Advocate, Nov 2020

Advocate VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020 ◆ ISSN 1329-7295

2020 Federal Budget fails universities

Coalition slashes A&TSI student funding

Wage theft is core university business

Sham contracting at JMC

Foreign relations rule changes

National Council 2020

State of the Uni Survey 2020

STFs: Fractured futures?

New Secretaries in Tas & WA

JOB-READY GRADUATES PACKAGE: AN ATTACK ON HIGHER EDUCATION Coalition’s latest attack on universities becomes law

Going to university just got harder for working class kids

Curtains for Theatre & Performance at Monash

Higher education should be for everyone

Clear-felling environmental expertise

Tales from the trenches in Tasmania and SA

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In this edition 2

Meeting COVID challenges Matthew McGowan, General Secretary

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LETTER 4

25 2020 Federal Budget fails universities Students pay more. Staff do more. Universities get less.

2020: A year like no other Dr Alison Barnes, National President

A response from ‘No Concessions’ casuals to ‘Letter to a fellow worker’

UNION BUSINESS 28 Wage theft is core university business

29 AUR: recent past and near future

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30 Fractured futures? Recent transformations of academic work

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Flawed foreign relations bill tightens the reins on university independence

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USYD professor arrested at protest

NTEU secures right to protest

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State of the Uni Survey: Working in higher education during 2020

WERTE! 11 Racism is a union issue

What was the impact of the STF on the structure of the higher education workforce and on the future prospects for academic workers?

13 Online Forums see greater member involvement JOB-READY GRADUATES 14 Job-Ready Graduates Bill passes into law The Coalition's latest attack on the higher education sector, the Job-Ready Graduates package, was passed by the Senate in October.

16 Clear-felling environmental expertise Job-Ready Graduates cut environmental courses just when the nation needs them the most.

18 Jacqui Lambie is right: It just got harder for working class kids like me to go to university

33 Out from under the cover of COVID INTERNATIONAL 34 Hong Kong trade union leader re-arrested 35 Building on the moment

DELEGATE PROFILE 36 Professor Peter Dabnichki, RMIT MY UNION 38 National Council during COVID Over 100 rank and file delegates and officers met at the end of October for the first online NTEU National Council.

41 Vale Prof Tracey Bretag 42 Anna Stewart Memorial Project continues in 2020 44 Sara Ranatunge awarded 2020 Carolyn Allport Scholarship

20 Higher education should be for everyone

46 Tasmania farewells Kelvin Michael

22 Curtains for Theatre & Performance Monash is gutting the Centre for Theatre and Performance without the consultation of staff or students.

24 Tales from the trenches Jenny Smith and Cécile Dutreix on the NTEU campaign to convince crossbench senators voting for the Job-Ready Graduates Bill.

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40 Life Members 2020

45 2020 Joan Hardy Scholarship goes to Sonja Dawson

21 Fighting course cuts at GU & QCA

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Never let a good global crisis go to waste.

Those in powerful roles in society – including the tertiary education sector in Aotearoa/NZ – certainly haven’t and neither must we.

Danijel Malbasa reflects on Lambie's speech opposing the Job-Ready Graduates Bill.

Under the Job-Ready Graduates rules, Celeste Liddle would not have made it to university.

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32 Wear It Purple Day: mostly remotely!

ACTU Indigenous Conference & Organising Conference 2020.

12 Coalition slashes A&TSI student funding

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COVID-19 has exposed the destructive consequences of an over reliance on casual labour in universities.

NEWS NTEU launches legal action against JMC alleging sham contracting

Cover image: Higher education should be for everyone. Mohammad Shahhosseini/Unsplash

FEDERAL BUDGET

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46 Pep Turner takes over as Tasmanian Division Secretary 47 Jonathan Hallett steps down in WA Division 47 Cathy Moore elected new WA Division Secretary

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48 New NTEU staff

Updating your membership info

ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020

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◆ FROM THE GENERAL SECRETARY

ADVOCATE

ISSN 1329-7295

All text & images ©NTEU 2020 unless otherwise stated

Publisher Matthew McGowan Editor Alison Barnes Production Manager Paul Clifton Editorial Assistance Anastasia Kotaidis Published by National Tertiary Education Union ABN 38 579 396 344

PO Box 1323, South Melbourne VIC 3205 Australia Feedback & advertising advocate@nteu.org.au

READ ONLINE AT NTEU.ORG.AU/ADVOCATE

Matthew McGowan, General Secretary k mmcgowan@nteu.org.au

Meeting COVID challenges The trauma of 2020 is nearly behind us, and we are all hoping for a COVID–normal Christmas.

As we prepare for a much-needed break it is worth acknowledging that many of our colleagues are still facing insecurity about next year, with no clear journey to post-COVID recovery yet for our tertiary education sector.

I have been incredibly impressed and humbled this year by the willingness of our membership to be truly collective at heart, and willing to put their individual needs second to the needs of the broader higher education community, and to act in a way that delivers the best outcomes for the most number of people in their workplaces.

NTEU NATIONAL EXECUTIVE National President Alison Barnes General Secretary Matthew McGowan National Assistant Secretary Gabe Gooding Vice-President (Academic) Andrew Bonnell Vice-President (General Staff) Cathy Rojas Acting A&TSI Policy Committee Chair

Sharlene Leroy-Dyer National Executive: Steve Adams, Nikola Balnave, Damien Cahill, Vince Caughley, Cathy Day, Andrea LamontMills, Michael McNally, Virginia Mansel Lees, Cathy Moore, Rajeev Sharma, Melissa Slee, Ron Slee, Michael Thomson, Perpetua Turner, Nick Warner

Advocate is available online free as a PDF and an e-book at nteu.org.au/advocate NTEU members may opt for ‘soft delivery’ of Advocate (email notification rather than printed version) at nteu.org.au/soft_delivery In accordance with NTEU policy to reduce our impact on the natural environment, Advocate is printed using vegetable based inks with alcohol free printing initiatives on FSC certified paper under ISO 14001 Environmental Certification.

Environment ISO 14001 2

The plastic bags used for postage of Advocate to home addresses are 100% biodegradable.

D @NTEUNational

I was very proud to lead the efforts of our union to prosecute a National Jobs Protection Framework to guide us through the worst crisis our industry has every faced. It gave us a strong vision and a strategy to save jobs. If only our university managements and VCs had a similar commitment to the whole.

I ask members to think about sending an email of thanks to your local Union reps – they have worked so hard this year representing your interests to your employers and to our national Union, often without thanks or recognition. It’s a small gesture that will be appreciated.

We have achieved much this year in a difficult climate. Whatever disappointments and challenges this year presented, the Union has stood firm and come out stronger at the end of it. If you haven’t read the Union’s Annual Report, I recommend taking the time to see what your Union has achieved. In short: • Strong membership growth.

• Strong support for the efforts of the Union to protect jobs.

• Strong campaign efforts that have increased Union influence We have to be looking to the next year and what will face us then.

In this COVID-impacted environment, we must prepare for enterprise bargaining in 2021. National Council will consider our

ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020

strategy in early December. But several things are clear. University staff have made significant sacrifices over this year including rapid responses to shifting courses online, adjusting to a new working reality from home and in the office, and of course, the uncertainty of how the financial difficulties will impact on employment and workloads.

Things will continue to be difficult next year, but workers in universities have a right to expect management to recognise and support the efforts made by staff.

Bargaining will be about solving issues that existed before COVID, but made more urgent as a result. Issues like; • Insecure work – The Academy needs to find a better way to build pathways into academia than unmanaged casual labour. The sink or swim, or rather the tread water for a decade, approach cannot be acceptable into the future.

• For professional and academic research staff, the life of rolling fixed term contracts without end – it has to end.

Our brightest researchers are being thrown on the scrap heap without fair compensation.

• Recent Federal Court cases raise questions about the protections in place for academic and intellectual freedom.

• Recent Choice of Fund legislation and proposals to 'staple' staff to a particular super fund present real challenges for UniSuper. We need to consider our response to possible threats to the retirement incomes of our members.

There are many more issues that may arise in the debates, but these will be debated and resolved at a Bargaining Conference and Special National Council Meeting to be held on 10-11 December.

These meetings will involve elected representatives from every university Branch in the country.

This is the strength of our union – democratic processes that elect your Union continued on p.4...

EDITORIAL ◆

Dr Alison Barnes, National President k abarnes@nteu.org.au

D @alisonbarnes25

2020: A year like no other During 2020 much that seemed certain has crumbled. The very spaces from which we work have changed, transforming the way we relate and connect. In normal times, the physical proximity of university work is energising. We call it a university community for a reason.

We spark intellectually with colleagues… we support someone through a tough time, or perhaps challenge a strong student to stretch themselves.

Many of us work diligently, co-operatively to maintain libraries, admin offices or IT systems. We do it together, in the same space.

But this year, all of that melted away.

As the months became seasons we felt the full brunt of the pandemic. Borders shut, enrolments collapsed. Casual work was scorched. And the delicate balance between teaching, research and administration was upended. And so now we are living through the worst crisis to hit Australian universities.

Yet despite these adverse conditions, a resilient solidarity has flourished. A solidarity among colleagues and a solidarity with students.

As university workers we have adapted and kept our promise to society, enabling so many students to transform their lives with the meaning and purpose that comes from education. And continued the quest for insight and knowledge through our research.

However, the Federal Government let down its end of the bargain. As I write this, at least twelve and a half thousand of our workmates have lost their livelihoods.

These are women like Dash, who endured years of rolling contracts at a private provider set up by Deakin University. When the international enrolments dried up, so did Dash’s work. Now she is leaving the university sector.

Or Ellyse – a brave advocate for casuals who made the case for decent employment on national television this year.

Ellyse hasn’t had work in weeks.

Then there are people like Jen – a professional staff member at Macquarie University. Jen’s crushing workload pushed her beyond breaking point. Management con-

sistently ignored the value of her work.

So Jen is taking a voluntary redundancy.

Ellyse, Jen and Dash. All three deserve to still be in a job, contributing to the national learning and research effort.

And perhaps they would be if we hadn’t been so badly let down by the Federal Government.

As billions of dollars in revenue were cut from universities, Dan Tehan and the Federal Government twisted themselves in knots to prevent universities accessing JobKeeper.

They doled out compensation and stimulus to all manner of industries that require a high vis vest – manufacturing, construction, energy – but not to their third highest export earner, not to our country’s intellectual engine room.

And then to make matters worse, they inflicted a new funding formula that rips out a further billion dollars from the sector and pushes the cost of this crisis onto students and the workforce.

Our Fund Uni Fairly campaign knocked some rough edges off a terrible bill.

Social work has been carved out and regional universities are getting greater support. Your personal stories, the 400 submissions members wrote, the tens of thousands of you who wrote, emailed, and rallied outside our parliament, the high school teachers and social workers, our members and our students who came with us to lobby made an indelible impression on Senators Rex Patrick and Jacqui Lambie.

But the Government ultimately passed laws that push the cost of this crisis on to students and staff. Hundreds of thousands of people will now graduate with a heavy burden of debt, into a job market that’s been ripped apart by the crisis.

I alluded earlier to the brave advocacy of people like Ellyse Fenton.

employer – constantly made to feel your work has no value. That your expectations of a modest holiday, applying for a mortgage or, heaven forbid, being paid while sick, somehow lack legitimacy.

Well this year, NTEU members lifted the lid on this national scandal. We revealed wage theft – on an industrial scale, with almost every campus affected.

Across the sector, millions of dollars have been recovered for members and the Union continues to pursue management for unpaid wages at universities like Sydney and Melbourne and the private education provider JMC, suggesting that the final figure could exceed ten million dollars.

We also revealed the root cause of this exploitation. Approximately seven in ten university workers are insecurely employed across our sector. NTEU members across the country stood together and were among the first across our mighty labour movement to win paid pandemic leave for all; a fight that continues to this day.

COVID-19 has exposed the fault lines: underfunding, work intensity and precarity that traverse our working lives. To shift these fault lines we must continue to build our workplace structures, density and strength. It is only through one big strong union that we can combat the tyrannies of our vice chancellors and the enmity of our Federal Government.

2020 has been a year like no other for our union and for universities.

In spite of the awful developments and the loss of so many jobs, the moral purpose of this Union has never wavered.

And that’s down to the resolve of you – our rank and file members, our Branches, delegates and National Councillors who keep us strong and united. I thank you for your resolve. ◆ Alison Barnes, National President

I recall Ellyse telling me casual academic work was like being gaslighted by your

ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020

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◆ LETTER TO THE EDITOR

A response from No Concessions casuals to ‘Letter to a fellow worker’ We are three casual workers from RMIT, Victoria University and the University of Queensland. We are also founder members of the NTEU Fightback group. We are writing in response to the ‘Letter to a fellow worker’ published in Advocate (vol. 27, no. 2 July 2020).

When organised casuals networks around the country saw these clauses they agreed that any kind of job protection was a fantasy. They were right – the concessionary approach has already failed to protect jobs at Monash and La Trobe after signing away conditions and pay. Additional concerns centred on the lack of transparency, undemocratic processes, a hiring freeze that left no opportunity for secure work, and undermining existing conditions.

The letter painted a picture of the ‘plight of workers’, in which the only option is to accept a so-called Jobs Protection Framework where all workers are forced to accept pay cuts and the inevitable loss of hard won job conditions. This is not a question of ‘purity’ but it is definitely a question of politics. Debates have always taken place within the trade union movement and within the NTEU. The discussion and decisions that are being taken now will shape not just the future of our lives at work, but the future of the entire higher education sector.

Despite the anonymous ‘Letter to a fellow worker’ giving the impression that all casuals supported a yes vote to the NJPF, we do not know of any casual networks that passed motions in support of the NJPF. In contrast, casuals networks and committees at UNSW, La Trobe, Monash, RMIT, Melbourne, Victoria, UQ and ANU all passed motions rejecting the NJPF and offering solidarity with ongoing colleagues against wage cuts and concessions.

The widespread resistance culminated in a statement from the National Higher Education Casuals Network rejecting the NJPF and supporting the No vote.

The challenge we face as workers in universities is clearly huge.

The economic crisis triggered by COVID-19 is continuing to unfold under the leadership of a Coalition Government that shows no signs of offering any further support to higher education. For workers to win anything, we will need to show a willingness to stand up for ourselves and our fellow workers, this is the very essence of trade unionism.

Unfortunately, the NTEU leadership took the opposite approach with the concessions based National Jobs Protection Framework (NJPF) that was first formally introduced to members at the beginning of April. After a groundswell of opposition, some of it driven by casual members, in which NTEU Fightback played a leading role, the NJPF dropped the ‘National’ and our officials have continued on a campus by campus level to bargain away pay and conditions in return for threadbare promises to save jobs.

The anonymous letter in the last Advocate points to the fact that casuals currently have ‘zero job protection’. This is clearly a significant issue that the NTEU should be urgently organising around. The rapid rate of casualisation in universities is an indictment of the neoliberal approach of management and the weakness of our union. Anecdotal evidence (this is all we have so far) suggests that hundreds, possibly thousands of casuals were effectively sacked at the beginning or during semester one this year. Fixed term staff have also been sacked in their hundreds.

When looked at in detail, the ‘guarantees’ you point to in the NJPF contain giant holes through which casuals can fall. For example, the Heads of Agreement clause 32 states: Where there is no work or insufficient work available for a continuing or fixed-term employee, the University will seek to identify other work for that employee, which might include work usually performed by casual employees. This provision takes precedence over items 33 and 34.

Like our casual colleagues in these networks, we don’t believe that solidarity is about ‘agreeing all staff should feel the pain together’. Solidarity comes through building strength, not sacrifice.

So what is our alternative to the NJPF? It starts with opposition to rotten deals and an orientation towards building a strike ready union. We too have bills to pay and children to care for at home.

There is no quick fix or easy solutions during a crisis. This does not mean letting management off the hook. Industrial action may not be realistic immediately but it remains the only real source of our collective strength, whether that be through refusing to carry out specific tasks – e.g. in student information services, marking work, releasing grades, processing applications – or whether that be full refusal to work through strike actions. Admitting defeat and conceding conditions – specifically around major change proposals – only weakens our ability to build a fighting union that can end the casualisation epidemic once and for all.

