth Strategy.

The Student Funding Guarantee would provide additional public investment of $9,000 per student (on average) over a standard 3-year degree. This would see the average funding per student at $11,800 in 2017; boost of funding per student by more than 27 per cent ($2,500) in 2018

and 40 per cent or $4,000 better off per student each year in government funding compared to the Coalition Government’s policy by 2026.

The Higher Education Productivity and Performance Commission would act as an arm’s length independent body that would have responsibility for regulation and funding of higher education, with a very strong emphasis on public accountability and institutional performance and productivity.

The Higher Education Access and Growth Strategy will focus not only on access for low income students, students from rural and regional areas, Indigenous Australian and migrant students, students with disabilities, but importantly, place greater attention on retention and completion.

Prioritising study in STEM Labor’s higher education polices also place strong emphasis on increasing the num-

Liberal National Coalition policy statement Like many of you reading this, I’ve benefited from a university education and I am determined that Australians from all backgrounds share those benefits in future. It’s why I and the Turnbull Government want to expand the range of tertiary pathways, while ensuring the system is sustainable for this and future generations of students.

Since the commencement of the demand-driven system in 2009 there has been a large expansion of enrolments in undergraduate degrees. Commonwealth-supported undergraduate places have grown around 30 per cent since 2009. While this has increased access markedly, some students would be better suited to enter university via pathway programs or a sub-bachelor course. Others need better pathways beyond undergraduate, into postgraduate courses.

The demand driven system has also seen the costs to taxpayers grow dramatically, increasing by 59 per cent compared with nominal GDP growth of 29 per cent. Funding of university students has, essentially, grown at twice the rate of the economy.

As our funding support for higher education grows to $16.7 billion in 2016, we have released a position paper that seeks to improve pathways into university, address inconsistencies in funding postgraduate places, deliver financial sustainability, confront areas of cross subsidy that distort enrolment decisions and support equitable access, excellence and innovation.

page 22 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate

ber of students pursuing science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) studies and careers, including offering to write-off the HECS debts of 100,000 students who complete a STEM degree at university. They are also offering a Startup Year at university to young Australians looking to start their own enterprise.

Deregulation Labor is strongly opposed to the deregulation of tuition fees, and would offset the cost of its higher education package (in the order of $2.5 billion over forward estimates) by not proceeding with the expansion of the demand-driven system to sub-bachelor places and to bachelor places at non-university higher education providers; the abolition of FEE–HELP and VET FEE–HELP loan fees; and the establishment of the Structural Adjustment Fund promised to help regional universities adjust to a deregulated system.

The Turnbull Coalition has listened and has taken full fee deregulation off the table. No doubt Labor will continue its baseless scare campaign on ‘$100,000 degrees’ but our proposed ‘flagship courses’ would focus on excellence and innovation to encourage specialisation within universities and more innovative competition between universities for students, while guaranteeing more than 80 per cent of students a fixed price pathway.

We will continue to ensure the higher education student loan scheme supports students so they don’t have to pay a dollar upfront and can access university regardless of their family background or financial circumstances. A HELP loan will still be one of the cheapest loans people will ever get and still won’t be paid back until a decent wage threshold is met.

Over the next five years we’ll also deliver $180 million extra to our $14 billion university research budget to encourage stronger links between universities and industry so that more Australians can benefit from the great break-throughs happening on campuses around the country. This is part of the Coalition’s National Innovation and Science Agenda that has also provided funding certainty for the next decade for national-scale research infrastructure and is encouraging greater engagement with STEM in early childhood and at school.

In vocational education and training we are working to fix the VET FEE-HELP mess that Labor left behind, by reforming the system and by putting the protection of students and taxpayers at the core. We’ve backed 16 reforms over the past year to protect students, to chase unscrupulous providers and to ensure taxpayers’ funds are being used efficiently.

So, at this election voters have a clear choice – the Turnbull Government with real plans to improve pathways into university, research collaboration, innovation in course content, equitable access and budget sustainability; or uncertainty under a Labor Party that when last in Government hit the sector with $6.6 billion worth of cuts to higher education and research.

Senator The Hon Simon Birmingham, Minister for Education and Training, Senator for South Australia

Federal Election 2016 On 10 June the ALP belatedly announced it would support some the Government’s cuts to higher education funding by supporting measures that would achieve about $200 million in savings over the forward estimates. These measures include using CPI for indexation of university grants ($119 million) as well as lowering the threshold level for HECS-HELP loans to $50,638 and abolishing HECS-HELP Benefits ($9 million). They will also scale back the new Colombo Plan by 50 per cent, saving $84 million over four years.

moves to increase fees for students and would invest $1.4 billion per annum to:

The Australian Greens

They state that their policy, however, will be cost neutral, using a continuation of the Coalition’s ‘deficit levy’ on a permanent basis for those earning over $180,000 per year to raise an additional $1.6 billion per annum to offset the increased costs over the forward estimates.

The Australian Greens support free, well-funded and high quality, life-long education and training. Their policy platform on higher education is part of the Lifetime of Learning policy, which outlines their support for schools, students with a disability and the tertiary sector. Lifetime of Learning states that Greens oppose any

• Reduce students’ fees and associated HELP costs by 20 per cent.

• Reinstate the Student Start-Up Scholarships as a grant.

The Greens state that their Lifetime of Learning package has been fully costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office at $1.4 billion per annum, over the forward estimates.

Paul Kniest, Policy & Research Coordinator

18yo enrolments up 20% The Australian Electoral Commission reported the enrolment of 18-yearolds was up 20 per cent in the two months to the end of May, when rolls closed for the 2016 federal election.

Now we’re not claiming total responsibility, but this $100K DEGREES? year NTEU put tEll thEm no! increased efforts into our Enrol to Vote campaign.

EnRol to V tE Flyers were distributed to Branches for use at Open Days and other student events, and members were encouraged to download simple desk signs and short presentations to remind their students to enrol to vote. Congratulations to those members who did so.

Australian Greens policy statement

low-income backgrounds, allowing them to purchase the textbooks and equipment they need to study. The Greens will continue to fight against higher fees by reducing students’ HELP costs by 20 per cent and by reinstating the Student StartUp Scholarships as a grant, not a loan.

The Australian Greens believe that education is principally a public good where differences in educational outcomes should not be influenced by differences in wealth, income, power, possessions or location. We recognise that universities and TAFE play a critical role in lifelong education and training.

TAFE is another critical element of higher education with more than a million students enrolled at campuses throughout the country. TAFE has been a leading provider of vocational education and training (VET) for more than a century and the Greens understand that we must have a well-funded TAFE system to continue to provide these opportunities for Australians into the future.

It is deeply concerning that the Coalition continues to push their harsh 20 per cent cuts to universities which would result in skyrocketing course fees and leaving graduates with HELP debts greater than a housing deposit. Not only will the Greens reverse the Coalition’s harsh cuts, but we are the only party with the courage to substantially boost investment to help establish a sustainable future for the sector. The Greens will increase the level of base funding per student at public universities and will invest an additional $1.3 billion into research over the next four years to reverse government cuts that have been so detrimental to our university research hubs.

The Greens also understand the need to better support students who face more barriers than ever to attend university and TAFE. Late last year Labor teamed up with the Coalition to turn the Student Start-Up Scholarships into a loan, lumping over 250,000 low-income students with more HELP debt - an average increase of $2,050 per year of study. These scholarships are critical for low-income students from disadvantaged or

Everyone agrees the current for-profit VET model is broken, evident by billions of taxpayer funds being written off due to bad debts associated with the current structure. Not only have these changes reduced the number of students attending TAFE, but it has resulted in fees skyrocketing and campuses being forced to abandon many courses deemed unsuitable due to this commercialised approach. While reforms legislated last year provide some safeguards, the Greens want genuine solutions and are committed to ceasing taxpayer funds being poured into the for-profit VET sector. The Greens will instead boost funding to TAFE and help students impacted by this broken system transition into TAFE or not-for-profit VET providers.

Whilst these are huge challenges, the Greens believe this presents an opportunity to set things right: an opportunity to reform higher education so it is designed to provide high quality, affordable and accessible education for all Australians.

The Greens have a platform that will achieve this by boosting public funding to universities and TAFE, increasing research funding and by better supporting students in their efforts to further their education.

To find out more about the Greens’ work on higher education and TAFE, visit www.greens.org.au/higher-ed Senator Robert Simms, Australian Greens’ spokesperson for higher education, Senator for South Australia

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 23

Federal Election 2016

VET policy a failure Scorecard: VET policy

The funding and regulation of vocational education and training (VET) has presented the Coalition Government with significant policy issues over the last three years. The expansion of demand driven fully contestable funding (between public TAFE and private providers) to all States and Territories has been, in anyone’s language, a complete and utter policy and market failure.

Barely a day goes by without reading another story about dodgy for-profit VET providers either ripping off students through unconscionable marketing tactics and/or rorting the VET-FEE HELP scheme.

The outcome is that students have no or a largely useless qualification, a debt to be repaid and the profiteers run off with tax payers’ funds.

It is a policy issue which has rightfully attracted much attention in recent months.

Liberal National Coalition In a last ditch attempt to deal with the unsustainable VET FEE-HELP blow-out, the Federal Government has: 1. Placed a freeze on the total amount of VET FEE HELP loans any provider could offer in 2016 (announced 11 March 2016), and 2. Released a Redesigning VET Fee HELP discussion paper on 29 April 2016.

The freeze on VET FEE HELP loans is a direct response to the value of such loans escalating from about $700m in 2013 to $1.7b in 2014 with an expectation that they would be in excess of $3billion in 2015.

Policy

LNP

ALP

Tighter regulation of for-profit providers

✔

✔

✔

Ongoing Limits on fees/VET FEE HELP loans

✖

✔

✔

Restricting availability of public funding to for-profit VET providers

✖

✖

✔

The discussion paper calls for a full redesign of the scheme, including significantly tougher regulatory measures, to deal with the scale of unrestrained malpractice by private providers who have used unethical and possibly illegal recruitment strategies as they seek to gauge out as much profit from the public purse as possible.

The measures proposed in the discussion paper include: • Application of minimum eligibility requirements for VET FEE-HELP recipients.

• Reducing the lifetime student loan limit from $99,389.

• Placing a funding cap on the scheme.

• P rioritising VET FEE-HELP funding to courses that align with industry needs or lead to employment outcomes.

• P roviding better information for VET FEE-HELP students before they enrol.

• Establishing a VET Ombudsman.

• R edesigning the regulatory oversight of VET FEE-HELP, giving the Commonwealth more power to tie payments to compliance measures.

• C onsideration of different payment tests around student engagement, progression and completion.

• The possibility of existing providers needing to reapply for registration.

It is worth noting however, that many of the recommendations made in the paper were amendments which Labor moved in Parliament in late 2015 and which the Government voted down.

Australian Labor Party If elected the ALP is committed to undertaking a comprehensive review of the vocational education and training sector – equivalent to the landmark Gonski Review into school funding and the Bradley Review of higher education. This would be the first such comprehensive review first since the Kangan review on 1974.

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Greens

The ALP is committed to backing ‘TAFE into the future by developing a comprehensive National Priority Plan that defines the unique role of TAFE as our public provider and delivers on this by working with the states and territories to provide ongoing guaranteed TAFE funding’. Labor has already committed to: • Establishing a VET Ombudsman.

• Capping tuition fees in line with how university fees are set.

• Lowering the lifetime limit for VET FEEHELP loans to half the current amount.

• Requiring loan applications for students to be handled by the department rather than a private college or broker.

• Banning or placing restrictions on brokers.

• Providing the Minister with the power to suspend payments to a private college under investigation.

In addition, the ALP has announced its intention to cap the amount students can borrow through VET-FEE HELP at $8,000 annually, although there would be provision for an exemption on legitimate high-cost courses such as nursing and engineering following ministerial approval. This is in response to government data that shows that the average cost of a diploma almost tripled from $4814 in 2012 to $12,308 in 2014, with information technology diplomas now costing an average $18,735 a year, hospitality diplomas $16,982 and management diplomas $15,493. By way of contrast, the annual student fee for a degree in law or commerce in 2016 is capped at $10,440.

The Australian Greens The Greens support a VET system with public TAFEs at its core to ensure the provision of affordable high quality education and training of quality. The Greens would abandon the current funding model with priority given to supporting the public TAFE system.

Federal Election 2016

In order to restore TAFE as the central component in the VET system, the Greens would: • A bandon the failed fully contestable market model by stopping the flow of public funds away from TAFE to private for-profit providers. Core public funding would be provided to public TAFE colleges as the primary provider of VET including ongoing funding for capital works, facilities, equipment and funding for community service obligations.

• E nforce minimum teaching qualification requirements for all VET providers and minimum supervised hours of delivery and appropriate practical components for all courses that receive government subsidies.

The Greens would establish a panel of eminent persons to assess the impacts of the contestable VET funding model and funding cuts over the last five years on the viability of TAFE as well as examine the quality, accessibility and affordability of vocational education and training. They would ask the panel to make recommendations for a sustainable model that maximises the public benefit.

Summary While the Government recognised the need for urgent action to respond to the absolute policy failure in VET, it remains committed to the idea of the market framework of contestability and price flexibility. The Government sees the failure of VET policy as a failure of regulation and therefore sees the solution as one of

tightening regulations and increasing the powers of the regulator.

The ALP believes that VET and higher education are fundamental cases of market failure. It also supports much tougher regulation but believes that the best way to keep VET education affordable and to stop private providers from rorting the VET-FEE HELP is to impose strict caps on the annual amount students can borrow.

The Greens see public TAFEs as being central to the provision of VET in Australia.

They would want to stop the damage done to TAFEs by reining in the failed contestable market model.

Paul Kniest, Policy & Research Coordinator

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 25

Federal Election 2016

The Defenders of Higher Education For the 2016 federal election, NTEU invited candidates to sign a pledge to be a Defender of Higher Education.

Before the 2013 federal election, the Coalition Government promised a policy of ‘masterly inactivity’ when it came to higher education policy. Tony Abbott and his colleagues promised no cuts to education and a commitment to continue with existing university funding arrangements, including not raising university fees.

Notwithstanding these ‘promises’, the Abbott Government’s first Budget contained the most radical changes to the regulation of higher education funding in over two decades. Christopher Pyne’s reforms included cutting public investment in higher education by more than $5 billion, allowing universities to charge whatever they like for a university degree, opening public funding to for-profit private providers and charging students market based interest rates on student loans.

While the NTEU led the fight against the Government’s higher education policies with our highly successful ‘$100,000 Degrees: I didn’t vote for this’ campaign and persistent lobbying efforts, our efforts would have been in vain had we not been able to persuade the ALP, the Australian Greens and a handful of crossbench Senators to vote against the Government’s legislation on two occasions.

