Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are 200,000 people working in our universities who deserve better than the governance disasters that so many vice-chancellors around the country are serving up. To give one example, this week the National Tertiary Education Union uncovered new revelations about the University of Wollongong and its interim vice-chancellor, John Dewar. Mr Dewar is a partner at consulting firm KordaMentha, who, it just so happens, the university has hired to advise on a restructure of the university's operations. The university said that Mr Dewar has been on unpaid leave at KordaMentha since he took on the vice-chancellor's role, but it was revealed yesterday that in fact he has continued working for KordaMentha while picking up his $1 million salary from the university. This absolutely screams of a conflict of interest. As the National Tertiary Education Union general secretary, Damien Cahill, said:

Why on earth would you choose KordaMentha, fully aware your hand-picked interim vice-chancellor was going to continue to work for them, to review the university if you took conflicts of interest seriously?

On top of all this, the university has cut 91 jobs and is threatening more. It raises serious questions about financial mismanagement at universities, when you are sacking staff and cutting courses, while at the same time you are handing out lucrative contracts to your vice-chancellor's consulting firm. These are serious issues to explore here. That is why I'm chairing, and the Albanese government is supporting, an inquiry into university governance, but, critically—to the minister's credit—it is why he set up an expanded inquiry into the Expert Council on University Governance. These are important steps to make sure that universities' governance are an improvement to what is going on now. Wollongong university is an unfortunate but obvious example of why these vice-chancellors need to be held to account.