Since the beginning of this crisis, casuals, including us, have joined with continuing and fixed term union activists to put ourselves at the heart of local organising in an attempt to build our strength and resist management driven sectionalism. We refuse to be divided by the status of our employment, by academic and professional roles, by subject areas or schools, by teaching or research, or by the leadership of our own union. We are joining with our fellow unionists to fight together by organising local area meetings, encouraging solidarity from ongoing staff through resistance to increasing workloads, by enforcing existing rights on casual conversions and pay rates, and by linking together our struggles across campuses and states. We are proud to be part of NTEU Fightback and we encourage you to join us. ◆ Roz Ward, Jack Hynes, Francine Chidgey View the original letter at nteu.info/advocate2702letter

Meeting COVID challenges ...continued from p.2 voice, strong debate and then unity around our decision making and purpose.

an opinion is not enough, working to deliver for our members is what we must be judged on.

employment in it. COVID-19 has changed everything. And NTEU will adapt to meet the challenge. ◆

I urge every member committed to the Union and solidarity to have your say, and then help build the strong unified voice we need to take into bargaining. Having

While many campuses are still struggling with the reality of COVID-19 job losses, we need to lift our gaze and look to the future of the sector and to the nature of

Matthew McGowan, General Secretary

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ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020

NTEU Annual Report 2019-20 online at

nteu.org.au/annual_report

NEWS ◆

NTEU launches legal action against JMC alleging sham contracting In September, NTEU filed proceedings in the Federal Court on behalf of members at JMC Academy alleging that the higher education provider was engaging its lecturers as independent contractors in order to avoid their obligations under the Fair Work Act 2009.

JMC Academy is a higher education provider with campuses in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney. It offers courses up to Masters level in areas including contemporary music performance, song writing, audio engineering and sound production and animation, game design and entertainment business management.

To our knowledge they predominantly engage their lecturers who deliver the majority of their teaching content as independent contractors rather than employees.

An independent contractor is a person or business engaged by another business to perform a specific service. In contrast to an employee, an independent contractor is paid to produce an agreed result (e.g. build a fence, upgrade an IT system) while an employee is paid for the time they spend in the service of their employer. An employee is subject to the direction and control of their employer, in general an independent contractor is not.

Genuine independent contractors are usually businesses that are generating goodwill for their own business while performing work, where as an employee will usually be generating goodwill for their employer while conducting their duties.

Sham contracting occurs when an employer tells an employee that they are being engaged as an independent contractor when in reality they are an employee. The common law position is that little regard is paid to how the parties describe their relationship, it is

the actual nature of the relationship that determines whether a person is truly an employee or independent contractor.

As the courts have repeatedly said, it is not open to an employer to ‘create something that has every feature of a rooster, but call it a duck and insist that everyone else recognise it as a duck’.

Sham contracting will usually involve egregious wage theft. That is because legitimate independent contractors are not entitled to the minimum employment standards provided by the Fair Work Act, including award wages, overtime or penalty rates, or superannuation in addition to wages. In the case of JMC, NTEU believes that members were paid around 50% of the minimum wage provided for in the Educational Services (Post Secondary) Award and paid no superannuation in respect of the work they performed for JMC.

ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020

The litigation has been brought by the Union in our representative capacity, and four members are named as witnesses.

We are seeking back pay for the alleged wage theft and penalties for the alleged breaches of the sham contracting provisions of the Fair Work Act. We know our members across the country stand in solidarity with those at JMC that are taking the fight to JMC for their alleged exploitative employment practices. ◆ Campbell Smith, National Industrial Officer Read the ABC story about the case, along with a profile of one of the members participating:

nteu.info/abcshamcontracting

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◆ NEWS

Image: Ernest Dudley Chase

Flawed foreign relations bill tightens the reins on university independence Ignoring widespread warnings of unintended consequences from the university sector, the Federal Government has pushed on with its deeply flawed 'foreign relations' bill, the purpose of which being to prevent 'arrangements' with foreign governments that may 'adversely affect Australia’s foreign relations or are inconsistent with our foreign policy.'

Put simply, the legislation would give the Minister of Foreign Affairs sweeping powers to determine if a foreign or subsidiary arrangement could potentially be inconsistent with Australia's foreign policy or adversely affect Australia’s foreign relations. The effect would be that it only has to be determined that there may be a possibility of impact on policy (and not law); or alternatively, if the Minister feels there may be a possibility of an ‘adverse effect’ on foreign relations, for an arrangement to be summarily amended or vetoed.

While at first it appeared the Government’s intention was to target foreign agreements at State, Territory and local government level (for example, Victoria's Belt and Road agreement with China), it became quickly apparent that Australian universities were the only non-government entities to be deliberately captured by the Bill, although no explanation for this has been given.

NTEU’s submission to an inquiry by the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee (chaired by Liberal Senator Eric Abetz) into the legislation outlined the Union’s opposition. We noted that universities are already subject to a considerable array of legislation and regulation around national security and the Bill is excessively broad in that the ‘arrangements’ it would cover.

Indeed, the legislation covers contracts, memoranda of understanding and other arrangements, whether they are legally binding or not, commercial or not, and regardless of when they were entered into, as well as any variations to these arrangements.

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Furthermore, it would cover arrangements with foreign universities that do not have the same level of ‘institutional autonomy’ supposedly applicable to Australian public universities – yet there is no definition of what actually constitutes ‘institutional autonomy’ in the Bill.

Given the Bill’s scope, it is likely to result in significant overreach, potentially impacting on the numerous Australian university arrangements with foreign entities, including, for example, agreements on joint degrees, staff or student exchange programs, research grant funding, collaborative research and conferences and collaborative opportunities, and joint commercial investments and activities.

The Government has claimed it’s not their intention to incorporate every single arrangement that Australian universities’ have with foreign entities, including other universities, (noting that, according to Universities Australia data, there were over 10,000 separate agreements held by Australian universities in 2018). However, the wording of the legislation, the lack of definition around key provisions and the broad scope of the Bill has left this issue far from resolved.

However, the flaws in this legislation go even further. The Bill explicitly denies any form of procedural justice, appeal and/or compensation for those negatively impacted by a Ministerial decision to not grant or to revoke approval of an arrangement. Furthermore, this decision to do so can be made in relation to 'foreign relations policy' that is 'not publicly known' or even the Government’s official position; there is no transparency and reasons do not need to be given. Finally, Department officials have reportedly told universities that the Minister would be able to effectively rip up an agreement that did have approval at any point in the future, as '…foreign policy is never static’.

Even more concerning however, is that this Bill would effectively require universities – which are non-government, independent and autonomous organisations – to be in step with the foreign policy of the Government of the day, potentially binding them to the Government’s politi-

ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020

cal agenda and undermining institutional independence. While this alone should cause great concern, the Bill further exacerbates these issues in that it does not allow for transparency, procedural fairness or avenues for appeal should the Minister decide to amend or veto arrangements under the Bill’s provisions.

Finally, it’s concerning that universities are the only non-government entities that are being singled out by this Bill.

There are many commercial entities that enter into arrangements with foreign governments and their subsidiaries where there is less oversight than what currently apply to universities.

In response to criticism of the Bill, the Senate Committee produced a report that not only endorses the legislation but recommends the Government consider broadening the scope to include health research associated with hospitals – although private industry and commercial enterprises still appear to be exempt. In a very minor concession, the Committee recommended that the Government consider inserting a definition of 'institutional autonomy' in the law and exempt 'minor administrative or purely logistical matters' from the legislative scope.

While NTEU is lobbying for the Bill to exclude universities, our VCs and Universities Australia appear, once again, to be willing to appease the Government, despite the detrimental impact of what is proposed. Indeed, there is a real danger this Bill will have a chilling effect on the sector, in which universities and academics would be reluctant to enter into arrangements should these (either now or at some future point) come under the shadow of this legislation. Even amended, however, the Bill’s fundamental flaws will remain. It is not without irony that this kind of legislation in another country would see those institutions fail most definitions of ‘institutional autonomy’, particularly in relation to political interference.

Yet it would appear that this Government is determined to tighten even further the political reins on our universities. ◆ Terri MacDonald, Policy & Research Officer

NEWS ◆ Image: Name

USYD professor arrested at protest The violent arrest of Professor Simon Rice at a student rally at the University of Sydney in October, and the subsequent outcry over the unnecessary and harsh treatment of him and others, appears to have been a catalyst for the NSW police to improve their approach to policing public gatherings.

Professor Rice, who teaches law at the University, wasn’t participating in the rally, but observing it as some of his students are researching the laws on protesting. The rally was opposing the federal government’s changes to higher education funding.

When the rally moved on to the footpath outside the university campus, the police, who had previously seemed content to watch the protestors but not intervene, began roughly restraining students and taking their banners and megaphones.

At this point Professor Rice was grabbed from behind, taken to a corner and had his legs swept out from underneath him.

He was arrested and fined for breaching a COVID Public Health Order.

The rally occurred two days after the NTEU had successfully won a NSW Supreme Court decision that upheld the right to protest in a COVID-safe way, against police objections. The NTEU NSW Division’s rally was held the day before the student protest, with police attending but without incident.

It begs the question whether the over-the-top treatment of the student protesters and those in the vicinity was the police venting their frustration at the Supreme Court decision.

Professor Rice told Advocate that the Public Health Order had now changed to allow for protest gatherings, and that the police approach appears to have also softened. He said that another University of Sydney student rally at the end of October resulted in students occupying the Chancellery building, but the police acted very differently on that occasion.

Professor Rice said that there are still major concerns about the consistency of the police approach, pointing out that much larger numbers of people than had attended any of the protest rallies had attended a football match or gone to the beach without COVID-related police action.

'The police still have discretionary powers under the COVID-19 restrictions to determine whether separate groups of people are considered one gathering for a "common purpose", which still can be inconsistently applied. As well they always have summary arrest powers for offensive language or disrupting traffic.'

'The police’s conduct makes you wonder who is making the decision about these issues, and where the police’s directions are coming from.' ◆ Michael Evans, Organiser (Media & Engagement) Below: Professor Rice is forced to the ground (at right) during his arrest (Honi Soit/Twitter)

NTEU secures right to protest In October, NSW members held a physically distanced protest against the Federal Government’s destructive higher education agenda.

To be COVID-safe, the rally was limited to five groups of no more than 19 members per group. Each group had its own marshal and was physically distanced from the other groups of members. Attendees were required to wear a mask and maintain social distancing and had to register beforehand and adhere to a COVID-safe checklist. Despite all this and after extensive negotiations, NSW Police denied permits for the rally and sought an order from the NSW Supreme Court to prohibit it from taking place.

'It’s extremely worrying that NSW police, with the apparent backing of the NSW Liberal Government, have seen COVID-19 as an opportunity to unnecessarily ban all protest,' said NSW Division Secretary Michael Thomson. 'We don’t need police intervention to beat this virus, we need a sensible approach that balances risk with democratic principles.'

George Newhouse, Director and Principal Solicitor of the National Justice Project, represented the NTEU in the NSW Supreme Court.

He added: 'The right to protest can be protected in a COVID-safe manner. When the NSW Government is allowing as many as 10,000 people to attend football matches in a COVID-safe way, there is no excuse to prevent citizens from expressing their freedom of speech in socially-distanced rallies.'

After a long day in court, NSW Police arguments were rejected, clearing the way for the rally to proceed. This fantastic win set a crucial precedent and only a couple of weeks later the NSW Government changed restrictions to permit rallies of up to 500 people. ◆ Richard Bailey, NSW Comms and Campaigns Organiser

ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020

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◆ NEWS Image: Name

NTEU.ORG.AU/STATEOFTHEUNI

2020 NTEU

STATE OF

Have your say!

NI THE U SURVEY

COVID-19 EDITION

State of the Uni Survey: Working in higher education during 2020 collected from across the country reflect this. Notably, only staff still maintaining access to their university email addresses received this survey, excluding those who have already departed the sector this year.

As a part of the NTEU’s ongoing efforts to understand the views and experiences of higher education workers we recently conducted a special interim survey in our State of the Uni series of surveys. This survey sought to capture the impacts of this year’s challenges on higher education worker’s and their views on the sector.

Working in 2020 Around 93 per cent of Victorian university staff were working from home in the week ending 31 October, while 45 per cent were still working from home in the rest of Australia.

A notable minority of staff, 19.5 per cent, reported that they still had inadequate resources for working from home. When

2020 has undoubtedly been a tumultuous year for higher education staff and data from the 18,000 responses

asked about workloads this year 72 per cent of academic staff said their workload had either increased or greatly increased, along with 53 per cent of professional and general staff.

Notable figures in the context of a sector that was already known for very high workloads prior to COVID-19.

Outlook for the future Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the heavy job losses suffered this year, staff views on their future in the sector are extremely dim. continued next page...

KEY ISSUES IN 2020: Concerned or Very Concerned Concern for colleagues and other staff

86%

8

Loss of employment

72%

The impact of work on my mental health

68%

Overwork

Loss of work opportunities.

64%

59%

Balancing family/caring responsibilities with work

53%

ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020

Loss of income

67%

NEWS ◆

State of the Uni Survey ...continued from previous page Only 68 per cent of respondents said they were hoping to maintain their employment in the sector over the next three years, and of these, only 22 per cent were very confident or extremely confident (on a five choice scale) that they would be able maintain their employment over the next 12 months, this dropped to 17 per cent when asked about keeping a job in the sector over the next three years.

While we don’t have a comparative data point, this level of pessimism seems notable, with 32 per cent of staff not actively seeking to stay in the sector it may indicate that universities should be thinking of ways to retain skilled staff for the recovery rather than being so hasty in dismissing them.

Sector staff are not only concerned about their own jobs, but their colleagues too. When asked to rate their concern regarding seven selected issues, respondents rated concern for colleagues and other staff as a concern most often, with almost 86 per cent being concerned or very concerned.

FUTURE PROSPECTS IN THE SECTOR Confident or Very Confident How likely is it that you will seek to actively maintain your employment in the university sector over the next 3 years?

68%

How confident are you that you will be employed in your current position in 12 months time?

22%

How confident are you that you will be able to maintain employment in the university sector over the next 3 years?

(Regardless of personal choice)

17%

ATTITUDES TO THE SECTOR: Agree or Agree Strongly Academics spend too much time doing admin

2019: 64%

2020: 68% +4%

Australian universities are under financial pressure

University education should be free for all Australians

2019: 77%

2019: 60%

2020: 90% +13%

2020: 66% +6%

Excessive reliance on casual and fixed term employment is affecting education quality

2019: 69%

Executive staff at my university receive salaries appropriate for the work they do

2019: 17%

Attitudes to the sector Looking at agreement with a set of issue statements asked several times over the years, a few positions stood out as having moved more than 2 percentage points since last year.

A greater proportion of staff agreed that excessive reliance on casual and fixed term staff was an issue than in 2019, more staff saw universities as being under financial pressure, and the smallest proportion of staff going back to 2015 agreed that executive salaries were appropriate.

2020: 76% +7%

the future of the sector, engagement with university staff, and position on higher education policy.

Performance of sector participants

NTEU members and staff generally rated NTEU efforts relatively favourably on average, with broad satisfaction between 68 and 78 per cent on these metrics. In addition to the five-point satisfaction scale, respondents were also able to select 'unaware of any actions.'

Respondents were also asked to rate the performance of key sector participants on several metrics, including efforts to protect jobs in the sector, efforts to protect

Universities Australia (UA) notably outpaced other sector participants on this response, with a full 25 per cent of respondents unaware of any actions tak-

2020: 12% 5%

en by UA to protect jobs, and additional 32 per cent dissatisfied with their efforts in this regard. In relation to 'engagement with university' staff UA faired even worse, with 32 per cent 'unaware of any engagement' and an additional 31 per cent selecting 'dissatisfied' or 'very dissatisfied' on this measure.