If this was not the case we would be heading toward a privatised American-style higher education system where many students would be paying in excess of $100,000 for a degree.

The voting record Despite coming under enormous pressure from the Government and Australia’s vice-chancellors, the Senate voted against the Government’s higher education legislation twice. On the first occasion

NO $100,000 DEGREES

DEFENDER OF HIGHER EDUCATION Higher Education Policy & the 2016 Federal Election Public investment in tertiary education in Australia ranks amongst the lowest of all developed economies and our students pay amongst the highest fees in the world to attend a public university.

Despite this, the Turnbull Government’s plan for higher education is to cut public investment and make students pay more.

Therefore, if elected in the 2016 Federal Election, I will support policies that: • Keep the cost and debt of going to university within the reach of all by opposing the deregulation of university fees that could result in $100,000 degrees.

• Improve the level of public investment in teaching and research for our public universities.

• Ensure university autonomy and academic freedom are protected in the public interest.

• Protect the international reputation of our higher education system through rigorous regulation and public accountability, and • Ensure the working rights of all staff are protected through collective bargaining agreements.

Signed

✘

in December 2014 the Higher Education Research Reform Amendment (HERRA) Bill 2014 was defeated 33 to 31 votes with Senators Lambie, Lazarus, Xenophon and Wang in addition to the ALP and Greens voting against the Bill.

Muir join the list of crossbench Senators to vote against the Government’s plans. Of even greater note was that Senator Jacqui Lambie discharged herself from hospital and travelled to Canberra to vote against the Bill.

The Coalition Government’s second failure to have its higher education policies passed by the Senate occurred on 17 March 2015 when the Higher Education Research Reform (HERR) Bill 2014 was defeated 34 votes to 30.

NTEU invited these politicians to sign our Defender of Higher Education statement.

The invitation was also extended to other candidates on the recommendation of Divisions and Branches.

Written and authorised by Matt McGowan, 120 Clarendon St, South Melbourne VIC 3205

This defeat was notable for a number of reasons. It not only happened the day after Christopher Pyne’s now infamous ‘I’m a fixer’ interview, it also saw Senator Ricky

page 26 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate

View all the Defenders’ statements and videos at: www.nteu.org.au/defenders

Federal Election 2016

Labor Party

The Greens

Bill Shorten has noted that ‘Australia cannot be an innovation nation without education’. That’s as true of universities and TAFE as it is of schools. Labor believes that investing in education is the single most important thing a society can do to secure its future prosperity, and to share the benefits of that prosperity fairly.

The Australian Greens believe that education is principally a public good where differences in educational outcomes should not be influenced by differences in wealth, income, power, possessions or location.

On higher education, Labor released a detailed, fully costed policy last year that mapped out how we plan to: • Remove the need for $100,000 degrees and a lifetime of debt for Australian students.

• Lock in proper funding for universities to teach our future workforce.

• Improve the quality of education across the university sector.

• Bring higher education opportunities to a greater number of disadvantaged Australians.

• Address high attrition rates to ensure more students complete their studies.

• Establish a Higher Education Commission to provide long-term policy continuity and expert advice.

This election is a crucial moment for the future of our higher education system and our nation’s future. Australia’s choice on 2 July will either defend the expansion of opportunity to all Australians and the proper resourcing of our universities; or license the gutting of our universities and the imposition of $100,000 degrees with a lifetime of debt.

Senator Kim Carr

We recognise that universities and TAFE play a critical role in lifelong education and training.

It is deeply concerning that the Coalition continues to push their harsh 20 per cent cuts to universities which would result in skyrocketing course fees and leaving graduates with HELP debts greater than a housing deposit. Not only will the Greens reverse the Coalition’s harsh cuts, but we are the only party with the courage to substantially boost investment to help establish a sustainable future for the sector.

The Greens will increase the level of base funding per student at public universities and will invest an additional $1.3 billion into research over the next four years to reverse government cuts that have been so detrimental to our university research hubs.

Whilst these are huge challenges, the Greens believe this presents an opportunity to set things right: an opportunity to reform higher education so it is designed to provide high quality, affordable and accessible education for all Australians.

The Greens have a platform that will achieve this by boosting public funding to universities and TAFE, increasing research funding and by better supporting students in their efforts to further their education.

Nick Xenophon Team The Nick Xenophon Team believes in maintaining university fee regulation to ensure students from all backgrounds are able to access higher education as a way to address socioeconomic disparity. We cannot allow our higher education sector to transform into that which exists in the United States, where students are increasingly paying for an ‘experience’, rather than an education.

However, the current demand-driven, uncapped funding system is not sustainable.

We want to work constructively with the NTEU to find a long term viable solution.

The Government has proposed partial fee deregulation by introducing a two tier system where universities are able to charge a premium for ‘flagship’ courses.

The Nick Xenophon Team has serious concerns about the implications of this, particularly its effect on students who achieve the required entry score for a flagship course but who lack the financial means to undertake it.

We are committed to ensuring higher education is available to all, regardless of their socio-economic background.

Senator Nick Xenophon

Senator Robert Simms

Right: Candidates for the NSW seat of New England, Tony Windsor (Ind), Rob Taber (Ind), and Mercurius Goldstein (Greens) signed the NTEU’s Defender of Higher Education statement at a public forum on ‘The Future of Post-School Education in New England’, held in Armidale on 25 May, organised by the NTEU and the NSW Teachers’ Federation.

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 27

Federal Election 2016

Andrew Wilkie

Glenn Lazarus

Jacqui Lambie

Independent MP for Denison

Independent Senator, Qld

Independent Senator, Tasmania

I am proud to support the NTEU’s Defender of Higher Education campaign. Australia is a rich and fortunate country and we can afford to have the best universities in the world. But they’re under attack by a succession of federal governments.

The Australian education system is founded on a system of merit. Our public education system, including publicly funded universities, gives any student the chance to succeed no matter their parents’ income. I stood firm against higher education deregulation because it would destroy that system by making university education unaffordable for many people.

The 2016 Budget has been and gone, and the Liberal Government has yet to reveal the Turnbull Government’s higher education policy, after the Abbott Government’s $100,000 degrees were knocked back in the Senate.

There should be no government-imposed limitation on people with appropriate potential being able to access affordable and high quality tertiary education. To that end fee-free undergraduate study should be reinstated for Australian citizens.

I oppose the current Government’s policy of deregulating university fees which will mean that study becomes more expensive and less accessible. Deregulation will fundamentally disadvantage people on lower incomes and from lower income families, women who tend to spend less time in the workforce and older people who have less time to pay back the increased debt.

I have consistently opposed both Labor and Liberal cuts to universities which have had and will continue to have a disproportionate impact on small and regional campuses like the University Tasmania. I will continue to advocate for an increase in university funding to at least the OECD average of 1 per cent of GDP. Those working in the tertiary sector are just as important as the students. Staff should receive certainty of tenure, and also a good wage that reflects the importance of their work and very often extensive qualifications. I also support the establishment of an ombudsman to investigate suspected contraventions of fair practices, workplace laws, awards and contracts in the tertiary education sector.

Deregulation measures are designed to do nothing more than give the Coalition Government the freedom to slash funding to the sector which will force universities to meet operating expenses by increasing the cost of degrees.

If we are serious about tackling youth unemployment and being competitive in a global innovative economy, we need to stop senseless cuts to education. We shouldn’t be trying to increase debt for young people and we shouldn’t be reducing investment in research.

I will continue to oppose fee deregulation, funding cuts and low income HELP repayments.

Many of our industry leaders come from regional or low socioeconomic backgrounds, including scientists, researchers, teachers and medical staff. These people would not have been able to succeed in their chosen fields without fair access to university.

Entry to university should be based on your academic results. Equal scores should mean equal treatment and publicly funded universities shouldn’t be discouraging the average Australian. I will continue to fight for a fair higher education system.

But considering the Turnbull Government’s record of taking from the poor to give to the rich – for example cuts to health and Medicare, cuts to corporate tax instead of bracket creep – we can expect if the Liberal Government is re-elected, their higher education policy will closely reflect $100,000 degrees. In fact, if the Government can win a majority during this year’s election, they are likely to re-submit the unpopular and aristocratic legislation.

Australia can’t keep cutting corners on its future though, we must invest 1% of our GDP. As a First World country, Australia has the capacity to almost double its expenditure on higher education from around $9 billion to $18 billion. The money is there, it is just a matter of priorities.

A free first university degree for all Australians who want to earn the opportunity will only become a wild, unachievable goal if the Senate and the Parliament are populated by people who think it is a wild, unachievable goal.

I also support an uncapping of Associate Degrees to allow universities to introduce as many two-year university courses they need to meet demand. Associate Degrees prepare students to enter the workforce with advanced skills and offer para-professional status. Uncapping the number universities can offer, broadens Australia’s ability to achieve qualifications and advanced skills.

Watch Andrew Wilkie and Glenn Lazarus’ Defender videos at nteu.org.au/defenders

Find more Defenders of Higher Education online Advocate went to press as election nominations closed, so we are unable to include all candidates who have signed on as Defenders of Higher Education, including candidates and incumbents nominated by NTEU Divisions and Branches because they are making higher education a priority in their campaign. Go to www.nteu.org.au/defenders to see the latest Higher Education Defenders, and consider giving them a hand campaigning! Keep following NTEU on Facebook and Twitter @NTEUNational

page 28 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate

Federal Election 2016

WILL DADDY BUY YOU A HOUSE AND A DEGREE?

100,000

$

DEGREES? no100kdegrees.org.au

Authorised by Matthew McGowan, 120 Clarendon St, South Melbourne VIC 3205

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 29

Federal Election 2016

Industrial policy short on detail Scorecard: Industrial Relations policy

When the PM called this double dissolution election, it seemed it was set to be fought on the well-trodden terrain of industrial relations.

Policy

LNP

ALP

Greens

Crack down on underpayment of employees (7-Eleven)

✔

✔

✔

Increase powers of the Fair Work Ombudsman

✔

✔

?

Tackle exploitation of migrant workers

✔

✔

✔

$4 per hour internships

✔

?

✖

Reintroduction of ABCC

✔

✖

✖

Strengthen financial accountability for unions

✔

✔

✔

After all, the trigger was the re-establishment of the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC), and the build up to the calling of the election involved a Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption (TURC) and a great deal of hand-wringing about ‘excessive’ penalty rates.

Establish Registered Organisations Commission to regulate unions

✔

✖

✖

Protect employees from sham contracting

✖

✔

✔

Support / legislate for weekend penalty rates

✖

✔

✔

Protect / augment paid parental leave

✖

✔

✔

Legislate for domestic and family violence leave

✖

✔

✔

Tougher penalties for union officials who break the law

✔

✔

?

However, since the calling of the election the issue seems to have gone dead, with no major political party prepared to lead with their policy on IR.

Right to take industrial action consistent with ILO standards

✖

?

✔

Stronger right of entry provisions for unions to recruit members

✖

?

✔

Portable long service leave

?

✔

✔

Liberal National Coalition

5 weeks annual leave for all employees

✖

?

✔

The Coalition has not yet released a specific industrial relations policy, although references to jobs are peppered throughout most of the policies they have released to date. Relevant policy positions to date are as follows:

Rights for long-term casuals to convert to permanent employment

✖

✖

✔

Protecting Vulnerable Workers Includes commitments to: • Increase penalties applying to employers for underpayment of wages and failure to keep proper records (7- Eleven).

• A $20 million funding injection for the Fair Work Ombudsman, with strengthened powers.

• Establish a Migrant Workers Taskforce to target employers exploiting migrant employees.

Youth Jobs PaTH Program Released in the Budget, the Youth Jobs PaTH (Prepare-Trial-Hire) Program provides for internships targeted at pre-employment skills training. Controversially, and as reported widely in the media, the program provides interns a minimum wage of $4

per hour and a wage subsidy to participating employers of $10,000 over 6 months.

Reintroduction of the ABCC The Coalition has already introduced legislation to reintroduce the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) – rejected twice by the Senate – and considers this to be ‘critical for job, growth and our transition to a new economy.’

Registered Organisations Bill The Coalition’s Registered Organisations Bill, also previously rejected by the Senate, includes commitments to: • Provide for penalties for breach of union officials’ responsibilities equivalent to those applying to company directors.

• Strengthen financial accounting, disclosure and transparency obligations on unions.

• Establish a Registered Organisations Commission with increased powers to regulate unions.

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Australian Labor Party By contrast, there is a little more flesh on the bones of the IR position put forward by the ALP, although still not much by comparison with other policy areas.

In various policy releases (Commonwealth Cleaning Services Guidelines, Safeguarding Workers Rights, Protect Weekend Penalty Rates, Protecting Paid Parental Leave, Family Violence Paid Leave), the ALP has committed to: • Ensuring better wages and conditions for cleaners working in Commonwealth buildings.

• Increasing penalties for underpayment of employees.

• Improving protections for employees from sham contracting.

• Augmenting the powers of the Fair Work Ombudsman to pursue employers who enter into voluntary administration to avoid paying employees’ entitlements.

Federal Election 2016

• Ensuring temporary overseas workers are not being exploited and underpaid ‘and that there is a level playing field for all workers in Australia’.

• Intervening in Fair Work Commission proceedings to make further submissions in support of retention of weekend penalty rates.

• P rotect the Commonwealth Paid Parental Leave scheme from the Coalition’s anti-’double-dipping’ measures.

• Introduce 5 days’ paid domestic and family violence leave into the National Employment Standards.

In its Better Union Governance policy, the ALP has committed to: • Providing the General Manager of the Fair Work Commission with an additional $4.5 million to monitor unions and employer organisations.

• Introducing tougher penalties for union officials who break the law.

• Ensuring unions rotate their auditors every 5 years, as in the corporate sector.

• An enhanced paid parental leave scheme.

• E xtending electoral funding laws to union elections, and reducing the disclosure threshold for election funding from $13,000 to $1000.

• 10 days’ domestic violence leave.

The Australian Greens The Greens have not yet released an election ‘initiative’ specifically on IR or workplace relations, but they do have a standing employment and workplace relations policy, which calls for:

• M inimum 5 weeks annual leave for all employees.

Further, we know the Greens oppose the Coalition’s $4 per hour intern scheme, and have called for protection of weekend penalty rates in the National Employment Standards.

Summary

• A right to take industrial action consistent with ILO standards.

With detail thin on the ground on IR, voters will be forced to make their election decisions based on the political parties’ track record. The initial promise that this would be an IR-focussed election has certainly not yet been realised.

• Stronger right of entry provisions for unions to recruit members.

Sarah Roberts, National Industrial Coordinator

• Abolition of building and construction industry-specific laws that undermine collective rights (anti-ABCC).

• Portability of long service leave entitlements between employers.

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 31

Federal Election 2016

Research & innovation – just a 3 word slogan?

