The jobs apocalypse
JOB LOSSES
POLICY & LOBBYING
It's happening now!
It is not too late for the Senate to do the right thing in the coming weeks and reject this bill – and we continue to urge members to join us in contacting the crossbench senators to achieve this outcome.
Since March this year, the NTEU began issuing strong warnings about possible heavy job losses coming to the sector in the wake of lost international student revenue. These warnings included TV and radio appearances, pleas to the Government, and even full-page newspaper ads.
gaping hole in international student enrolments. Later, in June, the Government dug the boot in again, announcing the surprise funding reforms they called the Job-Ready Graduate Package that would be rapidly legislated and implement for 2021 and beyond.
At the time, the NTEU’s own modelling confirmed Universities Australia’s estimate of at least 20,000 job losses in 2020 without government support.
This bill has been widely criticised from all corners of the sector for its idiosyncratic fee increases, cuts to funding per place, and complete unwillingness to acknowledge the teaching-research nexus, or indeed even the concept of teaching quality (over quantity).
Sadly, these warnings went unheeded. Instead, the Government moved to restrict Universities’ access to JobKeeper and released a disingenuous 'support package' on Easter Sunday that did nothing to address the
It is not too late for the Senate to do the right thing in the coming weeks and reject this bill – and we continue to urge members to join us in contacting the crossbench senators to achieve this outcome. continued overpage...
Kieran McCarron Policy & Research Officer
vol. 1 no. 5
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nteu.org.au/sentry
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