Full report on the survey results will be available early in 2021. ◆ Kieran McCarron, Policy & Research Officer nteu.org.au/stateoftheuni

EFFORTS TO PROTECT JOBS IN THE SECTOR: Satisifed of Very Satisfied Satisfied or Very Satisfied with the NTEU

Satisfied or Very Satisfied with my Vice-Chancellor

Satisfied or Very Satisfied with Universities Australia

Satisfied or Very Satisfied with the Federal Government

70%

20%

11%

2%

ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020

9

◆ NEWS Bermix Studio

Academic freedom in peril Academic freedom in the Australian higher education sector has been constrained by a recent court decision.

An ancient concept, academic freedom is the defining characteristic of universities.

It is: the right, without constriction by prescribed doctrine, to freedom of teaching and discussion, freedom in carrying out research and disseminating and publishing the results thereof, freedom to express freely their opinion about the institution or system in which they work, freedom from institutional censorship and freedom to participate in professional or representative academic bodies.

It is a norm which threads through universities like DNA. Without it, universities are not universities. But in a continuance of the managerialist university which pervades our sector, academic freedom is now under critical threat.

This is highlighted most prominently in the Full Court of the Federal Court’s decision in James Cook University (JCU) v Peter Ridd [2020] FCA 123. The Court’s task in that case was to construe the intellectual freedom of the JCU Enterprise Agreement, a clause common across the sector which seeks to provide a right to academic freedom. In issue in the case was both the relevant context to the clause, i.e. what academic freedom is, and whether and how the University’s Code of Conduct interacted with the clause.

It is worth understanding the facts of Peter Ridd’s case. Without delving too much into the detail, the case featured around several of Ridd’s public and private comments which questioned some of the scientific research being conducted by his JCU colleagues about the Great Barrier Reef.

The majority of the Court considered Ridd’s behaviour to be ‘trivial’. The University instituted several different disciplinary procedures, and ultimately

10

found that he had breached the Code of Conduct because he, for example, 'did not act in a collegial way, did not respect the right of others'. Ridd’s employment was eventually terminated for serious misconduct, including serious breaches of the Code of Conduct and that the behaviour was 'contrary to the interests of JCU'.

Ridd’s case has had significant media interest, and many will disagree with him and his views. He is a controversial and divisive figure. But many university workers are. Many must be in order for their work to have impact. In order for the search for truth to carry on uninhibited.

Which is why academic freedom exists at all: university workers must be free from the threat of, persecution or punishment for expressing their ideas.

They must be free to engage in debate, robust and sometimes forceful debate.

They must be free to push the boundaries of thought and ideas, even if that might cause others to be upset. Of course academic freedom comes with responsibilities: of professionalism, honesty and to avoid limiting someone else’s academic freedom. But if Peter Ridd did not have academic freedom, no one does.

Enter neoliberal universities obsessed with their reputation and funding sources. Enter fragile institutions which promote more and more insecure forms of work in order to cultivate a vulnerable, compliant workforce, which threatens the core task of university functions. And enter the university’s key tool in controlling the workforce’s behaviours: the Code of Conduct.

Many universities, if not all, will have a Code of Conduct. They are designed, although are often not fit for purpose, to set out guiding principles of how university workers ought to behave. Often including opaque and vague concepts

ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020

like 'courtesy' and 'sensitivity', and then require staff to strictly comply with them.

The majority of the Full Court in Ridd’s case found that, essentially, at JCU, all university staff must comply with the Code of Conduct even when exercising academic or intellectual freedom.

Despite attempts in the JCU agreement to ensure that the Code did not interfere with intellectual freedom rights, and despite the Court’s criticism of the ‘vague and imprecise language’ of the Code, the Court found that the Code was ‘enshrined’ in the Agreement and it must be complied with. That is, that there may have been an exercise of intellectual freedom did not mean that it could not also be a breach of the Code of Conduct, and the intellectual freedom clause did not operate like a ‘shield’ to protect against disciplinary action.

Most troubling about the Court’s majority decision was the treatment of academic freedom as a concept itself. Several paragraphs of the judgment trace the history of academic freedom, including a discussion about Socrates’ Apology, its relationship with tenure, the first staff award, and also the broadening of academic rights to all academics, not just professors. The Court dismissed one of the only cases considering academic freedom as ‘little more than historical interest’. In doing so, the Court entirely rejected the historical or context of universities’ viz academic freedom.

Peter Ridd’s case fights on to the High Court, where he must seek special leave of the Court to be heard. But NTEU must also fight now. The Courts have not assisted in ensuring academic freedom protection, so NTEU members must. If any member would like to be involved in working on this, please get in touch. ◆ Kelly Thomas, Senior Legal Officer

WERTE! ◆

ACTU Indigenous Conference & Organising Conference 2020

Racism is a union issue On 16 November, the ACTU held its Indigenous Conference online with attendees present from most of the affiliate unions.

There was a large contingent of NTEU Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander members and staff who presented sessions, gave addresses and answered crucial questions on a wide variety of topics.

The Indigenous Conference featured a welcome, a keynote and four different workshops which were run multiple times so attendees could attend them all.

Of particular note was the session 'Racism is a Union Issue'. This featured Adam Frogley, NTEU National A&TSI Director with Nareen Young, Industry Professor at Jumbunna Institute of Education and Research. Both panellists revealed findings of surveys on the racism and discrimination A&TSI workers still experience in the workplace.

I'm Not A Racist, But...

Starting with the two reports the NTEU has done based on member surveys – I'm not a racist, but… (2011) and I'm still not a racist, but… (2018) – Adam Frogley took attendees through the distressing levels of racism and discrimination, lack of cultural respect and lateral violence reported by A&TSI people working within the university sector. It was particularly noted that in the 7 years between the two reports, the situation had actually gotten worse on campus.

These findings were further reinforced

by Nareen Young's presentation of the Gari Yala (Speak The Truth) report which was launched on the same day as the Conference. In this report, based again on survey responses, it was found that 44% had experienced racial slurs in their workplace, 39% had reported being treated unfairly due to their background, and a staggering 59% had experienced comments based on their appearance which others in their workplace deemed not 'looking' Aboriginal enough, or 'being pretty for an Aboriginal person'. All this

ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020

leads to a negative workplace experience and it's crucial that workplaces educate and adjust their practices.

Black Lives Matter Sharlene Leroy-Dyer, Acting Chair of the NTEU A&TSI Policy Committee, anchored a panel on the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in Australia which featured Ashley Rose (FSU) and Celeste Liddle (NTEU). Ash Rose spoke of lobbying the various unions in NSW to support a BLM statement which would in turn commit them to a series of actions to educate members and agitate as unions for the implementation of the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, amongst other things.

This multiple union statement then was sent on to the NSW Government to lobby them to make changes.

Celeste spoke about the BLM movement more broadly – its origins online and then in riots following the deaths of two African-American men in 2014; its resurrection in 2016 in the lead-up to the US election and the global solidarity movements; and then the rallies this year.

Celeste spoke of the continual issues trying to get the Australian public to recognise the parallels in Australia with things such as deaths in custody and the continual high incarceration of Indigenous peoples. There is a need for people to become more educated and interested in what is happening domestically, as over 440 Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander people have died since the Royal Commission findings were handed down.

Change remains painfully slow whilst families continue to grieve.

A session on Voice, Treaty, Truth, along with another on A&TSI people advancing in jobs was held. All sessions were repeated for the ACTU Organising Conference and were deemed highly successful. ◆ Celeste Liddle, National A&TSI Organiser Gari Yala (Spreak The Truth)

bit.ly/3kGUL5x I'm Not A Racist, but... and I'm Still Not A Racist, but...

nteu.org.au/atsi/publications

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◆ WERTE!

Coalition slashes A&TSI student funding

When compared to the previous year’s Federal Budget and forward estimates, an overall funding decrease of $177,000 (-0.25%) was applied to the ISSP in the 2020-21 financial year, with a further $3.78 million (-5.06%) removed from the forward estimates (see Fig. 1).

2019-20 Budget

2020-21 Budget

23-24 22-23 21-22 20-21 19-20 $70k

$72k

$74k

Fig. 1: ISSP funding, Budget & forward estimates Despite the urgent requirement for greater funding and support for A&TSI students, the Morrison Government has chosen to strip $3.96 million in the current year and forward estimates.

This follows the 2019-20 Federal Budget where $10.98 million was also removed under the guise of efficiency dividends and direct funding cuts.

Thus, over the past two Budgets brought down by Josh Frydenberg, there has been a total actual and projected loss of $14.94 million. Prior to the consolidation of the three student support programs in January 2017, the projected A&TSI student support funding (from the 201516 Federal Budget and forward estimates) would have seen total projected allocation of approximately $75.7 million in the 2018-19 financial year.

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15-16

16-17

17-18

18-19

19-20

A&TSI Commencing Students A&TSI All Students A&TSI Staff

20-21

Budget Forward Estimates

80k

1.4% 70k

20 0 20 4 0 20 5 06 20 0 20 7 0 20 8 0 20 9 10 20 1 20 1 1 20 2 1 20 3 1 20 4 1 20 5 16 20 1 20 7 18

0.6% 1516 20 16 -17 20 1718 20 18 -19 20 19 -20 20 20 -2 20 1 2122 20 22 -23 20 23 -24

60k

1.0%

20

The 2020-21 Federal Budget has seen further reductions to the supplementary funding allocation for the current year and forward estimates via the Indigenous Student Assistance Grants (ISAG) for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (A&TSI) student support administered through the Indigenous Student Success Program (ISSP).

Fig. 2:Funding allocations across 6 Budgets Fig, 2 details total funding allocations (including forward estimates) across six Budget cycles. The reduced allocations shows a continued lack of commitment to A&TSI peoples, families and their students who are entering or continuing their tertiary education pathway.

A&TSI students and staff Despite successive Coalition Governments applying continuous funding cuts and efficiency dividends to this vital program, the numbers of A&TSI students completing their final year of secondary education continues to increase.

In the 2001 Census, 41,923 A&TSI students completed Year 12 or equivalent.

At the 2016 Census this number had increased to 123,887: an average of 5,464 per year and an overall 195% increase across the same period. In the 2018 full year data, a total of 8,805 A&TSI students commenced tertiary studies (1.4% of all commencing students), with a total student cohort of 19,981 A&TSI students enrolled in universities across the country (1.3% of all enrolled students).

In 2019, fixed-term and ongoing A&TSI staff totalled 1,578 staff and this translates to 1.3% headcount and full-time equivalent (FTE) of all fixed-term and ongoing university staff. As the key funding allocation supporting Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Support Centres and their staff, the ISSP provides funding allocations to all Table A and B higher education providers to provide A&TSI students with culturally appropriate support and places of cultural safety on campus.

Figure 3 compares the total national commencing and all A&TSI students, to all A&TSI staff as a percentage of all students and staff. The percentage of students is increasing, while the number of staff is only barely keeping pace.

ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020

Fig. 3: Total A&TSI student and staff (as a percentage of all totals) The need to maintain and grow the number of A&TSI staff employed is paramount, particularly with the ongoing growth of students. While the numbers of A&TSI students continues to increase, the Federal Government has not planned for this increase, and has not examined the needs of A&TSI peoples embarking upon their journey to achieve post-secondary qualifications.

Job-Ready Graduates Bill To add further insult to injury, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students will now face fee hikes across a range of areas of traditional study for them (creative arts, humanities and commerce) of up to 113%. Coupled with an expected reduction in cultural, pastoral and tutorial support, this will see many potential A&TSI students exploring options outside of tertiary education.

The Job-Ready Graduates package both incentivises higher education for A&TSI peoples by creating an additional 1,700 Commonwealth Supported Places (CSP) by 2024 for students in regional and remote/very remote areas, while conversely de-incentivising higher education by not making those CSPs available to A&TSI students not residing in priority areas.

The 2016 Australian Census reported 37.4% of A&TSI peoples had residence in major cities and therefore almost 40% of potential A&TSI students have been made ineligible for CSPs due to their area of remoteness alone.

The Budget strikes yet another devastating blow to A&TSI students, staff and communities and shows the Morrison Government has little interest in supporting A&TSI peoples to achieve greater post school educational outcomes. It shows only tokenistic support for A&TSI continued next page...

WERTE! ◆

Online Forums see greater member involvement This year, the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (A&TSI) National Forum was held online due to COVID-19. With about 40 registrations, some of which turned up for all four of the sessions, it was a successful couple of days of discussion.

Forum was held on 27-28 August and, for the first time ever, was thrown open to all NTEU Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members, rather than just elected representatives and delegates approved by their Branch.

Chaired by National A&TSI Councillor and Acting Chair of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy Committee (A&TSIPC) Sharlene Leroy-Dyer, with other members of the A&TSIPC anchoring and driving the discussions, the Forum was divided into four separate two hour sessions: Welcome and introductory speeches, Yarn Session, Discussion regarding National Council Motions, and Plenary and voting.

At the end of the Forum, several motions were endorsed for inclusion at the NTEU National Council. These included a

machinery motion that all A&TSI National Council motions from 2019 be rolled over into 2021 due to COVID-19; a motion that senior level appointments relating to Indigenous knowledges and business on campus should be identified; and a motion calling on the NTEU to withdraw financial support from the First Nations Workers’ Alliance (FNWA) in preference for directly supporting ACTU work with Community Development Program (CDP) workers directly. All motions were passed and work will proceed of them in the coming year.

In particular, we wish to stress that the NTEU continues to support the fight for wage justice, proper rates and protections, and superannuation for CDP workers and will ensure members are kept updated with our new plans to work with the ACTU on that front. These motions combined with the many motions passed at National Council 2019 (such as recognition of cultural knowledge and ownership of cultural property and artefacts) will form the work of the union in 2020.

The National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Forum followed what has been an ongoing series of A&TSI Division meetings which have also been held online. In light of COVID-19, the regular schedule of Division Forums could obviously not continue in their usual format. In lieu of this we conducted almost monthly meetings for each of the Divisions, along with specific meetings for casual members.

Given the success of these meetings and the fact that many who attended had previously not attended the in-person Division Forums, it is envisaged that in 2021, once all travel restrictions are lifted, in-person Division Forums will be organised and these will be complemented with continued opportunities for online engagement so that as many members as possible get to have a say.

The NTEU National A&TSIPC, together the with National A&TSI Unit, would like to thank all who attended this year’s National Forum, shared their stories, contributed to the discussions and debates, and helped set the NTEU’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander agenda for 2021. Your input has been invaluable and we look forward to seeing many of you in person in your Branches and Divisions next year. ◆ Celeste Liddle, National A&TSI Organiser

Coalition slashes A&TSI student funding ...continued from previous page students, and A&TSI staff fair no better.

A&TSI academic and general/professional staff are pivotal when seeking to attract, increase and retain/maintain the number of A&TSI students participating in higher education.

Funding attributed via the ISAG/ISSP ensures the employment of a range of A&TSI staff into Student Support Officer

(or similar) roles that provide mentorship, guidance, support and assistance, while providing places of cultural safety on campus. It is feared that many more universities will mainstream A&TSI specific roles and remove places of cultural safety in the interests of efficiency and cost cutting. ◆ Adam Frogley, National A&TSI Director

ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020

A&TSI

Non-Indigenous

Total

80 60 40 20 Major Inner Outer Cities Regional Regional

Remote

Very Remote

Fig. 4: Estimated resident A&TSI population by areas, 30 June 2016

13

◆ JOB-READY GRADUATES ACT members protesting against the Job-Ready Graduates Bill at Parliament House. Lachlan Clohesy

Job-Ready Graduates Bill passes into law The Morrison Government’s latest attack on the higher education sector – the Job-Ready Graduates amendments to the Higher Education Support Act – were passed by the Senate on 8 October.

The legislation will strip $1 billion of funding from universities, more than double the cost of many courses and in particular arts and humanities courses, and make it more difficult for many students to go to university. It will jeopardise more university jobs, increase insecure employment and the quality of education provided to students.

Michael Evans, NTEU National Organiser (Media & Engagement)

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Centre Alliance plays ball with the Coalition The Bill was passed in the Senate by one vote – that of Centre Alliance (CA) Senator Stirling Griff. It’s disappointing that Centre Alliance chose to ignore the thousands of constituents who contacted them to oppose the Bill, something that we hope South Australian voters remember at the next federal election.