Scorecard: Research & Innovation policy

Research and innovation is a key policy area targeted by all major political parties in the 2016 federal election. Indeed, while noting that it appears that you can’t have research without innovation, it has been bandied around to the point where it almost seems to be another three word election slogan.

However, with ongoing funding cuts which have had a huge impact on both the CSIRO and the Cooperative Research Centres (CRCs), as well as the push to invest less in pure research and research for the public good and to place more emphasis on commercialisation, the question of what impact will these policies have (if realised) must be seriously considered.

There are major points of difference between Government, Labor and the Greens which, if implemented, would have significant ramifications for the future of Australian research and research staff.

Liberal National Coalition In November 2015, Prime Minister Turnbull announced the Coalition’s National Innovation and Science Agenda (NISA), which is a central component of the Coalition’s research and innovation policy platform (see Advocate, March 2016 ).

There will be new investment in national scale research infrastructure under the National Innovation and Science Agenda of $2.3 billion over 10 years, including $1.5 billion for the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS). This supports collaboration between researchers, government and industry, with a view to commercialisation of research.

Policy

LNP

ALP

Increased investment in CSIRO

✖

✔

Increased commercialisation of university research

✔

✖

✖

Greater collaboration between universities and business

✔

✔

✔

Increased investment in STEM education

✔

✔

✔

The Government also plans to establish the Research Support Program (RSP) and Research Training Program (RTP) for universities. This is part of new research block grant funding arrangements for universities effectively replacing the current six grants with two grants. An additional $127 million is allocated for transitional arrangements.

There will be $9 million will be allocated to measure the impact and engagement of university research, to be conducted by the Australian Research Council (ARC) as a companion exercise with the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA).

In an attempt to address the crisis of women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) areas, $13 million over five years has been allocated to encourage women to choose to stay in STEM research, start-ups and businesses.

Other initiatives are aimed at fast tracking collaboration between business interests and researchers, with tax incentives provided to businesses for innovation and research, particularly in STEM areas (biomedicine, agriculture, cyber security, advanced computing etc). The current ARC Linkage Projects scheme will also be changed so that it is open to new applications continually, instead of the annual rounds, to better suit business and industry collaboration.

Greens ✔

• I mproving the flow of capital to startups through Startup Capital.

• Supporting the ‘best and brightest overseas’ through a ‘Landing Pad’ for Australian innovators.

This third wave of innovation policy initiatives also builds upon Labor’s previous announcements, including measures to boost STEM skills, access to venture capital to commercialise great ideas and support local start-ups. It also incorporates policy in schools, TAFE, higher education (see higher education policy), investment and workforce initiatives. In addition to the specific policies related to higher education and vocational education and training the ALP is committed to: • Developing a National Digital Workforce Plan which aims to have 100,000 more ICT workers by 2020.

• Boosting the skills of 25,000 primary and high school teachers to teach STEM. • Teaching scholarships for 25,000 science, technology, engineering and mathematics graduates.

Labor has also announced $50 million in funding for the CSIRO with a focus on conserving the Great Barrier Reef.

However, Labor will also support the Government’s R&D tax incentive cuts, saving $860 million over forward estimates.

Australian Labor Party

The Australian Greens

In 2015 the ALP released its ‘Innovation reforms’ which included:

The Greens research and development policy will increase science and research funding to 3 per cent of GDP by 2025 and 4 per cent of GDP by 2030. This was outlined in the Greens Securing Our Future Through Research and Development plan, which includes commitments to:

• A ccelerating regional innovation via Regional Innovation Hubs.

• S tructural reform through Innovate Australia.

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Federal Election 2016

• A ‘Protecting Science’ package, consisting of a combined $847.9 million boost to the Australia Research Council, National Health & Medical Research Council, Cooperative Research Centres.

• Restoring funding to CSIRO ($306.5 million) • Increased funding for indirect costs associated with research including reversing cuts to the Sustainable Research Excellence (SRE) program and boost university research ($1,306 million).

• Additional funding for the Future Fellowships scheme to attract and retain

top research talents ($297.2 million).

• Support for women in science ($213.7 million) and collaborative health research centres ($171.9 million).

• Support the ongoing development of the Medical Research Future Fund.

• Reverse cuts to R&D tax offsets ($690 million).

Importantly, the Greens have identified the need to end the funding gaps created by rolling short term research contracts that has resulted in the majority of the research workforce employed on short

to medium term contracts. In order to address this, the ARC and NHMRC would be required to develop ‘proven capacity’ guidelines to inform the distribution of their Future Science funds.

The Greens have also committed $50 million per year in grants to research and innovation organisations to assist in the development of strategic programs to help retain women workers and carers as they manage competing demands upon their time.

Terri MacDonald, Policy & Research Officer

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 33

Federal Election 2016

A&TSI policy no show Scorecard: Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander policy

The major party policies pertaining to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (A&TSI) peoples at the upcoming election are striking in their absence.

The policy vacuum is profound, particularly as all major parties have thrown their support behind recognising A&TSI peoples in the Constitution.

While the LNP and Labor have policies that are founded on specific issues, for example developing Indigenous businesses and investing in students, the only party to hold a specific A&TSI policy is The Greens.

It is challenging to reconcile the lack of policies as part of this election to the rhetoric from all sides of politics on targets for ‘Closing the Gap’. While all sides of politics have expressed dismay in relation to meeting those targets, the LNP and ALP policies indicate at best a lack of understanding as to how to meet those targets or improve the lives of First Nations peoples.

All political parties are united in their support for Constitutional Recognition of A&TSI peoples in the Australian Constitution. This support is at odds with the feelings expressed by the majority of A&TSI people who would feel the time is right to talk about a Treaty (or Treaties).

Despite the millions of dollars in funding provided to the Recognise campaign, there has been, and continues to be, little to no interest in providing funding for a No campaign. Members of the A&TSI communities feel as though their sovereign rights and ability to self-determination will be undermined by the Australian populous at any future referendum.

This is a policy issue where more must be done. The lack of party policy would indicate the major parties are unable or unwilling to devise and implement policy that would achieve change.

Liberal National Coalition The LNP continue to support Constitutional Recognition, although when looking for specific policy on the future for A&TSI affairs the LNP have little to offer. As part

Policy

LNP

ALP

Greens

Support for Treaty rather than Constitutional Recognition only

✖

✖

✔

Supporting for the goals of Closing the Gap – fully or partially

✖

✔

✔

Funding for National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples

✖

✖

✔

of their policy suite, the LNP have chosen to prioritise developing Indigenous business opportunities and have conveniently ignored how best to approach meeting and/or exceeding the targets for ‘Closing the Gap’.

While opportunities to create and build Indigenous businesses are noteworthy, these opportunities will not tackle the fundamental issues of health, education and community development. Of interest, it has been noted that the LNP only make reference to Indigenous and A&TSI twice in their entire party platform.

Australian Labor Party The Australian Labor Party (ALP) have a number of policies that relate to A&TSI peoples, although these policies are issue specific with the ALP having no over-arching A&TSI policy in existence.

The ALP has highlighted specific issues as priority for the Federal Election campaign, these issues include Constitutional Recognition, investing in Indigenous students, Indigenous Eye Health Help, doubling the number of Indigenous Rangers, empowering Indigenous girls and Indigenous Justice Targets.

While Labor’s policies are far more progressive than those of the LNP in recognising particular issues of importance for Indigenous communities, those presented do not encapsulate or provide direction on the areas of dire need expressed in ‘Closing the Gap’.

Of equal concern is the party-wide support for Constitutional Recognition, with no reference to the preference of A&TSI peoples who are seeking Treaty/Treaties.

The Australian Greens The Greens are the only major party that has a specific detailed policy on A&TSI affairs and have highlighted a number of very important and relevant issues specific to the A&TSI communities including Sovereignty, Treaty and Constitutional

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Recognition; changing the record on incarceration; funding the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples; funding key services, including mental health and suicide prevention; recognising Australia’s International commitments and listening to community voices.

The Greens are the only major party that has raised the issue of Treaty in their platform and while they are providing support for Constitutional Recognition they have acknowledged that the vast majority of A&TSI peoples are calling for Treaty/ Treaties.

The Greens have recognised the need to change the level at which A&TSI peoples are incarcerated in Australian prisons and will provide funding for a number of key services, including funding for mental health and suicide prevention.

While these policies do not address the entirety of issues faced by A&TSI peoples, the Greens are far more progressive than either the ALP or LNP.

Summary While the Coalition and Labor pushed ahead with Recognition of A&TSI peoples in the Constitution, there is a noticeable lack of specific targeted policy that will address the myriad of urgent issues facing A&TSI peoples today. The Greens have shown they have at least heard the voices of A&TSI peoples and have understood that the path toward Constitutional Recognition is not a path many A&TSI peoples wish to walk.

It is very disappointing that there has been little advancement by the major political parties on a range of policy positions applicable to A&TSI peoples since the previous federal election.

Adam Frogley, Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Coordinator

Federal Election 2016

Make equality happen Scorecard: Marriage Equality policy

The federal election on 2 July 2016 is the opportunity for the majority of Australians to make marriage equality happen.

About two-thirds of Australians support marriage equality according to polls, but a significant number of Coalition politicians, conservative religious groups and influential individuals back the status quo and have been doing their best recently to dominate the debate.

If re-elected, a Turnbull Government has committed to hold a $160 million plebiscite on the issue. Labor has promised to legalise same-sex marriage within 100 days if elected. Greens and a number of Independent candidates support marriage equality, and have done so for some time.

Recent controversies regarding issues related to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer communities remind us that that despite widespread shifts in the way communities view issues related to people of diverse sexualities and genders, some minority voices remain powerful in the debate.

Late in 2015 a local NSW Presbyterian minister, with social commentator Piers Akerman and the Daily Telegraph, publicly reacted to school screenings of a documentary Gayby Baby in recognition of Wear it Purple Day, a day that singles out bullying of LGBTIQ students. The documentary prompted Akerman to lament offensively ‘the drive to create the fantasy that homosexual families are the norm.’

According to the church minister the film was ‘trying to change children’s minds by promoting a gay lifestyle.’

The noise was enough for the NSW Education Minister to intervene, placing a statewide school-hours ban on the film.

Agitation by the Australian Christian Lobby and conservative Christian organisation, Family Voice, recently saw significant changes to the Government funded Safe Schools program. Federal Nationals Senator Barry O’Sullivan, and Liberal Senator Cory Bernadi took their opinions about the

Policy Support for Marriage Equality parliamentary vote rather than Plebiscite program to party room meetings. Prime Minister Turnbull then announced a review of the program, prompting ex-Prime Minister Tony Abbot to distance himself from his decision to support the program, ‘As far as I’m concerned, it’s not about anti-bullying, it’s about social engineering; now that we know exactly what this program is all about.’

LNP Member for Dawson in Queensland, George Christensen, who had voiced strong concerns about the program, gathered the signatures of 43 colleagues on a petition demanding a full parliamentary inquiry. Receiving the petition and the program review the Education Minister announced he had requested changes to the program and that funding for it would cease after 2017.

The attacks continued when program founder and La Trobe University academic Roz Ward was recently suspended from her position (see p. 9). Purportedly about a private social media comment about the Australian flag in reality it was part of this concerted political and ideological campaign of the extreme right.

Some in LGBTIQ communities and allies who support changing marriage laws fear an escalation of damaging views, like those aired in the Gayby Baby and Safe Schools issues, both as parties debate their election policies and throughout a plebiscite campaign should a Coalition Government be re-elected. Already community groups are developing resources

LNP

ALP

✖

✔

Greens ✔

to assist vulnerable individuals combat the potentially negative implications of this kind of aggressive debate.

An election statement by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference distributed to Australia’s 5.4 million Catholics in mid-May has represented what the church would like people to consider when they vote.

Significantly stronger than their 2013 election statement they warn: …political decisions in the future will undermine further the dignity and uniqueness of marriage as a lifelong union of man and woman. Support for marriage and the family does not look like a big vote-winner, so that even the most basic human institution, upon which the health of a society depends, can become part of the throwaway culture or at best an optional extra.

For many in our communities this year’s federal election is the opportunity for our voices, and those of our allies, to make a real difference towards achieving equality, recognition and social justice. Whilst it might feel difficult in having your voice heard there are a range of actions that you can take to get our message out there.

Queer Unionists in Tertiary Education (QUTE) seeks to connect members interested in representing this issue in the election campaign and beyond. Specifically, we are asking that you consider handing out leaflets on Election Day; use your influence to ensure that our corflute signs are at every polling booth; if you are in a seat where the conversations are taking place then engaging in these activities so that you can talk about marriage equality.

We urge you to become involved in this important issue and ask that you contact Dave to get resources and to find out how to be part of this important change for our community.

Virginia Mansel Lees, Victorian Division Executive, and Dave Willis, RMIT Branch Organiser.

For more information on QUTE, email dwillis@nteu.org.au www.nteu.org.au/qute

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 35

Federal Election 2016

Major parties target women voters Scorecard: Women’s policy

The 2016 federal election campaign has seen a shift away from the mantra of ‘working families’, probably because both major political parties have realised that single women are now a substantial block of voters. Furthermore, as the proportion of women undertaking and completing higher education has increased (to the point where the majority of graduates are women), so has their political engagement, and now women equal men in terms of their political interest, particularly for younger women.

At the same time there has evolved an increasing awareness by women that they need to ensure their financial independence, with more women in paid employment today than in previous generations (although women are still significantly over represented in part time, casual and low paid work). Another demographic change has seen less women marrying, and those that do marry do so later; more women are also choosing to start families later in life.

The result is a shift in the policy focus for the major political parties as they attempt to grab women’s votes.

Policy

LNP

ALP

Support for improvements to workplace gender equity

✖

✔

✔

Support for domestic and family violence leave as a workplace right

✖

✔

✔

✖✔

✔

✔

Improving economic security for women

Liberal National Coalition The Coalition is attempting to appeal to women through the party’s business focused policy platform, with women now representing over a third of all business operators in Australia, a 46 per cent increase from the mid 1990s. However, while the Coalition is claiming that their Budget measures will boost workforce participation for women and improve their economic security, recent independent analysis has found significant flaws in their policy platforms.

Workplace gender equity The 2016 Federal Budget offered nothing towards improving gender equity in the workplace, and many in the Coalition remain firmly opposed to reporting requirements for employers under the Workplace Gender Equity Act (WGEA).

Furthermore, the Coalition’s repeated attempts to water down the highly successful government supported paid parental leave scheme, which would result in the reduction of time taken or exclusion from the scheme for the vast majority of new mothers, seems contrary to their claims to want to boost workforce participation.

Superannuation While the Government has backed away from its initial plans to abolish Labor’s Low Income Super Contribution scheme (an annual payment of up to $500 to assist those earning less than $37,000 – mostly women) other superannuation reforms announced in the Budget, will have a negative impact on women.

