Flinders University (Remuneration of Council Members) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 25 September 2019.)

Mr DULUK (Waite) (12:29): I rise today to make a few remarks in regard to the Flinders University (Remuneration of Council Members) Amendment Bill. Of course, universities are a vital part of the fabric of our state and our nation. Indeed, in my community and the member for Davenport's community, they are a very important part as well.

The bill makes a few changes, but by and large it brings Flinders University in line with and on the same footing as the University of South Australia in terms of payment for council members and the ability of the council of Flinders University to set levels of payment for its members, and that is so important.

In my contribution today, I would like to talk a bit more broadly about Flinders University. We know it is a globally renowned precinct. It is known for its leadership, its innovation, its enterprise and especially for its work in the area of health and education. There is a campus in Bedford Park and also an additional campus in Victoria Square. More recently, in the last couple of years, they expanded into the new Tonsley Innovation Precinct as well.

The work that the university is doing at Tonsley, in collaboration with industry, stakeholders and the state government, is fantastic and transformational and will really see the inner south explode in terms of innovation, advanced manufacturing and creating an employment hub—more importantly, an educational hub—around Tonsley and using that old Mitsubishi site to its full potential, which is fantastic to see.

Offering more than 160 undergraduate and postgraduate courses, as well as higher degrees, the university is a modern university that caters for tens of thousands of students, which is so important. It was founded in 1966 and naturally is named after Matthew Flinders. Coincidentally, in today's paper there is an article about Matthew Flinders being interred in his home town and moved from Euston in the United Kingdom. I think an honourable member in the other house was talking about how Matthew Flinders could perhaps be interred here in South Australia, given his contribution to the founding of our state, finding our state and charting the course of the great southern land.

Sir, you will be interested to know that the Queen Mother officially opened Flinders University in 1966 when the university had just 400 students, and of course Flinders Medical Centre was built on adjacent land.

A really exciting thing that is happening at Flinders at the moment is the Flinders Link Project. I know that for many residents in the member for Davenport's electorate, and indeed in my electorate as well around Bellevue Heights and Eden Hills, they cannot wait for this project to happen. I understand that it should be this time next year that the project is completed.

It is fantastic to see public transport going into that Flinders precinct. It is a $125 million project co-funded by the federal government. I have to praise my federal colleague and the local member, Nicolle Flint, for her advocacy over the last several years to find funding for this project, and of course the Marshall Liberal government as well for funding this most important project. The project is a 650-metre extension of the Tonsley line.

There will be an elevated track over the fantastic Darlington project over South Road. It is really going to create accessibility for residents of Bedford Park in my community, as well as for students at Flinders University, to not only connect with the metropolitan train network but to give them easy access to get into North Terrace and into the City of Adelaide. That connectivity between the universities on North Terrace and Flinders, and more importantly between the two health precincts at the RAH and at Flinders, is going to be fantastic.

Another really exciting project that the university is embarking on is Flinders Village—the university's plan for a health, education and accommodation precinct to be built around the railway station at Flinders on the main oval. It will be centred around the new Flinders Station. Flinders Village will transform the campus into a vibrant urban centre in Adelaide's south that will become a lifestyle focus for southern Adelaide.

What is happening with Flinders Village and what is happening at Tonsley is going to reinvigorate the south and lead to more investment, and we are already seeing that. On Monday night, I was very fortunate to be there when the Premier opened the new development at the Marion Hotel, a fantastic pub in this precinct. There are new accommodation facilities.

I have to congratulate the Hurley Hotel Group on their substantial investment in the south. Peter Hurley, the proprietor of the Hurley Hotel Group, said that one of the main drivers for putting in a new accommodation complex at the Marion Hotel is to cater for exactly what is happening at Tonsley, what is happening at Flinders University and what is going to happen in the coming years, which is fantastic.

The upgrade at the university village will include high-tech research facilities, cafes, shops and entertainment, as well as an expanded residential offering for students. We know how important international students are to the South Australian economy; it is one of our biggest exports. I know that the Minister for Education, the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment and the whole of government are pursuing this and want to see growth in international students for what they can bring to South Australia in terms of their skills and inclusiveness but, more importantly, to make a contribution to our society.