We also hope that the price that Senator Griff sold his vote for is worth it to a generation of students who will now be burdened with overwhelming debt, or deterred from seeking a university education because of the cost.

JOB-READY GRADUATES ◆

It is also extremely disappointing that this has been done with the complicity of the majority of vice-chancellors who supported the package. It would be well worth asking them to explain why they supported a package that will make university even more expensive for large numbers of their students, while reducing the funding for research and teaching overall.

Campaigning in a pandemic Despite the obvious constraints on running a big public campaign imposed by the coronavirus, we were able to achieve an impressive list of campaign activities: • Over 16,000 people signed our Fund Uni Fairly petition to Education Minister Dan Tehan. The petition was tabled in the Senate by ALP Senator Louise Pratt on 2 September.

• We regularly targeted social media ads at the crossbench Senators urging them to block the Bill.

• We ran a full page advertisement in the Burnie Advocate on 21 August, urging the crossbench Senators (and Jacqui Lambie in particular, as Burnie is her home town) to block the Bill.

• NTEU prepared three different submissions in relation to the Bill, and NTEU National President Alison Barnes gave presentations to two Senate inquiries about the legislation.

• Nearly 6,000 people from around the country sent emails to the crossbench Senators urging them to block the Government’s legislation.

• We had strong support from the Australian Services Union (ASU) and the Australian Education Union (AEU) who sent information to their members and urged them to contact their local MP.

• Over 100 members from three NSW Branches sent emails to National Party MPs and Senators urging them to block the Bill because of the potential effects on regional universities.

• Our ACT members demonstrated against the Job-Ready Graduates Bill in front of Parliament House on 28 August, the first sitting day of the last Parliamentary session.

• Nearly 600 members and supporters sent submissions to the Senate inquiry on the Government’s proposed legislation (over 80% of the submissions received by the Senate inquiry were negative about the proposed changes to funding).

• We received support for our campaign from a range of academic professional associations, especially in the arts and humanities.

• Many NTEU members contacted their local MP urging them to not support the Bill.

• We prepared briefing papers to assist members to lobby their MPs. • ALP education spokespeople Tanya Plibersek and Louise Pratt spoke to a gathering of Tasmanian members online to announce that the ALP would not support the proposed Bill.

• We developed a Fund Uni Fairly pledge that was signed by ALP and Greens MPs, independent Senator Rex Patrick from South Australia, and Tasmanian MP Andrew Wilkie.

• Over 80 NTEU Tasmanian members, students and supporters attended an online meeting on 24 September to discuss the Bill and our campaign.

• Over 180 people attended a national online seminar on 25 September to hear a presentation on the Bill and the campaign. The meeting culminated in participants sending emails to the crossbench Senators, phoning their offices, and tweeting and posting on social media to get the message across to the MPs. • A giant mobile billboard calling on Centre Alliance (CA) to vote against the Bill was driven around CA MP Rebekha Sharkie’s electorate of Mayo over a long weekend, just before the final Senate vote.

ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020

• A snap online action was held on 2 October, where over 300 members, students and supporters around the country sent emails, social media posts and phoned the CA MPs’ offices.

It’s fair to say that our campaign was instrumental in persuading independent Senators Jacqui Lambie and Rex Patrick to vote against the Bill.

Funding and jobs crisis continues unabated The legislation does nothing to address the funding and jobs crisis that is smashing our universities as a result of COVID-19, with over 12,000 jobs lost and a revenue shortfall of nearly $3 billion.

The author of this mess is Dan Tehan and the Coalition Government, which has completely abandoned Australian universities during their worst ever crisis.

Rather than stepping in with a robust support package, the Liberals and Nationals have pushed the cost of the crisis onto students and the university workforce.

Livelihoods and careers are being destroyed and irreparably damaged.

This Government has used the COVID-19 crisis as an excuse to implement an agenda which sees less funding for universities to teach and research, more debt for students, opens the door to rampant privatisation, and drives up insecure jobs in higher education – its agenda is to cut the heart out of our university sector in what is an ideologically driven vendetta against universities, students and staff.

The campaign to repeal this legislation and win fair university funding will continue and run right up to the federal election and beyond. We need a fair and equitable higher education system where obtaining a degree doesn’t depend on your capacity to pay. ◆

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◆ JOB-READY GRADUATES

Clear-felling environmental expertise 'This year’s pandemic, and the bushfires in January, have shown that our need for science has never been greater, and the payoff from our investment has never been more obvious than in this difficult year.'

These comments were made by the former Australian Chief Scientist, Prof. Alan Finkel on the back of a devastating summer of fires which started in June 2019 and continued through until March 2020.

These fires saw eight million hectares of land in south-eastern Australia burnt, an area larger than Tasmania.

Increased frequency and intesity of bushfire, coronavirus, global warming and human induced climate change, drought and water resource pressure, biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, pollution, food insecurity – these problems are real.

We need investment in science because science is an effective solution to these problems now, and into the future.

Dr Perpetua Turner, University of Tasmania NTEU Tasmanian Division Secretary

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ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020

For over 20 years I have practiced as an ecologist. In that time I have witnessed substantial, detrimental changes to our environment, changes that I would never have thought possible during my undergraduate years. As I stood on the shoreline of Stephenson Lagoon on Heard Island in 2003, I found it hard to fathom that had I been standing on that spot 56 years before, I would have been standing on a glacier.

I mapped vegetation in the Australian Alps in 1998; returning just months later I was greeted by a burnt landscape not adapted to burning. I thought that with the last most recent burn being in 1934 another gap of more than 64 years would facilitate regeneration. These landscapes have now been burnt 2-3 times in the last 20 years with fire regime changes occurring too fast for even our fire adapted flora to survive. These changes, within such short timeframes, demonstrate that there has never been a more pressing time for investment in science jobs to help generate practical solutions.

JOB-READY GRADUATES ◆ Chris Orr

However, investment in science-based solutions appears to not have been in mind with the recent changes to course funding. The Coalition's Job-Ready Graduates Bill cut the student contribution for environmental studies from $9,698 to $7,700 a year. While any cut to student fees is welcome, the shortfall has not been covered by government contribution.

In one of the largest cuts to any university course, the recently passed Job-Ready Graduates Bill cut environmental courses by 29%, which translates to a decrease on current levels of $9,944 per year per student. With all the attention on bringing down student costs for STEM degrees, one of the largest funding cuts to any university course flew completely under the radar.

Universities will receive almost $10,000 less funding for students in environmental related courses. This cut will lead to fewer graduates and much reduced quality and quantity of practical learning.

We are currently witnessing extraordinary pressures on ecosystems which are expected to intensify into the future.

More than ever we not only need graduates with expertise in environmental studies, but graduates who come with a substantial increase on current levels of practical training and experience. These cuts to environmental studies courses could not have come at a worse time.

My profession – ecology – has practical learning as a fundamental component for gaining successful employment. I started my first ever post-undergraduate job before I had even finished my Honours degree, and repeated this pattern with my PhD, principally because I had practical learning in my coursework that made me job ready. Whilst cheaper student fees will

mean it will be much easier for students to study environmental sciences, the gap in what the universities get and what it costs to deliver environmental courses will see the quality of education drop.

Encompassing biological and earth sciences, mathematics, chemistry, and management and planning, my degree in ecology facilitated my employment in various areas: vegetation mapping, remote sensing, Antarctic science, but for me most of all, forestry. I have worked for State and Commonwealth governments, not-for-profit groups, university, and private industry. I’ve worked on a broad range of environmental issues including how our flora and fauna adapt to climate change impacts, ensuring biodiversity conservation in forest production, monitoring bank erosion after hydro power high-energy waterflows, and how grazing by herbivores impacts biodiversity. My environmental studies degree made me ‘job ready’ for more diverse projects and roles than I ever thought possible.

While the aim was to improve science education, the environmental studies funding cuts have the potential to achieve the opposite. Prof. Iain Young, Dean of Science at the University of Sydney stated that 'Agriculture will be worse off by $3,500, environmental studies roughly $10,000 a year and science overall will be worse off by $4,759 per year per student.' And while universities may accommodate the funding cuts, adapting by drawing down one area in order to raise up another, this will place more pressure upon universities already under stress from declines in other areas (e.g. international students).

It’s not just scientists in agriculture who are concerned. Senior members of the

ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020

Australian Council of Environmental Deans and Directors called the cuts ‘clear-felling environmental expertise’.

The experts on clear-felling, the Institute of Foresters (IFA/AFG), have called the cuts 'short sighted'. If foresters are worried that the funding will see a shortfall in forestry education and investment into their sector, then we should be very worried too. Having worked with foresters for many years, I know that as students, foresters gain specialist environmental knowledge, and practical and theoretical training as students.

Lack of funding can translate to fewer university staff and decreased specialist training for students in areas such as fire management. Fewer graduates with specialist knowledge in fire will place pressure on industries such as forestry who are not only required to deliver high standards for environmental management, but also contribute substantially to the fire fighting effort. Coming out of a summer where we recorded our worst ever bushfire season is not the time to undervalue environmental expertise.

After a devastating fire season and with climate change meaning severe fire seasons will become more frequent, now is the time to invest in education focused on sustainable land management, climate change and natural disaster management.

Through a highly practical education in environmental studies, students learn how to protect biodiversity, water, resources, and human life. These funding cuts undervalue training and expertise and will produce a workforce that will struggle to keep pace with the environmental pressures faced by future generations. Our children deserve better. ◆

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◆ JOB-READY GRADUATES

Jacqui Lambie is right It just got harder for working class kids like me to go to university I know Senator Jacqui Lambie is a controversial figure, but after scuttling the Federal Government’s refugee phone ban and now delivering a powerful speech on working-class kids, I am starting to warm up to her.

Her recent speech on the floor of the Senate opposing the Government’s university changes because they would make it hard for working-class students to go to university resonated with me on so many levels.

I know because I was one of those working-class students she talked about.

Danijel Malbasa, CFMMEU Senior National Legal Officer

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ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020

I went to one of the poorest high schools in this country – Parafield Gardens High School. A school with no culture of students going on to tertiary education.

It was assumed, and accepted, by those around me that if you came from the northern suburbs of Adelaide, you would end up on the factory floor.

Completing Year 10 was the ceiling. You were then ushered into vocational training and then into a low-paid, insecure job behind a till or on a factory line (if you were lucky).

JOB-READY GRADUATES ◆ Nasro Azaizia/Unsplash

Universities did not bother with us.

We did not have mentors or 'old boys' or networks to open doors for us, prop us up and set up connections for life.

I was supposed to end up slaughtering chickens at the local abattoir with my twin brother before moving up to a job with Holden’s Elizabeth plant – with my older brother.

But it is not just that society (teachers, politicians, universities) gave up on me, on us working-class kids, it could also be our own families.

Unlike most ethnic parents, my mother was never too keen on education because none of her working-class friends had kids in universities. She was constantly pushing me to get a job and stop dreaming about going to university – a concept so foreign and distant it was almost unimaginable to her.

She worked on the farms in regional South Australia, picking fruit, vegetables and tending vineyards because it was the only thing she could do – a peasant refugee war widow from communist Yugoslavia.

I remember, at the end of the day, she would sit at the kitchen table: tired, looking at her bruised hands, then at me, as if she were thinking 'poor child, this is waiting for you, too'.

When you don’t have anyone in your family who went on to university or even completed high school, it makes it that much harder to believe in yourself.

And when you do make it to university and you have overcome all of this, then your struggles really begin.

I remember my first week at the University of Adelaide law school in 2007.

One of the well-groomed and dapper law students in my law of torts class asked me where I went to school, and I said Parafield Gardens. He furrowed his brow and asked 'Where?' I said: 'Northern suburbs of Adelaide.' He paused, eyeing me with suspicion, then said: 'YOU got into Adelaide law?' I felt like I was in a scene from Legally Blonde.

That same week, another private school-educated student expressed disdain at my presence in their cohort, saying 'Oh, well the university dropped

ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020

their standards these days, they allow anyone in.'

As a refugee, working class, union lawyer and a gay man I must be selective in my outrage because it is draining trying to fight against so much injustice out there.

Over the years I have come to realise one thing: that the distance between my world and Australia’s understanding of it is so vast because so few people from my Australia ever end up in law schools, on university grounds, or in echelons of power and beyond to tell our stories.

It is a distance I make shorter every time I enter the same spaces and sit at the same tables as my friends from more privileged backgrounds. These university changes will only make bridging this distance that much harder. ◆ Danijel Malbasa is a Melbournebased industrial relations lawyer This article was originally published in The Guardian, 9 October 2020.

Reprinted with permission.

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◆ JOB-READY GRADUATES Mohammad Shahhosseini/Unsplash

Higher education should be for everyone At the beginning of this year, in what was a spur of the moment decision, I applied to undertake a Masters degree. It had been a long time coming. Indeed, when I finished honours in 2002, I had planned to enter the workforce, enjoy not being utterly broke for a bit, then return to uni to begin my PhD. Seven years later, I finally realised that wasn’t going to happen so I enrolled in a graduate diploma to ‘dip my toes’ back in the world of academia with the view of continuing on. Again, that didn’t happen so eight years later, here I am again: only a couple of weeks away from submitting my final assessments for my Masters and seeing what I do next.

Celeste Liddle, NTEU National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Organiser

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ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020

JOB-READY GRADUATES ◆

Fighting course cuts at GU & QCA Don’t piss off a jeweller or she will make passive aggressive protest earrings!

Griffith University is proposing massive cuts to staff and programs including at the Queensland College of Art (QCA), including Jewellery & Small Objects, along with print-making and cuts to photography, art theory and design.

Clare Poppi, NTEU member at the QCA, is using her creativity to shine a light on union members' fight against the course cuts. With an NTEU protest planned for 20 November, Clare says 'I’ll be there with a grumpy sign to match my grumpy earrings!' ◆ Find out more at www.nteu.org.au/Griffith/restructure

This year though has been a ‘unique’ year to study, to say the least. The impacts of COVID-19 on the sector have been not just trying, but simply devastating. I have not set foot in a classroom all year which, I have to admit, is one of the things I have always loved most about studying – the immersion within a learning environment.

The other day I actually physically picked up a textbook. It was the first time I had read academic argument all year that had not been on a screen.

I’d had exposure to listening to lectures online before but attending online tutorials where everyone is a little square with a name on it and the opportunity to interact is non-existent is completely new. Essays remain the same arduous task they have always been but group assessment tasks prepared entirely via Zoom are a new form of hell. Struggling through this semester with both a bad neck and arm injury and ‘lockdown malaise’ has been rough.

All that being said though, that’s nothing compared to what I have seen the lecturers, tutors and support staff go through. I saw them, for example, have to move entire units online in mere days as governments shut down states. I have seen tutors try to co-ordinate discussions with students who are sometimes unresponsive and often dispersed across the world.

The Indigenous support centre has been in continuous contact to ensure that despite the situation, my journey and that of other Indigenous students is a smooth one. Navigating government systems designed to support uni students are hard enough without having to walk students through it virtually from home.

So to see all these dedicated educators and support staff continue to give their utmost whilst the sector is attacked by

the Government is devastating. I watched recently as the Government, with key support from some crossbenchers, passed the Higher Education Support Amendment (Job-Ready Graduates and Supporting Regional and Remote Students) Bill 2020 and knew that the futures of many had been dashed.

It took me 20 years to admit that only reason I was able to go to university in the first place was because I received an Indigenous accommodation scholarship so was able to live on campus. I wasn’t deemed eligible for government student support until my fourth year, so I worked casual jobs to get through. I wasn’t a regional or remote student, but I was one of only a handful of Indigenous students across the state in that year who had finished Year 12 and had gone straight on to university.

The Government has now seen fit to double the fees on every single course that I have taken at uni. They’ve effectively ensured the next generation of students like me won’t get the opportunity to study. It’s great that they believe they will be supporting regional and remote Indigenous students but we can assume this is institutional racism at its finest.

