Parliamentary Committees

Joint Committee on the Establishment of Adelaide University

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Minister for Defence and Space Industries, Minister for Climate, Environment and Water) (11:01): I move:

That the report of the committee be noted.

I will not speak for long about this motion because we have legislation that will be forthcoming in the next couple of weeks in this chamber. It is under consideration in the other place. I do want to sincerely thank all the members of the committee who contributed to this report and all the witnesses who attended.

I particularly want to thank the people who came from the two universities to present their case for why they felt that this was both in the state's interests and in their individual institutions' interests. I think it is very important that we listen to these two universities that have fine reputations and continue to make outstanding contributions to South Australian society and the economy and that we listen with respect and understand that the position that they have reached, that this is the right thing for the state as well as themselves, is worthy of consideration and action by this parliament.

I would like to thank you, sir, for chairing that committee. I think it was important that the committee be neither chaired by nor dominated by government members. This is a change that will be in many ways the largest microeconomic reform that has been seen in this state for some time, and it is important that as much as possible it be supported across the parliament rather than being only the brainchild of one party. That said, I think it is pleasing that this state government was able to accelerate the discussions that had previously already existed between those two institutions by expressing the interest of this government in a new university created from the two existing institutions and a willingness to be part of making that be successful.

While universities are primarily seen as the creatures of the federal government because the funding and many of the policy mechanisms that guide that funding are driven by the commonwealth government, they are nonetheless the creatures of this parliament by virtue of being created in acts of this parliament. Also, more importantly in many ways, they are so fundamental to the economic success of a state that for a state government to take a hands-off approach, to not pay attention, to not guide and support in every way that is consistent with the state's interests, would be to be derelict in our duty.

We are at a point in the journey of South Australia where we need to harness the intellectual capacity of every South Australian, and we need to attract every person here who is willing to contribute to that. Universities do that both through educating people here and by encouraging, creating and commercialising research that drives our economy onwards.

We have always been an economy that combines both primary production and manufacturing. We were for some time in South Australia the economy that had the highest proportion of people working in manufacturing of all the states. We were then victim of the big change in manufacturing, as much of the simpler work was offshored to places that were deemed to be cheaper and easier to do that work. When that happened, we saw many people not only lose their jobs but their families fall into disadvantage from which it is difficult to emerge.

The only way that an economy emerges from that period is by educating and investing in its people. To do that through an education system, to give them the opportunity to fulfil their potential and therefore the potential of our state, we must be a more complex economy. We cannot allow ourselves to simply dig things up, chop them down, or grow them and package them and let that be all that we do.

While that part of our economy will always be essential, we must also harness the intellectual capacity of people living here to create and add value. That is what complexity is: the additional application of knowledge, of intellect to what we make and what we do, and that only happens when you educate and invest in people. For too long, Australia has spent time riding on driving down real wages and lowering the conditions in which people work, and we saw the resultant stagnation of wages and the decline in productivity growth.

What we need to do is invest in people so that we can drive up productivity and drive up standards of living through undertaking more complex work. The merger of these institutions is not something that is simply a good in itself that will allow those institutions to grow, to employ more people, but is something that will fundamentally change the nature of the South Australian economy in time. It will take effort, it will be complex and there will be things that will be difficult and challenging on the way. That is usually the case with important reform.

My belief and my gratitude is extended to the committee because I believe that what it has done is take seriously the extent of the weight of that reform in taking evidence, in considering the recommendations and in producing its report. It has not done a trivial light touch; it has seriously considered the weight of the proposition placed before this parliament and in so doing has discharged its obligations honourably.

I am grateful, as I say, to all who were involved in that committee, from all sides, recognising that there were two minority reports, but nonetheless indicated an understanding why this reform is important and a willingness to look at the legislation as it comes in. As I say, it will be debated in the other place this week, it will be coming here soon and I reserve other comments for that time.

Ms HOOD (Adelaide) (11:08): I am a country kid, I was a School Card kid and I was the first in my family to go to university, and I would not be standing here today without the opportunity of a great public education and support to move to Adelaide to start my university education. A new Adelaide University will be backed by a $120 million student support fund that will help young people from a diverse range of backgrounds and from our regions to access university. I want to say to all the country kids, to all the School Card kids, to those who will become the first in their family to go to university that I see you, that this government sees you, and that it is big, bold policies like this that will help you reach your full potential.

My understanding and appreciation of the opportunity I was given inspired me to become an education journalist at The Advertiser. One of the many topics I would cover in that role was discussions regarding mergers between our tertiary institutions. They were raised from time to time, but nothing concrete ever eventuated. When the opportunity came for me to be part of the Joint Committee on the Establishment of Adelaide University, I jumped at it.

The committee was chaired by our Speaker, the Independent MP Dan Cregan, member for Kavel, and did not have a majority of government members. I want to thank the Chair for his diligent stewardship of our committee; my government colleagues, the member for Florey, the member for Gibson and the Hon. Reggie Martin; crossbench committee members, the Hon. Connie Bonaros and the Hon. Sarah Game; Greens members, first the Hon. Tammy Franks followed by the Hon. Robert Simms; and opposition members, the member for Morialta and the Hon. Jing Lee. I also want to thank the parliamentary staff, the research officers and the Hansard staff for their hard work, in particular Alison Meeks, Shane Hilton and Tonia Coulter.

We met over three months. It was a significant inquiry. We received more than 80 submissions and heard evidence from almost 50 witnesses, including academics, students, experts and business and community groups. The committee heard extensive evidence that the fierce global competition between universities is only likely to increase, and that the state's university sector is likely to become increasingly less competitive without significant reform like this.

Our committee considered evidence that the proposed merger would likely deliver long-term economic benefits to South Australia, increase the international ranking of the new institution, attract more international students, enhance research output and quality and provide possible benefits of scale, including the reduction of barriers to research intensity and collaboration. Importantly, the committee heard evidence on the risk of inaction if the proposed amalgamation did not proceed. I am incredibly proud to be part of the committee to recommend that this amalgamation does go ahead and I will be pleased to see debate begin in the other place on the Adelaide University Bill this week.

In particular, I want to speak about research. This policy would be backed by a $200 million research fund. When we heard evidence from witnesses, one of the key themes that came through in that evidence was that, under the current system in relation to research, funding rewards scale. We are not just competing against large institutions, particularly in the Eastern States, we are competing internationally—not just for research dollars but for research talent: the people and the brainpower that will drive significant research in this state.

When we look at our state, we have so much potential and so much opportunity. We are home to SAHMRI, our health and medical research institute, which next month celebrates 10 years at its HQ in the cheese grater. We have significant industries here, from the AUKUS agreement to build nuclear submarines, to the industry to establish South Australia as a renewable energy powerhouse through hydrogen, just to name two. What those two industries need is brainpower and that is what this new university can achieve. It will be able to get more students through and attract more research dollars so that we can really drive innovation, particularly in these two key industries that we are establishing in South Australia.

The big challenge we have is the tech revolution and AI, and the significant disruption that that will create within economies. What we do need, again, is that brainpower, those educated South Australians who can help drive innovation in our state because there are huge economic benefits that can flow from this. That is what we heard from witnesses including Business SA and particularly the Productivity Commission: that we need an amalgamation like this to drive those economic benefits in South Australia and, as our Deputy Premier said, increase the economic complexity of South Australia as well.

One of the other elements is $30 million to attract international students to South Australia. One of the interesting points that was made around this was the economic contribution that international students make to South Australia, not just from the fact that their parents then come to visit South Australia. We heard from Adelaide Airport that on a large number of those international flights that come into South Australia are parents of international students. They come here, they stay here and they spend money.

The international students also provide an important worker pool for South Australian businesses. We know that there are worker shortages, so when those international students come here and study they also fill those gaps, whether in hospitality or retail. They are an important part of our economy to address those skills shortages we see in those particular industries. Importantly, they become ambassadors for our state: whether they stay here or whether they go back to their home countries, they are able to really put South Australia on the map as an amazing place to live, work and play.

As I said, this really is going to be a game changer for our state. We know that we have to be more competitive, both nationally and internationally, but we also have to understand that education is the way forward for our state. As a government we are not just looking at the university sector, we are looking from birth through to adulthood, whether it was our royal commission led by former Prime Minister Julia Gillard into early education in South Australia, where we are going to look at rolling out universal access to preschool for three year olds, looking at identifying the most developmental delays within our young children and making sure that we can reduce that by the time those children start school, through to high schools.

We are expanding our public education system in my local community by expanding Adelaide Botanic High to allow more local kids to access a first-class public education. We are then building trade schools, because we acknowledge that not everyone will go to university. We are building trade schools, we are investing a huge amount in skills. I was with the Premier and the education minister a couple of weeks ago to announce a huge skills package to look at increasing the number of young people doing trades and particular areas of skills shortages, like child care. We are also investing in our tertiary institutions through the potential amalgamation of these two powerhouse universities, should the bill pass.

From birth through to adulthood we are leaving no stone unturned in using the greatest resource we have in South Australia, our people, to make a difference to our great state. Again, just circling back, I want to say to any kid who is thinking perhaps of doing something very different, something that has never happened in their family before, going to university: I know what that feels like, it is quite a scary experience, particularly when you are a regional kid. Not only was I making the decision to be the first in my family to go university but it meant I had to leave the town and the only place I had ever lived, the only place I loved to live, in order to be able to access that tertiary education.

For anyone who knows Naracoorte, my new housemates and I cried all the way from Naracoorte to Coonalpyn, to the silos, because we knew this was the last time we would ever really truly be able to call Naracoorte our home, because we were moving to the big city. I know that it can be quite a scary experience to do something that perhaps no-one in your family has ever done before, but it is policies like this that will help you reach your full potential, help you push forward with your chosen career and create the life that you have dreamed of.