The university village will merge university life with the wider community, creating a mixed-use precinct for students, educators, visitors, service providers and local residents. Flinders Village will commence with the development of a world-class health research facility, as well as teaching simulation and clinical research spaces. Amongst other things, it will deliver commercial and office spaces, community gardens, research commercialisation incubators, health commercialisation and start-ups, and health and wellness clinics and consulting suites.

The campus will be the biggest integrated health and education precinct in South Australia and will include transitional health accommodation, a hotel, student accommodation and a range of private developments and retail facilities. This long-term plan for development will create many opportunities for students and the broader community, and the benefits will be numerous, including driving a competitive and dynamic economy for South Australia, which is so important. We have had good news today in terms of employment statistics in South Australia.

Ultimately, it is about jobs and the future, training the next generation of jobseekers and apprentices in South Australia, attracting more students to our great state and supporting real-world research that improves the lives of our community. The Flinders Village will reinforce the importance of universities to the economy and to the fabric of our society. For Flinders University, I believe that this is a really exciting future and a really exciting project, and I look forward to working with the state government over the coming years to see it come to fruition.

Universities transform people's lives through education and through the wider impact of their research. Education gives us knowledge of the world around us, and a university education is more than the next level in the learning process: it is a critical component in our human development. A university education provides not only high-level skills but also training that is essential. and they are anchor institutions in our community. I look forward to seeing Flinders University go from strength to strength.

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (12:37): I am delighted to stand up to talk about my alma mater, Flinders University. I guess that we all have personal connections to the three universities in this state in one way or another. We certainly are very grateful for the economic activity they undertake in our state. I indicate that I am the lead speaker and that I am supporting the bill, and I will try to restrain myself from talking for too long about Flinders.

I simply note the importance of universities to the economy and the society of this state. While we pay tribute to the University of Adelaide as the first institution, and in many ways still the most economically powerful institution, the fact that we have three strong public universities has been of enormous benefit to people seeking to train in this state, to companies that benefit from the research that is undertaken, to everyone who benefits from the number of international students who have been in our state over the last several years and also generally to the way in which our society and economy are enriched by the presence of such strong universities.

That said, I have a special place in my heart for Flinders for two reasons. One, of course, is that I am a product of Flinders University. It educated me in every meaningful way. Since I went through high school, high school education has become far more sophisticated and far more focused on developing critical and creative thinking in particular. However, my experience was that I largely developed those skills, such as I have them, through my time at university.

I was very fortunate to be in the in-between generation that got free education and was able to undertake a degree that interested me rather than made me predetermined about what kind of profession I would undertake in the future. The second reason I hold a special place in my heart for Flinders, of course, is that my parents both worked there their entire careers. They were their first and only jobs. We are, indeed, Australian because my father, having graduated from university, was offered a job in the very early days of Flinders University. He and my mother came here in early 1967 and I was born at the end of 1967 and, therefore, am Australian thanks to a new university starting up and seeking young academics for the most part from around the world.

However, the trajectory of universities has been a fraught one in many ways in Australia over the past couple of decades. I say this in the context of the bill that we are discussing today, which we support, but there is opposition to this bill which has been raised with me by the NTEU, the union representing many of the people employed within the university. While I am happy to support this piece of legislation—I think it is sensible and the university has every right to ask it of this parliament—I note that the objections raised with me were substantially about the concern the union and many people have about the way in which universities have been required to increasingly become businesses.

In some ways, there is nothing wrong with our universities operating on a businesslike footing, with universities recognising their economic impact, their economic potential, and the importance of being successful on many criteria. However, I note that the decline in the proportion of public funding which has gone to universities, which really took hold at a time when I was working at the University of Adelaide in the second half of the 1990s, pushed universities into having to consider income-raising as one of their primary considerations rather than a consideration subordinate to the intellectual work being undertaken by their academics.

As I said, this is a debate. It is not that this is all bad and what occurred before was all good. But I acknowledge what is under strain within universities in their current configuration and the current pressures that they are under. I acknowledge the difficulty for many universities to sufficiently prioritise research that has no clear benefit in the short term and yet recognise the importance of that kind of research for Australia. In fact, the importance of that kind of research has led to so many developments in our society and our understanding of the way the world works and, indeed, in science, technology and business.