In particular, older women who have found themselves needing to top-up their super before retirement, due to extended breaks from the workforce, the impact of

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Greens

life events such as divorce, or lower paid employment, will be hit the hardest by new tax measures, which appear to be retrospective.

The Government has made much of its proposed ‘carry forward’ provision which would allow people to contribute more to their super when they have not reached their pre-tax contributions cap in previous years. Taxpayers with a super balance of less than $500,000 will be able to draw on unused caps from the previous four years to make ‘catch-up’ contributions.

However, few middle-income earners – and even fewer women – make large catch-up contributions to their super fund.

A tiny 2 per cent of women with superannuation balances of less than $500,000 made pre-tax contributions of $25,000 or more in 2013-14 (and 80 per cent of them are among the top 20 per cent of income earners).

Interestingly, even women who are relatively well off will be worse off under these proposed changes than their male counterparts, with University of Canberra’s NATSEM modelling finding that women aged over 50 would pay the highest tax increase as a proportion of their income (up 0.97 per cent for 50 to 64 year olds; and 1.29 per cent for 65+), because women in these age groups were earning a lower average income than men.

Furthermore, NATSEM modelling found the Government’s argument that its policy changes would only affect high income earners to be true for men, but for women aged 50 to 64, the median income of those affected is $112,730, certainly not in the highest income bracket, but is when women consider contributing more to their concessional superannuation.

Federal Election 2016 Domestic and family violence Also of concern is the failure to direct new domestic and family violence funding at the legal and support services, which are still facing significant cuts due to decisions made by the Government in 2014. Instead, the majority of funding will be allocated to an expensive media based ‘education campaign’.

Furthermore, the Minister for Women, Michaelia Cash, is resisting attempts by unions and the ACTU to introduce mandatory domestic and family violence leave, saying it would dissuade employers from hiring women.

Australian Labor Party Labor has stated that its policy platform around women is focused on increasing access and participation by women in institutions of power and the workplace, addressing inequities in family law and looking to improve economic opportunity.

Workplace gender equity This is the focus of their women’s budget statement, which includes policies such as their commitment to ensure half of their previously promised STEM scholarships go to women, statement of support for the work of the Workplace Gender Equity Agency and their opposition to cutting penalty rates (noting that it is more often women who rely on penalty rate hours to make up otherwise very low income jobs).

Labor has also committed to increasing the participation of women within the party to 50 per cent by 2025.

Superannuation On superannuation, Labor has announced that it would accept the Government superannuation changes but would not accept the retrospective aspect and is critical of the aspects the impact on the retirement phase.

Labor’s own policy would see earning on superannuation taxed at 15 per cent when a pension account earns more than $75,000 per year. It would also remove the 10 per cent tax offset on defined benefit pension income above $75,000 per year.

These measures may have a similar result to that found in the NATSEM modelling, but more detail is required.

Domestic and family violence While the Coalition has made much of its anti-domestic violence campaign, Labor has announced its own package of measures, worth $70 million. This includes:

• Approximately $50 million to frontline legal services, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services to ensure people experiencing family violence get legal support and do not have to go to court alone.

• An initial investment of $15 million in Safe at Home grants to help people affected by family violence stay safe in their own home and communities.

• $ 8 million investment in mapping perpetrator activities to look at the interactions across family violence, law enforcement, justice, child protection and related systems to help identify opportunities to prevent violence through information sharing.

Importantly, Labor has committed to introducing domestic and family violence leave as a universal workplace right.

The Australian Greens The Green’s policy around women focuses on opposing and dealing with discrimination, supporting gender equality and equal pay, reproductive rights, family-friendly work and freedom from violence. They have also announced targeted support for women working in science and research.

Reproductive rights The Green’s stance on reproductive rights includes a $15million commitment to support the decriminalisation of abortion at a state level and cut out-of-pocket expenses through a review of rebates.

The party also supports ‘truth in advertising’ laws for pregnancy counselling, the accurate collation of data on terminations and seek to increase access to abortions via public hospitals by establishing a task force on abortion and contraception.

Domestic and family violence The Greens support the strengthening of anti-discrimination laws and have a number of policies aimed to tackling domestic and family violence.

Noting that domestic and family violence is the leading cause of homelessness in Australia, and access to safe accommodation is critical for protecting at risk women and children, the Greens have called on the Government to recommit to the National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS), where funding for 12,000 new dwellings is currently in doubt.

includes funding for 85,000 new affordable rental homes over the next decade.

The Greens would also ensure vulnerable women and children can access the legal services by: • Doubling funding for community legal services.

• I ncreasing legal aid funding by 50 per cent.

• I ncreasing the federal contribution to the National Partnership on legal assistance services by 50 per cent.

• R educing court fees to 2010-11 levels, subject to indexation.

• D ouble funding to Indigenous family violence prevention programs and increase funding to Indigenous legal services by 50 per cent.

Workplace gender equity The Greens also have targeted women in their Support for Women in Science initiative (at $213.7 million), committing $50 million per year in grants to research and innovation organisations to help them develop strategic programs designed to help retain female workers and carers.

These programs may include part-time fellowships, childcare support, family friendly facilities or increased technical support while on maternity leave.

Conclusion It is clear that the major parties are moving away from seeing women only in the policy context of ‘working families’, which is a positive for women overall. However, to what extent these policy promises are realised will depend not only which major party has control of Government, but what the make-up of the Senate, where the Greens, smaller parties and Independents may hold the balance of power yet again.

However, it is clear that party strategists have finally realised that women will be making important decisions on who to support at the ballot box, and that they cannot afford to ignore the ‘women’s vote’ any longer.

Terri MacDonald, Policy & Research Officer

The Greens have also released a national housing affordability road map, which

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 37

Federal Election 2016

The tax & super pie Scorecard: Tax and Super policy

Due to public outcry against its ideas of raising the GST and allowing the States to charge tax, the Coalition has opted for safe Reaganomic rhetoric about ‘growing the pie’ and ‘the trickle-down effect.’

By contrast, Labor and the Greens have been running hard with relatively risky and innovative tax and superannuation policies.

Tax Liberal-National Coalition The Coalition stands for: • Tax cuts for people earning over $80,000.

• Corporate tax cuts to 27.5 per cent for ‘small businesses’ with annual turnover less than $10 million, gradually extended to all companies, then progressively reduced to 25 per cent by 2026.

• Crackdowns on tax avoidance and loopholes.

Australian Labor Party Labor has committed to: • Reducing the small business company tax rate to 27.5 per cent (but not to the Coalition’s definition of ‘small business’).

• Cracking down on multinational tax avoidance, including offshoring of profits and hybrid structures to reduce tax, and improving reporting requirements.

• No increase to the GST. • Halving the capital gains tax discount for assets purchased after 1 July 2017.

The Australian Greens The Greens have a comprehensive tax avoidance election policy, including 18 measures, some highlights of which are: • Restoring funding to the Australian Tax

Policy

LNP

ALP

Reduction in small business tax rate to 27.5%

✔

✔

✖

Reduction in overall company tax to 25% by 2026

✔

?

✖

Cracking down on multinational tax avoidance

✔

✔

✔

Tax cuts for those on over $80,000

✔

✖

✖

Cutting or phasing out capital gains tax discounts

✖

✔

✔

Minimum tax guarantee for high-income earners

✖

?

✔

Cap tax-free superannuation accounts, with additional earnings taxed

✔

✔

?

Lifetime cap on after-tax additional super contributions, backdated to 2007

✔

✖

?

Transition to retirement income accounts taxed at 15%

✔

?

?

Reducing cap on pre-tax additional superannuation contributions to $25,000

✔

?

✖

Those earning over $250,000 pay 30% tax on additional super contributions

?

✔

✔

Progressive taxation on additional superannuation contributions

✖

✖

✔

Negative gearing

✔

✖

✖

Office for enforcement purposes.

• Increasing the Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s powers.

• Taxing trusts (used by some to hide income) at the corporate tax rate.

• Lowering tax disclosure thresholds to force more companies to disclose the tax they do/do not pay.

• Working towards unitary pricing, where taxes are paid where the economic activity occurs.

Greens

• Introduction of a lifetime cap of $500,000 on non-concessional (after tax) additional superannuation contributions, backdated to 2007.

• Transition to retirement income accounts to be taxed at 15 per cent.

• Reducing the cap for concessional (pre-tax) additional superannuation contributions from $35,000 to $25,000.

Australian Labor Party Labor’s plan for superannuation is to:

The Greens are also seeking to entirely phase out capital gains tax discounts, and have ruled out support for any cuts to income or corporate tax rates.

• Cap tax-free superannuation accounts at $1.5 million, with superannuation earnings above $75,000 annually taxed at 15 per cent.

Finally, the Greens want to introduce a ‘high income tax guarantee’ which would apply only to the top 1 per cent of taxpayers, making them pay a minimum of 35 per cent of pre-deduction income in tax.

• Reduce the Higher Income Superannuation Charge (HISC) so those with income over $250,000 pay 30 per cent tax on their additional before-tax superannuation contributions (currently $300,000).

Superannuation

Further, Labor would oppose the retrospectivity of the Coalition’s introduction of a lifetime cap on non-concessional superannuation contributions.

Liberal-National Coalition The Coalition has assured Australians that if elected they will introduce no further changes to the superannuation measures announced in the Budget, which include: • Capping tax-free superannuation accounts at $1.6 million, with any superannuation earnings over this amount taxed at 15 per cent.

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The Australian Greens The Greens are seeking progressive taxation on superannuation contributions, with a government co-contribution for individuals below the tax-free threshold.

Sarah Roberts, National Industrial Coordinator

Federal Election 2016

Climate policies lacking emphasis Scorecard: Climate Change policy

One of the most disappointing and frustrating aspects of this election campaign is the lack of emphasis on what is, by any measure, the most challenging issue facing our nation and the world – climate change.

When the Treasurer’s budget speech fails to mention climate change even once, you know things are bad. It is as if the climate is some ‘thing’ that we can safely put ‘over there’ and worry about when we have time – certainly not something that should get in the way of thinking about ‘jobs and growth’ or superannuation or tax.

Yet, as the recent east coast floods have reminded us yet again, all our human endeavours are, in the end, subject to the whims of the climate system. The catastrophic bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef has made it clear to the tourism industry at least, despite the Government’s efforts to censor UNESCO reports on the subject, that there are no jobs on a dead planet.

In this election, there are stark differences between the parties on climate change policy, as there have been for several years. The Coalition Government appears to be still wedded to policies devised during the Abbott years, which are essentially designed to give the appearance of action while doing very little. The vein of climate change denialism still runs very deep in the Liberal Party.

The ALP has better commitments to pollution reduction and renewable energy, but makes few commitments to deal with the biggest single contributor to climate change – the mining and burning of coal.

The Greens, overall, have the most comprehensive policies, appropriate to the level of risk posed by climate change.

Policy

LNP

ALP

Greens

✖

2050

2040

Renewable energy target by 2030

✖

50%

90%

Commitment to energy efficiency

✖

✔

✔✔

Net-zero carbon pollution target

Commitment ot ending coal mining

✖

✖

✔

Just transition for carbon-constrained workforces and communities

✖

✔

✔

In what follows, we will give a brief summary of the three parties’ positions on the major climate change-related issues.

Greenhouse gas emission reduction targets The Coalition has committed to 5 per cent reduction in emissions by 2020 and 26-28 per cent reduction on 2005 levels by 2030.

The ALP promises 45 per cent reduction in emissions on 2005 levels by 2030 and net zero carbon pollution by 2050.

The Greens have the more ambitious target of net-zero carbon pollution by 2040.

Renewable energy While the ALP and Greens make substantial commitments to renewable energy, the Coalition last year cut the renewable energy target to 23 per cent of energy to come from renewables by 2020, and has not announced a post-2020 target.

The ALP has committed to a 50 per cent renewable energy target by 2030, and the Greens to 90 per cent by 2030.

The Greens have also announced substantial support for the domestic installation of solar power, including batteries.

Energy efficiency The Coalition has few positive policies in this area, having repealed the Energy Efficiency Opportunities Act in 2014 and scrapped the Home Energy Saver Scheme.

The ALP commits to double energy productivity by 2030 and $98.7 million over four years for Community Power network, including funding for low-income energy efficiency retrofits. The Greens want to

double energy efficiency by 2030 with a National Energy Efficiency Scheme.

Coal mining The Coalition, strong supporters of the continued expansion of coal mining, make no commitments to ending the mining of fossil fuels. Similarly, the ALP has made no commitment to ending fossil fuel mining.

The Greens’ promise no new coal-burning power stations or coal mines, and no expansions to any existing power stations or mines.

Just transition for carbonconstrained workforces and communities The Coalition makes no commitments to phase out coal fired power or assistance to workers affected by transition away from fossil fuels.

Encouragingly, the ALP will establish a Just Transitions Unit in the Environment Department to manage impacts of coal closures on workers and communities, a policy strongly advocated by the NTEU and ACTU. Again, however, the Greens have the most complete policy on the issue, advocating for staged closure of coal-fired power stations using emissions intensity standards and $250 million for Clean Energy Transition Fund to provide assistance and worker re-training for communities that rely on coal.

Colin Long, Victorian Division Secretary

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 39

Federal Election 2016

Refugee policy hardline & heartless Scorecard: Refugees and Asylum Seeker policy

Last year, human displacement hit an all-time high with a staggering 60 million people forcibly displaced from their homes. The UNHCR calculates that one in every 122 people is now a refugee, asylum seeker or internally displaced person.

Many academics are deeply concerned about how Australia’s political leaders have responded to this global humanitarian crisis. In the lead up to the Federal election, we examine the policies of the three major political parties in relation to people seeking asylum.

Differences in rhetoric aside, unfortunately little distinguishes the two major political parties, with both supporting increasingly draconian policies including the mandatory detention of asylum seekers, offshore processing and boat turnbacks.

Offshore processing & mandatory detention Both the Coalition and Labor are refusing people their right to seek asylum by practicing a policy of deterrence towards those arriving in Australia by boat. Offshore processing is the central component of this deterrence model. It involves subjecting people to prolonged detention in offshore camps so that they do not gain any ‘advantage’ over refugees elsewhere. This approach is morally reprehensible and not substantiated by research or solid evidence.

The Coalition under Malcolm Turnbull continues the hard-line approach of Operation Sovereign Borders implemented under the Abbott Government. This policy currently sees around 1450 people held in camps in Nauru and Manus Island.

Policy

LNP

ALP

Greens

Access to right to asylum for all

✖

✖

✔

Supports community processing

✖

✖

✔

Ending offshore detention

✖

✖

✔

The UNHCR has described these arrangements as deeply damaging, untenable and in breach of international standards including the prohibition against torture.

Papua New Guinea has vowed to close the Manus Island detention centre, following a ruling of their Supreme Court in April 2016 that it is illegal.