For all those country kids, all those kids from low socio-economic backgrounds, whether you are School Card or in a lower socio-economic area, these are policies we are pushing for, fighting for and developing for you so that you can reach your full potential. Once again, I thank our Chair, the Speaker, and all the committee members for their hard work.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (11:18): I am very pleased to have the opportunity to make some remarks on the Joint Committee on the Establishment of Adelaide University. This has been a lengthy process in terms of the time taken, and from the opposition's point of view the modest resources we have available certainly have been applied very heavily over the last four or five months as this matter has been considered.

With that in mind, I would like to particularly thank the Hon. Jing Lee MLC who worked with me from the Liberal Party's point of view. We have a very modest staff team in terms of the resources available to us, but I note Samuel Morrison, who was in the Leader of the Opposition's office and applied himself significantly to the role, along with Ryan Smith, Elise Baker, Ben Harvey, Lachlan Skinner from my own office, and other staff members who provided us support where possible.

In working through this matter, the committee was ably assisted by staff including David Pegram, not for the longest of terms but certainly seeing us through that first meeting and ensuring that the committee understood what it was doing to start with, until his role was taken over by Alison Meeks as joint secretary. Shane Hilton worked with us throughout. Tonia Coulter provided that secretariat role and there was research officer support from Alistair Taylor and Megan Fink when Alistair took on a different role. Their work was important throughout and enabled the committee to function very well.

I also recognise the other members of the committee: the member for Adelaide, the member for Gibson, the member for Florey, the Speaker from the House of Assembly, and from the Legislative Council the Hon. Reggie Martin, the Hon. Jing Lee I have mentioned, the Hon. Robert Simms, the Hon. Connie Bonaros and the Hon. Sarah Game. Ten members is a large committee and we spent a lot of time together over the course of our witness hearings and our deliberative meetings.

There was, I think, an opportunity for improvements that could have been done to this process had the committee had more time to reflect, had the committee had slightly different terms of reference, as suggested by the Liberal Party, the Hon. Frank Pangallo, the Hon. Rob Simms and the Hon. Tammy Franks prior to the formation of the committee, but within the terms of reference and the time frame that we had, I thank the other members of the committee for the collegiate way in which, for the most part, we conducted our business and, for the most part, worked pretty well together.

I was a co-author of a minority report suggesting that I did not agree with everything that the majority of the members of the committee signed up to. The Hon. Jing Lee joined me in co-authoring our minority report. I encourage members to turn their attention to it. I will draw some particular attention to some aspects during this contribution. I note the Hon. Robert Simms also identified himself as not being with the majority.

The Speaker was in the Chair. There were six other members of the committee and certainly there was a majority view that is reflected in some of the findings and the recommendations. That said, I agreed with a lot of the findings and the recommendations. The minority report highlights some difference in nuance on some of them. The majority report highlights some areas that should have been strengthened in our view and the majority report identifies support for a number of the recommendations as well.

I am going to start with the genesis of how we got here. One of the Labor Party's first election commitments was, for the future, a South Australian university merger. I want to remind people of where we have come from. The document with the Premier's face on the front states:

The harsh truth is that each of our universities alone are too small and too undercapitalised to make it into the list of top international universities. They simply don't do enough large scale research to be recognised as world leading, and that is holding our state back. Combined, our three universities don't equal the revenue of The University of Melbourne alone.

Frankly, I take issue with some of that. The universities we have in South Australia are all within the top 3 per cent of university rankings within the world. The University of Adelaide is within the top 1 per cent, Flinders University is just outside that mark and the University of Adelaide is the eighth highest ranked university in Australia and is a destination of choice for thousands and thousands of university students. It is ranked in the top 100 according to two of the measures last year and one of the measures this year and is a very highly ranked university. There is a risk of that ranking subsiding, which we will get to in the time coming. I think the Premier got that wrong in fact but, nevertheless, we will continue.

The other point I would make is, of course, that rankings are not based on scale of research, as this document suggests. Rankings are based on a number of things. Most of them have a research aspect that is very strong, but it tends to be the top quality research that we are talking about, not just the volume of research. The volume of top quality research is the key thing. The document goes on to say:

Labor in government will establish a University Merger Commission to chart a path. It will include the leadership of the three universities and be headed up by an eminent commissioner with higher education experience. Its task will be to determine how the state can be best served by the university sector.

Methodology aside, it is a worthy goal to consider how the state can be best served by the university sector. I always saw that as being the key function that the committee looking into this matter could serve. How is our state best served?

Of course, the university councils that provided the heads of agreement signatures to the government in signing up to this considered this from the point of view of their institution, as defined by their councils, as defined by their legislation. Their institution contributes to the state's interests, but their institution's interests are not necessarily exactly the same as the state's interests.

The University of Adelaide's interests are the wellbeing of the University of Adelaide, the volume of research, the wellbeing of staff and students, the success that they have in attracting staff and students. They contribute to our state's interests, but the University of Adelaide, the University of South Australia and Flinders University are all separate institutions and their interests are confined to their own institution, irrespective of the wellbeing of the other institutions.

There are examples where staff and students from within one state have gone to another institution from within one state. This will become quite apparent in my later remarks, particularly in relation to Flinders University. The wellbeing and the advancement of a new university, or the University of Adelaide or the University of South Australia, can only be considered in the state's interests when you take into account Flinders as well.

If the outcome of work we do today is to see taxpayers' dollars supporting the new university with detrimental results for Flinders, that is not a net benefit to the state and it does not meet the goal set by the Premier in his election document. The opposition will be here with some suggestions and some recommendations, of course.

The Premier's promise is for a university merger commission. I note that has not happened. At any rate, the Premier has said that there is a different path. The universities came to this suggestion that the Premier and the government considered, and the Premier and the government have decided in lieu of their election promise to go down this path instead, rather than having a commission.

At any rate, what was a commission intended to do? Let's have a look at that. The document goes on:

Should the independent Commission determine that a university merger is in the interest of the South Australian ecconomy and the welfare of the people of the state, then a merger will be a first term priority for a Labor Government.

Intriguingly, the document then, after that full stop, says:

A university merger will be a first term priority for a Labor Government.

It is unclear whether this is a typo or if we have two separate promises there, but at any rate it is clear that the sense of this is that the first corollary for determining whether a university merger is a priority for the government must be that the commission should determine that it is in the interests of the South Australian economy—'ecconomy' spelt with two Cs, I note—and the welfare of the people of the state.

Those are reasonable considerations. Those are considerations that a university commission would have determined under this policy, had the policy been implemented. In the absence of this policy being implemented, those are the two considerations that cabinet absolutely had to consider first and foremost before determining to pursue this merger, to bring this legislation.

One of the points I will be going into in some detail is that I do not believe that the cabinet did that. I think that if Treasurer's Instruction 17 was followed it was followed very loosely by this cabinet, the idea that ministers and cabinet should have in front of them the full set of information that they require to make a decision.

I just make the point. I am not going to dwell on it at length more than is necessary. The Premier and the Deputy Premier have stated publicly on a number of occasions that they neither read nor sought to read the business case for this institution's development. The Department for Industry, Innovation and Science gave testimony to a hearing, saying that they had not read the business case. They had not provided policy advice to the government, and it was understood that the universities had done that work of policy consideration as to whether this was in the state's interests. But I make the point again: it was not their purpose to find the state's interests; it was their purpose to find their own institution's interests, so we have a deficiency here.

The Department for Industry, Innovation and Science also gave testimony that the Treasury department was the lead agency, and when the Treasury department was given the opportunity to bear witness in the inquiry they said that their job was basically to negotiate a package with the universities such that the universities would be happy to implement this new interpretation of government policy (i.e. that there will be a merger without having had the commission first).

To put it in really simple terms, the government promised a commission. Let's even put that to one side. The government promised they would be focused on the interests of the South Australian economy and the welfare of the people of the state without having had any policy advice from the Department for Industry, Innovation and Science, which has higher education functions, nor Treasury, which was the lead agency.

Nobody within government provided policy advice to the government saying that it is in the interests of the South Australian economy or indeed the welfare of the people of this state. Nobody from government provided that. There has been no commission that has provided that advice. Indeed, the universities that did work on whether it suited their institutions have not been in a position to provide that advice. It is not their job.

So, the government came with a new proposition that was not an election commitment and signed a heads of agreement with the universities saying they would do this despite its significant impact on our state, despite the significant spending of the significant investment of South Australian taxpayers' funds and without having any policy advice to suggest that it was good. We only had the Premier's word that he felt it would be a good idea. The policy document, by the way, went on to state:

The state should not start this process with a view about which universities should merge, nor which university should teach what degrees. The role of the State Government is to determine what our collective interests are as South Australians and that is where the process should start.

If only that had been true. I just read at great length from the opening statements of the policy document and every part of it the government did not follow through with.

The joint committee's purpose and importance I think is underscored here because the joint committee in many ways did a lot of the policy work and analysis and risk consideration that the government should have done, that a university merger commission would have done, that cabinet should have done and that ministers should have done prior to even bringing their work to cabinet, but the evidence we had was that they did not do it. We are here to help. The committee members worked at great length with diligence, supported by staff, to provide that policy work for the people of South Australia that should have been provided by the government. The Labor Party set out goals to achieve in their election document, which include that:

There are five outcomes that any merger must achieve:

1. South Australia needs an internationally recognised top 100 university in order to ensure the highest quality research is funded in this state to drive economic growth. This would also lead to SA being attractive to the best and brightest students and staff.