Not only do the majority of Indigenous people live in cities, but even if they do guarantee HECS support for regional and remote Indigenous students, the majority – like I did – take courses which have just seen their fees doubled so the Government is really just saddling an already financially disadvantaged cohort with exorbitant debts.

Why do so many Indigenous students study in these areas? Because not only are these areas usually the home of Indigenous studies courses but humanities and social sciences often lead to work in the community sector.

ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020

clarepoppi/Instagram

Then there’s the fact that the majority of Indigenous academics also work in these areas of study. With lower student numbers entering these study areas due to costs and wrongful perceptions of ‘job-readiness’ (wrongful because I myself have not been out of work since I finished uni the first time), what is the surety that these dedicated Indigenous knowledge providers will have jobs in the coming months?

Speaking more broadly than only Indigenous staff, can we also expect that the brilliant minds who have been teaching me and others in these areas will soon be joining the welfare queue we saw snaking around Centrelink buildings at the beginning of the COVID lockdown in March?

Every day of my life I have been thankful for those who have helped broaden my horizons, who have challenged me, who have taught me to think critically and have essentially played a major part in making me the person I am today. More than ever, I am thankful this year that they have somehow still managed to do so while facing some of the biggest challenges the sector has ever seen.

It therefore distresses me that thanks to governmental short-term thinking, elitism, ignorance and, yes, racism they are, as Senator Jacqui Lambie told the Senate in her moving speech opposing the Bill, telling future generations to ‘dream a little cheaper’.

Australia is on the precipice of another ‘brain drain’ and due to their continual attacks on higher education, I think the Government is too stupid to see it. ◆ This article was originally printed in Eureka Street, 29 October 2020.

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◆ JOB-READY GRADUATES A 2019 production of 'Forgiveness'. Sarah Walker

Curtains for Theatre & Performance I’m standing in the garden thinking about a plan for my last class. I always tell my students.'Don’t think you’re starting from zero because you have a blank page. Thinking is writing.' Today, I’m holding my own words as I contemplate a plan for this last class in a job I don’t want to lose. Whilst I have a blank page, I also have five years of thinking non-stop about how to improve the lives, art, confidence and creativity of my students and fifteen years of practice as a professional playwright to draw on.

My department at Monash, the Centre for Theatre and Performance, is being disestablished. The major is no more, leaving a minor, now delivered through Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music and Performance (without a major in ‘performance’, these last two words make for a hollow duo). In a zoom meeting with the Dean of Arts, my colleagues were informed that three of the four of them need to take a ‘voluntary’ redundancy.

Fleur Kilpatrick, Monash University Centre for Theatre and Performance

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ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020

My contract, up for renewal in November 2020, made me one of countless invisible casualties of the Corona Cull. I received a stock Monash HR email saying my contract wouldn’t be renewed. So, receiving glowing unit evaluations and a teaching award hasn't saved my job! I replied saying this isn’t the way to dismiss an employee of five years. They sent a stock reminder to acknowledge receipt of my non-renewal. I told them to call me. They sent a survey of my recent Monash HR experience. I wrote ‘very unsatisfied’.

JOB-READY GRADUATES ◆

It’s a pointless little fight with a faceless entity. I’m ‘taking this personally’, something I’ve been warned against. I took my job personally and put so much of myself into it, that it’s impossible to separate my feelings from the erasure of the career I’m so passionate about.

For two months I’ve been navigating a language I don’t speak. What does ‘voluntary’ mean for staff of the one school being shut down? If this is a ‘consultation’, who is being consulted? Students haven’t been. Surely, they’re major stakeholders in this decision. Is the decision to disestablish the school up for negotiation? No? So, what then is being ‘negotiated’? In response to my queries I received either silence or directions to read appendix four of the attachment: more alienating language.

In the beginning, I received news about my school through all-staff emails. These emails filtered through to students – many of whom are also staff. Soon students sent emails: ‘Hi Fleur, we’re freaking out. Is this true?’ So, I’d go to Zoom classrooms, many full of weeping students, try to push my own emotions to the side, and guide students through the news with honesty and little drama.

Each of us, navigating our own emotions, were left to interpret global emails and attachments alone. It was isolating.

Then Monash communication shifted to students telling them what was on offer for 2021 without mentioning the disestablishment of their school. We had to ask them to pass these emails on to staff to learn whose subjects had vanished.

Our students advocated for us, for each other and for their own education. They called to check on us, something our employer never did. I was reminded of a moment: at the end of first semester, I asked first years what they’d learnt about Monash and what we valued. They said 'mental health', 'community' and 'trying, even if it isn’t perfect'. In 2020, Monash turned into a series of tiny universities run from our homes: I am proud this was what they learnt from mine. I am proud that my students showed humanity in an inhuman process.

So, I’m planning my last class and I decide to make it theatre. I share it with you, my colleagues, in celebration of creative teaching and this year of grief and small victories we’ve had.

The Last Class Objective: closure, a space for grief and celebration, acknowledge the community we’ve created together and the pandemic

we’ve navigated. (These are, after all, some of the many beautiful uses of my art form.)

0-10 Check in 10-30 Writing task: Write the year 2020 as a recipe: ingredients, step-by-step instructions etc (Combine hope and optimism over a high heat. Cook until smoking and set aside. You won’t be needing it for a while.)

Create a communal hotpot in the chat section: one ingredient and one instruction from each of us.

Perform as a cooking show.

There’s symmetry in this: I delivered my first lecture of the year from my kitchen, whilst cooking soup, gesticulating with broccoli to make a point and pausing mid-20th century political upheaval, to recommend adding a parmesan rind.

30-45 Discuss: what did we think musical theatre was at the start of the year and how have our assumptions changed?

45-60 Lena’s provocation and writing exercise.

One of my students, who battles chronic disabilities, has had a strange and difficult year in lockdown. Lena and I decided to celebrate this year by asking students to consider what they’ve learnt about how they work and what they can do, embracing the neurodiversity, physical or mental challenges they live with and reframing them as an area of expertise. Lena shared their own lessons with me before class.

'Sometimes you can’t do what you want to be able to do. Always do what you can instead' has stayed with me; one of the many little gifts I’ll take with me into unemployment.

1’00-1’05 Break. We love breaks. Breathe.

Look out at the garden. Remember you’ll teach again someday. Nothing you love this much vanishes without a trace.

1’05-1’15 Improvisation with limited palette to learn the method Verbal: Yes, no, each other’s names .

Actions: Not letting your face be seen, laughing.

Once they get used to it add: Create a secret handshake, zoom is cutting out, share a New Year’s resolution for 2020 or 2021.

1’15-1’45 Our farewell: an online improvised play in four acts.

Prologue: The play has a different title for each participant. It begins ‘The Year We -’.

Type your title into the chat.

No faces allowed on screen in this prologue.

ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020

You can run and grab a costume item.

This class were obsessed with making and posting hats and one by one the hats appeared in their little zoom squares: a tribute to the ways in which they’d connected over distance.

Act One: Meet the crew Find a fun way to get your face back on screen.

Introduce yourself and your costume.

You can laugh. You can applaud. Say ‘yes’, ‘no’ or each other’s names.

The student in charge of the music played High School Musical. It was ridiculous, cheesy and joyful.

Act Two: Where we thought we were going Share an image from January (chat bar or spoken is fine) From February . From May. From July. From September Smoke, shared memes, online games nights, isolation, thinking they wouldn’t be good enough, phone calls with me telling them they would be.

Act Three: Complete this sentence This year I became.

This year I fell in love with.

Describe the moment you cherished from 2020.

Act Four: Gifts Make predictions for each other.

Freya and Tara, two of the student organisers of the SaveOurCTP campaign, will become arts advocates or student leaders. Lena will continue teaching others how to approach their disabilities and difficulties with compassion and pride.

The day after this class, Fleur will go on sick leave for anxiety and the exhaustion of performing class after class whilst in a state of grief and confusion.

Students will never forget this year and the joy and community we created in it.

Students will never forget this year and the way their university devalued their achievements, their teachers and their artform.

Thank people by name. Present or absent.

You can applaud. You can bow. You can find a way to leave the stage.

Curtains. ◆ More about the campaign to Save the Centre for Theatre and Performance at saveourctp.com

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◆ JOB-READY GRADUATES

Tales from the trenches Tasmania and SA were at the pointy end of the fight against the Job-Ready Graduates Bill. Jenny Smith and Cécile Dutreix share their war stories.

Jenny Smith Scientist & Tas Division Councillor The cost of a law or humanities degree is now nearly double, with the passing of the Job-Ready Graduates Bill. NTEU’s campaign to ‘Fund Uni Fairly’ targeted key Senators including Tasmania’s Jacqui Lambie, who ended up being a strong opponent of the Bill.

I grew up in a very disadvantaged area in Tasmania. I was the first student from my school to go to uni. Other families saw my family’s plans for me to go to uni, and this opened their eyes to what was previously an impossible dream. However, they would never have sent their kids to uni if a huge debt awaited them at the end of their studies.

Senator Jacqui Lambie is a passionate advocate for Tasmania and for battlers, but was initially ambivalent about the Bill, so I knew she needed to hear my story.

I knew what to say, but I had no time to write a coherent message, and I guessed

Cécile Dutreix Field Education Coordinator, UniSA In September 2020, it became apparent that the Coalition were close to passing the Job-Ready Graduates Bill. Crossbenchers were the only hope to thwart this ill-informed, devious attempt to further decrease equitable and affordable access for students to higher education.

The South Australian campaign targeted Centre Alliance Federal Member for Mayo, Rebekha Sharkie, spokesperson on Education, and Centre Alliance Senator Stirling Griff, whose votes against the Bill along with ALP, Greens, Jacqui Lambie and Rex Patrick would’ve Blocked the Bill.

My family and I migrated to Australia in 1969. I was the first person in my family to attain a university degree, a degree in social work. Without higher education policies of the time I wouldn’t have had

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Senator Lambie had little time to read it. I also knew that seeing and hearing a person speak with passion is powerful: 'people may not remember what you said or what you did, but they will remember how you made them feel'.

I wrote down about 4 sentences, went to the laboratory with my phone, and recorded what I wanted to say. It took me two minutes. I looked at the video; like anyone who looks at videos of themselves I cringed a little (okay, a lot!). But I thought ‘stuff it, I’ve shown how I feel and I’ve said a few facts, it will just have to do’. I sent it off to Senator Lambie, and also to NTEU President Alison Barnes to use as they saw fit.

The NTEU media team put my video on Facebook, and I’ve had so many people comment on the feelings I conveyed in that video. Hearing Senator Lambie speak strongly against the Bill, in contrast to her previous wavering, was a highlight – I felt my strong feelings about the terrible unfairness of the Bill had formed part of the basis of her strong opposition.

This Bill only just passed. Next time a uni-crushing Bill comes up, I hope others feel they can make a short video to communicate how they feel – you’ll feel shy and weird and awfully self-conscious, but seeing and hearing a person speak with passion about their personal story is how many a mind has been influenced. ◆ Above: A still from Jenny's Facebook video.

See video at nteu.info/jennysmithvideo

access to university education, particularly as a mature age single parent. I’m now an educator at UniSA working within social work.

As member of the UniSA Branch Committee, the Women’s Action Committee, and one of two members in the SA Division who live in Mayo, I felt compelled to reach out to my Federal representative to listen to reasoned arguments from the NTEU about how this Bill negatively impacts students.

Along with NTEU comrades around Australia we swamped social media, drove a bus and banner around Mayo, held Snap Actions online, rang the offices of Centre Alliance members and wrote letters.

Unfortunately, Centre Alliance made a deal with the Coalition in return for funding for roads in Mayo.

Caring and supporting every member of my community is important to me and a value made active in the NTEU.

ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020

When I witness injustice I cannot, with any integrity, say and do nothing. Being a union delegate is one of the ways that I can actively fight injustice, inequality, racism and the neoliberal agenda that profits the few and disadvantages the many. If you concur, I implore you to become a delegate and join us in the pursuit of a fair and just society. ◆ Above: Cécile with the Fund Uni Fairly billboard

FEDERAL BUDGET 2020 â—† Alexis Brown/Unsplash

2020 Federal Budget fails universities

Students pay more.

Staff do more.

Universities get less.

Ever since the election of the Abbott Coalition Government in 2013, the objective of policy in relation to the education of government supported university students has been to spend less per student while expecting universities to do more and requiring students to pay more. continued over page...

Paul Kniest, NTEU Director (Policy & Research)

ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 â—† NOV 2020

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◆ FEDERAL BUDGET 2020

2020 Federal Budget fails ...continued from previous page On 18 October 2020, the Government with the critical support of SA Centre Alliance Senator Stirling Griff and Qld One Nation Senators Pauline Hanson and Malcolm Roberts, managed to secure passage of its Job-Ready Graduates (JRG) higher education policies through the Senate.

This was the Government’s fifth major attempt at higher education reform.

Despite the fact that Australia has one of the lowest levels of public investment in tertiary education amongst OECD countries and that Australian student pay some of the highest fees in the world, the focus of all of these policies was for the Government to spend less per student, make students pay more and expect universities to educate more students – that is shift the cost of university education on to students and people working at universities.

convince Senators of the merits of $100,000 degrees, unfortunately the Government’s promise of additional growth places for South Australia’s universities seems to have been enough to overturn Centre Alliance’s initial opposition to the unfair fee increases at the heart of the JRG policies.

The Government claims that the major upheaval of the funding arrangements for Commonwealth supported (student) places (CSPs) at the centre of the JRG policies is to better align total funding with costs of delivery and provide price signals (lower fees), to encourage more enrolments in disciplines where Australia needs more graduates, and in areas the Government considers to be national priorities, including STEM, nursing and teaching.

As the NTEU’s submission to the Senate inquiry into the JRG showed, it is difficult to reconcile the bewildering entanglement of changing government contributions, student fees and total resourcing for different disciplines with these rationales.

In 2017 Senator Simon Birmingham failed to gain support for his so-called ‘fair, reasonable and necessary’ reforms, which again would have increased student fees and cut university funding through the imposition of an efficiency dividend.

However, there is absolutely no doubt that the changes will result in the Government slashing public investment per student, students paying more (on average) and universities receiving less to educate them.

NTEU and students opposed all of these policies but unfortunately this was not the case of our university leadership, with vice-chancellors and peak bodies on more than one occasion, lobbying Senators to support polices that would see universities have less resourcing per student and result in students paying more.

While Pyne’s ‘I’m a fixer’ plea and vice-chancellors' support failed to

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Based on Dept of Education, Training and Science budget portfolio statements, Figure 1 shows forward estimates for the level of total government funding for the education of Commonwealth supported places (CSPs) over the period 2019-20 to 2023-24. The funding included in Figure 1 not only includes Commonwealth Grants Scheme (CGS) and associated loading and transition funding but also general university support funding including the new NPILF and IRLSAF programs.

Job-Ready Graduates policies

In 2014, Christopher Pyne failed twice in his attempts to cut public funding to universities and deregulate university fees. Had these policies succeeded some students would now be paying in excess of $100,000 for a degree.

Out of frustration, Birmingham then used what was intended to be safety provisions in the higher education legislation to impose a freeze on the level of funding each university would receive to educate Commonwealth supported students. This would also, albeit slowly, shift the cost from the Government to students as government funding was frozen but student fees continued to increase in line with the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

Less funding per student

The sudden increase in funding in 202021 and 2021-22 is a consequence of grandparenting and transition arrangements associated with the transition to the new funding arrangements.

Figure 1 also shows that the total level of nominal funding for the education of CSPs is expected to increase from about $7,484m in 2019-20 to $7,824m an increase of $384m or 4.6%, which is the basis of Government claims of increased public investment in higher education.

Figure 1 also shows that when adjusted for price rises the real 2019-20 value (based on Treasury Consumer Price Index forecasts) of total public investment actually falls by $177 million or 2.4% by 2023-24. When further adjusted for increase in CSP load then the real value of public investment in education of CSPs falls by over $1 billion or more than 14%.

