Minister for Education, Science and Training Leads Uni Students, Staff and Administration a Merry Dance Keeping Them Off Balance as He Plays Them His Quickstep. (April 30, 2005)

    This Past Thursday (April 28) over 10,000 university student, principally in Sydney and Melbourne forsook lectures and practical classes to march in protest against voluntary student unionism legislation introduced to Federal Parliament by the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Brendan Nelson last month.

Student representatives say the legislation would strip $161million from campus organisations, which provide subsidised services such as childcare, food and sports facilities.

The Coalition government sees the student unions as equivalent of the closed shop and has every intention of breaking them. While the government has been accused of waging an ideological war it is also the case that university students and their representatives tend to be predominantly small "l" liberals.

While it is more than likely that Dr Nelson's legislation will be enacted, because the Coalition will hold a majority in both houses of parliament, it may well be in amended form simply because a few Coalition Senators will be wary of the probability of the reduction of student services particularly at universities away from the main population centres.

The next day Dr Nelson, just back from South America, was joined by Kevin Andrews, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. They revealed details of the government's new Higher Education Workplace Relations Requirements^{1, 2} at a conference in Brisbane. The bottom line is that in order to receive money under the Commonwealth Grants Scheme, universities will be required to offer all staff the choice of an Australian Workplace Agreement. Union involvement in workplace relations and human resources matters will be permitted only at the invitation of university employees. In addition, no limits may be placed on the number of casual staff. Undoubtedly that will improve the quality of the "university experience" for the students no end.

And, No -- federal money may not be used to subsidise union accommodation at universities, union staff salaries or activities.

According to media reports the ministers said the requirements would assist the universities. They would make them more productive, efficient, flexible and competitive. So far as we know Dr Nelson and Mr Andrews have not tabled a peer reviewed paper supporting these claims. Mr Andrews also told their audience, "Ongoing workplace relations reform is needed to ensure the sector's long term sustainability."

Dr Nelson said the new requirements would help universities attract, retain and reward the best employees. Again we are left to ruminate on just exactly how this would be accomplished, particularly since Dr Nelson has recently concluded that there is no compelling argument for an indexation adjustment to university block funding despite the fact that the current system does not keep step with expenses and makes no provision for salary adjustments.

What Dr Nelson and Mr Andrews appear to be purveying is economic alchemy, yet so far as has been determined by the best scientific minds here or abroad, it is not possible to transform lead to gold cost effectively.

Labor's deputy leader and education spokeswoman, Jenny Macklin succinctly summed the matter up, "These conditions would do nothing to improve the quality of education at Australian universities," while the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee through its CEO John Mullarvey pointed out "Government funding is steadily in decline as a proportion of total revenue, on average down from the 90 per cent in the 1980s to currently about 40 per cent in 2003." In short the federal government in its role as the representative of Australian taxpayers, although the largest single contributor to university funding has become a minority stakeholder, and shows all the symptoms of a micromanaging control freak. Does this government really have a mandate for such manipulation of Australia's university sector?