The value of having a top 100 university, to be clear, is that it is appealing to international students and some international students, particularly from some markets, are absolutely keen to be studying at a top 100 university. There is a premium that can be attached to the price charged to international students in a top 100 university. The University of Adelaide is able to charge more than other institutions in this state because it is a top 100 university.

We heard evidence that international students will, in many cases, look at the country they want to study in, and they will look at the rankings of the universities and accordingly they will choose based on what they can afford. That is understood. A top 100 university is not necessarily to drive new research; it is more likely to be a function of having achieved that research.

A top 100 university is not going to necessarily guarantee that you have the best and brightest students and staff. That is an insult to every student and staff member at Flinders University and the University of South Australia. Indeed, being a top 100 university is not a reflection on the quality of teaching and learning at an institute at all. Some of the world's most appealing, well-regarded and distinguished teaching universities do not focus on research and do not even figure in the rankings at all. At any rate, it is certainly a thing that is useful for South Australia to have in terms of our appeal to the international student market.

As the member for Adelaide said in her contribution earlier, I think all members of the committee unambiguously agreed with the proposition that international students are good for South Australia. They are good for our economy, they are good for diversity within our institutions, and they are good for our students to engage with and learn from. They provide positive impacts in terms of their direct contribution for their fees, their living expenses while they are here, their tourism expenses that they themselves contribute and the expenses that their families contribute when visiting. Indeed, international students provide a valuable resource for our communities and our workforce in the years ahead.

I agree with all of that. Everyone agreed with all of that, and so for that purpose we also accept the premise that it would be ideal to have a top 100 university. We kind of do, but there is certainly that question mark over how sustainable Adelaide University's position in the top 100 is, and that has also informed the Liberal Party's consideration as we come to deal with this issue.

The second proposition that the government have put forward in their promise for this issue is:

2. South Australia's higher education sector must be actively engaged with local industry and business to optimise local investment, commercialisation of research and economic growth.

It is, but we would like it to continue to be, so sure, I am happy to accept that. I just want to reflect briefly, though.

I do not want to take it for granted, as some people seem to, that our universities do not do pretty good work in this area at the moment. If you go to Tonsley and talk to the people at Flinders University about the work that they are doing commercialising their research, it is a startup hub of some note. Indeed, Flinders students and Flinders researchers who have engaged with business are doing it extraordinarily successfully, as are Adelaide University researchers in their areas of key focus. Adelaide University has some very proud success stories in this area, and the other university that does is the University of South Australia—on a smaller scale to be sure. The idea that our universities do not do that at the moment is, I think, a bit of a misnomer, but we would like them to continue to do so.

The third proposition for the proposal from the government is:

3. The [South Australian] university sector needs to be stable and productive. Securing jobs and career pathways for academics, researchers and administrative staff will strengthen the university sector here.

I have no problem with that.

The fourth proposition is:

4. Students from all socio-economic backgrounds must have access to a university education in South Australia of an elite global standard, and students require internationally competitive employment outcomes in order to be sure that the investment of going to university will be of immediate and lasting value to them.

I want to dwell on this for a moment. The University of South Australia has some of the strongest graduate outcomes of any university in Australia. By some measures, it is number one in Australia—not in South Australia but in Australia.

There are other measures of teacher quality and teacher-student satisfaction. By those measures, there are strong results from all three of our universities. I think Flinders may even be ranked the top, and UniSA, if not Flinders, and Adelaide University is third of the three universities, but they are all definitely in the top quartile of Australian universities. Some of Australia's top-ranked universities feature very poorly by comparison in relation to the graduate outcomes and student satisfaction rankings. The point I make is that it is utterly wrongheaded for the government to pursue this only on the basis that we are going to have students desperate to be in a globally highly ranked institution in order to achieve their career goals.

South Australia's students are extremely well served by all three of our institutions at the moment when it comes to the quality of teaching and learning, and graduate satisfaction. The measures suggest that, and there is also not the correlation that is assumed in Labor's document between having a highly ranked university and graduate satisfaction. Again, the benefit of a highly ranked university over and above everything else is in attracting international students, and the function that drives having a highly ranked university more than anything else is the volume—not of research, but the volume of that top-quality research. It is not the only thing that feeds into most of the rankings, but nevertheless it is not a function that actually drives the domestic market particularly strongly.

There are all sorts of factors that feature in a South Australian student's desire to go to a particular university over another. I have spoken to a range of people throughout this journey. I have spoken to student representatives from different clubs and organisations at the universities; I have spoken to colleagues, friends and family. Everybody has a view on this matter, whether they have been to university or not—especially if they have been to one of the institutions. One of the questions I would ask is: what drove you to make your decision to go to Adelaide or Flinders or UniSA or any number? For the record, the South Australian Liberal parliamentary team is made up of graduates of all three, with significant advocates for the education they received in the different institutions.

I have spoken to people who had made their decision based on geography: 'It was the university down the road from where I live.' This is something that is very popular at Flinders University. People in the southern suburbs are very proud of the fact that their institution is delivering great teaching and learning. In the regions, people living in Mount Gambier, for example, very much appreciate the offering that UniSA has in Mount Gambier.

Students may choose to go to a particular university because they want to go to a particular course. If they want to be a paramedic then they have to go to Flinders because that is where being a paramedic is offered. Some students had a particular interest in doing subjects or disciplines that are only offered at Adelaide. There is a smaller cohort that is attracted to a university because their parent might have gone to that university or there is a reputation attached, but this is by no means comparable to the driver for an international student that rankings are. We heard significant evidence to that effect as well.

People are proud of their university and they take pride in the things that their university points to. I am a graduate of Adelaide University; I did subjects at Flinders University as well. I am proud that my university had the connection with Howard Florey, who I think is one of the most important people who lived in the 20^th century and who did study at Adelaide University. I think that is something that brings me joy; it does not necessarily influence my feeling about the merger by any stretch. But I think the idea that it would be an elite global standard that somehow was not achieved actually is an insult to our universities as they stand.

The fifth purpose the Labor Party had for their election policy was:

All SA public universities must remain strong regardless of a merger configuration, and there must be a relationship between higher education and vocational training that facilitates increasing the qualification levels held by South Australians.

To be honest, nobody has really talked about the second part of the fifth one. There are two promises. First, regardless of the configuration, all South Australian universities must remain strong. We will come back to talk more about Flinders in due course, but I do not think that the particular package that the government has settled on adequately deals with that. We have said many times that Flinders University needs to be given more consideration.

The proposal as it is does not hugely go into this question of the relationship between higher education and vocational training. There is other work that is important in relation to vocational training. There is other work that I am very proud of that was delivered under the Marshall Liberal government aimed at increasing the number of people successfully completing apprenticeships and traineeships—support for the group training organisation (GTO) sector, for example, where the national average of some 50-something per cent of apprenticeships and traineeship completions rose up to about 80 per cent completions. I think the former government's strong support for GTOs and apprenticeships and traineeships was an important part of that. The former government's reforms to VET in schools was an important part of that:

the idea that the school week should not be the only determinant of whether a young person can do a school-based apprenticeship or traineeship;

the idea that schools should work to enable participation in the workplace first and then the schools provide extra supports to help students complete their SACE while undertaking their apprenticeship or traineeship;

the idea also that state funding for vocational education schools should be geared towards where there are skills demand areas. Whether that is through an apprenticeship or a traineeship, if a business is taking on an apprentice then there is a demand for the skill, because otherwise the business would not be putting money in the game; or

the skills shortage lists that have been identified. That is where we put our money, changing it from the previous one which was, 'We would fund any student to do any course once, and then when they found there was no job at the end they would have to pay for it themselves if they wanted to do more.'

That reform, focusing our training effort within schools on areas that had skills needs, was really important. The new government has kept it. That work is important. It was one of the promises that they would look at here. Maybe I take from it that they were so satisfied by the work the Marshall Liberal government did in reforming VET in schools and pathways that they did not feel the need to focus on that anymore. That is how I will take it.

We turn back to the recommendations of the committee. Indeed, I will turn to the process. This was dealt with particularly in the minority report. The point that I would make is that, having not gone through the process of having the commission of inquiry as was explicitly promised in the election document, the government could have said, 'We have decided not to do our election commitment because the universities have come to us with a better idea.' That is not what they said. They have said effectively that their election commitment is being fulfilled by delivering on this better idea that the universities have come to them with.

The reason why whether or not it is an election commitment is important is that that slightly adjusts the process that a cabinet needs to go through. If something has been an election commitment, then there is an obligation upon the government to deliver on that election commitment. They are the long policy considerations that you might expect from Treasurer's Instructions 17, that cabinet needs to consider a justification statement, that the justification statement should:

(a) apply evaluation principles that are appropriate for the size and nature of the public sector initiative being evaluated; and

(b) having regard to the estimated cost, magnitude and sensitivity, include sufficient scope and details to enable the approver to make a decision on an informed basis.

If something is an election commitment, then it is deemed that that work has effectively been done through the publication of the promise prior to the election, the consideration of which by the people of South Australia informing their views on who should form government. There is a benefit to the government in describing this policy proposal as an election commitment even though it is indeed not the delivery of their election commitment. It is an alternative to their election commitment.

What we observed through the committee was some of the most surprising testimony that I have encountered in my nearly 14 years in the parliament. It was very clear from the way that the public servants spoke about this proposal that they were under riding instructions, if you like. They were under no doubt that the government's view was that supporting this merger was the election commitment. That was their interpretation of the election commitment.

