Universities Australia's Submission to Coalition Deregulation Taskforce. (April 8, 2013)

Last Tuesday, Belinda Robinson, Chief Executive of Universities Australia posted a five page submission to Mr Karim Barbara, The Office of Senator Arthur Sinodinos AO, Liberal Senator for New South Wales. The full submission is available here.

Below, some excerpts:

Universities Australia welcomes the opportunity to make this submission to the Coalition Deregulation Taskforce. Universities Australia... strongly supports the Coalition's moves to reduce the costs and burden of regulation... Professor Glyn Davis, indicated that the role of a peak body in a more market based environment is to “focus on securing a fair, competitive environment: we need from government a regulatory environment that sets clear rules of engagement, while leaving each university scope to develop a distinctive contribution.”

This approach to regulation is especially important for Australia's university sector, as it constitutes a major industry in its own right. Australia's universities have an annual turnover of approximately $22 billion [and] Australia's university sector is also a significant contributor to Australia's broader economic performance, through the higher productivity of university-trained workers, through returns from university research and innovation, and through export earnings from overseas students. In relation to the latter higher education contributes approximately 70 per cent (or some $9.4b in 2010-11) to education services exports, which are now the third largest earner of export dollars for Australia.

Universities Australia has consistently maintained that universities are amongst the most over-regulated sectors of the Australian economy...  [It has] recommended a series of policy reforms that would have the effect of improving the ability of Australia's universities to focus their activities on their core business of teaching, research and community engagement... A selection of the major regulatory issues currently faced by the university sector is set out on the attachment to this letter. Universities Australia will be looking for a substantial reduction in regulatory burden involving fewer programs, improved data collection efficiency and a light touch regulator with a risk-proportionate approach to regulation.