$8,500

CGS (incl Tr ansition) + General Uni Support Fu nding $7,832

$8,000

$7,500

Real (2

$7,484

019-2

0 Val

$7,000

ues)

Rea l Ad jus

ted

$6,500

$6,000

2019-20

2020-21

2021-22

$7,307

for C

2022-23

SP L $6,429 oad 2023-24

Source: Dept Education, Science & Employment 2020-21 Portfolio Budget Statement (Outcome 2)

Fig 1: Funding for Commonwealth Supported Places

ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020

FEDERAL BUDGET 2020 ◆

universities

Alexis Brown/Unsplash

$13,000 12,474

12,460 11,918

$12,000

11,117 $11,000

10,672

$10,000 2019-20

2020-21

2021-22

2022-23

2023-24

Fig 2: Real Public Funding per Commonwealth Supported Place (Real 2019-20 Values) ...continued from previous page The real public investment per Commonwealth Supported Place is shown in Figure 2. It shows that in real terms the level of public investment per CSP will fall from $12,474 to $11,672 a decline of $1,802 or 14.4% per student. This is in line with previous NTEU analysis.

Students pay more Analysis presented in the NTEU’s Senate inquiry submission also shows that as a result of the JRG, average student fees will increase from a round $8,800 to $9,530 an increase of some $730 or 8%.

The inherent inequity of the JRG is revealed with the analysis showing the average fees for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students increasing by 15% and women students experiencing an increase of 10%.

Universities get less The data presented above shows that an increase in average fees ($730) is not enough to offset the reduction in average public funding per student ($1,800). Taken together this means that universities on average suffer a loss to resourcing of more than $1,000 or approx. 6% per CSP. This loss of real funding per student means universities will have fewer resources to educate student which will ultimately be borne by student and staff. For students there are likely to be fewer or larger face-to-face classes and less comprehensive student support. It will also mean even heavier workloads for already overstretched staff and even greatly reliance on casual and short-term contract workers.

Universities educate more students The Government’s announcement in December 2017 to freeze the level of public funding each university was entitled to receive to educate government supported students was always unsustainable.

From the Government’s perspective it meant that universities were not being funded to accommodate the imminent surge in school-leavers making their way to university as a result of the so-called Costello baby-bonus boom.

A failure to address this temporary spike in the young adult population would result in many qualified students missing out on a university place. Escalating levels of unmet demand would be politically unpalatable.

Therefore, one of the primary objectives of the JRG is to increase the number of CSPs universities offer, without spending an extra cent. The original Government rhetoric around the JRG promised 39,000 new places by 2023 and 100,000 new places by 2030 . The question is how will this be achieved without any additional public investment?

In an answer to a question on notice from Senator Mehreen Faruqi (Greens) about the composition of the original 15,000 new growth places in 2021, the Department of Education Science and Employment provided the following breakdown: • 4,000 new allocated growth places.

• 1,000 designated national priority and Indigenous student places.

• 7,000 from increased flexibility and the introduction of new funding envelope.

Only one-in-three (5,000) of the additional 15,000 places are newly funded growth or national priority places. The other 10,000 come from changes to the funding arrangements. The additional 3,000 places delivered as result of indexation are in fact places that otherwise would have been lost due to declining real funding levels.

Almost half (7,000) of the new places are a result of what is referred to as increased flexibility within the funding envelope.

This is bureaucratic gobbledegook for assuming that if universities want to maintain their maximum grant allocations for CSPs, they will have no option but to increase CSP enrolments. This is a direct result of reducing the level of public funding per CSP (Figure 2).

In other words, based on the data provided by the Government, only one third of the expected rise in CSP enrolments come from additional newly funded places.

Two out of three places are those rescued from removing indexation and those generated by cutting public investment per student. ◆

• 3,000 additional places delivered as a result of CPI indexation.

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◆ WAGE THEFT lightwise/123rf

Wage theft is core university business The COVID-19 crisis has exposed the destructive consequences of an over reliance on casual labour across the economy. One of the clearest examples of this over-reliance is in universities.

For the last two decades, as federal funding has stagnated, universities have leaned into international student fees on the revenue side, and casual workers on the expense side. This devolved the risks of the international student fee market to insecurely employed staff with few entitlements or employment rights.

This is a devastating consequence of the central business model of universities intersecting with the Federal Government’s ideological aversion to universities accessing JobKeeper.

Since the pandemic hit and international student fee income dried up, thousands of casual university staff have lost their jobs.

University managers have shown a keenness to deny the extent of casualisation within the sector. They typically point to figures showing that on a full time equivalent (FTE) basis casuals comprise

Damien Cahill Assistant Secretary, NSW Division

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ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020

Uncovering the true extent of casualisation

WAGE THEFT ◆

only a small proportion of the workforce.

But while universities are only required to report their staffing figures on an FTE basis, this underestimates the number of casual staff on a headcount basis.

Indeed, the NTEU estimates that the actual proportion of casual employees in Australian public universities is about 45% – with some universities much higher than this.

Just as university managers regularly deny the extent of casualisation, so are they keen to downplay the associated issue of wage theft. In a recent submission to the Senate Inquiry into Unlawful Underpayment of Employees’ Remuneration, the Australian Higher Education Industrial Association (AHEIA), an employer group representing universities, claimed that wage theft is not a systemic issue in Australian universities.

Yet we now know that in NSW alone, seven out of the eleven public universities have indicated that they are now being, or have recently been, audited for underpayment of staff – Sydney, UNSW, WSU, Newcastle, Wollongong, CSU and UNE. Three of these (UNSW, CSU and Wollongong) were only announced following pressure from the NTEU. This is an indication of the scale of underpayments. Casuals are valued by well-paid vice-chancellors for more than just being able to have their employment cut at a moment’s notice. Casuals are prized recruits because they can be paid less than they are owed. Such wage theft has become systematic and routinised within universities.

Forms of underpayment There are several common forms of underpayment for casual workers.

The first is a semantic sleight of hand where managers classify teaching work in a way that attracts a lower rate of pay. For example, tutorials are regularly classified as ‘demonstrations’, meaning the casual is paid less for the same type of work.

Last year at Macquarie University the NTEU won about $50,000 in underpayments for causal staff whose tutorials had been re-classified as ‘small group teaching activities’ with a lower rate of pay.

Similarly, at the University of Western Australia, tutorials have been classified as ‘information sessions’, thus attracting a lower rate of pay.

full entitlements. For example casual professional staff are entitled to a be paid for a minimum number of hours per engagement, but this might be ignored by university payroll systems, which only look at time sheets.

This is why auditors have been called into the University of Sydney where it seems casual workers may have been underpaid millions of dollars over many years.

Similarly, the University of Newcastle recently revealed underpayments of over $6 million for incorrect calculations relating to span of hours and overtime.

But perhaps the most common and insidious form of wage theft is requiring casuals to work for no pay. Typically, key tasks simply aren’t part of a casual worker’s contract, yet are expected to be completed.

This could be consultation with students, class preparation, familiarisation with labyrinthine policies or setting unrealistic timeframes to complete marking.

At the University of Melbourne, for example, the Fair Work Ombudsman is investigating underpayments in relation to casual marking on the back of an NTEU campaign around the improper use of piece rates, rather than payment for the hours worked. About $1million has already been paid out.

The Union is in dispute with management at RMIT over a similar issue. In many cases, however, because of their precarious employment and fear of losing work, casuals can be reluctant to raise underpayments with their supervisors.

Much of the work performed by casual staff is regular, ongoing and stable over time. It is not actually casual in nature.

Student enrolments, for example, which drives teaching work, is quite steady year on year.

Solving the crisis

AUR: recent past and near future You no doubt enjoyed Australian Universities’ Review vol. 62, no. 2, comprising seven scholarly papers and five opinion pieces. AUR sets itself apart from most scholarly refereed journals because of our policy of publishing opinion. We’re into book reviews too! It has been out for a few weeks now, and as always is available for free online at aur.org.au.

The planned issues for 2021 are both guest-edited ‘specials’. The February 2021 issue, vol. 63, no. 2, is on ‘Academic freedom’s precarious future: Why it matters and what’s at stake’. It is edited by Professor Kristen Lyons of the University of Queensland. This issue is approaching completion.

Following that, in September 2021, vol. 63, no. 2 is being guest edited

by Nic Kimberley and James Roffee of the University of South Australia and Swinburne University of Technology, respectively. The theme for this issue is ‘Coronavirus and the crisis of higher education: Post pandemic universities’. Proposals are coming in, but there might still be time! ◆ Ian Dobson, Editor, AUR Read online at aur.org.au

The solution is simple: end the overreliance of universities on casuals. Just a few months ago, such a proposal may have sounded outlandish. But unprecedented times demand new solutions.

And moving casual university work into salaried positions with greater security and employment rights would be good for staff, good for students, and good for the community. ◆ This is an edited version of an article originally published in The Conversation.

Another frequent source of underpayment is the failure to pay casuals their

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◆ RESEARCH Image:Pxhere Name

Fractured futures?

Recent transformations of academic work In the 2012-13 bargaining round, the NTEU negotiated a new category of employment for academic staff. Drawing existing casual academic staff into on-going, teaching-focused positions, the Scholarly Teaching Fellow (STF) was introduced to reduce casualisation and promote job security. By 2018, 30 out of 35 university enterprise agreements established a total 850 STFs or STFlike positions; around 800 of these positions have been filled. Meanwhile, the proportion of casual staff in teaching and teaching-and-research roles has increased slightly or remained the same.

What was the impact of the STF on the structure of the higher education workforce, on the daily lives of STFs themselves and on the future prospects for academic workers?

We recently completed 5 years of research to explore precisely these questions. Based on 80 interviews with university staff, primarily people employed as STFs and senior university managers, as well as 4 focus groups and a deliberative conference, we evaluated the recent transformation of academic work that is facilitated by the STF and other teaching intensive roles. Given the deep crisis that higher education currently faces, this work offers important insights into existing working conditions in universities, prospects for the future, and strategic challenges for the Union.

Claire Parfitt, University of Sydney

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The shape of today’s academic workforce The historical and institutional backdrop for the transformation of academic work includes a financial crunch, driven by falling per-student funding from the Commonwealth, and changes in performance indicators and rankings for both universities and staff, including the increasing prevalence of research metrics.

Also, since the 1990s, universities have been amongst the most avid employers of precarious labour.

Today the academic workforce is deeply segmented between people employed in on-going roles with a balance of teaching and research responsibilities, and people employed on contingent contracts, usually to perform either teaching or

Keiko Yasukawa, University of Technology, Sydney

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research work. The STF category and other teaching-intensive roles, sit outside the existing academic work structure and career pathway.

They lock workers into on-going, teaching intensive positions, usually with little prospect of progression or sideways movement into teaching-and-research roles. While many STFs have hoped to use their positions to springboard into on-going balanced roles, STFs are typically unable to develop a research profile due to their debilitating teaching workloads.

The STF, along with the expansion of teaching-intensive work in other ways, is creating a risk of further entrenching existing divisions between workers in academia.

James Goodman, University of Technology, Sydney

RESEARCH ◆

From precarity to security?

Senior managers and teaching-intensive workers alike recognised the extraordinary financial pressures and the practical challenges faced by academics in precarious employment. The drive for economic security was the primary reason that many people applied for STF positions.

Having obtained the roles, many teaching intensive workers also felt that on-going employment gave a sense of belonging and legitimacy in the institution that was lacking for casual academics.

But it also became clear that a physically, mentally and emotionally exhausting workload was the price to be paid for that security and legitimacy.

I’m working every night ... when the assessment all comes in at once, you can have 150 people’s assessment to complete in three weeks. Chained to the desk day and night, that’s really unhealthy. (Female STF, New Universities) Some STFs were able to provide estimates of their weekly working hours. One claimed he was ‘clocking up around 60 hours a week’ (Male STF, Sandstone), while another said, ‘I clocked up 90 to 110 hours a week’ (Male STF, New Universities).

Of the 40 STFs and EFRs (36 STFs and 4 EFRs) interviewed for this study, 32 respondents experienced workload issues, and 22 reported effects on work/ life balance, or family, physical health or mental health issues as a result of workload stress or overwork.

As one respondent put it: You’re being exploited harder than everyone else. (Female STF, Sandstone)

Confusion and contradiction in the STF role Teaching intensive work is often pitched as a means of developing teaching specialists and enhancing the educational experience of our students. Indeed, several people employed as STFs expressed their preference for teaching over research and their enthusiasm for becoming expert teachers: I see myself as a teacher first and foremost ... My research at the moment is in teaching, not in my discipline. ... I’m also driving the curriculum renewal for the undergraduate course in my discipline. I’m exploring different approaches to teaching and learning ... (Male in EFR, New Universities).

But the heavy workloads and the numbers of students STFs were responsible

for, made this kind of specialisation and enhancement impossible: When you are taking 500 students, I think everyone needs to move their benchmark down of what good teaching can be.... you are not going to get stellar, amazing commendations ...when you’ve got 500 (Female STF, Sandstone).

The lack of clarity regarding the place of the STF within the overall academic career structure created confusion over the proposition that these staff would be teaching experts. One teaching-focused worker explains: ‘everybody was appointed on their research, not on their teaching. So ... teaching has been neglected’ (Male EFR, New Universities).

Similarly, another respondent explained that they did not have the required authority or respect to deliver changes to curriculum: ‘I don’t have the status. I was in a ... faculty board meeting on curriculum review and quite clearly there were others in more senior positions who had a much stronger voice. It sounds like you’re at the end of the table saying ‘pedagogy, pedagogy’. They’re saying ‘what?’ No, I don’t see that that will ever be equalised’ (Male in EFR, New Universities).

This tension regarding the expectation that STFs provide ‘leadership’ on teaching and student engagement but do not have the sufficient institutional recognition to drive change is hardly surprising given that STFs were appointed at levels A and B. The lack of clarity regarding the STF also applied to the ‘scholarship’ expectation.

There was widespread confusion and disagreement among STFs and their managers as to whether ‘scholarly teaching’ meant being informed by scholarship in the pedagogical literature or in their subject-area literature.

Scholarship linked to pedagogy and teaching, and learning is how we define scholarship in a teaching role...Teachers that don’t do research are simply actors mouthing the words of others. (Male Middle Manager, New Universities).

Another manager offered a more flexible view: It doesn’t have to be education related scholarship for it to benefit someone’s teaching. (Female Senior Staff, Sandstone).

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And several STFs felt that their performance would we reviewed unfavourably: My own research program has kind of collapsed and I’m really concerned about what kind of plan I’m going to muster for my [performance review] meeting... (Female STF, Sandstone).

Importantly, STF respondents also observed the importance of the link between research and excellence in teaching: When I am teaching those subjects [which are the areas of my research] I do better… You can only do that if you’re teaching three subjects a year in your area of specialisation. (Female STF, Sandstone).

What does this mean for the future of the university in Australia?

The STF experiment is inherently contradictory. Junior staff are appointed, but with the expectation of being ‘leaders’ and ‘experts’ in teaching and student experience. Teaching excellence is demanded of staff with workloads so devastating that many of them have suffered physical and psychological consequences and who are working outside their areas of expertise.

Workers are appointed as teaching focused, with no time for research, but driven by aspirations to join the academic career structure in a balanced teaching-and-research role. The opacity of expectations regarding ‘scholarly’ teaching is so deep as to defy neat summation.

STFs were established to decasualise the workforce but have in fact created a new category of employment outside the existing career structure, creating widespread confusion about its function.

These conditions demand urgent action: • Existing STF roles should be converted into balanced teaching and research positions.

• Casual academics should be appointed to Level A positions, with teaching loads no more than 60 per cent of total working hours.

• Workload models are utterly unrealistic and should be redrafted to reflect the actual hours worked. ◆ 'Scholarly Teaching Fellows as a new category of employment in Australian universities: impacts and prospects for teaching and learning' Available at: https://ltr.edu.au/resources/ SP16-5285_Goodman_Report_2020.pdf

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◆ LGBTIQ+

Wear It Purple Day, mostly remotely!

Wear it Purple Day, 28 August 2020, is one of two LGBTIQ+ annual campaign days on the NTEU calendar.

COVID-19 threw up a new challenge for many ‘Wear it Purple’ allies getting together. They did that where permitted.

