Australian Greens' additional comments
1.1The Greens welcome the opportunity to contribute additional comments to the committee's interim report and thank the witnesses and those who made submissions for their time and the expertise they contributed to the inquiry process.
1.2The Greens acknowledge the strength and courage of staff and students who have spoken out amidst the hostile environment and threat of repercussions. This inquiry would not exist without the activism, advocacy, and solidarity demonstrated by university communities and union representatives. TheGreens will continue to amplify their voices in our mission to rebuild universities based on equity, democracy, and the public good.
1.3Having worked in the university sector as an academic and researcher, I know firsthand how universities transform individuals, communities, and society for the better, by supporting staff and students and fulfilling their public mission. Ihave witnessed some of the corporatisation and decline, but even I am shocked by the depth and breadth of anxiety, stress, trauma and fear that staff are subjected to, and the lack of accountability and transparency that vice‑chancellors and executives get away with, without any repercussions or recourse.
1.4We note that university governance issues are not new but have been exacerbated and exposed over time. Governance failings, the increasing corporatisation of the public university, funding cuts and freezes, and neo‑liberal policies have left universities in crisis. The overwhelming evidence provided to this inquiry further points to the dire state of university governance and the resulting systemic issues.
1.5Executives are paid exorbitant salaries and receive lavish benefits, while staff and students bear the brunt of job cuts, wage theft, course cancellations, and casualisation. Conflicts of interest are rife, and millions of dollars of public funding are being poured into private consultants rather than into our public education. It is clear that universities are in a structural crisis. It is clear that university governance requires an overhaul. This will require transformative change that returns universities to their purpose of public good and service to the community.
1.6Successive Coalition and Labor governments have played a part in the path to this crisis: chronically underfunding universities, hiking student fees, and leaving staff and students to cope with casualisation, job insecurity, wage theft, and crushing student debt for far too long. The decline of university rankings in Australia is just one indicator of these systemic issues that plague universities.
1.7The Greens welcome this interim report which details the severity of the crisis at hand and responds to some governance issues. The Greens make the following observations and recommendations to strengthen the interim report.
1.8While this interim report does not focus on broader issues of corporatisation of universities, we believe this issue cannot be separated from the problems of accountability and transparency that this report highlights. Neither can the recent fee hikes and funding cuts of the Job-ready Graduates Package. Hence, these have been included in our additional comments.
1.9The corporate reshaping of universities as businesses that operate in a market is replacing the public-focussed mission of the university with an agenda centred on production of work-ready students and profit-maximising commercialisation of research. Our universities should be places of knowledge creation and sharing, critical thinking, academic freedom, innovation and democracy that serve the public good. To achieve the transformative change required, university governance must move away from a 'corporate university' to a public university whose central purpose is education and research to serve the public good and service the community.
1.10We agree with the analysis of the Australia Institute on this point that the role and purpose of public universities should be made explicit and clear, and can be done in the following ways.[1]
Recommendation 1
1.11That the Australian Tertiary Education Commission's foundational legislation should clearly articulate the public mission and the educational, social, and civic functions of a public university sector.
Recommendation 2
1.12That the establishing acts of universities be amended to clarify that their central purpose is public research and education, not commercial or corporate performance.
1.13Improvements to the quality of governance at Australian higher education providers cannot be separated from the well-being of students who are being crushed under a lifetime of debt. The fee hikes of the disastrous Job-ready Graduates Package have resulted in $50 000 arts degrees, and the Government's own Universities Accord process found that the Job-ready Graduates Package required 'urgent remediation'.[2]
1.14It is a rarity where students and staff, and university executives agreed in this inquiry, but it was unanimously agreed that the job-ready graduates fee hikes and funding cuts should be immediately reversed, with Universities Australia declaring it should be 'dead, buried, cremated and replaced'.[3] Many others also provided evidence of the damaging effects of this package.[4] Distinguished Professor George Williams AO, Vice-Chancellor and President of Western Sydney University, declared it to be 'one of the top five worst public policy mistakes made in the last 20 years in this country'.[5]
Recommendation 3
1.15That the Australian Government immediately reverse the Job-ready Graduates Package fee hikes and funding cuts.
1.16Accountability begins with transparency. It is common practice in universities around the world for university councils and governing body meetings to be mandatorily held in public,[6] and livestreamed online (as is the case for the University of Oxford, Harvard University, and the ETH Zürich). There is no justification for Australian universities to be exempt from this transparency measure.
Recommendation 4
1.17That the meetings of all university councils and governing bodies be held in public and be livestreamed online.
1.18In order for our higher education providers to fulfil their missions as public institutions and be accountable to the public, they must reflect the communities and people that they serve. The inclusivity and diversity of our universities cannot be mere platitudes, these principles must be intentional and substantive, from the very top.
Recommendation 5
1.19That all higher education provider governing bodies reflect the community's diversity including First Nations peoples, Culturally and Racially Marginalised people, and people with disabilities.
1.20It is inconceivable that someone can sit on a university governing board without having experience in public administration or even higher education expertise. The absence of this experience has fed directly into the corporatisation of universities,[7] as their boards are ill-equipped to make decisions in the public interest and with an appropriate understanding of the university environment in which they operate. It is imperative that council members have experience in higher education or public administration.
Recommendation 6
1.21That the majority of members on university governing bodies have public administration and higher education expertise.
1.22Staff and student representation on governing boards and university councils continues to diminish, widening the disconnect between universities' management and their communities. Positions on governing bodies are increasingly being filled by corporate executives and consultants, who now account for 27 per cent of university council membership.[8] We are now at a point where the 'basic structure of University Councils is profoundly undemocratic'.[9] There must be a shift back towards more staff and students on governing bodies so decisions are made by the university communities not just executives and corporate appointees.
