The Vice-Chancellor rightly pointed out that the Federal Budget (and for that matter the Opposition's reply) was generally disappointing for the University and the higher education sector. Research by the AVCC shows that the cost of red tape in implementing the Government's changes has reached $50m more than the $12.6m initially set aside to offset the impost on the sector.
The Budget presented a good opportunity to invest more in the country's infrastructure, including education, but this opportunity was lost.
This was the most interesting (and important) part of the meeting. At its March 2006 meeting, Senate had approved a number of amendments to the composition of its committees as a result of the reduction in the size of Senate. The agenda for the May meeting stated that the composition of the committees had been considered further (by whom, pray tell?) in the light of the availability of members of Senate to serve on them.
Yet one of the changes, in regard to Finance Committee, was to remove the staff member and the student member (2 out of 14 members), which had nothing to do with availability. No explanation was offered before a motion was quickly proposed by the Chancellor that the new compositions be approved.
Denis Brosnan (former general staffer, now employed by the Student Union, and elected to Senate from the body of graduates) spoke against the motion, pointing out that the change had nothing to do with member availability and was a retrograde step. He noted that his interim membership of the Legislative Committee and Student Appeals Committee had been cancelled, without explanation.
I then stood to seek an amendment to the motion, to reinstate the academic staff and student members to Finance Committee, and to add a general staff member, as I'd requested at the March meeting. I noted that the minutes of the March meeting had recorded that the Vice-Chancellor was to respond to this request at the May meeting. I asked what the impediment to having staff and student members of Finance Committee was.
The Vice-Chancellor rose to speak against the amendment. He claimed that the change was due to Federal Government pressure - DEST had allegedly indicated that only external members of Senate (preferably from the commercial business world) and senior executives should be on the Committee. DEST apparently believed that having staff and students on such a committee represented a conflict of interest - a point of view John Hay said he agreed with.
Senior Deputy V-C, Paul Greenfield, then rose to claim that the change was also HEWRRs-inspired. This was patently wrong. Greenfield invited Douglas Porter to speak. Porter said that DEST was delving deeply into the University's operations and UQ was being "ultra-cautious" so as not to jeopardise extra funding.
Undergraduate student member, Meggen Lowry, then spoke in favour of the amendment, pointing out that there was nothing in the National Governance Protocols or the Higher Education Workplace Relations Regulations that required the University to change the composition of its Senate sub-committees. While noting that external members of Senate would no doubt bring useful knowledge and experience to the Finance Committee, so too could staff and students. Transparency of the Committee's operations was also an important consideration.
The amendment was then put to the vote and I requested a secret ballot, getting the required support of at least two other members. The Chancellor claimed that this was "highly unusual", yet there had been a secret ballot at the last meeting, when he was chairing. The amendment was defeated and then the original motion passed, meaning the committee compositions, as proposed by University management, were approved.
Speaking to a few of the externals "from the real world" after the meeting, their attitude was that staff and students need to influence budget decisions before the budget gets to Finance Committee. I wonder how they are supposed to do that? "You don't invite your salesmen into the boardroom to pitch for how the company's funds should be spent", said one. Unfortunately, some of these externals seem yet to realise that a university is more a community than it is a factory.
The experience left me with the impression that when it comes to political interference by the Government in the running of the University's operations, UQ executive management is, at best, jumping at shadows, and at worst, deliberately over-achieving, with the bonus that some pesky staff and students are out of their way.
So, I wrote to the Minister for Education, Hon Julie Bishop, for her views on what transpired, copy Opposition Spokesperson, Jenny Macklin. For more on this, click here.
The student representatives presented a petition seeking University support (within budget constraints) for the student services they provide, which face cuts with the introduction of Voluntary Student Unionism. The resolution was supported unanimously.
Other matters on the agenda were either of a routine nature or strictly confidential at this stage.