Despite this, the Government repeatedly refused New Zealand’s offer to resettle people from Australia’s offshore camps, saying that it would be ‘used by the people smugglers as a marketing opportunity’.

Instead, the Coalition promotes Cambodia as a viable third country for resettling refugees, a policy that goes against concerns of human rights specialists and has to date been a dismal failure, at a cost to Australia of a massive $55 million.

Labor also stands by the policy of offshore processing that it introduced in August 2012. It has also chosen to endorse a policy of boat turnbacks in line with the Coalition’s practice. Where Labor differs from the Coalition is in its promise to expedite the processing of refugee claims and its proposal to establish an independent oversight mechanism with jurisdiction to review Australian-funded offshore camps.

The Greens, in contrast, oppose boat turnbacks, call for the abolition of offshore processing and propose to let people live in the Australian community while their asylum claims are processed. However, this policy does envisage allowing people to be held for a maximum 30 days in onshore detention centres for identification and security checks.

Humanitarian Program The Coalition has pledged to increase the current number of allocated places in Australia’s overall onshore and offshore humanitarian program from 13,750 to

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18,750 in 2018/19. This proposed change merely restores the annual intake to near pre-2013 levels, and remains only a small fraction of the 190,000 people who have permanently migrated to Australia under our Migration Program in recent years.

This number excludes the as yet unfulfilled pledge of the Abbott Government to resettle an additional 12,000 people from Syria by March 2017, a less than generous contribution to the estimated 11.6 million who fled Syria or remain internally displaced. As of 1 April 2016, only 187 of Syrians have been resettled in Australia.

Labor has promised to increase the intake to 27,000 people per year by 2025, while the Greens promise an increase to 50,000 people per year, including proposing to additionally establish a Skilled Refugee visa program for 10,000 people.

Both these proposed increases remain low in the context of the large-scale resettlement schemes that are needed in order to offer safety, dignity and humanitarian support to the millions of people in the world in need of refuge and improved livelihoods.

Where to from here?

The question of how Australia should treat people seeking asylum has long been a fraught election issue. It need not be so.

More sound policy options do exist that expand the choices of people in need of refuge and ensure their safety and rights.

Instead of focusing on the securitisation of borders and subjecting individuals to prolonged detention and torture, it’s time Australia adopted a more just, inclusive and dignity-centred approach to people seeking asylum. continued opposite...

Federal Election 2016 Persecution, Jews and asylumseekers My grandparents and father were refugees who came to Australia by boat.

They were Jews living in Vienna when the Nazis invaded Austria in 1938.

They managed to escape later that year, and saved their lives by fleeing their home country. They came to Australia, and like many other refugees they worked in whatever jobs they could get. After some years my grandparents started their own small business, and employed other people.

I grew up hearing and learning about my family history of fleeing Nazism as refugees, and persecution.

My grandfather was not religious, and being Jewish in terms of religion was not important to him. He often said ‘I am allergic to rabbis’; but he said Hitler made him identify as being Jewish. Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe were persecuted and killed, simply for being Jewish, whether they were religious or not.

It is part of Jewish culture to know about persecution. In Passover every year (and

Advocacy by academics Academics have long advocated for just policies. Academics for Refugees has run campaigns to close the centres on Nauru and Manus and to release children in detention. We know that the current policies are not acceptable or sustainable – and

at other times) Jews remember their history of persecution, and that they were once slaves in Egypt.

Because Jewish culture remembers persecution, I find it difficult to understand why Jewish people sometimes do not have sympathy for other persecuted people. I find it difficult to accept that Michael Danby (my local member – ALP, Melbourne Ports), a politician who identifies as Jewish, and who wants Jewish people to vote for him, shows no sympathy or understanding of the plight of refugees and asylum seekers who come to Australia by boat.

Both major political parties in Australia (the ALP and the Coalition) have adopted policies that treat asylum seekers in a cruel, inhumane and shameful manner.

Neither of the major parties have tried to explain to the Australian public the complex reasons why there are increasing numbers of refugees globally, and why Australia should assist these people. As Waleed Aly has pointed out ‘our current policies are a bipartisan concoction: the result of years of mutual posturing, outflanking and then outbidding.’ (The Age, 29 April 2016) These policies have led to intense suffering with people living for years in limbo without knowing anything about their future, severe mental health problems, suicides, self-immolations, and compari-

are costly. We have evidence to support these concerns. As the refugee protests on Nauru and Manus Island continue, academics are encouraged to act in solidarity by protesting to all politicians and utilising social media. Our voices can make a difference.

sons with Nazi concentration camps. In short, these policies persecute people.

Both major political party’s policies (towards asylum seekers) have been condemned by human rights organisations and individuals, both in Australia and internationally. They make me feel ashamed to be Australian.

Some ALP MPs have a conscience and have publicly criticised the ALP policy of off-shore detention, but I have not heard anything from Michael Danby on this issue. Does he have any sympathy for the people incarcerated in detention centres indefinitely?

Both major parties have been offensively disappointing and mean-spirited in their responses to asylum seekers coming to Australian by boat. The Greens are one party in Australia that demonstrates understanding of the complexity of the issues around migration and refugees in the world today, and shows humane sympathy to asylum seekers and refugees.

I urge voters in Melbourne Ports (and other electorates) to consider these issues before voting; and to have compassion and sympathy for refugees and asylum seekers.

David Feith, Monash College

Above: David Feith’s father and grandparents in Austria, 1934.

Sara Dehm and Philomena Murray, University of Melbourne.

Coordinators, Academics for Refugees academicsforrefugees.wordpress.com

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 41

Federal Election 2016

NTEU members running in 2016 Once again a healthy number of NTEU members are running as candidates in the federal election. Advocate presents profiles of the eight members who informed us of their candidatures. Three sitting NTEU members are recontesting their seats.

Anne Aly Labor candidate for Cowan Edith Cowan University professor Anne Aly is Labor’s candidate for Cowan, one of WA’s most marginal seats held by Liberal MP Luke Simpkins on a margin of 4.5%.

Anne is one of Labor’s higher profile candidates, well known for her research on counter terrorism and countering violent extremism. She held a number of senior positions in the Western Australian Public Service before going to work at both Curtin University and Edith Cowan University.

Of Egyptian descent, Anne has been an advisor to the UNs Counter-Terrorism Directorate, a Board member of both the Council for Arab Australian Relations and the Australia Arab Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and has addressed President Obama’s Countering Violent Extremism summit at the White House.

In standing for Labor, Anne says she believes she has something to give back to the community. ‘I come from a very working-class family and it’s through education that I’ve been able to take opportunities that have been offered to me’, she said, ‘I’d like to see the rest of Australia also having those opportunities.’

Anne Aly is also the Founding Chair of People against Violent Extremism, a not-for-profit organisation focused on empowering communities to challenge violent extremism. She has written five books and over 60 publications on topics ranging from Islamic identity to counter narratives and the policy response to violent extremism.

Thor Kerr Greens candidate for Tangney Thor Kerr is a lecturer in the Department of Communication and Cultural Studies in Curtin University’s School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts and the Greens candidate for Tangney, held by Liberal-turned-Independent Dennis Jensen on a margin of 13%.

Thor is passionate about free access to higher education, and has demonstrated actively against government funding cuts.

His politics follow his research interest in local social justice issues.

Dr Kerr’s research focusses on media and public representation in negotiations of urban space, particularly in relation to green built environments and Aboriginal heritage. His latest book, To the Beach, examines public controversy and policy making around ‘sustainable’ coastal property development. His previous book, co-authored with Dr Shaphan Cox, examines media criminalisation of Aboriginal activists at the Nyoongar Tent Embassy in Perth. For an early career researcher and teacher, he has published widely in academic journals and other publications as well as online media.

Thor supervises several PhD students and coordinates the Master of Media and Communication course at Curtin University. His current teaching focus relates to project planning and research methods for disciplines in media and communication. He has been a member of award-winning teaching and creative production teams.

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Kristen Lyons Greens candidate for Moreton Dr Kristen Lyons, an Associate Professor in the School of Social Science at UQ, is standing for the Greens in the Queensland seat of Moreton, held by Graham Perrett for the ALP on a margin of 1.6%.

As a university lecturer who has also worked in international development, Kristen is as committed to sustainable development here as well as overseas. She has been actively involved with environmental and social justice NGOs for many years, as well as supporting ethical small businesses. She is an active member of the Ngara Institute and the Oakland Institute, think tanks which contribute to public and policy debates.

Kristen says ‘The Greens stand for issues that are at the core of what matters to many Australians – a fair society, a healthy economy, and a clean environment – and I’m delighted to be standing with this growing political movement.

‘Importantly, we are the only party to take strong action to halt dangerous global warming; saying no to new coal mines and committing to transition to at least 90% renewables by 2030. We are the only party who will do the right thing by people seeking asylum, and we are committed to ensure affordable education and health for all Australians.

‘I am happy to be standing with a party that has a vision for the kind of Australia we actually want to live in, where everyone is given the opportunity to flourish.’

Federal Election 2016 Patrick O’Sullivan Greens candidate for Hindmarsh Patrick O’Sullivan is Team Leader for Engineering Technical Services at UniSA and Greens candidate for Hindmarsh, held by Liberal Matt Williams on a margin of 1.9%.

Patrick has spent all of his working life in the education sector, having previously been a High School teacher. He is passionate about education and in particular the scientific and engineering fields; critical in building Australia’s renewable energy sector. He said he made the decision to run as a Greens’ candidate because of the Greens’ commitment to ensuring high-quality education is available to all Australians.

‘Education is investing in our future and should not be viewed through the eyes of economic rationalism. Free education is under threat and in the near future may be in name only. The Greens plan is to boost investment in public education and fight against fee increases such as the Student Start-Up Scholarship which then turned into a loan, adding to a student’s debt.’

Patrick believes the current government ‘is threatening universal education with its plan to deregulate universities, driving fees up to $100,000, diverting funding away from primary and secondary schools and cutting back the TAFE sector. ‘ ‘Education should be seen as a life-long pursuit so that through all stages of life education is valued and accessible. I believe that an accessible, high-quality education is central to a flourishing society and economy.’

Sharlene Leroy-Dyer Susan Price Socialist Alliance senate candidates, NSW Sharlene Leroy-Dyer and Susan Price are standing as Senate candidates for the Socialist Alliance in NSW. Sharlene, a descendant of the Guringai, Gadigal, Wiradjuri and Dharug peoples of NSW, is on the Newcastle Branch committee and is Deputy Chair of NTEU Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy Committee. Susan was UNSW Branch President between 2006 and 2010 and served on the NTEU National Executive from 2010-2012.

Price outlined Socialist Alliance’s education platform, saying ‘Education is a fundamental right, yet the policies of successive governments have been to turn education into a privilege and to shift the cost onto students and their families. At all levels, the public system has been systematically dismantled, while private schools, institutions and colleges enjoy billions in taxpayer subsidies.’

‘We stand for a reversal of the cuts to the education sector and for free, quality public education at all levels. This requires a massive investment of public funds; expansion of the public sector; and an end to the public funding of private schools, tertiary institutions and training colleges.’

James Searle Greens senate candidate, Vic Jame Searle works for the Swinburne Student Union and is a Greens senate candidate in Victoria. Although his position on the ticket is unlikely to see him elected, James says he is working hard to support the re-election of both Victorian Greens Senators, Richard Di Natale and Janet Rice.

‘Unionism and green politics have a strong history, starting with the BLF’s Green Bans in the 1970s and demonstrated recently by the Greens’ principled positions against the reintroduction of the Australian Building and Construction Commission and supporting the retention of weekend penalty rates.’

As a former sessional academic and current Student Union manager, James knows how important higher education is to Australian’s future. ‘Corporatisation and managerialism are ruining our public universities. We have seen a gradual but constant erosion of the culture of universities as scholarly institutions. Democracy must be restored on university councils and academic boards and we must oppose any further moves to cut education funding and deregulate university fees.’

Only the Greens ‘have the courage and vision to stand up for free university and TAFE education, and for a strong union movement.’

Kevin Poynter Greens candidate for Riverina Kevin Poynter has worked in higher education as a lecturer, general staff member and now as the NTEU Branch Organiser at Charles Sturt University Branch. He is

the Greens candidate in the NSW seat of Riverina, held by Michael McCormack for the Nationals on a margin of 19%.

Kevin says he ‘has been privileged to represent members at local, state and national levels in elected positions and as a staff member for many years, and to work with them to protect the independence of universities and the professional autonomy of staff as important tools in driving real innovation and rigorous public debate.’

He is standing for The Greens because education, research, health and ensuring we have a sustainable and just future are important to him.

‘These things are too important to be, ignored, slashed, or left to the whims of the profit motive. They must be part of a fully rounded economic model that respects the private sector, government provision of services and the work of not-for-profit organisations as tools to build community confidence and social and economic prosperity. Government budgets should be about more than providing old political parties with resources to further their own political careers. They need to be evidence based plans that transition to a clean, genuinely innovative and sustainable future.‘

Recontesting members Andrew Leigh Labor member for Fenner Formerly at ANU, Andrew Leigh is recontesting his seat of Fenner (formerly Fraser) in the ACT, defending a margin of 12.5%.

Robert Simms SA Greens Senator Formerly at Flinders University and a senator since 2015, Robert Simms is at second place on the Greens’ SA ticket.*

Deb O’Neill NSW Labor Senator Deb O’Neill was MP for Robertson from 2010-2013, and has been a Labor senator for NSW since 2014.* *See profiles in Advocate vol 23 no 1 (March 2016)

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 43

Unpaid overtime

Photo: Section from NTEU’s Go Home On Time Day 2015 poster

It’s not uncommon in many workplaces, and universities are no exception. It seems like such a little thing – working just a snippet of unpaid overtime here and there. An example of this, for professional staff at least, is working through lunch and not claiming the time (though the principle also applies to academic workloads). When people do this, they sometimes tells themselves a story to justify their actions. ‘It’s my time and I can do what I want with it’ must be a pretty common theme. Using the lunch-hour example, I’m going to show that there are good reasons why this justification, and a few others, simply don’t stack up.

Imagine that you are beset with urgent work and impending deadlines (this shouldn’t be too difficult). As a member of professional staff at a university, your contract stipulates a set number of hours per week. Your standard work day is eight hours, including a one-hour, unpaid, lunch break. Sometimes, you eat you lunch at your desk while continuing to complete work-related tasks. This extra time often ends up un-accounted for (and unpaid) in that you don’t claim it as overtime, flexitime or otherwise take an extra hour off somewhere else in your week.

There are legal reasons why you shouldn’t do this. But there are also ethical reasons why this is not OK.

It’s not your time to give away.

You might tell yourself that it is your time.

If you want or need to donate it to your institution for the good of the students and staff that rely on you, then it is no one else’s business.

This is incorrect.