We have gone through the document and said what the election commitment was in some detail. I apologise to members who did not want to spend the last 20 minutes going through the Labor Party election document, but it is very clear in black and white that the policy document was for a university commission. We went through the five things that the commission would consider. If they decided not to have the commission, if they decided to do that work through another model, that would be a variation on the election commitment, but it was not that. They did not do that work. In fact, the public servants explicitly ruled out having done that work.

During witness testimony we could not have been clearer, because I went back and asked these questions a couple of times because I was surprised at the answers that we were getting. I think the member for Adelaide might have asked a pertinent question in relation to policy advice, in relation to whether the witnesses thought it was a good idea, and I think they said that it was. I asked, 'Was that the first time that you had been asked by anyone in government for policy advice on this question?' They made it clear that they were not there to provide policy advice to government on this matter. They were there to work on the bill that would deliver on Labor's election commitment.

The bill is, as has been mentioned, in the other place and, not wanting to make reflections on what we expect the other place to do, certainly there is a possibility that it will be here in the next sitting week. It is really unusual that such a significant proposition would have no policy advice provided by government. That is not to say whether or not the merits of the bill, the merits of the proposal, are good or bad. It is a duty of government to be fully informed of a decision before they take it.

The members of the Public Service identified that the policy work would have been done by the universities to inform their business cases that were going to the university councils. When asked if those business cases had been provided to the department, it became clear that aspects of the business cases had been provided. The department was given information that it requested, but it did not request the full business cases to be provided. No-one in government, as far as we can tell, has read all the documents that the university councils have read.

The university councils considered business cases that were relevant to their institutions. A lot of that material was shared material and some of it was specific to their institutions because, of course, if the university merger did not go ahead then those universities would want to protect their own information and interests going forward.

At this point I will take us back briefly to 2018. When I was the Minister for Education in 2018, I had the opportunity to bear witness to an earlier discussion of this. It was reflected on by a couple of witnesses to the committee what happened in 2018 and at least one of them put on the record some statements that I knew to be, at the very least, wild exaggerations of what I remember to be the case. I would also draw to the chamber's attention that the second reading speech given by the Attorney-General in the other place in relation to the bill that comes out of this document suggests that the former government's lack of interest in supporting the university was the problem, and that this government being interested in providing financial resources to the university was the difference that was going to make it work.

What happened in 2018 was the two universities organically coming together; the vice-chancellors and the chancellors discussing the proposal and coming to government. The government at that stage was absolutely, as we are now—with our statements from the Premier and from myself as Minister for Education to the institutions—more than happy to facilitate a merger if that was something the institutions wanted to do and if it was something that was going to be in the state's interest. That remains our position today, and I will put a bit more meat on the bones in the coming minutes of where that lands us.

But in 2018 the stumbling block was not the government's willingness or unwillingness to entertain the idea. We took every meeting that we were invited to. We were very clear that if resources from the government were needed at some level then we would entertain such considerations; we just needed to be provided with the ask. The universities never made it to that point. The councils of the universities determined not to proceed on a basis, as best I can tell because I was not in the council meetings, that they were not able to agree on certain factors. It has been suggested the name was still a stumbling block, so when the university vice-chancellors as they are now came up and agreed in terms of a transition process and a name, that is a different outcome from what happened four years ago.

The universities were also in an extremely different financial position four years ago. In 2018 and 2019, the level of government investment required to underpin the proposal would have probably been less than is required now, because they had not been through COVID. Indeed, a substantial amount of the ask from universities in relation to this matter is to underpin the councils' confidence that they are not going to reach any sort of liquidity flaw in what they might do as the merger proceeds. The universities had more money prior to the pandemic. The universities had to apply resources during the pandemic to keep staff, to keep students going, to maintain the level of service and to deal with the challenges everyone had during the pandemic.

The point I make is the circumstances were different and the reason that it did not proceed in 2018 was actually in no way due to interest or lack of interest or support or lack of support from the government. It was a decision the universities took and we do accept that the universities on this occasion have come to the decision differently. One of the vice-chancellors is new, two of the chancellors are new and, indeed, there is therefore a different set of circumstances that we are dealing with. There is a simpatico clearly between the two organisations at a leadership level and we accept, as is clear, that the universities do see it being in their interest. That is the first stage cleared. The second stage is whether it is in the state's interest.

My critique of the government is highlighted in the third recommendation in the minority report. We believe:

(3) Any public sector initiative being considered by Cabinet should include a justification statement setting out the implications of the initiative…

The justification statement should—

(a) apply evaluation principles that are appropriate for the size and nature of the public sector initiative being evaluated; and

(b) having regard to the estimated cost, magnitude and sensitivity, include sufficient scope and details to enable the approver to make a decision on an informed basis.

That is the law at the moment. Treasurer's Instructions 17 is empowered, under section 41 of the Public Finance and Audit Act, to require that of government. What we therefore request is that all ministers in this government, and future governments, give consideration as to how they are fulfilling their responsibilities under the law, under Treasurer's Instructions 17.

Simply saying something was an election commitment does not make it so and it does not obviate your responsibilities to fulfil your obligations under the law. Ministers need to be very mindful that they are talking about a bill that will not only facilitate the provision of several hundreds of millions of dollars over the period of time of public moneys, but also that will have an impact on our state that is quite significant beyond the financial impact, beyond international students, and I want to focus on this for a moment. We are talking about a social impact on South Australia that cannot necessarily be measured in whether 5,000 or 7,000 international students might bring in an extra $100 million to the institution, might bring in an extra $100 million in research funding, might bring in extra funding.

We are talking about teaching our graduates, our professionals—our teachers, our doctors, our lawyers, our engineers, our scientists, our accountants, our economists, our policy officers, our social workers. These are the people who require a degree to participate in our workforce, our businesses, our public sector institutions that require degree-educated and qualified people, our researchers themselves, our school principals and our public servants. The quality of their education is really important. The experience they have at university is very important, and I think in a lot of the public discussion it was just assumed that ranking had a relevance to the quality of education. The truth is, it seems unfortunate, the rankings do not have much of a correlation with that.

We have schools of law and education at both universities at the moment. They do things differently and one of the challenges is going to be getting that right. The consequence of getting it wrong is not just financial risk, although we will get to that shortly. The consequence of getting it wrong is that with the universities that are turning out two-thirds to three-quarters of our teachers, our doctors, our lawyers, our accountants and so forth they will be giving them less of an experience than they have at the moment.

Any merger proposition should only be supported or considered, in my view, on the basis that their experience will be at least as good as it is at the moment, because it is a good experience at the moment. The ratings under the various registers of the quality of teaching and learning suggest that our students are having a good experience at the moment. It is a risk to bring those schools together, especially when they are in many cases using different pedagogies or different focus areas to deliver their course materials.

There is a range of risks to this proposal going forward in the way that we would like it to. The opportunities are understood and they are clear. We set out in our minority report that an alternative to the first recommendation should have been a finding that Hon. Jing Lee and I agreed with, and I quote:

(1) On the balance of the evidence considered by the Committee, the economic and social interests of the State of South Australia might be advanced by the proposed amalgamation, but Members should note that these opportunities carry with them a number of considerable risks that need to be mitigated.

We said:

The proposal is not objectively good or bad. It is a subjective call, with opportunities and risks inherent in either approach. Members might also be persuaded that there are also risks in maintaining the status quo that haven't previously been fully articulated.

I thought the member for Adelaide spoke pretty well about these just a moment ago. The report continues:

The potential benefits of the proposal certainly merit the Parliament's serious consideration, but to dismiss the concerns and risks, such as those raised by a range of eminent individuals and interested stakeholders throughout this Committee inquiry, without taking further steps in mitigation, would be foolhardy and not in the state's interests.

We believe that while informed members acting in good faith could reasonably conclude that the risks inherent in the proposal are worth taking, or not, we would suggest that the measures presented in Recommendations 2-7 in the [majority] report are essential if the proposal were to proceed—

Noting that we also, in the minority report, recommended further measures to strengthen those recommendations. We feel those measures should have been considered as part of a full cabinet process prior to the announcement of the proposal, with submissions including details of all these issues.

We know that cabinet considered this proposal and considered the spending appropriation, it considered the bill, but many matters in the report—in the majority report and the minority report alike—do not seem to have been the subject of rigorous policy analysis or advice from the department prior to cabinet making its decision.

Two weeks ago the government held a press conference with the Hon. Sarah Game and the Hon. Connie Bonaros, setting out that those two members were going to support the bill and that there were two amendments to the proposal that were announced at that press conference. At the press conference the government confirmed it was going to add an extra $20 million to the scholarship fund, which would be particularly focused on supporting regional students, and was going to provide a new scholarship fund worth $40 million for a Flinders University equity fund.

Those things are welcome, but they do not address some of the key issues we have to grapple with. To be clear, we feel there are four main areas of concern that this parliament can consider: the first are the risks inherent in the proposal (and I will talk at some greater length about them); the second being the impact on Flinders University; the third being the opportunity, or lack of, for our regions; and the fourth being in relation to the Magill campus.

Risk I will deal with at some time, but at this point I want to commend the vice-chancellors from Adelaide University and the University of South Australia, who have been good enough to provide a letter to the opposition in response to our minority report and in response to the suggestions, because while the equity fund for Flinders is welcomed, while the $20 million increase to the equity fund for Adelaide for rural students is welcomed—we certainly do not have a problem with providing more scholarships—they do not address a couple of key things.

We believe they do not address the need for there to be research equity between Flinders and the new institution, and they do not address the strong view that the Hon. Jing Lee and I presented that we need to have proactive support for those students who want to study in regional South Australia, not just for students who want to come from regional South Australia to the city. We want to see more opportunities for people to study in regional South Australia, more opportunities for regional communities to benefit from regional students being able to stay in their towns, whether they do nursing, teaching, medical training, or whatever the course might be.