We need to make sure that we are not pushing universities so hard to find immediate sources of income that they start to fail in playing that role. While I have enormous faith in the leadership of the universities, both in South Australia and in Australia altogether, I am a concerned observer of the pressure that they are under and, of course, that occasionally becomes a focus such as in the case of questions over the dependence on international students, and dependence on international students from particular countries, and the pressure that has occasionally been argued to have brought to bear on academic standards and academics' treatment of students.

As I said, I have faith, but I maintain a sceptical and inquiring eye on how the universities are managing these stresses. That said, while I acknowledge and share the concerns that were raised by the NTEU with me in that context, I do not believe that that then argues for this parliament not supporting what I regard to be a reasonable request by the Flinders University leadership for the capacity to remunerate council members.

It seems to me, on the one hand, that this is becoming increasingly standard practice. It is certainly the way that the University of South Australia was established from the start, I believe. It is practice in many universities across the country and gives a capacity for a council and a leadership that it ought to have as one of its tools.

I also take slight issue with the proposition that people should be on boards, committees and councils for free because that is the only way that they demonstrate their goodwill, their sense of altruism and their wanting the university to succeed for its own sake. The reason I take issue is that it is a very slippery slope from that argument to saying that no-one should be paid for work that they do that ought to be of a nature that is beneficial to society. Of course, that is where we started with politicians, where only those who were independently wealthy were able to take time out and be representatives. That is the last thing we want to return to if we are to have any chance of having the full diversity of Australian or any other society represented in a parliament.

It is a long stretch, perhaps, between what is properly a full-time job and what could be regarded as something that does not take very much time, but I think there is a link. If we are asking someone to undertake a serious piece of work in support of an institution, then we ought to be prepared to recognise that it may come at a cost that ought to be able to be remunerated. I do not accept that element of the argument, but I do accept the general concern raised by the NTEU that we are seeing a shift increasingly into a corporate culture for universities, some of which makes sense. Universities ought to be subject to all the policies, procedures and ways in which people are employed under fair working conditions in the rest of society.

In a deeper sense, and in the sense in which I think the NTEU means it, there is a concern of that becoming a priority over the wider and somewhat diffuse benefits that universities have always given our society in educating young people for the sake of educating them and undertaking research for the sake of the inquiry. That said, we are happy to support this piece of legislation and I indicate that we will not be seeking on this side to go into committee.

Mr MURRAY (Davenport) (12:47): I, too, rise to speak to the Flinders University (Remuneration of Council Members) Amendment Bill 2019. Can I start by thanking and commending the member for Port Adelaide, who I can recall self-styled herself in discussions with me at Flinders as a 'child of the university'. I congratulate her on her longstanding association with the university and support enumerated in her contribution just now.

I am a convert as a supporter of the university; Adelaide University is my alma mater. My wife and I have had longstanding banter over the years, she being from Flinders University. I am very proud to have Flinders University, and indeed the Flinders precinct, in the suburb of Bedford Park and as part of the seat of Davenport. Flinders University, and the broader Flinders precinct, is something I am not just proud to represent but also very keen to aggressively protect and enhance to the extent I can.

I intend to very briefly talk about the background of the university and this bill, the university's strategy and how the bill gives considerable weight to that. The existing act is, in some respects, a product of its time. The university started life in 1960, with premier Playford allocating about 150 hectares of land in what was Burbank, now Bedford Park, to the University of Adelaide.

Subsequent to that, in about 1965 there was a determination made that what is now Flinders University would not be an adjunct part of the University of Adelaide, but would in fact be a completely separate entity. As a consequence, in March 1966 a bill was passed that officially created the university. It is that bill, and, to some extent, as the member for Port Adelaide has pointed out, the precepts of those times that we are seeking to update today.

The university started life with an enrolment of about 400, and one of the significant early decisions with the construction of the university was to integrate, as much as possible, the university with the adjacent Flinders Medical Centre. A key feature of the university today is the tight integration and the impact that has, from a beneficial sense, on the way in which teaching is conducted and, in particular, training is provided to people on that precinct.

