Bills

Statutes Amendment (Universities - Caps on Vice Chancellor Salaries) Bill

Introduction and First Reading

The Hon. R.A. SIMMS (16:31): Obtained leave and introduced a bill for an act to amend the Adelaide University Act 2023 and the Flinders University Act 1966. Read a first time.

Second Reading

The Hon. R.A. SIMMS (16:32): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Today, I seek to introduce a simple bill to cap the salaries of South Australian vice-chancellors and put them on par with our Premier. Australian vice-chancellors are some of the highest paid in the world, doubling and sometimes tripling the salaries of their US and UK counterparts. On 25 August The Advertiser reported that the University of Adelaide chief, Professor Peter Høj, earned a 24 per cent pay rise last year to between $1.3 million and almost $1.314 million, according to the university's annual report. Meanwhile, Professor David Lloyd earned $1.303 million in 2024 and Flinders University vice-chancellor, Colin Stirling, earned a 9 per cent pay rise and earned over $1.43 million during that financial year.

I understand that the salary being provided to the new vice-chancellor of the new merged Adelaide University has not yet been published. National Tertiary Education Union state secretary, Andrew Miller, who is locked in staff pay talks, criticised that 'unreasonable secrecy' and said, 'The university is a public entity, therefore all South Australians deserve to know how much the incoming VC is being paid.' I agree. The amount of $450 million in taxpayer funds has been allocated to support the merger of the University of South Australia and the University of Adelaide.

The Greens have been advocating for some time that vice-chancellors' salaries should be capped, and we suggested they should be capped in line with the salary of our Premier. That salary is $436,000 a year. Our Governor is paid $495,000. When one considers the responsibilities associated with these roles—people who are, in effect, running our state—the salaries of our vice-chancellors do seem really out of step with community expectations.

The reality is that our universities are treating their vice-chancellors like they are CEOs. CEOs are often chosen for their ability to turn a profit and make money, but the rest of the university sector is plagued by low pay, poor job security, unpaid hours and employment law contraventions. Indeed, in 2022, vice-chancellor remuneration was at least seven times more than that of university lecturers, more than nine times that of a high school teacher, and over 10 times more than that of a primary school teacher.

Meanwhile, the average remuneration for university tutors, a job that has become highly casualised, insecure and often involves significant hours of unpaid work, is under $23,000 per year, less than 3 per cent of the average vice-chancellor's salary. Poor labour conditions are not just an issue for tutors; they are rife across the sector. The National Tertiary Education Union estimates that there is more than $400 million in wage theft across the sector.

So why are we treating our universities like corporations, like degree factories? Why are we putting profits ahead of teaching, learning and research? Why are we paying our vice-chancellors almost three times as much as the Premier? We cannot continue to allow the corporate greed to run rampant in our universities. They are institutions of higher learning and they should be treated as such. There is a great deal more work that must be done to reform our university sectors.

Indeed, I am disappointed that when there was an opportunity to do this when we were setting up our new university, there was no enthusiasm from the Labor government, or indeed some of my crossbench colleagues, to actually deal with the issue of governance of our universities, to tackle exorbitant vice-chancellor and executive salaries, and also to ensure that students and staff had more of a say in the running of the new institution.

Universities must continue to be promoted as places of higher education, not simply as degree factories and money makers. I hope that members of all sides of politics will support this bill. Let's not forget that we are seeing these exorbitant vice-chancellor salaries at a time when students are paying through the teeth to go to university and when South Australians are in the midst of the worst cost-of-living crisis in generations. To see these salaries in excess of $1 million is just obscene.

I think a lot of South Australians would be scratching their head and saying. 'These are public institutions. They getting a lot of taxpayer support. Is this really the best way to use taxpayer money?' I hope that all political parties will come on board and support this very straightforward and sensible proposition from the Greens.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. I.K. Hunter.