While those matters were not addressed by the government and are not addressed in the bill, the Liberal Party will make a commitment to address those matters further should we—when we—win government in March 2026. I will spend some time talking about that in a moment.

In relation to Magill, I commend members of the committee for acknowledging the need to support the childcare centre at Magill. The recommendation in the majority report was supported, I do not think anyone would mind me saying, by all members; it was very welcome. However, there are significant assets for the community, for biodiversity, for heritage and for active and passive recreation, particularly on the western side of St Bernards Road, that need to be further addressed. The Liberal government, in the future, will ensure that community needs are first and foremost there.

When it comes to the risk of the proposal overall, I want to commend the university vice-chancellors for their response to the minority report. The vice-chancellors wrote to us and said:

Firstly, we should acknowledge the careful and constructive way in which both you and the wider community have engaged with the university as part of the parliamentary process.

They went on to write:

The minority report's recommendations propose a number of matters for consideration. Some are directed towards the government, others relate to how the universities could best manage the transition period and post merger activities of Adelaide University. We wish to respond in broad terms to those recommendations.

I will get to the bits where they talk about risks, and they do identify measures they are now taking, that had not been announced prior to the release of the report, that will help mitigate those risks. In the context of the fact that the government has secured the numbers in the Legislative Council, we certainly acknowledge that this is going to go ahead and we need to deal with the risks.

The vice-chancellors also talked about regional delivery. In acknowledging the calls in the minority report for more work to be done in regional South Australia, the vice-chancellors highlight, and I will quote from their letter again:

The recently released interim report of the Australian Universities Accord has listed as a priority the establishment of 'Regional University Centres' and 'suburb University Centres' throughout Australia. The Universities welcome this initiative and will be engaging with the Commonwealth to ensure that South Australia receives the appropriate level of support. It also believes that its curriculum and access ambitions align with the Accord's priorities. We would very much welcome State-based initiatives of this type to underpin greater access to our offerings around South Australia.

The Universities, and a future Adelaide University, will subject to sufficient demand and support actively engage with any such state policy initiatives designed to establish regional hubs or learning centres. As the founding legislation for the new Adelaide University obligates and the existing regional campuses of our two institutions demonstrate, the new University intends to serve the state, not just metropolitan Adelaide. As such, Adelaide University would, subject to the appropriate assessment, be extremely well placed to being an anchor tenant in any regional initiative that may be advanced in the future.

I will come back to that letter in a moment, but I want to put on the record my appreciation to the vice-chancellors for engaging with the opposition in such a constructive way. The witnesses that were provided to the committee included dozens of people arguing for and against the proposal, and indeed many who provided expert dispassionate advice about the merits, or otherwise, of the proposal. The vice-chancellors appeared twice, and indeed the other senior leaders appeared a third time, in camera, to provide some of the further foundation details.

For the vice-chancellors to see the university committee report and the minority report and take seriously its recommendations and findings, and that they would then engage with the opposition in a constructive and positive way, even after the government had secured the numbers to pass their bill, I think speaks very highly of their credibility and their desire to see positive outcomes come from this process. I thank the vice-chancellors for doing that work and for providing further recognition of the concerns raised by the opposition in our minority report and in public. It provides some level of comfort to us that they were being addressed, and I will talk about some of those risk mitigation strategies.

I imagine that a number of members of the house would be eager to learn that the opposition will be supporting the bill to establish the new university. We do this in the context that this proposal is too big to fail. The government has secured an agreement from the Hon. Connie Bonaros and the Hon. Sarah Game that they will support. We can count the numbers in the Legislative Council. This bill will pass in the Legislative Council this week, irrespective of what the Liberal Party does.

In that circumstance, in the beginning of 2026 we will have a new university in South Australia. It will be responsible for educating two-thirds of our degree-qualified graduates: our accountants, our doctors, our teachers, our nurses, our lawyers and a range of others, as we have said. It will also be responsible for 7,000 to 8,000 staff for 60,000 to 70,000 students. It is one of those propositions that, now it is going to happen, they call too big to fail. I think that speaks to why more risk mitigation work was needed to be done by the government, but it was clear two weeks ago that, once they had secured the votes that they needed, it was going ahead. They were very happy with themselves.

The opposition looks at this from the perspective of the state's interests. There was a pathway available to the opposition to oppose this bill for political expediency, because there will be bumps along the road in the next couple of years, make no mistake. One of the biggest risks to the proposition is if there are researchers who are operating at a high level at Adelaide University who leave the institution in the next couple of years, not being happy with the way the culture is working out, not being happy with the way the transition is working out. That will have an impact on rankings.

I think everybody accepts that there is going to be a dip in the rankings for the new university, compared with the University of Adelaide. The vice-chancellors' proposition is that it will return within a couple of years. Indeed, I think the documents they put out expect it, certainly, within five years. But it has been put to us by other witnesses that it could take 10 years or longer to see that return and if the worst prognostications came to be true—if there was a 10-year return or worse on restoring the ranking—then the positive opportunities in this proposal will not be borne out.

There is an issue of culture and confidence that has direct implications for our future as a state, because if it did take longer than five years to bear out then you would not see the uptick in international students, you would not see the uptick in revenue and without that uptick in revenue you would not be able to invest in the sort of research that will see the continued prosperity that the proposal expects.

The opportunities in this proposal are significant for our state; we recognise that. We have recognised it all along, but the risks need to be acknowledged and mitigated, and we do not believe the government did that. One of the risks, therefore, is something where we would, if we took that politically expedient path, be contributing to that risk.

I wonder: what would the Labor Party do if they were in opposition? Some have said, 'Well, they would just oppose it, try and kill the bill in the Legislative Council and if they could not then they would spend the next two years seeking to undermine the proposal and taking political glee every time something went wrong.'

The Liberal Party is not about that, because our interest is in the people of South Australia. We want our kids to be able to experience the best possible education and the best possible opportunities, and that would not be served by taking the politically expedient path. So, instead, we work on something that is more constructive. We will support this bill because it is going to pass, it is too big to fail and it requires everyone to lean in to that effort.

But more than that we are also willing to put on the record today some policy commitments for when the Liberal Party forms government in March 2026. Some of the policy commitments that we can make now will alleviate some of the risks to our state getting the benefit from this proposal.

At great length the Hon. Jing Lee and I talk in our report—and indeed we talked about this in the committee, and the Vice Chancellor of Flinders University, Colin Stirling, talked at great length in the committee—about the risks to South Australia fulfilling its opportunities here if Flinders University does not get the research support.

With Adelaide University being the beneficiary of at least $4 million a year, most likely more than that, as a result of the $200 million research fund, that money is designed to secure new researchers doing high-quality research for Adelaide University. Taxpayers are paying for that. In attracting high-quality researchers to any institution, you can convince people to come from another country, you can convince people to come from another state. The easiest way is for somebody to be convinced to come from another side of town and change their commute, because it is easier to change your commute than to change your state or your country.

So there is a risk to our state fulfilling this opportunity if Flinders University is shut out from government funding for research. Flinders University does a range of research in very high-quality areas that are aligned to our state's Strategic Plan. A Speirs Liberal government, if elected in March 2026, will establish a research fund for Flinders University equivalent in its nature to that that has been provided in this proposal for Adelaide University. The detail, in terms of the size of the fund required and the returns that it will bear every year, will be announced between now and the next election, but the scope of work that it will do will be in alignment with our state's strategic priorities.

Flinders University is a world-leading university when it comes to research in defence, science and technology, in matters that are directly related to our AUKUS agreement and our AUKUS opportunities for our state. This will be an area in which Flinders University's research will benefit directly our state. It will be an area to which this research fund will be applied.

Flinders University is a world-leading institution when it comes to agtech—agricultural technology—food production technology and science, and this is an area where funding from the Speirs Liberal government's Flinders University research fund will be applied in direct benefit for our state's interests.

Flinders University is one of the world's leading universities in relation to a range of health science and research areas. Curing diseases: there is extraordinary work being done at Flinders University. Particularly in this area, which is also a focus for the new institution, we would want to ensure that the work Flinders is used to doing is not undermined by the government-funded support for the new institution.

We want them both to thrive. We want them to be the best two universities in Australia when it comes to health science research. So that is also an area where the Speirs Liberal government's proposed Flinders University research fund will provide support to Flinders University.

So, that is the first thing. We will provide a Flinders University research fund in government, and it will ensure that, while there will be a cost to the budget, the nature of the way in which the Adelaide University research fund could well be reflected here is that the capital stays in the hands of the South Australian people. It sits on our balance sheet, and it is a cost that is only in terms of the foregone revenue, which would likely be a modest single-digit number in the millions that is not in our balance sheet going forward. In the context of the state budget, this is imminently affordable but it does reduce the risk of South Australia not realising the opportunity that this proposal presents.

The second area the Speirs Liberal government—if elected in March 2026, should we receive that honour from the South Australian people—will commit to is to further support regional South Australia. Flinders University is a very important university in the Australian context, particularly for the south. Our regions and the support we give our regions are critically important as well. The deal done two weeks ago identified $20 million, which presumably might have a return of $1 million a year for our students to receive scholarships, one imagines mostly to come to the city.

When students come to Adelaide, it is important regional students are supported in doing so and we certainly will maintain that extra fund. What is even more exciting is when students are able to access great education in the regions as well. We want to see the existing effort maintained as a minimum. We are talking about campuses at Mount Gambier, Whyalla, Roseworthy, and there are other efforts the universities are making at the moment, and we want to see that net impact realised.