Recommendation 7
1.23That a minimum membership requirement of at least 50 per cent democratically elected staff and student representatives (including undergraduate and postgraduate students) be set for governing bodies.
1.24As recommended by the report, governing bodies must be required to publish council minutes, but the extent of opaqueness highlighted by the inquiry proves that transparency mechanisms need to go further.[10]
1.25Stop Woodside Monash in its submission detailed that responses to freedom of information requests were met with an 'absolute blanket rejection of every word of every document', showing 'a disturbing lack of transparency'.[11] These are often documents that should already have been in the public domain. Universities must be prevented from hiding behind claims of commercial‑in‑confidence and escaping transparency and accountabilities.
1.26University communities and the public are entitled to know the decisions and findings of reports and reviews to institutions.
Recommendation 8
1.27That, in addition to council minutes, reports produced for council and annual self-performance reviews be published on university websites.
1.28Undoubtedly, universities must examine and enhance their complaints processes, as we have heard countless testimonies in this inquiry of staff and student complaints falling into the abyss, and in the worst cases, resulting in persecution and intimidation of staff and students.
1.29Complaint process reform must be developed with students, staff, and student bodies so that they are fit for purpose and have embedded accountability and appeal measures.
Recommendation 9
1.30That complaints processes be examined and enhanced by working with students, staff, and student bodies.
1.31In addition, universities' current consultation with students and staff is completely unsatisfactory. The Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations and the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Postgraduate Association emphasised in their submission that consultation is 'perceived as tokenistic, or lacking authenticity'.[12] Students reported being 'intimidated, mistreated and gaslit' with their community connections being vilified instead of seen as a valuable perspective.[13]
1.32Staff council members who have raised criticism of council decisions or executives have become genuinely fearful for their job security.[14] We also heard from an Australian National University staff member in the public hearing who felt that their 'career has been derailed' as a result.[15] The sole elected staff councillor at Federation University reflected on this hostility, submitting that he had been 'subject to intimidation, vilification, attempts at silencing' for raising concerns about the decisions and behaviour of management, and 'mocked by the chair' when making contributions to council meetings.[16] To address this abuse of process from university executives, a prescriptive framework for genuine student and staff engagement in all decision making relating to change proposals, corporate and academic governance must be prescribed by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency.
Recommendation 10
1.33That the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency's Higher Education Standards Framework be amended to include a consultation framework for how universities meaningfully involve, consult and work with students and staff as partners in major change proposals, prior to decisions being made.
1.34This inquiry has further exposed what lies beneath the tip of the governance failure iceberg—overpaid and arrogant management and their largesse, opaque, unaccountable, and top-down decision-making, and governance bodies stacked with corporate appointees.
1.35Immense courage has been shown by university staff, students, and their unions in highlighting the structural problems at individual universities and the structural issues that plague the sector more broadly, despite the risk of consequences they may face for telling it like it is.
1.36It is imperative that the Government listen to the damning evidence provided to this inquiry, take seriously the recommendations being made by staff and students, and act strongly to turn things around so our universities can once again be institutions that are grounded in equity, democracy, accountability, and transparency in order to pursue their public research and education mission, not chase corporate or commercial interests.
1.37This interim report makes the urgent need for an overhaul of hefty vice‑chancellor and executive salaries and cleaning up university governance bodies crystal clear.We must ensure that they are transparent and accountable to staff, students, and the public, have the required higher education expertise and are run by staff and students, not stacked with corporate elites. This will be a big step forward for a more democratic university which serves the public interest.
Senator Mehreen Faruqi
Senator for New South Wales
Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens
Australian Greens spokesperson for Higher Education
Footnotes
[1]The Australia Institute, Submission 105 (47th Parliament), p. 9.
[2]Australian Government, Australian Universities Accord Final Report, p. 12.
[3]Mr Luke Sheehy, Chief Executive Officer, Universities Australia, Proof Committee Hansard, 12August 2025, p. 12.
[4]Dr Martin Parkinson AC PSM, Chancellor, Macquarie University, Proof Committee Hansard, 8September 2025, p. 54 and Mr Paul Harris, Executive Director, Innovative Research Universities, Proof Committee Hansard, 8 September 2025, p. 50.
[5]Distinguished Professor George Williams AO, Vice-Chancellor and President, Western Sydney University, Proof Committee Hansard, 8 September 2025, p. 9.
[6]The Australian Institute, Submission 105 (47th Parliament), p. 23.
[7]National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), Submission 15 (47th Parliament), p. 4.
[8]NTEU, Submission 15 (47th Parliament), Attachment 3 (The corporatisation of university governance in Australia), p. 3.
[9]University of Wollongong NTEU Branch Committee, Submission 78 (47th Parliament), [p. 6].
[10]The University of Western Australia Academic Staff Association, Submission 38 (47th Parliament), p.2.
[11]Stop Woodside Monash, Submission 118 (47th Parliament), p. 2.
[12]Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations and National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Postgraduate Association, Submission 60 (47th Parliament), [p. 16].
[13]Mr William Burfoot, President, Australian National University Students' Association, ProofCommittee Hansard, 12 August 2025, p. 20.
[14]Mr Millan Pintos-Lopez, Private capacity, ProofCommittee Hansard, 12 August 2025, p. 27.
[15]Dr Liz Allen, Private capacity, ProofCommittee Hansard, 12 August 2025, p. 29.
[16]Dr Mathew Abbott, Federation University Branch President, NTEU, ProofCommittee Hansard, 12March 2025, p. 3.
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