National QUTE caucus held our monthly online chat on Wear it Purple Day. Participants answered the question, 'If I could tell my 16-year-old self something, what would it be?' The solidarity and warmth of participants in the online chat underlined the true spirit of Wear it Purple Day. Wear it Purple Day is an opportunity for the Union to engage members in activities that recognise, celebrate and support our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ+) communities.

Schools, universities and other workplaces ‘wear it purple’ to celebrate the diversity of the rainbow community and show support to rainbow young people.

Origins Response to a string of deaths of rainbow youth due to bullying and harassment back in 2010 moved the public conscience. Famous television host Ellen Degeneres declared on her show, 'this needs to be a wake up call to everyone: teenage bullying and teasing is an epidemic …and the death rate is rising.'

That year, American university student Tyler Clementi jumped to his death from a bridge after being ‘outed’ by his roommate. A webcam recording of Tyler and another male student was shared without

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their knowledge or consent. Tyler’s legacy is an anti-bullying Foundation in his name. It stands to challenge harassment, bullying, cruelty and humiliation by engaging ‘bystanders’ to these behaviours to become ‘upstanders’. ‘Upstanders’ are encouraged to stop anti-social behaviours by leading a pledge that calls out harassing behaviours both in person and online.

gender diverse staff and students at the at Western Sydney University. A critical finding of this study was the level of fear of heterosexism and cissexism on a university campus. 46% of participants reported they felt safer hiding their sexuality or gender identity. Discrimination was reported by 42% of participants and harassment/bullying 32%.

Being LGBTIQ+on campus

Significantly, the research also showed that although 75% of all respondents reported they would intervene in incidents of heterosexism and cissexism just 26% did so making ‘bystander’ behaviour a potential key action item for this work within universities and a potential action for NTEU’s 2021 Wear it Purple Day.

Recent research points to the significance of events such as Wear it Purple to supporting LGBTIQ+students and staff in tertiary education.

Research into the LGBTIQ+student experience in (American) higher education was commissioned by the Tyler Foundation and reported in 2018 . It revealed campus climates that failed to provide an equitable learning environment for LGBTIQ+students and disparities across engagement and health outcomes.

Supplementing the normative stress and challenges of university, the study found, LGBTIQ+students navigate the additional stress of prejudice, harassment, discrimination and violence on campus.

This includes social exclusion, verbal and/or physical harassment, non-verbal exclusion (e.g. looks and stares) and discrimination.

For the Tyler Clementi Foundation, this report is a call to action to address campus heterosexism and cissexism. They ask bystanders to become ‘upstanders’ and generate resources and support to make this happen.

Recent Australian research investigated campus climate for sexuality and

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Looking ahead In October, NTEU National Council 2020 moved a motion similar in intent to the pledge put forward by the Tyler Clementi Foundation. This motion followed internal hostility between members of the QUTE caucus. This conflict translated into online harassment, humiliation and other ‘cancel culture’ tactics against fellow union members and union staff.

This was an important step for the QUTE caucus in living the values of Wear it Purple Day and standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before, like Tyler Clementi. ◆ Dave Willis & Aimee Hulbert nteu.org.au/qute/wearitpurple Interested in joining QUTE? Email Renee Veal, rveal@nteu.org.au.

FROM THE IMMEDIATE PAST PRESIDENT ◆

Jeannie Rea, Immediate Past President k jrea@vu.edu.au

Out from under the cover of COVID Since March, my colleagues and students in international community development have been discussing the impacts of the Coronavirus pandemic upon communities’ capacity to organise to mitigate the pandemic health risks whilst also trying to hold onto achievements in making sustainable, equitable and healthy communities.

Redgirl Lee/Unsplash

Many international stories are of governments and their agents using the cover of COVID-19 to introduce or implement harsh and repressive regulations and laws, as well as acting illegally.

Not surprisingly for people in these situations, the cooperation of the people of Victoria in adhering to ‘lockdown’ restrictions, is seen as quite strange. In general Victorians were scared enough of the virus and trustful enough of government to go along, albeit with much complaining.

The State Premier controlled the mediation of the Government’s position by fronting a televised media conference every day. In arguing about when and what restrictions should be relieved, the underlying understanding was/is that they will end.

Then we deal with the aftermath from increased poverty and the many still reliant on food handouts, the reduced household incomes, decimated businesses, the exacerbation of domestic violence, deterioration in physical and mental health, and starting to restore the improvements now eroded in gender and other areas of equity.

However, confidence in the Andrews Government was severely betrayed with the felling of the Djab Wurrung sacred Directions Tree under a State of Disaster when protests were banned, as well as travel further than 25km. Through this act, the Government’s commitment to making treaties with First Nations’ communities, which had been tentatively welcomed, was thrown asunder. Reported around the world, this fitted with the more general perception that governments are not to be trusted even in their public health responses to the pandemic.

At a time when people are simultaneously calling upon governments for leadership and action.

‘Under the cover of COVID’ has become an almost standard clause when report-

ing upon government actions in curtailing freedoms of speech and movement beyond what seems necessary and temporary, and which impact more harshly upon the very communities that bear the brunt of the virus and mitigation measures.

Australia’s isolation and relative prosperity and confidence in government has made these minor issues for most, but they are catastrophic in many parts of the world, noisily evident in the deeply politically, economically and racially divided United States. But stories in our region also talk of fear of ongoing consequences of government actions even where there is relief that the virus has been contained.

The critics, including the intellectual critics come from the right and left, taking up usual positions on rights and freedoms and coalescing around individual or collective philosophical manoeuvres.

What then should universities be doing in this time? Fearlessly and courageously speak truth to power. I suggest that they/ we come up wanting – and I am not referring to Australia alone. The university sector has much to say about the financial impact of the closed borders on the international student ‘market’ and the difficulties in shifting to digitally remote learning delivery.

There is much discourse about the stresses and strains of working from home amongst people still in secure jobs. There is rightly anger at jobs and courses being cut and very reasonable presumption that ‘under the cover of COVID’ university managements are continuing to pursue the neoliberal restructuring and job smashing agendas.

But there is limited support for acting in resistance. Governments have used the opportunity to again cut funding and increase students fees and, in Australia, undermine the Humanities, while also putting the onus on universities to deliver ‘job ready’ graduates.

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In Australia, universities are also adopting what most see to be the unnecessary recommendations of the French Inquiry into freedom of speech, prompted by some right-wing commentators claiming their voices are not being heard on campuses.

The irony is that implementing these requirements has made academic freedom and freedom of speech in the workplace and amongst students live issues again which I doubt was the intent.

I would suggest we ramp up exercising the space and duty we have in universities, where we have intellectual freedom to speak out and with and even for those denied access and opportunity in Australia and internationally. There is opportunity in this disruptive time of crisis to demand more intellectual and critical space.

Self-censoring by academics in the hope that this may keep us out of the next firing line has not worked, nor has being acquiescent and rolling with the constant change and erosion of staff working conditions and students learning conditions.

There have been far more opportunities than usual for university people to be heard and be listened to, in the public continued overpage...

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◆ INTERNATIONAL

Hong Kong trade union leader re-arrested In February of this year, Lee Cheuk-yan, General Secretary of Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions was arrested for pro-democracy activism.

He was released on bail but then in April, under the cover of COVID-19, pro-Beijing authorities in Hong Kong rearrested Lee and 14 other democracy activists.

Mr Lee was due to attend the 2019 NTEU National Council, but last minute visa issues forced him to deliver his talk by video link. Despite a sometimes shaky connection, he enthralled Council with his extraordinary story of activism and resistance.

In December last year, NTEU UTS Branch members hosted a forum with Mr Lee. He spoke to members about the political impacts of government repression against the freedom movement and academia in Hong Kong.

Lee told The Guardian that the arrests were clearly intended to intimidate activists and voters in the run-up to the September elections.

Lee told Union Aid Abroad: 'We need the international community to continue to stand with us in our fight for democracy'.

Lee is a veteran labor leader and former member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, representing the New Territories West constituency for more than two

decades. He co-founded and is Vice Chair of the Hong Kong Labour Party.

NTEU members are continuing to support work by Union Aid Abroad to protest Lee’s arrest and support trade unionists and democracy activists in Hong Kong. ◆ Richard Bailey Above: Lee Cheuk-yan at a rally earlier this year (Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions)

Out from under the cover of COVID ...continued from previous page domain from the epidemiologists and immunologists; to the feminist researchers analysing the weight of the burden upon women of managing COVID while government recovery programs purposefully favour men; to the health specialists, psychologists and sociologists monitoring and at the same time helping people cope; to the planners and engineers and economists developing models of how we can do things differently; and the environmental experts warning climate change is still the bigger problem.

Students are both disengaged because they have so much to cope with – and

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more engaged as they want their university education to equip them for global citizenship in a changing world. Over 1200 academics signed an open letter calling upon the Victorian Government to stop the roadwork and protect the remaining Djab Wurrung trees and land (see link at end of this article).

Universities should be acting in the public interest for the public good. We need to be intervening in public life, and encouraging raging debate inside universities.

It is our responsibility to get past the bizarre notion that facts and science and evidence are merely a different opinion.

And those opinions become truth if you shout louder.

How about a shout-out instead for education and learning and research and listening and asking questions? Let’s remind ourselves and others why universities do matter. And why we in Australia have to speak out and stand up for our colleagues in other countries who are facing more and more repression – and Coronavirus. ◆ Jeannie Rea was NTEU National President 2010–2018, and is an Associate Professor at Victoria University Open Letter to Victorian Government from Australian academics regarding the sacred Djab Wurrung Directions Tree:

shorturl.at/bgh09

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INTERNATIONAL ◆

Building on the moment Never let a good global crisis go to waste. Those in powerful roles in society – including the tertiary education sector in Aotearoa – certainly haven’t and neither must we.

The global COVID-19 pandemic is a moment we can and must learn from.

It is a pandemic that the New Zealand Government has responded to by ‘going hard and going early’. The result – border closures, a relatively short lock-down period by international standards, and rapid changes to policies and support for workers.

This meant tertiary education provision in Aotearoa moved to emergency remote teaching and support in the first half of 2020, and institutions lost about $300M in international education ‘revenue’.

The COVID-19 response threw into sharp relief the damage done by decades of funding shortfalls and politicians who have treated education as a ‘market’.

And it highlighted the extra miles staff go every day to make the tertiary education system work.

The question now is will we learn from the COVID-19 moment and what direction will our learning take?

Will we again see government acknowledging that tertiary education is a public good and crucial to any plan to ‘build back better’? And it will mean our university leaders realise they must change the way they think and act?

To build back better we need a new funding regime which ensures small courses and small campuses in regional New Zealand will flourish.

We need proper student support which allows everyone in Aotearoa to seize the life-changing opportunities of tertiary study.

There will be a need for universities to work together, to create a co-operative approach to tertiary education provision in Aotearoa and to end wasteful marketing of ‘sexy’ courses.

We need good jobs and an end to pushing core work – marking, teaching, researching and student support – onto workers on casual and fixed-term agreements.

There is some recognition of the need for change but, sadly, those in power (our vice-chancellors, senior leadership teams, government officials, and our centre-left government) are not quite there when it comes to reclaiming the university for all it can be.

Under the cover of COVID-19 we’ve seen our institutional leaders deepen the neo-liberal and managerial agenda which has driven our sector near to collapse.

Institutional leaders are cutting courses and jobs and denying any real conversation about the impact on learners and the quality of education.

We’ve seen good jobs being sold off. And we’ve even seen one vice-chancellor pushing ahead with outsourcing an entire bridging program to a for-profit international provider.

Institutional leaders have seen the ability of staff to be ‘nimble’ and execute emergency remote teaching functions as the rationale for advancing long held plans to move all tertiary education online – or at least as much as possible. This all corresponds to the commercial formula adopted in NZ 15 years ago – go online, divest of infrastructure (campuses), and use more casual labour.

There is another attack on the mission of the university that has been height-

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ened in 2020. There has been more than one attempt by universities to silence criticism in order to defend their reputation. It seems corporate style ‘fidelity and loyalty’ is more important for some vice-chancellors than the core mission of universities to act as critic and conscience of society.

The vice-chancellors must not be allowed to use the impact of COVID-19 as a cover under which they can fundamentally shift the mission of the universities.

The market approach to tertiary education is failing Aotearoa right now. The negative impacts on students and staff, and on their families and communities, need to be told. And the alternative must be on everyone’s lips.

• Tertiary education is a public good.

• Tertiary education is crucial to creating a more equal and creative world.

• Tertiary education staff need to have stability and security to support learners and their families.

Perhaps for NZTEU there are some signs of hope. The current Labour Government and Minister of Education had already begun a program of returning vocational education to its rightful place as a public good, before COVID-19 hit. Those working in New Zealand’s version of TAFE have been involved throughout 2020 in helping design an equitable, accessible, high quality national network of vocational education provision that aims to reach all communities.

The question is, will the Government take what the COVID-19 moment has clearly demonstrated – you can’t design universities as competitors in commercial markets and expect them to care about people – and use it to drive home change in the entire tertiary education sector? ◆ Sandra Grey, National Secretary, Te Hautū Kahurangi | NZ Tertiary Education Union teu.ac.nz

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â—† DELEGATE PROFILE

Professor Peter Dabnichki Engineering, RMIT University RMIT has had a lot of challenges in 2020, some similar to all other institutions and some unique to it. Overseas student numbers have fallen, meaning decreased revenue, everyone had to move to 100% online teaching, learning and working, the entire sector suffered through exclusion from JobKeeper, mass sackings and a wholesale change to funding. The idea of the university as we know it has again fundamentally shifted.

While NTEU has resisted the cuts to courses, funding, staff and increases to workload that have wounded higher education and left many students stranded mid-stream as a Union we are again grappling with what we are to do about the future of higher education.

ings and political gatherings' the building blocks of collective engagement. Peter reflects on that time as 'the lesson to take is you can not be a trade union and be politically independent, that is a dogma that regimes love to perpetuate, it's impossible because their policies are against freedom.'

The people who resist these pernicious changes and fight on the frontlines to keep our universities places where new ideas are made and our futures strengthened are our delegates and one of our most experienced and active Union delegates is Professor Peter Dabnichki.

When reflecting on the demands for democratic reform which swept Eastern Europe in 1989 which led Zhivkov to resign Peter says 'very similar to Poland we eventually became the biggest organisation and eventually led to the downfall of the regime.' For all intents and purposes, this was the end of Communist rule in Bulgaria.

Peter has been an academic in Europe, the UK and now Australia. His research is focused around applications of smart technologies in the areas of medicine, sport and biomechanics such as Intelligent systems in medicine and sport, pervasive computing in medicine and sport modelling in biomechanics, biology inspired design, and sport engineering. This is all amazing work, but here we focus on Peter's political life as a radical trade unionist.

The first union Peter became an activist in, in Bulgaria, was illegal. 'I started as a unionist in my country which was in a very similar situation to Poland. The communists had union membership which is mandatory, we didn't become part of that and the only way to resist government, which was management really, in day to day work was to create an independent trade union... by virtue of trying to be independent you become immediately political because they didn't tolerate any dissent and always wanted full control.'

Peter learned how to organise with others to build power and solidarity 'Yes of course it involved a lot of strikes and meet-

Later on, Peter moved to the UK to continue his academic career and as it turned out found another reason to continue his union activism. 'Very quickly I saw in the post Thatcher years when they started nationalising universities and it didn't matter whether Tories or Labour were in power the policies were exactly the same for universities, which was government control.' Again, to defend higher education and the 'curiosity that must be the heart and leader of research' Peter determined 'there was only one way to resist this' which was to join and to become active against the changes to research funding that both sides of politics were putting forward.

'University funding depended on a research funding model in what became known as the REF... this led to wild swings in university funding, frequently with people being laid off. My first experience with that was when 300 medical researchers were made redundant because of the funding changes.'

Like many union leaders the challenges of getting people interested in campaigning for an improved sector is real. 'The way continued next page...

NATIONAL TERTIARY EDUCATION UNION

Become an NTEU

Delegate!