But we also have seen the development in recent years of uni hubs around Australia. There is one at Port Pirie, for example, which a number of members would be very familiar with, where it is not just that there is an offering available to students through the anchor tenant—and the anchor tenant in Port Pirie is not a South Australian university but from the north-east—it also provides that resource within a community for other university students to be able to engage with their curriculum when they are not able to be on campus in Adelaide.

The factor that entered our thinking here is that there are parts of South Australia that are relatively well serviced. Potentially those regional centres do not have a wide variety of choices available to them in terms of what subjects are able to be offered and what courses are able to be offered, but certainly the access to facilities is there.

One of the factors in the universities' curriculum development that is interesting here is the way that they are proposing to rewrite the curriculum in a modular nature—stackable, some people call it—where you can do aspects of different degrees at different times. This would lend itself well to regional delivery where you might have a student doing remote learning, with access enabled by the internet for periods, and then they would have hands-on engagement with lecturers or courses at different times, whether that is coming to the city or a local hub. We would like to see more of that.

A Speirs Liberal government will commit to maintaining existing effort and sometimes that will mean applying state resources. But, more than that, we will see at least one new uni hub in regional South Australia in areas that are not currently serviced by our existing effort. This will require new investment and state government resources, which would have been a good way for the government to go in the last couple of weeks when they were talking about their scholarship fund, but instead they focused only on things that will help those students who are in a position to come to Adelaide.

We are much more interested in seeing communities supported as well as that, because if you want somebody to be teaching in a regional area, as we always do—and as we know, there are skills shortages in teaching, early childhood, nursing, medical across the board—one of the best ways to get yourself somebody who is eager to work in regional South Australia is to have somebody who has grown up in regional South Australia who sees it as their community. The more times they are able to access and engage with their education in a regional area, the higher likelihood it is that they will seek to stay in that regional area upon graduation.

We want to make it as easy as possible, and that is why we think this is a tremendously important area that the government has neglected to deal with in this report. This is one of the reasons why I am so grateful to the vice-chancellors for engaging with the opposition because the vice-chancellors keenly and clearly understood the issue that the Hon. Jing Lee and I raised in our minority report here that was not addressed by the government and the relevant crossbenchers in their deal a couple of weeks ago.

The opportunity to nail down extra support and resources for students who want to study in regional South Australia, not just students from regional South Australia, is something that the Liberal Party is committed now to doing.

The third commitment that the Liberal Party will give should we win the next election is in relation to the community surrounding the land at Magill. The committee heard strong evidence from the Hon. Vincent Tarzia, the member for Hartley, in relation to his views and his community's reaction to the proposal and what their fears might be about what might happen with the land in that area.

The committee heard evidence from the Campbelltown council from a former Labor minister, the Hon. Chris Schacht, who is a local resident. He talked about the important role that that creek line plays through the campus in his daily recreation and that of hundreds and hundreds of other residents.

There are two patches of land in question when it comes to Magill. One is on the eastern side of the road, which is in my electorate of Morialta and which is scheduled under this proposal to be sold and master-planned by Renewal SA sooner rather than later. It may well be that this has been disposed of before the next election.

In doing so, I very strongly encourage the government to look at submissions from the Campbelltown council and others in relation to that land; namely, that maintaining sufficient open space so that the community still has access to open space in that area, which has been very heavily developed, and maintaining access to community recreation facilities, such as the Campbelltown council proposed, would be the best case scenario for that land. The government has a decision to make soon on that, and I urge them to make the right decision and to support the community.

In relation to the western half of the land, the proposal in front of the parliament put forward by the government is that UniSA can have five years on its lease with an option for five more, and so in five or 10 years that land will then be developed in one way or another. It is the very clear understanding of the Liberal Party—and as very articulately represented by the Hon. Vincent Tarzia, the member for Hartley, in whose electorate that land resides—that there are community assets in that area that are tremendously important.

The Magill Campus Community Children's Centre is a really important community long day-care service that dozens and dozens of families currently use. They have a waiting list and they want certainty about that site going forward. The committee has recommended that the government engage with them as soon as possible. My understanding is that the government will. I commend the government for that and urge them to do so.

That has to be protected for child care, long day care, early education and indeed child development. They do an excellent job there, and certainly given the government's stated aims for early childhood development it would be odd, frankly, if they did not renew that lease and support that childcare centre's continued opportunity to thrive.

There are also active and passive recreation facilities there. There is an oval that is used every weekend. There is a heritage building in Murray House that is stunning. Anyone driving down St Bernards Road will know the building I am talking about. Also, there is a creek line which has very high-level biodiversity and environmental value. These need protecting.

Renewal SA in their evidence to the committee did suggest that they saw more value potentially to be realised. It may have been Renewal SA or it may have been Treasury, but they are interested in selling more housing on the east side of the road than the west.

However, we make it very abundantly clear that, when it comes particularly to that land that the government would not have sold by the time of the next election, a Speirs Liberal government will be very focused on making sure that community needs are met. That means reflecting the opportunity for heritage value of Murray House, for the active and passive recreation opportunities, including organised sports that use those facilities, the childcare centre, that the tree line and the creek line be protected in the consideration of any development there, and community must be front and the centre in those expectations.

With that in mind, those are the three commitments the Liberal Party offers today on 31 October 2023 for what we will deliver in 2026, and it is important to recognise these things. One of the reasons the vice-chancellors of Adelaide University and the University of South Australia were eager for the perpetual funds to have a floor on how much money they will generate for the first eight years for their research and equity, as is in the legislation, is because they need to be able to plan during this risky transition period.

They need to be able to confirm what financial commitments they can make and do so on a basis not just of using their existing resources and the combined sum of their existing budgets but also having the security that, if there is a revenue dip in the next couple of years as a result of the required expenditure in transition and there are potential issues with retaining numbers of international students during the riskiest first couple of years, they have that surety that they are going to have that income coming in.

So we have a bit of time to work out the timing of our commitments. We feel that the problem with the perpetual funds being created for Adelaide University and not Flinders is not the short-term provision of finance to assist with the merger; the government could have just given a grant to facilitate a merger. The problem is providing perpetual funds that will go on forever only in one institution's benefit, and that is why, in the long term, Flinders has to be taken into consideration when it comes to this.

When it comes to the engagement of the vice-chancellors, I spoke a little bit about this earlier, but I am going to read the letter that they sent to the opposition because I think it is important. They have said that they are happy for this to become a public document. It was sent outlining their stated positions, articulating some new information and responding to some of the issues raised in the minority report. It is not a secret document. It is a document I received yesterday and am releasing publicly today. The letter is marked with the University of Adelaide's and the University of South Australia's crests and is to John Gardner, Deputy Leader of the Opposition—that is me:

30 October 2023

Dear Mr Gardner,

We are writing to provide a response to the Minority Report by yourself and the Hon. Jing Lee MLC as part of the Joint Committee on the Establishment of Adelaide University.

Firstly, we wish to acknowledge the careful and constructive way in which both you and the wider committee have engaged with the Universities as part of this parliamentary process.

We believe that the ambition of the new University is clear. As captured in our first collective vision statement:

'Australia's new for-purpose university is a leading contemporary comprehensive university of global standing. We are dedicated to ensuring the prosperity, wellbeing and cohesion of society by addressing educational inequality through our actions and through the success and impact of our students, staff and alumni. Partnered with the communities we serve, we conduct outstanding future-making research of scale and focus.'

They go on:

The Minority Report's recommendations propose a number of matters for consideration. Some are directed towards the Government; others relate to how the Universities could best manage the transition period and post-merger activities of Adelaide University. We wish to respond, in broad terms, to those recommendations regarding to risk and regional delivery.

Risk and its mitigation

The Universities, in their various submissions and evidence before the Joint Committee, outlined the detailed attention that has been given to matters of risk and their mitigation. We acknowledge the risks are tangible, though manageable and in our view outweigh the longer-term risk of not pursuing this opportunity.

The Universities have put in place very detailed plans and mitigations relating to all aspects of the merger, not all of which is in the public domain for competition purposes. However, there is some additional information we would like to provide you as part of our response to the Minority Report.

Following a rigorous tender and procurement process, with independent probity, the Universities have jointly appointed Deloitte as our Integration Management Partner. Deloitte has a proven track record of delivering successful integration projects of substantial complexity. They will support critical subject areas such as: integration and transformation oversight, project management and quality assurance, business process design, systems integration, change management and the communication frameworks. This partnership is one of the key measures that has been taken to de-risk this merger.

I think this next paragraph is very important:

Staff retention and attraction during any complex change of this scale is a risk. It is one that the Universities identified early as part of its transition planning. Processes and procedures have been put in place to retain/minimise the loss of key staff with an ambition to attract and retain more talent in the medium to long term. While the pre-legislative period does cause a level of uncertainty, we cannot yet identify any discernible trend to suggest that staff are departing the universities due to the merger. Indeed, the Universities can report the appointment of several senior and highly credentialled academics since the announcement of the merger, including from Oxford University, Durham University, St Andrews University, University of Southern Denmark and from leading Australian Universities.

The new Adelaide University is committed to enhancing the student experience and do not believe that the lived experience in a merged university will be in any way diminished. The enhancement of the student experience has been identified as a key institutional strategic goal, is a key transition path and is an area in which planning has already commenced. Indeed, it is proposed that Adelaide University will appoint a Deputy Vice Chancellor whose primary portfolio attention will be upon student experience and success.

The Universities welcomed the focus the Joint Committee placed on the risks involved in this merger. The Universities have always anticipated the risks and have spent considerable time identifying and putting in place management plans to address them.

