Flinders University

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (15:22): Flinders University has had a proud 50-year history and has long been regarded as a dynamic and democratic university, guided by principles of social justice and collegial governance. The very mission of a university is to uphold the public interest and free and open inquiry and commentary. The public interest is served by staff and students having an absolute, full right to intellectual freedom to contribute to university governance and to speak truth to power for the public interest. Evidence is beginning to show that intellectual freedom has been curtailed, and changes see staff and students no longer active participants in university governance.

The sad saga of the demise of Women's Studies in this quasquicentennary year of dual suffrage in South Australia seems to indicate something has indeed changed at Flinders. A restructure process took place late last year and continues this year, with more to come. I have been told many excellent scholars and teachers were pushed into voluntary redundancies where they felt they had little or no real choice. The alternative was to lose money through involuntary redundancy or to be pushed into teaching-only roles.

Effectively, the restructure was both a physical and psychological restructure. It displaced people into new positions—not usually the ones they wanted—or out of the university altogether. The psychological restructure seems to have been more about embedding top-down leadership that places power in senior management, deliberately eroding collegiality and collective governance. In December 2018, the Flinders branch committee of the National Tertiary Education Union moved and passed the following motion, which was supported by over 600 staff, students and alumni. This is the quote:

Flinders University is a public university entrusted to deliver excellence in research and teaching for the public good. Staff, students, alumni, and concerned community members move a motion of NO CONFIDENCE in the Vice-Chancellor and Chancellor to deliver ethical governance, empowering leadership, or due diligence on the academic restructure for the public good. The damage to campus culture and morale could become irreparable unless immediate steps are taken to return to a collegial model of governance. The ill-conceived academic restructure risks the quality of research, teaching, and community engagement and exposes Flinders to massive reputational damage. Management's gross incompetence to date gives us no confidence in its capacity to effect change that is sustainable, consultative, evidence-based, or in the long term interests of the university or the broader community.

What happened in Women's Studies after that? I am told two well-regarded level D academics (associate professors) had to compete for the one position left at that level while a third staff member's position at level C simply disappeared.

The final version of the restructure document offered a small improvement to the Women's Studies situation, with one level D and one level B (both balanced positions) and as such this meant the discipline would continue with research status. In academic jargon, a 'balanced position' means research plus teaching, which used to be the standard job description for any academic position. Now these positions will be rare and many staff will be either research-only or teaching-only. This is considered by many to be a terribly backward step.

Inaugurated as an independent discipline in 1987, Women's Studies at Flinders has always punched above its weight in terms of scholarship, national competitive research funding and innovative teaching. For most of its 30-year history, this has been delivered through 2.5 full-time equivalent academic staff. Women's Studies has attracted significant numbers of overseas postgraduates to both coursework and RHD enrolment, bringing concomitant funding to the university. It has modelled and initiated many interdisciplinary and collaborative research and teaching projects, both locally and nationally.

Women's Studies at Flinders occupies a special position among Australian universities as the inheritor of the first student-led interdisciplinary Women's Studies course (in 1973) and the first university to appoint dedicated Women's Studies staff. Professor Lyndall Ryan was appointed as a reader in 1986 and Dr Susan Sheridan was appointed as a lecturer in 1987. Among their many credits, Professor Ryan initiated the formation of the National Women's and Gender Studies Association and Emeritus Professor Sheridan was founding co-editor of the A-ranking journal Australian Feminist Studies.

While it would be a great pity if this notable history at Flinders were to be lost in the proposed restructuring, even more distressing is the prospect of the present program's disappearance. I have seen numerous cases where women's studies and gender studies at university or TAFE have changed lives. With the proposed positions—one level D teaching and research, and one level B teaching-only—the required resignation of two of the three current research-active members of staff has meant the loss to the university of their outstanding contributions.

It is hard to see how such changes under the guise of restructure could enhance Flinders' national and international standing. It scarcely needs pointing out that interdisciplinary research as well as teaching on gender equality are urgently needed in today's world. Has the social and cultural capital of the university—the health, wellbeing and wisdom of its staff and students—been sacrificed for the dictates of corporatisation? Time will tell in the climate where job security has been eroded and it becomes difficult for most staff to speak out or speak back. Fear replaces voice and the critical and questioning spirit of the university is diminished.