FLINDERS UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA ACT

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (15:47): I rise to make some comments on proposed changes to the Flinders University of South Australia Act. Yesterday staff members of the Flinders University of South Australia, at 10.58am, received an email. That email was from the Vice Chancellor and was sent to all staff. It read:

Changing the Flinders University of South Australia Act

The 2011 review of the University Council's structure and operation and subsequent Council discussions has established strong support within Council for the greater flexibility to determine its own size and composition. The University has therefore approached the state government about amending the legislation that governs the composition of the Council.

Council has formed the view that its membership must be predominantly external and that a smaller council will facilitate more effective engagement of members and more effective decision-making.

In a dynamic higher education environment, Flinders must attract people to University Council with a diversity of skills and experience who can support the University to meet its strategic objectives. This may be more difficult to achieve with election of stakeholder representatives to a council of reduced size.

It has been proposed to the State Government that the membership of Council should be no fewer than 12 and no greater than 20. The current Council's view is that a membership of 14 to 15 will achieve the necessary balance of skills and experience with the perceived benefits of smaller size.

The state government has been very receptive to this proposed legislated change, which is in line with modern governance trends and similar to changes made to the legislation of universities in NSW. It is possible that amending legislation can be passed later this year or early next year. Elections to replace staff and student positions on Council which come to an end 31 December 2012 have been postponed in the interim.

If the legislative changes are achieved, Council intends to retain the current ex officio members which include the Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor and Chair of Academic Senate. A minimum of one staff member, appointed or elected, and one student member will be retained in the new composition of Council.

The intended appointment of the President of the Students' Association to Council will ensure that the council's discussions and decisions have input from the person having the most direct contact with the student body and understanding of the issues affecting students.

The University has been discussing potential transitional arrangements involving appointment rather than election of student representatives to Council for 2013, if amending legislation is not passed this year. In this event, elections for staff member positions on Council will proceed in February 2013.

It is signed off by Michael Barber, the current Flinders University Vice Chancellor. This raises concerns. At the bottom at of this email, it states:

This message is from the Vice-Chancellor to all staff. If you are not a member of staff at Flinders University please ignore this message.

The Greens will not ignore this message. This is a message that says that universities are corporations, not cultural institutions that are, in fact, democratic institutions and proudly so. Reducing the number of stakeholder representatives is out of step with what the community expects from university governance. This is not the board of BHP. The council of a university should ensure that its staff and its students have a right to be appropriately engaged in the decision-making processes of that institution. I would question the potential for one lone student to be able to influence any decision-making process undertaken by the university council in this new intended configuration. Certainly, the email itself does not give clarity whether or not the staff members would be appointed or elected in the same way the students have been assumed to have taken on that president of the Student Association role.

The Greens are incredibly concerned about this. It follows from the recent reforms to TAFE under state legislation, which has stripped staff and students in TAFE of a say in internal democracy. It flies in the face of the history of universities being more than simply a place where you go to learn. Clearly, the focus of becoming more corporatised and having a streamlined decision-making system is in chase of the dollar and profitability—but at what expense? I would say that it is at the expense of democracy and of true university culture. Certainly, the Greens will not ignore this email, and this will not be the last you will hear of this issue.