Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) Share this | Hansard source

Currently AUQA reports are public. The minister also takes the view that there is no difficulty in providing information on a public basis beyond that report if there is a breach of the voluntary protocols that would be entered into.

Can I just indicate the reasons why the government does not support the opposition’s amendments. Essentially, the opposition amendments would maintain penalties for noncompliance with the national governance protocols. In our judgement, these amendments seek to entrench the current prescriptive and punitive approach towards the national governance protocols—that is, to maintain a financial penalty on universities for breaches of the detailed requirements that do not respect the institutional autonomy of universities. They do not recognise the professional responsibilities of universities. Financial penalties are in fact very substantial, with a 7.5 per cent reduction in a university’s base grant. The penalty would be incurred if a minister, not just the current minister but any minister into the future while these provisions apply, is not satisfied—’satisfied’ is the word used to describe the criteria on which these assessments would be made—and that the university has not met its obligations under the national governance protocols.

There are three key reasons why the government is seeking to remove these provisions that the opposition is seeking to maintain. Firstly, they do not allow for diversity in university governance. Secondly, they are not focused on increasing accountability or imposing outcomes. They are about micromanagement of universities and they are about fundamentally undermining the institutional autonomy of our academic institutions. Thirdly, they demonstrate a fundamental distrust of our higher education institutions and, as I said, they constitute a threat to the autonomy of such institutions. The government is committed to taking the foot off the throats of our academic institutions.