Before I go on to the rest of their letter, I identify particularly the evidence that is in relation to staff retention. As I may have said before, one of the biggest cultural risks in any transition process, in any merger process of any institution, is that your key staff are not enjoying the experience, are not enjoying the cultural change, and depart.

We are talking about people who are able to get jobs anywhere in the world. While Adelaide, South Australia, is, sir, I know that you will agree, as we all do, the best place in the world to live—we have that going for us—there is a risk that they could get offered more money elsewhere at a culture they might feel more inclined to stay with. To see the benefits of this opportunity realised, if the business case, if the publicly released figures in terms of opportunity for international students and for money are to be realised, then staff retention is number one, two and three in terms of being able to realise them.

The second issue that I talked about earlier was student experience being an important focus, that, in an initiative by a university aimed at the financial benefits of international students rankings and research, the student experience not be lost as well. That the university is being proactive in seeking now and advertising, I think in the last week, to recruit a new deputy vice-chancellor of student experience and success highlights I think the willingness of the vice-chancellors to engage with a number of the issues that were raised during the university committee's considerations and the minority report in particular. I commend them for doing so and I thank them for releasing the details of staff who have been recruited.

In our minority report, we focused some time talking about how there is limited data to establish whether or not there is confidence or opposition amongst the majority of staff to the process. The NTEU, the academics' union, did a survey. I think they had some 1,400 responses from the three universities, which combined have in the order of about 10,000 staff. The vice-chancellors put out information in March that welcomed people to provide questions or other responses. It was not a survey as such, but they had hundreds of responses too. But, again, that was open to everyone in the community and a relatively low percentage of people expressed an opinion.

The Liberal Party of South Australia put out research into the field. We put out a website inviting members of the community, interested people, people from universities to respond to the question of what they would support and provide their comments. We had about 1,700 responses and it was about 40 per cent in favour, 40 per cent against, and 20 per cent in the middle. This is exactly the sort of survey from which—I am sure you would understand, sir, as a former state secretary of the Labor Party—if you are looking to gauge community feeling, it is fair to say feelings were mixed in the community.

I think it is fair to say that it is widely acknowledged that there are some people and staff who are deadset against the proposal and there are some who are very keen on the proposal. I suspect that, of those who responded to most of the surveys, more staff responded negatively than positively. That highlights the risk. But there is a significant majority of staff who did not respond to any of the surveys. We highlight in the minority report that there is therefore a subjective question as to the level of risk in terms of staff retention or staff recruitment with the cultural question over whether people are going to enjoy this merger process or not.

It is true that people have known this has likely been coming for a while. The universities and the government made an announcement late last year in November or December, talking about the work that was going to be undertaken. Since March-April, they have had an idea of what the university was going to brand itself as, and since the heads of agreement in July, they have had an understanding of what was happening there.

While there has always been the proposition the parliament could reject the merger, the universities and I think particularly the government have spruiked hard, including through paid advertising, what the university would look like. In that context, it is fair to look at not just what might happen but what has happened in the last year. The data provided by the university vice-chancellors is, therefore, helpful in helping us form that view. It is new information. I know a couple of the researchers and lecturers in question in this list and recognise the significant role that they will play in the university going forward.

The vice-chancellors went on, in writing about regional delivery, and I quote again:

Regional Delivery

As identified in the Minority Report the viability of many offerings is dependent on scale. You correctly noted—

They indicate they were talking about me and the Hon. Jing Lee, and they quote from our report:

One area that merits serious consideration is that of courses with low student numbers. The Committee heard evidence that a risk inherent in the status quo is for such courses. As they require subsidy from other parts of the Universities' budgets, the future of these courses might be vulnerable in times of financial pressure. It was suggested that the proposed scale of the new institution would give such courses a much stronger level of protection.

They go on:

This conclusion is directly relevant to the regional campus and hubs. Both universities have invested in regional education research in Mount Gambier, Whyalla, Roseworthy and the Waite. In addition, there are focused activities in Port Lincoln, Ceduna, Elizabeth and the APY Lands. A university of scale provides the means by which the academic offerings in the regions become more sustainable and can possibly be further expanded.

In designing and implementing a new curriculum for the new University, a fundamental principle is that the student ambition and experience will be paramount. The new curriculum will be contemporary, 'modular, adaptable, and stackable' with digital underpinnings. The ability to engage with students through face-to-face, hybrid-mode or online education will provide important means of access for students in the regions. We believe that this approach to curriculum design and delivery will allow more regional students to attend Adelaide University without necessarily relocating to Adelaide.

The recently released interim report of the Australian Universities Accord has listed as a priority the establishment of 'Regional University Centres' and 'Suburb University Centres' throughout Australia. The Universities welcome this initiative and will be engaging with the Commonwealth to ensure that South Australia receives the appropriate level of support. It also believes that its curriculum and access ambitions align with the Accord's priorities. We would very much welcome State-based initiatives of this type to underpin greater access to our offerings across South Australia.

The Universities, and a future Adelaide University, will subject to sufficient demand and support actively engage with any such state policy initiatives designed to establish regional hubs or learning centres. As the founding legislation for the new Adelaide University obligates and the existing regional campuses of our two institutions demonstrate, the new University intends to serve the state, not just metropolitan Adelaide. As such, Adelaide University would, subject to the appropriate assessment, be extremely well placed to being an anchor tenant in any regional initiative that may be advanced in the future.

We again thank you for the opportunity to respond to aspects of the Minority Report. We are encouraged by the carefully consideration that has been given to the establishment of the new Adelaide University.

Yours sincerely

Professor Peter Høj AC

Vice-Chancellor and President

The University of Adelaide

Professor David Lloyd

Vice Chancellor and President

University of South Australia

The vice-chancellors, in providing that document, have been very helpful to the opposition. It is not the only reason that we have come to the view of supporting the bill. I say, again, we were instructed by the numbers and by the impact that our taking a politically expedient route would have potentially had on community confidence in the new university.

If this merger is going to take place, it is something our state's prosperity, our future students' wellbeing and our staff's wellbeing demand that it be done well. It demands that it be done with a level of as much confidence as possible. To this end, we will hold the government to account and we will call out issues with the new university when they exist. Support for this bill does not give a blank cheque, by any means, for any failures that happen in the period ahead.

I think one of the biggest risks that we are left with is the way in which this whole process has been botched, in my view, from the start. Confidence from staff and students and the community at large is important going forward. If a lack of confidence in the culture of the transition and the culture of the new university leads to people leaving, then it will highlight, I think, the failure of the government to bring people with them from the start.

The election promise for a university commission assumed that there was going to be a level of public engagement in what the outcome would be. What we have instead is a pre-determined outcome by the government and, therefore, a process that did not involve further analysis of risk or benefit before the application of public funds being promised.

I think you have to look at the staff and the question of bringing staff along. I think that either the first or second witness to the Joint Committee on the Establishment of Adelaide University was the union, which represents a good number, a significant proportion, of the staff of the universities. They felt completely alienated from the process—a process required between the government and the university to be done behind close doors.

We heard from witnesses within government, who had been engaging in this process for months prior to the heads of agreement being signed in around the middle of the year, that staff who are expected to work in these facilities were operating in a vacuum of information, and all the information released in the second half of last year and the first half of this year was really notable in terms of its being full of buzzwords and catchphrases and lacking any granular detail, lacking engagement effectively with the staff.

We understand the rigorous secrecy provisions around a cabinet process. Universities had to put up with that as well as their own provisions around protecting their own data. It is an unfortunate state of affairs that, over the last 12 months, the staff and student communities have not been brought along on the journey in the way they could have been. We will do our best in the months and years ahead to support the process, as an opposition should, through holding the government to account on issues that come about.

It is important to note that the process could have been managed so much better by the government and, even if they were going to take the proposal from universities and not pursue the commission, I think there were government processes that should have been held internally that provided a greater level of rigorous scrutiny on behalf of taxpayers and an approach to the release of information about the proposal that brought much more information to public light earlier, that enabled more staff concerns in particular to be addressed through proactive engagement earlier.

Our support for the bill does not absolve the government of responsibility for any problems that we might see along the way, but we will support the universities in seeking to realise the potential of this ambition, because the alternative, if this fails, if this goes badly, could at the very least be very costly for the state and at the very worst be very bad for the state in a long-term way.

It is worth touching on this question of risk: risk to people living in the suburbs, whether that is near Magill or Flinders University, risk to the research projects that Flinders is able to offer and the retention of its staff and risks to lacking the full realisation of opportunities for the regions. Suburbs, regions and research: the commitments we have made for a new Liberal government in 2026 will alleviate a number of those challenges.

In terms of risks to the success of the project, I think it is worth turning some attention to those risks. The minority report highlights that evidence was provided by a number of serious stakeholders to the inquiry whose evidence was, I think, not given sufficient weight by the majority report. In our minority report we highlighted a couple of those, and I particularly draw members' attention to the appearances of the NTEU, the National Tertiary Education Union, and Professor Hanmer on 8 August, and they also provided significant submissions to the review, which are publicly available.

Professor Hanmer noted that the information, the submission, provided by Adelaide University and UniSA came at the end of calls for public submissions. Professor Hanmer did a significant service to the state by then providing subsequent reflections on their submissions as well, which was taken into evidence later. I encourage people to look at that.

Professor Bebbington appeared on 10 August 2023. Warren Bebbington was Vice-Chancellor of Adelaide University for an extended period of time, and is very familiar with the organisation and with higher education policy. His testimony was dismissed by the government I think pretty blithely and that is disappointing. I think they would have done well to listen to some of the concerns he has raised, but nevertheless, members wishing to familiarise themselves with the risks that he talked about, his evidence was on 10 August this year and the Hansard is available.