Dr Samuel Douglas University of Newcastle M@BeachPhilosophy

Your institution has bought the right to your time and labour, but not all time and time and effort in your life! What they have actually purchased is the time and labour that is covered by the contract between you and your employer – nothing else.

Your contract cannot cover time that is not covered by your contract; this is logically impossible.

nteu.org.au/gohomeontimeday

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Authorised by Grahame McCulloch, NTEU, 120 Clarendon St, Sth Melbourne VIC

You might agree that this sets limits on what your employer can expect of you, but not on what you can give away to them.

Consider this then: If you work an extra hour without being paid, that is an hour of paid work that someone else could do.

For every seven times this happens, this is one day of work. For every thirty-five times, a week of paid employment. If you accept that this work has to be done one way or the other, then it follows that the institution would have to find some other way of getting these tasks completed.

One way this could happen would be to pay someone else to do this work. In this light, what you are doing is taking work away from someone else who could be getting paid for it. Who would these people be? Not your overworked colleagues – they don’t have the time for anything extra. Rather it is the unemployed, the underemployed, the casually employed and the precariously contracted who miss out on work and greater security because of this practice.

I would agree that they do not have an absolute right to this work. But surely, if you are already permanently employed, they have more of a need of it, and therefore more of a right to it, than you do.

When you give your time away for nothing to an employer, you are stealing work and security from people who have less of both than you do.

It’s not loyal It would be reasonable to argue that the institution could deal with this situation through efficiency gains or technological solutions, rather than by hiring additional employees. But even if this were the case, undertaking work that is not accounted for hides the true extent of the gains in efficiency or technological improvement required to deal with the problem. This is particularly relevant if you feel that your donation of time is an expression of your loyalty to your institution.

Would you consider it loyalty to lie to a friend about the seriousness of a problem in their life? Would you deliberately hide the symptoms of the problem so that they never saw the need for change? Being an employee is not the same as being a friend, but there are good reasons to think that loyalty to an organisation is not best served through dishonesty and deception – even if well-intentioned.

It stifles the improvements that you actually want Work that is not paid and accounted for hides structural inefficiencies and technological shortfalls. If you can see an IT bottleneck, it is never going to be fixed if people offset its effect by working unpaid overtime.

The same goes for inefficient organisational structures, unnecessarily complicated procedures, unclear reporting lines and in-

Interns – a new frontier for exploitation Many students benefit from placements and work experience opportunities during courses of study, in the university and vocational education sectors. In fact, learning practical professional and technical work skills in real workplaces is often a pre-requisite for completing a qualification.

However, with high levels of unemployment affecting even skilled occupations in recent years, there has been an increasing trend to exploit those seeking on-the-job experience by the use of dubious, and sometimes illegal, internship arrangements.

In Melbourne recently, a seminar was organised by the Victorian Trades Hall’s Young Workers Centre about the use and abuses of internships. The speakers were John Howe (Melbourne Law School), Carolyn Dunbar (Media, Entertainment, and Arts Alliance), Abbey Kendall (Slater & Gordon) and Jack Kenchington-Evans (Interns Australia).

Discussion focussed on what constituted good and bad internships, with many accounts from the speakers and from participants about: • ‘Interns’ being employed on no money for long periods • The use of internship arrangements to perform productive work, in some cases after other employees had been declared redundant.

• Internships which did not provide real opportunities to develop skills in the relevant occupation.

Examples ranged across industries and professions, with law, media and the arts cited as areas where exploitation was a problem.

Interns Australia works with unions, educational institutions and employers to ensure interns are not exploited. Interns Australia and the ACTU have also warned that the Coalition Government’s proposed ‘$4 per hour’ internships, announced in May, could lead to increased exploitation, and that if interns are performing productive work they should be paid the appropriate award wage for that work.

NTEU members should be careful Under the Fair Work Act, if an intern is performing productive work and contributing to the employer’s business in a meaningful way, there will be an employment relationship and they may be entitled to remuneration. If the employee receives no pay, the employer would be breaking the law.

There is an exemption from this requirement if the work being undertaken is part of the requirements for passing a course of study. However, university and TAFE staff are often involved in facilitating work-placement arrangements which go beyond the specific requirements of the students’ course. Under the Fair Work Act, a university or TAFE Institute which was ‘knowingly involved’ in providing cheap unpaid labour to an employer could itself be breaking the law, as could the staff who made such arrangements.

Ken McAlpine, Union Education & Training Officer More advice for interns, those employing them, and how NTEU members can follow best practice, at Interns Australia: www.internsaustralia.org

consistent policies. Not only will the issues not be addressed, but you are unlikely to received official recognition for your role in dealing with them.

As Professors John Sterman and Nelson Repenning, of the MIT Sloan School of Management, have argued, ‘Nobody ever gets credit for fixing problems that never happened.’ Innovation is said to thrive on constraint, so in hiding or minimising constraints, you are, in effect, reducing the perceived need for the innovations that would actually make your life easier.

So there you have it. Undertaking work that is not accounted and paid for, which includes (but is not limited to) working through your unpaid lunch break, is not a good thing. It takes work away from those who need it most, isn’t a good way of being loyal to your institution, and slows the rate of organisational improvement.

Dr Samuel Douglas is Casual Academic (Philosophy) & Program Advisor at the University of Newcastle, NSW, and an NTEU member.

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Research

The modern academix A colleague of mine is a self-professed multidisciplinary economist. He bears the scars of the modern academic: he has moved several times for work, he told me of his research having suffered as a result of his teaching enterprises, and he was now three years into a five year, non-renewable research position.

The corporatisation of universities troubled him, and he was obviously fearful of his future in research. He says he did not like how universities had outsourced in the way they had.

The culture and economics of Australian universities is moving toward an American mode: user pays. No time or space to think, no time get a group of friends together, contemplate, and look at the stars.

What does it all mean for universities as research institutions when the external funding acquired by their academics, already stretched intellectually and time poor, is going to those who simply do not have the time to carry out their proposed research? That is, how can a full time teaching and research academic carry out more research if they are successful in accruing more grant money? My contention: they cannot, at least successfully.

What such a situation creates is one not only of an inequity of financial resources but an odd inequity of temporal resources: those who get the research money gen-

erally have little time to use the cash, and those who do not get the cash do have the time to use it. And one would assume in most cases, use it well.

But the time-poor still manage to become the cash-rich in the academic world. In addition, those who are established in their field get to push their research in their desired direction while those who often have more innovative and creative yet possibly less developed ideas are hindered by making contributions and are restricted from being allowed in the door.

My new colleague reminded me of the success rate of a particular section of research funding in Australia: around 20 per cent. Not bad odds really. Although as a postdoc on a different funding scheme I am now a beneficiary of a system, I am under no illusion that just because I am now on the inside that the system is fine. It is not. It is skewed towards those who have.

Where has that artist in me gone, the one who used to talk about ‘research for research’s sake’ or ‘art for art’s sake’?

For the postdoc scheme I entered, eight candidates were selected from a batch of around 75 applicants, a less than 11 per cent success rate. These are not good odds, and with the increasing number of PhD completions flooding the academic markets of Australia and the world, the odds are no doubt getting worse.

Behind these facts is the idea of a future; are my skills saleable or transferrable?

Where has that artist in me gone, the one who used to talk about ‘research for research’s sake’ or ‘art for art’s sake? ‘I didn’t go to uni to get a job’, I used to tell people, ‘I went to uni to learn how to think.’ Isn’t it

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enough to have a research project funded by my university reason enough to continue in a research-only position?

So it is here I suggest that maybe it is not such a bad thing to have three years of well-paid research funds without it necessarily leading to a tenured position. The oasis of tenure may be there, but it does not have to be a dangling carrot.

I believe it is under such conditions that real radical research in any field can be done. Such research often gets rejected in peer review, but it is work, which when coupled with tenacity, perseverance, and resolution, will eventually get published.

Despite how naïve the following statement appears based in our current neoliberal yardsticks of research quality, it is our creativity in research which counts not the number of articles, citations, and publications in highly ranked journals. In the end, the only question one must ask oneself as a researcher is: How do I want to live my life? Or as applied to research: How do I want to conduct my research?

If those, who because of time poverty, cannot conduct the research they propose while being successful at accruing funds, what is the future of research? I believe the answer to this question lies in individual self-reflection on one’s role in the neoliberal world of research, whether we are applying for research funding which could be better left to others, and whether or not we as researchers are making the greasy pole greasier or not.

Joshua Nash is a postdoctoral fellow in linguistics at the University of New England, Armidale, NSW and an NTEU member.

Art & Design

Protesting posters NTEU member Ivo Lovric and Margaret Thornton, Professor of Law and ANU Public Policy Fellow, recently completed the planning, design and production of a series of posters which address the corporatisation, casualisation and massification of higher education, as well as the effects that these strategies are having on both students and staff.

While working as a Publishing Officer with ANU Press, Ivo Lovric formatted a book edited by Margaret Thornton called Through a Glass Darkly: The Social Sciences Look at the Neoliberal University. This led him to approach Margaret and to their subsequent collaboration as part of the Vice-Chancellor’s Colleges Artist Fellowship Scheme (VCCAFS).

Through numerous meetings they discussed the developing political situation vis-à-vis higher education policy as well as the effects of thirty or so years of neoliberalism on the Australian university sector. These discussions alongside readings of Margaret’s books, including Through a Glass Darkly and Privatising the Public University: The Case of Law resulted in the initial concepts for the posters. Subsequent sketches and elaboration of the imagery using both 2D and 3D graphics software led to the finished designs.

Utilising humour or satire as well as more serious or informational approaches, the posters confront themes that include student debt, increased staff workloads, precarious employment, poor morale, a toxic workplace culture encouraging obedient acquiescence, commercial and instrumental forms of training versus humanistic and critical education, collegial versus corporate management styles and, in broader terms, the idea that university education is a public good it is not solely for individual gain. By using the poster form they hope to popularise or raise awareness about the foregoing issues. In this respect, posters can assist in reaching a wider audience by using a combination of visual and textual strategies that deliver a message in an immediate and easily understood manner.

On 10 December 2015, Margaret and Ivo presented a paper about the finished posters at Complicities, a conference hosted by the Law, Literature and Humanities Association of Australasia.

Through their interdisciplinary research involving the socio-legal and the visual arts, the paper discussed how the poster form can reveal and hopefully challenge the widespread complicities with prevailing political, legal and higher education cultures that have sought to privatise Australian universities.

Margaret and Ivo will probably deliver another presentation about the poster project to NTEU members in Canber-

ra and possibly interstate during 2016.

Additional posters are now being made and you might see the posters on a wall at your university in the near future.

To discuss this project, its future development or some form of collaboration, Ivo Lovric can be contacted at Ivo.Lovric@anu.edu.au

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United Kingdom

UK uni staff strike over real pay cuts Members of the 110,000 strong University and College Union (UCU) walked out of universities across the UK on 25 and 26 May in a dispute over pay.

UCU members had voted to strike rejecting a pay offer of just 1.1%, arguing that universities could afford to pay more and the latest offer did little to address the real term pay cut of 14.5% that staff have suffered since 2009.

Along with the erosion in pay and increased workloads, higher education work in the UK is becoming increasingly precarious. UCU explains that universities save money by not employing lecturers during the summer months, with 46% of universities using these casual contracts.

Media reported strong picket lines across the country, whilst the employers predictably said that the strike caused little

disruption. Union members also began working to contract.

Additionally, more than 1,000 academics have already resigned from their roles as external examiners in universities across the UK, with thousands more expected to join them in coming weeks.

Reported in the Guardian (26 May 2016), the academics urged others to follow their lead explaining that We love our work as external examiners not least because it brings us into contact with academics from around the country. The high-quality work we see confirms to us that staff deserve better from institution heads.

We have therefore resigned from our external examiner posts and will not be taking up new posts in order to demonstrate that there will be no ‘business as usual’ until we have a commitment from our universities to fair pay in higher education.

Fifty professors have signed a letter to the paper voicing their opposition to what

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they see as the ‘unfairness of the current pay policies of our universities and their impact on staff and their students.’

If there is no reasonable offer, the dispute will continue to escalate with graduation ceremonies and open days targeted, and other unions likely joining in this campaign for fair pay in higher education.

While staff salaries have been effectively declining, the remuneration packages of university leaders has increased by 5% in 2014/15.

NTEU sent this message of solidarity: The NTEU in Australia stands in solidarity with UCU members as you strike demanding better pay. Like you we are outraged that vice-chancellors are being paid outrageous packages while higher education staff struggle with blowouts in workloads as colleagues lose their jobs and others are in insecure jobs.

Jeannie Rea, National President www.ucu.org.uk/news

Below: Striking UCU members in Bath.

Source: www.union-news.co.uk

Syria

Kurdish School for War Orphans The Kobanê Residential School for Orphans project is sponsored by the Kurdish Association of Victoria and Australians for Kurdistan.

Children are always the worst hit in any war and the suffering of Syrian children has been immense. Who can forget the dreadful photographs of Alan Kurdi, the little boy whose body was washed up on a Turkish beach? Alan’s family came from Kobanê, the Kurdish city that lies astride the Turkish border in the Rojava district of northern Syria.

In late 2014, the city was besieged by Islamic State fighters armed with tanks and artillery. Despite gloomy predictions, the city did not fall. The defenders drove the genocidal fanatics away but the victory came at a terrible cost for the lightly armed defenders—many of them women.

Much of the city’s infrastructure was destroyed, including schools, hospitals, factories and houses. Rebuilding will be a lengthy and costly task.

As an educator and a parent, I am acutely aware of the need to help rebuild the city’s schools and to care for the many war orphans. One way that we can assist is by donating to the Kobanê residential school for orphans project, which is sponsored

by the Kurdish Association of Victoria and Australians for Kurdistan, of which I am proud to be a member.

Before the outbreak of war, the population of Kobanê and its immediate hinterland was roughly 400,000, of whom 175,000 were children. While many fled with their parents to Turkish refugee camps, or have joined the tragic mass exodus to Europe, others remain and live without homes or parents in the city’s ruins.

Kindergarten in Kobanê catering mainly for children orphaned by ISIS. Source: Australians for Kurdistan

Sadly, the ISIS fanatics have targeted people who came to help rebuild the city. On July 20 last year, a brigade of Turkish and Kurdish young socialists arrived in the Turkish border town of Suruç, on their way to build a children’s playground in Kobanê.

Thirty-three of them died in an IS suicide attack, which is widely believed to have been carried out with the connivance of Turkish security. Let us ensure that they did not die in vain in the struggle of humanity against barbarism. We can do that by supporting the orphans’ school project.

The aim of the project is to create a permanent, non-profit, community-based organization and school for children without parents in Kobanê. The school will cater for up to 100 children, with on-site accommodation and gardens to supply the kitchens.

