Nelson's renewed attack on universities

Bob Briton

Last week Federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson went public 
with plans for higher education that he intends to ram through 
the Parliament when the new Coalition-dominated Senate sits in 
July. Nelson will dust off bills blocked in the upper house last 
December to remove current limits on the number of university 
staff employed as casuals and to impose non-union Australian 
Workplace Agreements (AWAs — individual work contracts). He will 
move to stop compulsory membership of student unions and to ban 
strikes by staff likely to adversely affect "innocent third 
parties". But he is not going to stop there.

Nelson would also like to wrest the last vestiges of control of 
the country's universities from the states and be able to appoint 
their governing boards and council members.

According to Nelson, universities should be forced to become 
either narrowly defined teaching or research institutes. The 
research unis especially should open themselves up to 
"partnership" opportunities with private enterprise. He already 
has in mind the merging of activities undertaken at the 
Australian National University and the CSIRO, which itself has 
been forced into greater service to the corporate sector.

University heads are outraged. The Australian Vice-Chancellors 
Committee (AVCC) thought that they had secured a deal with the 
Commonwealth last December that would remain in place for the 
foreseeable future. Committee President Di Yerbury complained in 
the media about the Minister's lack of good faith: "Neither the 
AVCC nor the Government achieved everything they were after. 
However, we did negotiate and compromise on what we believed was, 
overall, a desirable outcome."

Unfortunately for students, part of the "desirable outcome" was a 
hike in uni fees of up to 25 per cent due to come into force next 
year. In the meantime, the promised review of the declining real 
value of Commonwealth base grants to universities is yet to 
begin. The vice-chancellors have just been handed a lesson on the 
value of unprincipled compromises with the Howard Government.

At present there is a limit on the employment of staff as casuals 
in universities of between 12 and 25 percent. Universities also 
allow for individual agreements with workers on condition that 
the terms are better than the collective agreement reached with 
other staff. Nelson's insistence on AWAs would remove this 
safeguard. AWAs would override the relevant collective agreement 
and ensure that inferior pay and conditions could be imposed on 
uni staff.

Of course, this is not the way Nelson is presenting the "reform". 
The government's propaganda line on AWAs is that they are good 
for productivity and good news for workers' pay packets. "We 
strongly want to drive this performance culture and financial 
rewards for performance culture", he told the press last week. 
Not many are buying Nelson's snake oil, however. Surveys reveal 
that the overwhelming majority of uni staff would prefer to have 
a union-negotiated collective agreement.

The meddling Minister would also like to stop universities 
granting staff time off to negotiate enterprise bargaining 
agreements. He wants to ban industrial action by staff that could 
hurt "innocent third parties". This is widely assumed to be aimed 
at preventing staff taking action during class or at exam times 
or when it could prevent the processing of students' results. It 
is more likely that the Howard Government would take the broadest 
possible interpretation of this anti-union legislation.

The Government's contempt for unions is also on display with 
Nelson's intention to resurrect legislation to stop compulsory 
membership of student unions. Decades upon decades of democratic 
tradition would be under threat if the Minister gets his way. 
Conditions for students would also suffer greatly.

"Plans to outlaw compulsory student unionism would see the 
erosion of important protections, and result in a sharp decline 
in student services such as accommodation, childcare, sporting 
facilities and counselling", as Democrat Senator Natasha Stott 
Despoja noted.

Nelson's latest claim on the university sector involves wrenching 
the last remnants of control over the institutions from the 
states. While the Commonwealth took over most of the funding of 
higher education in 1974 as part of the sweeping progressive 
changes under the Whitlam Government, the current minister wants 
to assume total control in order to force his "performance 
culture" on them.

Universities are established under state acts. This enables the 
states to control their borrowing and commercial activities and 
part of the responsibility for filling governing councils. Nelson 
wants it all and unfortunately it appears that some state 
governments are willing to talk it over. While Queensland and 
Tasmania have reacted against the power gab, the Carr Government 
had already expressed its willingness to trade health and 
education responsibilities. Victorian Education and Training 
Minister Lynne Kosky is also "happy to have the conversation" 
with her Federal counterpart.

Dr Nelson insists that the current mode of operation of 
Australian universities is promoting "mediocrity" — a favourite 
neo-liberal term of abuse. "Too often the states see universities 
as quasi government departments. I think there are unnecessary 
restrictions on commercial activities", the Minister said.

The Minister might well be about to throw a match into an 
explosive situation developing on Australia's uni campuses. 
National Tertiary Education Union president Carolyn Allport has 
warned of national strike action at our universities: "Brendan 
Nelson is going to destabilise each institution in the country 
and his reforms will not get through because they are not useful 
or helpful."

This determined stance deserves the support of the rest of the 
labour movement and the community. Nelson cannot claim any 
"mandate" for this post-election ambush.