Professor Derek Abbott appeared on 6 September. I am probably going to start reflecting on some of the risks that he raised, but people can, again, read through the Hansard to read that engagement. Professor Thomas, a distinguished academic with an extraordinary career in scientific fields making an extraordinary contribution towards South Australia's success, gave evidence on 21 September.

It should be noted that at least a couple of these witnesses are still serving at Adelaide University at a very high level and are no doubt contributing to the positive rankings that Adelaide University has through the quality of their research work. Indeed, they are the subject of public acclaim in many cases for some of the things that they have achieved through their work.

Now that is not to say that I agree with all the risks and concerns that they have raised. Some of the confidence I have that this can succeed—not necessarily that it will succeed but can succeed—is as a result of some of the questions that we were able to ask in the in camera session. The committee considered evidence from the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia in camera on one date and we received submissions from them. It related to material that was commercially sensitive, that was commercial-in-confidence in some ways, that underlined the business case and in particular the risk register and mitigation impacts.

The universities and the government have not wanted to release the business case—the business case, of course, that we have heard the Premier and the Deputy Premier did not read—because they were concerned about the opportunities that it might give their competitor universities. As an example, for example if we are looking to pitch to an international student market then we do not want the University of Sydney or Monash University to know our plans for that so therefore there was a risk to the state. We accept that.

The universities also identified that they did not necessarily want the line items of some of the budget spends to be particularised because that would leave the new institution in a weakened situation when trying to compete with suppliers. For example, one of the key expenses in a merger will be the assimilation of IT systems enabling the university staff to operate on a standard IT system and have protection from cyber attack with confidence and have a positive IT system that would engage the student learner experience as well as research.

I do not think that anyone here will be surprised that the experience of government and large institutions is that these are extraordinarily expensive things. It is not identified in a line item publicly because the university is understandably not wanting to put themselves at a disadvantage when negotiating with potential suppliers, but nevertheless that is something that does feed into the confidence or otherwise that people might have in whether risk mitigations are in place. I think critically the university is concerned not to give away risk mitigation proposals.

From the Liberal Party, our view is that not enough information has been provided publicly and the apparent secrecy over so much of it does lead people to have questions about whether all these things have necessarily been thought through.

Through the course of the inquiry, and particularly the in camera session, I became more confident that many of the things I would have raised had been thought through, are in the risk register and indeed have risk mitigation strategies. Whether or not I am fully satisfied they will definitely work or not, it is certainly a body of work that is significant and clearly of quality. But we cannot tell people what it is. That is one of the inherent problems with the process.

The Greens, the Liberal Party and the Hon. Frank Pangallo have for some time been calling for more information to be released. In the Liberal Party, I accept certainly that you cannot release everything, that there would need to be certain redactions to protect the state's interest in the sorts of areas I have just described. But I think this process could have been done better, with more information released.

That said, as I go through Professor Abbott's list of specific risks he brought to the attention of the committee, some of them I can reflect on, some of them I agree with, and some of them I do not share, and sometimes the reason for that is because I am aware of information the universities have given to the committee that is, for whatever reason, with the support of the government in particular, not able to be shared in a public domain. So be it. I am quoting from Professor Abbott. Under Risk 1, Professor Abbott points out that:

…the Adelaide merger study was done without transparency. Staff were not brought along. The NTEU survey showed 25 per cent in favour of the merger…on the ground those 25 per cent are largely lukewarm. One sees no enthusiasm. The elephant in the room is this: how can one possibly execute a merger as large and as complex as this if staff have not been engaged to a level where they have buy-in and ownership of the process?

I agree that that is a risk. It is a subjective question in my mind as to how many of the staff would be on Professor Abbott's side of the question and how many of the staff would be on the government's side of the question, and I suspect the fact is that there is a large group in the middle who actually just want to get on and do their jobs. Certainly, we go into this in the hope that staff will be brought along much more successfully now that it is a done deal.

Under Risk 2, Professor Abbott says:

University of Adelaide and UniSA are not well matched. They are different types of universities that serve the state differently, as I have described. To merge the two into a one-size-fits-all uni and yet operate at a Go8 level will attract fewer students into the state, as compared with operating them separately.

Then he talks about a two-tier system. I am not sure that I fully agree with this. There is evidence in the committee's report, for example, that suggests that the entrance level for those students using an ATAR to enter the University of Adelaide and UniSA is actually much more similar than I think is believed to be the case.

I think many domestic students will choose a university based on the campus fit that feels most right for them. Geographical choices fit into it. Vibe and culture even inform the student experience, and there is a question mark over how those things will play out in the future with just one university. Certainly, for someone living adjacent to the Magill campus being able to walk to uni is no longer an opportunity for them to consider.

I think that some of the assumptions that many people might have about the quality of preparation for students going to the two universities is not necessarily accurate any longer. I reflect on contributions made by members of the Parliamentary Liberal Party to discussions. The concern of graduates of the University of South Australia was not that the new university would capture all of the quality and the prestige of Adelaide University. Their concern was that the positive student experience they had and the graduate satisfaction they had at UniSA would not be replicated. The truth is that is a risk too.

What we want to see, and what we will need to see if we are to see the opportunities fully realised, is the best of both universities brought along, and that will require work. I do not necessarily accept the risk described here.

Under Risk 3, Professor Abbott says:

…an exodus is inevitable. In a merger as large and as complex as this, resources and time get diverted from core business activities The top 200 staff who are research intensive are those that can be employed in any university in the world with ease. As soon as merger activities slow down their research progress they will be a flight risk.

Certainly, that goes to some of the points I have already been making. If the worst-case scenario comes to be the case and a lot of those 200 staff leave, that will be a big problem for the university. That is a specific issue which was raised with the vice-chancellors and which they have addressed, and certainly I take some comfort from the vice-chancellors' response to this.

We certainly do not want to see those staff leave. I guess the call is to everybody: if you know a university researcher operating at a top level, encourage them to stay, because our state will need them. The risk needs to be understood there. I am not sure the committee report fully accepted it. I am grateful that the vice-chancellors recognise that risk and have duly responded.

Risk 4 identified is that:

…staff layoffs and cost overruns are inevitable. In year 4 of the Manchester merger it became clear that the goals of the merger were off target. The university went £3 million into deficit and laid off 400 staff. Then, in year 5 of the merger, £1 billion was injected to ensure its success. And this was a tiny merger where there were only 6,000 students. By contrast UniSA is over 30,000. And so the capacity for cost overrun is much bigger.

In relation to costs and future investments, I guess the point I would make—and this does touch on some of the material that was received in camera—is that I don't think it is reasonable to talk about the application of funds that are already in the universities' budgets for expenditure in the coming decade as cost overrun when applied in the new university's context. I will give an example. There are two health science buildings on North Terrace that have been invested in by the two universities over the last decade. They spent $300 million each on these two separate buildings. The point has been made that, if you had two universities working together on one strategic plan, you might have had a better outcome than the two separate $300 million buildings with one $500 million building and you would have $100 million left over.

The two universities that we have at the moment have forward budgets with significant investment expectations in relation to infrastructure, IT and curriculum design and development that are already in their budgets going forward. The merger would effectively see those quantums brought together and enabled to be invested strategically in the state's interests by one institution. The scale of those sums is significant, let's say, and I do not think would fairly be categorised as a cost overrun when they are expended.

Having insight such as we were given in the committee into that expenditure is useful in informing us. It is really unfortunate from my point of view that it is not available to the broader public to understand. I understand why the universities are reluctant to provide it, but I urge the universities and the government to again make available as much of the information as is viable—as is possible—to help build community confidence that they are not going to see cost overruns that might see the university coming back to the state asking for further investment.

In saying the Liberal Party will support the bill, we do so partly in confidence from having understood the business case detail that has not been released publicly that there is unlikely to be that further call on the taxpayer requiring further significant investment and that would be very unfortunate if it was not realised. Professor Abbott says:

Risk 5: the merger is unprecedented. The Premier himself has correctly stated that no merger of this type and size has been done before. But this should cause us immediate concern, surely. Add to that the large difference in ranking between the two universities, their different ethos, different cultures. What is concerning is that no-one knows how to even do a merger like that. Our management has zero experience with that.

Consultants have zero experience with that and so forth. He continues:

The chance of failure will put our state and our universities at risk of reputational damage.

That is a risk. There is no comparable merger.

Risk 6: irreversibility. Once the egg has been scrambled, you can't put it back in its shell. Therefore, if the merger were to go ahead it would need more realistic costing and much larger funding to ensure success.

Irreversibility, I agree with. Nevertheless, we have One Nation and the Hon. Connie Bonaros in the upper house confirming the merger is going ahead and I make my comments in that environment. With realistic costing and much larger funding I think that when you take into account the universities' own forward budgets that is probably less of a risk.

Risk 7: the project is highly undercosted.

I think that is basically addressed by the comments I have just made. He continues:

Risk 8: the merger business case relies on a further 6,000 international students. What if they don't come? The risk is heightened when you consider that the cost of living, housing and rent in Adelaide are sharply rising, while China is undergoing a property market crash right now and its economy is tanking. This change in economic outlook, together with geopolitical tension, means that reliance on extra international students is completely fraught.

To that end, it is a risk. The opportunity provided by the merger assumes that 5,000 to 7,000 international students will come here. That will unlock extra funding that can be applied to research, which will improve rankings, which will bring in extra international students, and so on. The virtuous circle relies on international students coming in and if they do not that is a risk. I will get to a conversation about addressing that question when we have the opportunity to come back. With that, I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

Sitting suspended from 12:58 to 14:00.