Because of the special needs of war-traumatized children, class sizes will be kept small. The school will be run by a staff of ten according to democratic, cooperative, multicultural and feminist philosophy; rejecting chauvinist, patriarchal and authoritarian models.

The cost of building, staffing, and maintaining the school will be large. With this in mind, the organisers have asked Australian supporters to raise $400,000 towards the cost. This is not an unrealistic target, but every contribution will count. Another way of supporting the project would be to invite speakers from the Kurdish Association and Australians for Kurdistan to speak on campus.

Donations, however small, can be made to the following account: School and Dormitory Project for Children Without Parents in Kobane Commonwealth Bank BSB: 063 135 Account: 1077 8565 John Tully is Honorary Professor in the College of Arts at Victoria University and a member of the NTEU’s Past Members Association.

Left: View of the destruction in Kobanê.

Source: crimethinc.com

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 49

News from the Net Pat Wright

A social media election?

There are widespread claims that the 2 July 2016 federal election campaigns will involve more social media activity than ever. This is undoubtedly true, since in many cases it is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

However, the inference that the election will be decided on social media alone is something of an over-statement.

What the parties do with their analyses of social media activity is at least as important in influencing the campaign outcome as the content of that activity. Of course, there must be a significant amount of activity on, say, Facebook or Twitter before meaningful ‘back office’ analyses can be developed, but a simple counting of likes, shares, re-tweets, or clicks, is much less useful to campaign managers than the demographic data in the analytics or insights of the clicks on the postings or the page, now available from both Facebook and Twitter.

A Campaign Director with limited resources needs to target them – and not waste them on lost causes, nor in preaching to the converted. Social media can assist with this campaign triage by adding a layer to their database of ABS Census data, broken down to Collection Districts and their database of AEC past voting patterns, broken down to Polling Booths. In this sense, we are heading for a big data election more than a social media election.

Even more important than the technology, however, is the use to which it is put in organising an army of trained volunteer campaign workers.

A look back at the 2013 federal election post-mortems at the National Press Club of the Liberals Campaign Director, Brian Loughnane, and Labor’s Campaign Director, George Wright, on 22 and 29 Oct 2013 (still available on YouTube) is instructive. Both agreed that social

organisation. Nevertheless, he noted Labor’s 3 million ‘hits’ (up from 50,000 in 2007), a greatly expanded email network, and the enhanced database made possible through the demographic analysis of social media activity.

In this sense, we are heading for a big data election more than a social media election.

media played an important part in their respective campaigns, but Wright was rather more forthcoming on why it was important.

Loughnane noted that Abbott’s Facebook page had 258,000 Likes, to Rudd’s 127,000, and the level of Engagement on Abbott’s page was three times that of Rudd’s. On their respective YouTube channels, the Coalition had 1.2 million views, to Labor’s 289,000. The Liberals also experimented with a Facebook sharing app, which was used by 200,000 Australians and no doubt micro-targeted distribution of Abbott’s manifesto, ‘Real Solutions’ to 5 million households.

Loughnane’s research, by Crosby Textor, told him that 36 per cent of voters (up 8 per cent) made their decision on the basis of policy issues. Presumably, the other 64 per cent made their decisions on the basis of habit, resentment, grudges, prejudice, disdain or a candidate’s hairstyle, perhaps.

However, the high level of activity on social media would have been valuable in reflecting the terms (or slogans) which would resonate with those interested in issues.

Wright claimed to have pulled off a Dunkirk, given the disruption of a late leadership change during the construction of a third generation campaigning

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All of this technology was harnessed to make volunteer campaign workers more effective – the email network was used to organise campaign workers to have more face-to-face conversations (rather than using email to evade conversations, as the techno-phobes claim), the demographic database was used to micro-target those conversations to local communities and communities of interest, and the insights gained from the analysis of social media activity informed the content of those conversations. In short, it is face-toface conversation in door-knocking, at street-corner or other meetings, at the workplace water-cooler, or at the pub, and telephone

conversations in canvassing or polling, that makes a difference, rather than the social media activity per se.

As Alex White’s article on The Drum website way back in November 2012 said, ‘It’s the personal contact, Stupid!’.

(See http://ab.co/1UexhjK or the June 2013 edition of this column.)

Since the 2013 federal election, of course, Labor has won state elections in Victoria and Queensland. Both campaigns used social media to stimulate and inform conversations between trained volunteer campaign workers and electors. (See the February 2015 edition of this column.)

It seems that Labor is committed to a similar campaign strategy for the 2016 federal election. Bill Shorten’s video clip on Labor’s YouTube channel on 23 May 2016 notes that there are 5,000 campaign volunteers, who had had 140,000 conversations by the end of the second week of the eight-week campaign, and announced a target of 1,000,000 conversations during the campaign period. See https://youtu. be/Cyx4uxYFLtA .

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

Lowering the Boom Ian Lowe

If you aren’t outraged by the Federal Budget, you just aren’t paying attention As we probably expected from the TurnbottAbbull Government, there was little to cheer about in the pre-election Budget. The nasties for higher education were concealed in a better class of obfuscatory rhetoric, but the time bomb is still ticking away.

Research funding got little publicity because there wasn’t very much to note. I suppose we should be grateful that things at least didn’t get worse this time around.

Dr Alan Duffy of Swinburne University of Technology wrote, ‘Scientists around Australia breathed a sigh of relief’ that there was ‘at least funding for the coming year’. Senior science journalist Leigh Dayton noted that there is ‘little to suggest any recovery from the $2.2 billion decline in support for science, innovation and research since 2014’.

So the situation remains bad, the cuts since Abbott was elected are still in place, while the few modest dollops of new money for science and innovation seem to be based on an outdated view of the world.

Geoscience Australia got about $100 million to fund exploration for mineral deposits as part of the ‘Exploring for the Future’ scheme. Given the declining importance of mining, that probably should be called ‘Exploring for the Past’.

The $83 million ‘to support Australia’s presence in Antarctica’ is driven by geopolitical considerations rather than the importance of polar science.

Nuclear waste dumping The next biggest new allocation of $37 million went to the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation.

The Budget papers say that the money is intended to ‘ensure nuclear waste is disposed of more efficiently’. Given that Australian nuclear waste has not yet been disposed of at all, any disposal would have

to be more efficient, so the whole area of nuclear waste management remains a serious political embarrassment. This funding will do relatively little to solve the problem.

on sea level rise impacts of climate change was effectively sacked by email on his way back from a research trip to the Antarctic.

The broader question is likely to be obscured by the nuclear activists in South Australia attempting to position the State as the world’s first commercial radioactive waste destination. They argue that countries like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have made no progress at all finding places within their borders prepared to accept the radioactive used fuel elements from their own nuclear power stations.

The fundamental problem is that governments see research funding as an expense, rather than recognising it as an investment in our future. Alan Duffy noted that discoveries and innovation from the last twenty years in the physical and mathematical sciences ‘directly contribute $145 billion to the economy’, while recent advances in the biological sciences are claimed to add a further $46 billion.

Since the waste is piling up, they might be prepared to pay gazillions to anybody prepared to take the problem off their hands.

It could turn out that they would be happy to pay somebody to take the nasty stuff away, but the chance seems a very insecure basis for South Australia to spend huge amounts of public money setting up a secure waste management system.

So even those who see the world through the distorting lens of short-term economics and reduce everything to simple three-word slogans like ‘jobs and growth’, to pick an example purely at random, should still see research and innovation as a good investment. Instead, the priorities revealed in the 2016-17 Budget are tax cuts for large corporations and propping up Liberal candidates in Adelaide.

This would be an extreme example of the Field of Dreams approach to public policy: build it and they will come, bearing radioactive waste in one hand and huge amounts of folding money in the other.

Most thoughtful people in South Australia see it as a Field of Nightmares.

Industry assistance posing as science The other noticeable allocations for science were really questionable. The $15 million for the National Carp Control Plan and the similar sum for cyber-security small business grants look more like industry assistance than science, while the $12.6 million for the Australian Astronomical Observatory seems to have been found from savings in the Cooperative Research Centres scheme.

More worryingly, Leigh Dayton noted ‘the Government appears to support CSIRO head Larry Marshall’s drive to refocus on industry-oriented research’. Internal documents suggest that the purge of scientists in such areas as climate research, land and water science is part of a broader policy of running down public-good applied science to turn CSIRO into a short-term consulting organisation.

As an extreme example of this new approach, one of the world’s leading experts

Budget ignores value of science

Deregulation time bomb The outlook for higher education will be very grim if the Coalition Government is returned. The extreme deregulation agenda wheeled out in the previous Budget was blocked in the Senate. The discussion paper released by Senator Birmingham shows that the ideologues have not given up, they have simply regrouped for another attack if they are returned to power.

The idea that universities can inflate fees for so-called ‘flagship courses’ is simply an ideological foot in the deregulation door. If they get away with that, they will argue that it would be logical to move to deregulate more generally, rather than having this approach apply only to selected courses.

The overall cuts in government funding will force universities to increase student fees more generally, while the specific cuts to equity and participation programs will reduce access for the disadvantaged.

If you aren’t outraged, you just aren’t paying attention!

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

M@AusConservation

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 51

The Thesis Whisperer Inger Mewburn

What do academic employers really want?

Your latest fixed-term academic contract is drawing to a close and you’ve started looking for the next role, maybe in a new city. You’ve found a few roles in your field, in locations you could contemplate living in, and sit down to start applying.

In Australia applying for an academic job involves answering a set of key selection criteria that are specified in the position description. A key selection criteria might be something like ‘Demonstrated ability to exercise independence and creativity while being a part of a team’. Your job is to write anywhere from one paragraph to one page to demonstrate how you possess the skills and capabilities implied in the statement.

The task is not easy. Are you the best person to say how you work in a team?

How do you demonstrate this along with independence and creativity all within the one response? If there are twenty or more of these key selection criteria, which there sometimes are, you have a long night of writing ahead of you.

Amidst writing pages and pages of responses to key selection criteria during a job hunt, Rachael noticed some mismatches in the stated expectations with the conventional ideas of what a PhD graduate possesses, and suggested we study the ads themselves. The first outcomes of this study have been published in a paper called ‘Academic superheroes: a critical analysis of academic job descriptions’1.

We downloaded all the position descriptions advertised in Victorian (Australia) universities on one day and then focused in on the levels that early career academics might apply for, i.e., Levels A (associate lecturer/research associate) through to C (senior lecturer/senior research fellow).

This resulted in 42 position descriptions being analysed (not the 300+ erroneous-

ly reported on elsewhere), with Vitae’s Researcher Development Framework2 informing our analysis.

significant advantages should they wish to return to the academy at a later date – particularly in the professions.

The position descriptions themselves ranged in length from 2–7 pages and contained anywhere from four to 24 key selection criteria. Some position descriptions clearly outlined the skills and experience deemed most important for the role, but others were unnecessarily complex, even contradictory.

As we might expect, greater breadth of expertise and experience was sought at each academic level, indicating the need for academics to increasingly become ‘well-rounded’ as they progress, including increasing expectations around mentoring and managing others. Continuously acquiring and honing these ‘ancillary’ skills while managing a typical academic workload can be challenging.

Some (not all) of the roles were so broad, and required expertise across so many different skill sets, that we wondered how many people would actually be suitable for the role. We had visions of Superman leaping 24 key selection criteria in a single job application and meeting the myriad requirements of the role.

Sometimes PhD graduates are led to think that leaving academia is a sign of failure, but this research suggests that graduates with experience in industry may have significant advantages should they wish to return to the academy at a later date – particularly in the professions.

We can only hope that universities are providing adequately resourced professional development opportunities. It’s worth noting that it can be very hard to acquire and improve a broad and varied skill set if you are part of the so-called ‘precariat’, with little to no job security. If you have no budget for conference travel or opportunity to manage the work of others it can be difficult to build up the kind of portfolio you will need to have.

If you are just starting out and wishing to follow an academic career, you could consider using our method to undertake your own analysis of position descriptions at various levels in your field. The exercise might yield valuable insights into the skills and expertise your next academic employer will want.

Dr Rachael Pitt is an independent scholar.

Dr Inger Mewburn does research on research and blogs about it.

Based on our analysis, it’s highly likely you will need more than a PhD on your CV if your dream is to be an academic. You’ll need to be able to demonstrate skills in a wide range of communication mediums, grant writing, managing money, and teaching.

You should not neglect the so-called ‘soft skills’ either. For example, we found evidence that some universities want to ‘buy’ your professional network to increase their own institutional prestige, or to find placements for undergraduate students in industry.

Sometimes PhD graduates are led to think that leaving academia is a sign of failure, but this research suggests that graduates with experience in industry may have

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www.thesiswhisperer.com

M@thesiswhisperer Footnotes 1. Pitt, R., & Mewburn, I. (2016). Academic superheroes: A critical analysis of academic job descriptions. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 38(1), 88-101. doi: 10.1080/1360080X.2015.1126896.

Temporarily available as an open access paper from the Taylor and Francis database: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.108 0/1360080X.2015.1126896#.VqreMPEnIZQ 2. Vitae. (2010). Researcher development statement. Careers Research and Advisory Centre (CRAC) Limited. Retrieved from www.vitae. ak.uk/rdf.

Letter from Aotearoa/NZ Sandra Grey

Privatising foundation studies treats international students as cash cows Victoria University of Wellington and the University of Waikato have both announced that they plan to sell off their foundation studies programs to multinational private companies.

Both programs are the gateway to the respective universities for full-fee paying international students. They provide education and skills to help those students reach the level they need to start university study.

Waikato’s program, which is called Pathways College, also provides education for hundreds of domestic students, many of whom are Maori and Pasifika.

Waikato and Victoria both want to increase their international student numbers but do not believe they have the marketing capacity to do this.

New Zealand’s tertiary education Minster Steven Joyce, has told all public tertiary education institutions that they will not be getting any more public money and that they should instead be looking to grow their revenue by dramatically increasing international student numbers.

The Government has set a target to grow export education to $5 billion per year.

Currently, it is about $3 billion.

Thus, Waikato has announced it is considering contracting out Pathways College to a private provider.

While it has not named which private provider or providers it is considering, it did note that most English-medium foundation programs around the world are delivered by just five multinational providers: Cambridge Education Group, INTO University Partnerships, Kaplan International Colleges, Navitas, and Study Group.

Navitas is already based at the University of Canterbury. Study Group has partnerships with AUT, the University of Auckland and Massey University.

Waikato University Vice-Chancellor Professor Neil Quigley says he believes that management by a private provider will give the college access to ‘a larger and more specialised network for the recruitment of students, the effectiveness of which will far exceed that of the existing recruitment channels managed by the university itself’.

It is ironic that universities have been told to bring in massive amounts more international students, but they then claim don’t have the money to upscale their international student numbers so they end up privatising the programs.

The change will affect the foundation studies program for both domestic and international students.