The member for Waite pointed out that the university also has a presence in Victoria Square, here in the CBD, and a considerable and growing presence at the Tonsley precinct. What is less widely known and appreciated is that the university also has a number of facilities in regional South Australia—it is the only university that does that—and they are justifiably proud of their investment and their support of regional populations and regional students, and the provision of integrated teaching opportunities between the main campus and those regional outliers. The university has a footprint not just in South Australia but also in south-west Victoria and the Northern Territory. Those teaching facilities are vitally important in ensuring the delivery of health services in those areas, and the university plays a very proud part within them.

Moving to the strategic imperatives of the university, as the member for Port Adelaide has alluded to, the university sector is no different from any other sector in this day and age. It is required to be self-sustaining to a degree, which is certainly heavier and more onerous than was the case back when I went to university and, I stress, subsequent to that, when the member for Port Adelaide went to university as well. As a consequence of that, universities generally need to have an aggressive and quite focused stance to be competitive not just here in South Australia, not just in Australia, but on a global basis.

The university has a strategic vision that is devoted to student success, international growth and high-impact research. It has a series of ambitious targets in both education and research, with an intention to elevate Flinders University to the top 10 of Australian universities and the top 1 per cent in the world by 2025. That is the vision that has been articulated by Vice-Chancellor Colin Stirling, and it has been embraced by the university in its totality. It is that vision, and particularly the expansion internationally, which nicely complements the university's work on a regional basis. It is that expansion that we are indirectly seeking to support by way of this bill today.

Regarding the principal reasons for the university being desirous of having the capacity to remunerate council members, there are several arguments in favour of that, and I will take the time to enumerate them. As we have discussed, the first is that council members are required already to devote a considerable period of their time, and they are also expected to exercise a high degree of skill, knowledge and expertise.

Today, Flinders has gone from 400 students to 27,000 students, nearly 2,600 staff and annual revenues reaching some $500 million. It has a comparable scale and complexity in many respects analogous to those of many large organisations and businesses. This is not a Mickey Mouse outfit by any stretch of the imagination; it is a sizeable enterprise and, as a result, the responsibilities of council members have a commensurate size and complexity.

By virtue of the integration Flinders has, and the unique nature of the campus, council members are required to deal with an ever-increasing regulatory landscape in relation to many complex matters of national and international significance, including cyber issues, cybersecurity, freedom of speech, foreign interference and defence, so there are complexities above and beyond those which attach themselves to enterprises of a comparable size. The member for Waite dwelt for some time on the Flinders Village project. I have made mention of the fact that the trains are coming to Davenport.

The Hon. S.K. Knoll interjecting:

Mr MURRAY: I note the very helpful and emphatically positive interjection from the Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government, which can only mean that he remains as committed to it as ever, and I congratulate him on that. This is the focal point that is helping to deliver the Flinders Village. The Flinders Village will in broad terms entail its expected some $1½ billion worth of investment. It is a prime example of the importance of the governance that an enterprise of this size needs; in this case, Flinders is no different.

It is a multiyear project and will be a combination of private and public partnerships. As a result, there will be significant governance issues that the university needs to be able to apply, and that governance entails the need for significantly higher levels of skill and expertise. As a result, this bill provides the flexibility of the council to enhance or ensure the ongoing efficacy of the governance arrangements it has in place.

I simply endorse the comments made by the member for Port Adelaide and make the point that the bill before us does not in any way enforce a disparity between one council member or another being remunerated. It actually enables the council to determine that a member of council be remunerated. It goes on to enable the council to fix different remuneration levels according to either the office held by the recipient or on the basis of any other factor the council may deem to be relevant. It also gives the council the ability to prescribe circumstances in which there may well not be any remuneration.

I think it behoves us to enable the university to make decisions about its own governance to allow it to recruit and, to the extent that it sees fit, remunerate contributors to its governance structure. It behoves us not only to enable that but to trust the university to chart its path in the future and continue to provide and enhance the sorts of education and training opportunities that it does provide.

By way of some very quick statistics that again enhance the argument, the University of South Australia, as the member for Waite has pointed out, remunerates its council members and the University of Adelaide remunerates its chancellor. Flinders currently remunerates its Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellors some $65,000 and $32,500 respectively. Yes, you can apply later. More than half of Australian universities currently remunerate their council members. I commend not just the university but also this bill to the house.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. S.K. Knoll.

Sitting suspended from 12:59 to 14:00.