It is ironic that universities have been told to bring in massive amounts more international students, but they then claim don’t have the money to upscale their international student numbers so they end up privatising the programs.

We are treating these international students as cash cows and not guests.

And now their cash could end up going to large multinational companies rather than public universities anyway.

The intentional students at Victoria University have been outspoken in their opposition to privatising their foundation studies program. They are worried it will exclude dozens of international students from the university.

About 60 students will lose their place in the university when they move to a private company, and several people who have years of experience working to help those students get into university courses could lose their jobs.

The university’s student association academic vice-president Jacinta Gulasekharam says many of the current international students are disappointed by the announcement.

Gulasekharam says international students come to Wellington to be part of Victoria’s campus and community, not to be excluded in a private course, off to the side of the university.

‘International students are integral to the Victoria University community,’ she says.

‘Does the university value an excellent international student experience, or reaching its growth targets?’

‘Student representatives say international students could end up paying for the Victoria brand ‘but not actually getting Victoria itself’.

Most worryingly though, there is no evidence that privatising these foundation studies programs will bring more international students to either university.

Both proposals lack evidence or reason.

They work on the fallacy that something that is privatised must work better than something that is publicly owned and run.

Victoria’s plan, which will see an entire program closed and outsourced, assumes without evidence that an as-yet-unnamed private provider will bring in another 150 international students.

There is no evidence an independent company will have more success recruiting or teaching students than an internationally regarded university.

Sandra Grey is National President/Te Tumu Whakarae, New Zealand Tertiary Education Union/Te Hautū Kahurangi o Aotearoa www.teu.ac.nz

M@nzteu

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My Union

Queensland Past Members Association lunch and launch The Queensland Division has begun the work of establishing a past members association, with about 25 past NTEU members attended our launch in Brisbane.

At this early stage, we are limited by not having email addresses for most of our past members (the universities having decided in their wisdom to drop retired staff from their email systems.) Gathering email addresses is therefore a priority, as is ensuring that Branch offices collect them in future as members retire.

The immediate impulse for establishing an association in Brisbane came from a call for volunteer ‘learning partners’ within a program which offers university units to disadvantaged people. Past members would be ideal, but we had no way of contacting them. Although this was the pretext for the first meeting of a small organising group, we quickly realised

NTEU elections in 2016 NTEU is one of the most democratically structured unions in Australia, and 2016 is an election year. At each university, members will elect a Branch Committee to govern the affairs of the Branch and to represent you at a local level.

Each Branch Committee consists of a Branch President, a Branch Secretary, a Vice-President (Academic Staff ) and a Vice-President (General Staff ). There are also between 5 and 10 regular Branch Committee positions, and one Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander position per Branch.

There is the additional position of National Councillor at each Branch. National Council meets in October each year and the Division Council (made up of National Councillors) several times a year.

Elections are happening for the positions of Division Secretary in all Divisions except Victoria and Queensland. For information on elections, please contact your local Division or Branch office or visit our website. www.nteu.org.au/myunion/about_us/elections/2016

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that the association could serve broader purposes.

At the launch, our discussion focused both on what the association could do for members and also on what members could do for the NTEU and the wider community.

Members indicated interest in information (e.g. UniHealth, financial planning, travel insurance) but also in social, cultural and intellectual activities. We recognised that we could be advocates for higher education and assist the Union in some of its campaigns, as well as constitute a hub for various opportunities for volunteer, educational and activist roles.

Organisation will not be too formal. We plan quarterly lunches, a newsletter and website links. Although inevitably Brisbane-based at this stage, we hope to reach beyond the South-East as our numbers grow.

Margaret Buckridge, Elizabeth Eddy, Michele Feinberg, Evan Jones, Geoff Dow and Ross Gwyther

WGEA report In accordance with the requirements of the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012, we wish to inform members that on 30 May 2016 the NTEU lodged its annual compliance report with the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA).

The report can be found at: www.nteu.org.au/library/view/ id/7026

My Union Joining up a colleague is the best way to build the Union Talking to your colleagues in the workplace about the NTEU and asking them to join is still one of the most effective ways to grow the Union, according to our recent survey of new NTEU members.

Twenty two per cent of respondents indicated that they had joined after being asked by a colleague. The next most common single reason was joining the Union appropriate to the workplace as a matter of principle (20 per cent).

These results are consistent with many previous studies in different work sectors.

The research generally indicates that people are most likely to join when union members engage with their work col-

leagues and can explain or demonstrate the reasons for union membership and the benefits of working collectively for a common purpose.

The other main reasons given for joining include: seeking advice about a work problem (17 per cent); the Union is involved in an issue that affects them (10 per cent); and being approached by a union representative – a delegate, organiser, or recruiter (8 per cent).

The survey indicates that the majority of new members are in the 36–55 age bracket (57 per cent), adding to the general concerns throughout the whole union movement that for whatever reason, unions are not appealing to younger people as they enter the workforce. The challenge is to find new and innovative ways to engage with this group; a good start is developing a comprehensive and dynamic social media presence and being involved in the issues and movements with which younger people are already engaged.

The relatively higher age at which new members join is reflected in the length of time that people have been employed by a university before they join. Sixty-four per

cent of respondents joined after they had been employed for more than three years.

With the next round of enterprise bargaining either starting or fast approaching across the country, it’s important that we grow the NTEU membership to more effectively campaign around the key issues of job security and fairness in the workplace.

To this end we have developed a simple recruitment ‘toolkit’ that members can use to discuss these issues with their colleagues who aren’t members, and hopefully persuade them to join. The toolkit includes basic information about the benefits of union membership and some insights into how to have a positive discussion with colleagues.

Just consider – if each member signed up just one colleague today, we would double the NTEU’s size overnight.

Michael Evans, National Organiser For further information about the new members survey or our recruitment toolkit, please contact Michael Evans: mevans@nteu.org.au

NTEU Members Special Offer: 20% off your tropical beach break!

Staying at the Hideaway Resort Fiji – Owned & operated by Fiji Teachers Union Book before 30 June 2016, travel before 31 March 2017 (subject to availability) to receive 20% off best available rates on resort website.

Room Types: Ocean View Bure, Beachfront Villa. Stay 6 nights or more and receive a FJD$100 resort credit per room booked.

Direct bookings only • www.hideawayfiji.com • email reservations@hideaway.com.fj • phone +679 6500177 Booking Code: TEACHU16 (Must be quoted at time of booking). Proof of membership will be required on check in.

We look forward to welcoming you to the Fiji Hideaway Resort & Spa, Coral Coast NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 55

With your NTEU membership, save on financial and lifestyle products and services.

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Your NTEU Member Benefit Program page 56 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate

My Union NTEU scholarships call for applications 2016 The NTEU is again offering two scholarships in 2016: the Carolyn Allport and the Joan Hardy scholarships.

The Carolyn Allport Scholarship is available for a woman undertaking postgraduate feminist studies, by research, in any discipline, awarding $5000 per year for a maximum of 3 years to the successful applicant.

This scholarship has been created in recognition of Dr Carolyn Allport’s contribution to the leadership and development of the Union in her 16 years as National President. Applicants must be currently enrolled in postgraduate studies, by research, in an academic award of an Australian public university.

The Joan Hardy Scholarship for post-graduate nursing research is 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. A sum of $5000 will be paid in two instalments; half on the awarding of the Scholarship and the remainder on evidence of submission of the thesis.

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.

This scholarship recognises the contribution the late Joan Hardy made to higher education and higher education unionism in over 30 years of activism.

The application deadline for both scholarships is Friday 29 July 2016. A decision will be made in late August 2016. For more information go to the webpage or contact Helena Spyrou hspyrou@nteu.org.au. www.nteu.org.au/myunion/ scholarships

Payable Thinking

by Paul Magee

Once in his lifetime, Ludwig Wittgenstein published a book, nothing else, and would now be unemployed, for failing to pay the tenure with enough philosophy.

The writers of journal articles were ‘Journalists’.

The last word from the Deans is ‘Don’t write books’ – it is placarded on a huge pretence.

Question: who’s pretending? Not us, our main job is to break the crust of what’s fake.

Our dear old fakery, it’s from the Eighties, is satisfied with two articles annually as the target input.

Burrowing and mining for a thought-through book?

The wild target could be seven years, which is no.

This would be a pampered little gripe, but universities are a common house for a while to four in ten of our children.

Actually, research has changed, from an activity that’s ongoing to a rash of little submissions, because these add up in units regardless of ‘that deforms my thought’ thoughts.

The students get the ethos.

What is an MBA but a language of quantities that ignores local conditions to speak to them commandingly?

There is a language of goods held in common, public reasoning and parks among them in an older economics.

In the new, Government heaps up students, with a mutual hope, ‘investment’.

Common goods have rolled into ‘the economy’.

Bought in bricks from academics busily manufacturing.

Andrew Wiles writes nothing for seven years in Princeton then in Nineteen Ninety-Four solves Fermat’s Last Theorem.

Paul Magee is a Professor of Poetry at the University of Canberra and an NTEU member.

Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea Cancer Council fundraiser On Thursday 2 June the Federation of Education Unions (NTEU, Independent Education Union and Australian Education Union) participated in the Cancer Council’s ‘Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea’ fundraiser for cancer research.

NTEU coordinated a morning tea in the FEU buildings, and each union brought a hearty delegation with an appetite to match. Well done to all our extravagant (and skilled) bakers and cooks, and to everyone’s joie de vivre in the name of a good cause. We raised over $1300 and will aim for at least $1500 next year.

Congratulations!

Sarah Roberts, National Industrial Coordinator

NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 57

My Union New NTEU staff News on new, moved and departing NTEU staff.

Joanna Horton Project Officer Qld Division Joanna Horton has recently joined the NTEU Queensland Division as Project Officer within the UQ Branch. Joanna will be continuing the work of the UQ Pilot Project on union organizing in research institutes, moving the project into its second stage by organising researchers and developing structures to facilitate ongoing union activity. Eventually, she hopes the project will serve as a template for future campaigns.

Joanna is a trained anthropologist who has previously worked in academic research, at both UQ and the University of Chicago. Her union background includes positions at Together, United Voice, and the National Union of Students. Outside of work, she learns Spanish, does yoga, and hosts a community radio show on 4ZZZ.

tional skills for the benefit of members. In addition Mark volunteers in bushfire relief efforts as part of the summer emergency response across WA.

Having recently migrated to Australia, his previous work experience has been in Dubai (7 Years), United States (18 months) and Pakistan in the similar IT roles.

Mark’s particular focus will be on building and developing delegate structures across WA universities, and he will have industrial and organising responsibilities at UWA and Murdoch.

Uffan enjoys listening and playing music and has a keen interest in learning about the different cultures, customs and the ancient history.

Tara Murphy Campaigns & Communications Officer NSW Division Tara has just come from working at the Guardian Australia as their program manager, producing editorially driven live discussions. She was a part of the launch team in 2013 and has come away with all sorts of odd skills that are part and parcel with being involved in a startup.

Tara is both proud and chuffed to be moving to the NSW Division of the NTEU and hopes to shape their communication strategies in a shareable and engaging way.

She is very much a cat person, but is a cat person who happens to spend much of her life walking, feeding and snuzzling an obnoxiously hairy and lovable dog.

Uffan Saeed Database Programmer/Analyst National Office

Mark Charles Industrial Officer WA Division Mark comes to NTEU from the CPSU/CSA where he was an Organiser. He started his working life as an apprentice aircraft maintenance engineer and subsequently worked for Westpac, Telstra and the WA Police. All, he says, taught him the value of having a strong Union in the workplace.

Mark is currently studying a post graduate law degree and hopes to use these addi-

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

Uffan Saeed joined the National Office as the new Database Programmer/Data Analyst in March 2016.

An experienced IT professional with over 10 years of industry experience, Uffan specialises in developing and supporting large scale analytical and data centric systems.

vol. 56, no. 1, 20 14 NTEU

Published by

Paul Doughty Senior State Organiser NSW Division Paul returns to the NTEU after 8 years at Unions NSW where he was Campaigns Coordinator, having taken up a position there after spending 2007 working on the Your Rights at Work campaign.

He graduated from Organising Works in 2000, and is part-way through a masters by research on union renewal.

Other staff appointments and movements After working in Growth Team roles, Narelle Maxton has been appointed to the QUT Branch Organiser position.

Chloe Gaul returns to the NTEU as the University of Melbourne Branch Industrial Organiser, commencing in June.

Roberta Stewart has been appointed to the UNSW part-time Branch Organiser position, commencing in August.

Khalid Hersi has been appointed to a six month contract position as WA Industrial Officer from June.

Josh Andrews has been appointed to a four month contract position as UWS Branch Organiser from 30 June.

AUR is published twice a year by the NTEU.

ISSN 0818 –8068

AUR

Australia n Unive rsities’R eview

AUR is listed on the DEEWR register of refereed journals.

page 58 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate

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

If you are an NTEU member and would like to receive AUR, please email aur@nteu.org.au

www.aur.org.au

My Union Obituary: John Kaye, MLC Former colleagues at the University of NSW, NTEU members and people across NSW and the whole of Australia were deeply saddened to hear of the death of Dr John Kaye MLC on 2 May, aged only 60.

John Kaye was a very proud member of the NTEU having joined as a lecturer when he was at UNSW and was determined to maintain his membership after being elected to the NSW Parliament in 2007 representing the Greens.

He was a regular particpant at NTEU protests and picket-lines both before and after his election to parliament. His public support of our campaigns was always followed by more research on the detail and speeches and questions in parliament.

He became an academic after earning his PhD in electrical engineering at the University of California Berkeley – he was there on a scholarship and the only member of his class not funded by the US Department of Defence.

He was a great fighter for the environment and for social justice.

With an engineering background he had a high level technical knowledge of environmental issues. He also had a unique ability to relate personally to the groups and organisational leaders that he dealt with.

His death perhaps means Australia has lost its fiercest parliamentary advocate for public education.

This put him at the front line with unions and community groups trying to prevent the destruction of public TAFE, particularly in NSW. NTEU moved a condolence motion at Unions NSW and John’s widespread support in the trade union movement was reflected at his memorial service, attended by nearly one thousand, on 27 May. Speeches and messages of support were given from the Australian Education Union, Electrical Trades Union and the Australian Workers Union (Illawarra Branch), and the Solidarity Choir led those attending in the trade-union standard Solidarity Forever.

John was a much-loved and admired campaigner and parliamentarian, who combined his academic expertise with a commitment to evidence-based solu-

tions to the problems of our society and our planet.

John was a great man a lovely friend of the movement and someone we will all miss dearly.

Genevieve Kelly, NSW Division Secretary

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. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • www.nteu.org.au/advocate • page 59

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

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|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

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DATE

OTHER:

YOUR EMPLOYMENT CATEGORY & TERM

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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 60 • NTEU ADVOCATE • vol. 23 no. 2 • June 2016 • 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

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