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Delegates

D E L E G AT E S . N T E U. O R G . AU

Delegates are a vital part of the NTEU, maintaining visibility, supporting recruitment & building the strength of the Union.

If you’re interested in becoming a Delegate in your work area, contact your Branch today.

ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 â—† NOV 2020

DELEGATE PROFILE ◆

among academics we have many people from countries where personal liberties are not rated highly and they are used to finding no problems with universities in the UK and Australia.'

Moving to Australia in 2015 Peter is struck by the differences in the way universities are managed. 'The major difference is although management is pushing toward this management way of running a University at the end of the day in the UK different units like schools and departments, ultimate power is the academic assembly which is the academic members of staff' One of the key differences is that 'department heads cannot push new programs, close programs or change curriculum without at least going through the academic assembly. Peter says this obviously has limitations but things are done with a basis of agreement. 'The second thing is managers are appointed following consultation, not Vice-Chancellors obviously, but people like department heads, every member of staff is consulted on a few candidates before a final decision is made.'

Peter's experience in Australia is that 'the managers just appoint staff here, there is no consultation, we had our manager effectively sacked and we wrote a letter to the professor to no effect to protect a younger member of staff, it was just ignored.' One of the ways to keep things fairer in the UK as Peter sees it is that 'in England trade unions have a seat on the board of governance as a voting member by right the union sits and acts as a voting member, that also makes a difference.'

When Peter thinks about the future of Australian universities he is concerned. 'The Universities are on their own, the academics have neither a say nor can influence the direction and will be able to salvage whatever is left. The first thing that is highly compromised of course is academic freedom. The KPI dogmas and constant barrage of top down instructions suffocates any type of independent thinking.'

We talk about the current funding direction and the attacks on different fields of study, particularly humanities and the history of those fields and importance to university life and knowledge.

'The first victim is obviously humanities, you know I'm engineering but university reputations are made and broken on humanities, that's how universities arise. The humanities have a really bad time, and humanities have an influence on society and way of thinking and even on academic development. As well as socalled pure science which is frowned upon nowadays.'

I ask what drives academics and universities and he reflects that 'people do things out of curiosity and that's how the big discoveries are made that change the world not by industry asking for services. As a result, research becomes quite expensive, driven by demand and the costs are supported by teach-

ing funds so universities are so heavily dependent on overseas students eventually that will crash.'

We move to current political events affecting Australian universities and the deep and lasting impacts it has had on colleagues and students and what we can do as a union to unpick the worst of it. 'Basically, I was shocked with Scott Morrison's attitude to universities when he was asked to help with JobKeeper and said universities have all this money and big salaries.' How do we change things? 'It's not about how much people are paid, it's the complete lack of transparency of the board or Council. We need to ask how are they elected, who are they, do they have merits, do they have our interests at heart or their own?.'

Peter thinks for a minute about the real way to solve the problem. 'Change to transparency needs to go through parliament. until then every university can be like RMIT and put 120 million a year through on consultancies voted on by University Council...nobody bats an eyelid and that's a worry. In normal enterprise the board will go for financial mismanagement, not the VC or the CEO because it's more than one person who makes those decisions to draw down big loans and buy big buildings. Otherwise we're just scapegoating people, most of the time VCs are benign though don't get me wrong I am not a fan of them at all but in reality, they are not in full control of the university.'

We talk about how to get underneath the problems and examine them. 'One needs to notice that they're all made from the same mould, so it must be the system that impacts this mould, the systemic lack of control over everything results in making people redundant. RMIT miscalculated on growth and expansion and then this crisis came. 'Every big organisation who has a lack of transparent way of running things ends up in the same place, like the banks for example.'

I ask Peter what he likes about NTEU as a union, he smiles and says 'I'm happy to belong to NTEU and have a solid organisation, our hairman Sam is fantastic, he has more bruises than anyone in this current fight. I wish academics were half as determined and half as enthusiastic about the Union as the professional staff; they are the real engine. We can all be thankful to them really for their immense contributions.'

Peter adds, 'I hope that and there are good signs that neoliberalism is ending, it is anything but democracy and not for the people.' ◆ Chloé Gaul, Senior State Organiser, Victorian Division delegates.nteu.org.au

AUR is published twice a year by the NTEU.

Since 1958, the Australian Universities’ Review has been encouraging debate and discussion about issues in higher education and its contribution to Australian public life.

NTEU members are entitled to receive a free subscription on an opt-in basis .

If you are an NTEU member and would like to receive AUR, please email aur@nteu.org.au

www.aur.org.au ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020

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National Council during COVID Over 100 rank and file delegates and officers from every Branch around the country met at the end of October for the NTEU National Council. But this was a Council with a difference – for the first time ever, due to COVID-19 restrictions, the entire Council meeting was held online, over two days.

This year’s Council, the Union’s main decision-making body that sets our policies and priorities for the coming year, was held against the backdrop of the COVID-19 crisis, which continues to have profound impacts on the tertiary education sector. It has seen universities lose over 12,000 jobs and grapple with a revenue shortfall of $3 billion this year, and up to $16 billion in 2021.

At the same time the Morrison Government has successfully passed (albeit, by only one vote in the Senate) the Job-Ready Graduates legislation, which will change for the worse the university funding framework. The main issues considered

by National Council, and not covered elsewhere in this edition of the Advocate, are outlined here.

2020/21 Priorities Council acknowledged that COVID-19 has affected much of the Union’s work this year, and that many things envisaged at last year’s Council weren’t able to be done.

4. Build capacity and foster activism by investing in delegate, staff, and officer development through resourcing, education, training and support.

5. Develop strategies and materials for campaigning on: • Protection of jobs.

• Wage theft.

• Insecure work and enforcement of casual entitlements.

• Healthy workplaces and the elimination of psychosocial hazards.

6. Prepare the Union at all levels for bargaining.

7. Continue to engage in public advocacy to secure and advance academic and intellectual freedom, freedom of speech and institutional autonomy.

In implementing these priorities the Union will work in consultation with the relevant interest groups and advisory bodies such as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Policy Committee, the Women’s Action Committee, Queer Unionists in Tertiary Education and the National Tertiary Casuals Committee.

COVID-19 impact on higher education sector The Council noted the catastrophic effects that COVID-19 has had on the tertiary education sector, including huge job losses and revenue shortfalls. This was compounded by the Federal Government blocking access to JobKeeper and the subsequent passing of the Job-Ready Graduates legislation. continued next page...

Below:Alison Barnes and Matt McGowan during National Council.

Council agreed on a set of priorities updated from 2019/20: 1. Engaging in campaigning, public advocacy and action to ensure that the sector is supported by a stable and fair funding system.

2. Working at all levels to prevent job losses.

3. Continue to re-orient the work of NTEU to ensure that we build a culture that supports and prioritises organising in order to build our power and member engagement.

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Council reaffirmed the NTEU’s higher education policy positions and our commitment to organising alongside student organisations, trade unions, professional bodies and other allies to ensure the quality of public tertiary education by:

Our Union must do more to recruit and organise casualised workers if it is to reflect the make-up of the university workforce and remain an effective advocate for the university community. To this end Council agreed to:

• Campaigning against government policy agendas of public funding cuts, the undermining of research and teaching, deregulation and privatisation.

• Develop a casual membership strategy, the aim of which is to achieve parity of casual membership with workforce structure in the sector, with adequate resources to be spent on achieving this aim.

• Opposing any attempts to further shift the cost of education onto students and advocating for the elimination of tuition fees for government supported students.

• Continuing to research and advocate for fair and sustainable funding and regulatory alternatives.

• Continuing to campaign and advocate against government policy and actions that undermine institutional autonomy and threaten academic freedom and genuine free speech on our university campuses.

• Supporting education international’s global campaign against the privatisation and commercialisation in and of education.

Organising against casualisation Insecure work has become the norm in higher education, and the COVID crisis and the effects on jobs and revenue is likely to make it worse.

NTEU analysis of the best available national data indicates that 65% of university workers are in insecure forms of employment. Of this, 43% are employed on a casual basis and 22% are employed on fixed term contracts. Only 35% of Australian university workers are in a secure job.

While casualised workers make up the largest group of Australian university workers by employment type, they are under-represented among NTEU members. Analysis of membership data from 2018 indicates that casualised workers make up only 12.8% of NTEU membership by headcount.

• Allocate resources to Branch-level casuals organising by making the organising of precarious workers a high priority in the work plans of all NTEU organising staff.

• Support NTEU members to form networks of precarious workers through which decisions about casuals organising and campaigns are made at Branch, Division, and National levels; • Develop Branch-level casuals delegate structures and integrating these structures with precarious worker networks and existing workplace delegate structures.

• Support precarious worker networks via organising resources and the free exchange of information between these networks and NTEU officials and staff, including the sharing of relevant membership lists with delegates, subject to NTEU protocols.

2021 Enterprise Bargaining The next round of enterprise bargaining is due to start in 2021 for many universities.

Because of the time constraints imposed by holding National Council online, Council members agreed to defer discussions about bargaining to a special National Council to be held online on 10-11 December 2020. ◆ Michael Evans, Organiser (Media & Engagement) Below: National Councillors attending the Zoom meeting.

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Life Members 2020

Greg McCarthy SA Division

Brad Astbury USQ Branch Brad Astbury was a tireless worker for the USQ membership in various capacities, most notable as Branch President from 2004 to 2014, and Vice-President (General Staff) until his retirement. He was a humble, yet fearless negotiator and led several rounds of successful Enterprise Bargaining...

Read full nomination at nteu.info/bradastbury

Greg McCarthy was National Vice-President (Academic) from 2006 to 2012. In addition to being highly respected for his scholarship and commitment to industrial issues affecting academics, he was also an advocate for professional staff...

Read full nomination at nteu.info/gregmccarthy

Kelvin Michael Tasmanian Division

Cathleen Farrelly La Trobe Branch Cathleen Farrelly was a full-time academic in the School of Education La Trobe University based in Bendigo for more than twenty-five years. During this time, she was active in all aspects of the Union. She was a vociferous and uncompromising fighter for staff rights and for the Union...

Read full nomination at nteu.info/cathleenfarrelly

Kelvin has a rather long and extensive membership record sheet with the NTEU. He was Division President (2008-2014), and Division Secretary (2014-2020). Kelvin is a strong unionist member who fought for the rights of members and played instrumental roles...

Read full nomination at nteu.info/kelvinmichael

Kate Mitchell SCU Branch

John Graham A&TSIPC John Graham is a proud Kombumerri man from the Gold Coast region of Queensland. John joined the NTEU in September 2001 shortly after commencing work at Griffith University in the Gumurrii student success unit. John actively recruited Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to the Union, especially those within the Gumurrii Centre where he worked. He was instrumental in mentoring others to take up union roles and encouraged others to come to NTEU A&TSI National Forum...

Read full nomination at nteu.info/johngraham

Craig MacMillan

It is with both honour and sadness that we farewell our truly great comrade, Kate Mitchell. Kate has always been proud that she had completed her own Bachelor's degree at SCU as a single mother, before joining the SCU staff...

Read full nomination at at nteu.info/katemitchell

Jamie O'Shea UWA Branch Dr Jamie O’Shea has been a tireless advocate for university workers for decades. He was a WA National/Division Councillor and UWA Branch Committee member (2004-2018), and Branch President (2006-2018). Jamie is a passionate advocate for members at every level of the University...

Read full nomination at nteu.info/jamieoshea

Macquarie Branch Craig MacMillan's exit from the sector is a huge loss. I cannot emphasise enough how highly committed he is to the union movement, the NTEU and to individual members.

The reciprocal respect and appreciation directed to Craig by members and comrades can also not be overstated. He has been tireless in his efforts to protect and enhance the rights and conditions of the collective and individual members over the years, while at the same time being a rock for those of us in the frontline...

Read full nomination at nteu.info/craigmacmillan

Margaret Sims UNE Branch Margaret epitomised the conscientious efforts that are required of all those wanting to make a difference. In 2010, Margaret was elected as an academic representative on the UNE Council and served with distinction in a not-too-friendly environment, and kept a productive dialogue open with the UNE Branch throughout her time on Council...

Read full nomination at nteu.info/margaretsims

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Vale Prof Tracey Bretag Tracey Bretag, Professor at the University of South Australia, passed away on 7 October following a battle with cancer.

Tracey was a long serving NTEU member, a passionate teacher and researcher, an engaged volunteer social justice advocate, and a friend.

Tracey will be remembered by the international university community as a leading expert on academic integrity: she literally wrote the handbook on it. Tracey was the former Chair and Founding Member of the Asia-Pacific Forum on Educational Integrity and a former President of the Executive Board to the International Centre for Academic Integrity (ICAI).

Times Higher Education named her as one of the 'People of the year: Who mattered in Higher Education in 2019'. She was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by European Network of Academic Integrity (ENAI) in April this year.

Tracey’s passion for academic integrity was born from her passion for fairness in all things. She advocated that while universities were catching hundreds of students plagiarising each year, it didn’t always come from intention but rather from a lack of understanding what was expected of them. She felt that if children were educated better about referencing in schools, instead of just cutting and pasting from the internet and that being okay, that it would prevent them getting stuck at university.

Tracey’s friends remember her as an exciting, energetic and enthusiastic individual with a love of advocacy. She couldn’t resist volunteering to help out whenever she could, be it filling in for a friend's netball team (until she returned home with a broken arm), calling the Union to find out how to fix the conditions of her research assistants, or supporting cancer research charities.

Tracey was a strident supporter of refugee associations. In 2002, when a group of refugees in detention entered into a suicide pact, she drove out to the Woomera Detention Centre to hold up a hand written sign that said 'You are not alone'. Tracey was arrested (broadcast live on TV news) for trespass that day and returned two days later to her university work as an early career academic very concerned she would be reprimanded – but instead she received a standing ovation from her students.

Tracey’s family remember her as a fun, caring, funny, determined and fiercely loyal force of nature with a love of literature and all things musical. At her memorial, amongst all of the jokes about plagiarising poets to memorialise her, friends were instructed (not invited) to take a book home and to promise to read it – each had been signed 'Love, Tracey 2020' and came with a bookmark bearing her picture.

Friends remembered a woman who used to trawl through the newspapers in her early twenties looking for things of interest to write about, who then wrote herself into a job as a regular opinion piece writer in the Advertiser simply because she really did have an opinion on almost everything. We marvelled at the insanity of a woman who sailed across an ocean in a 37 foot catamaran while 6 months pregnant, and then another ocean while nursing a 6 week old baby, because she didn’t like to sit still. We laughed through our tears as we were serenaded by her favourite musical tune (that she had instructed be played) 'Hasa Diga Eebowai' from the Broadway musical, The Book of Mormon.

At the risk of plagiarising, I’ll paraphrase one of her friends who noted at her memorial service that the world will never be the same without Tracey, but it is a whole lot better for having had her in it for 58 years. ◆

Life Members 2020

Juliet Fuller, SA Division Organiser

Ron Slee

Gillian Stacey

SA Division

La Trobe Branch

Ron Slee was SA Division Secretary (2016-2020) and Flinders Branch President (2012-2020). He is a staunch unionist committed to social justice and has committed a lifetime to progressive politics, social reform and transformation, and the Union movement...

Read full nomination at nteu.info/ronslee

Gillian Stacey worked in the library and was always an active member of the Branch, either as a delegate or on the Branch Committee. She ran meetings and dealt with disputes within the library and was always recruiting members...

Read full nomination at nteu.info/gillianstacey All testimonials at www.nteu.org.au/life_members

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Anna Stewart Memorial Project continues in 2020 At this year’s Anna Stewart Memorial Project in South Australia, 13 women participated in the five-day program. They came from a variety of sectors including plumbing, electrical induction, primary, secondary and tertiary education It was inspirational to see the effort that everyone made to attend this vital project. Women travelled from regional areas, took recreation leave and even brought their young children with them.

Everyone who attended had the same goal of being able to better contribute to their respective unions.

In the morning of our very first session we were asked to do two things: Consider what we wanted to get out of the project, and consider which issues were most important to us

Above: Anna McCarron and Jess Jacobson with their Anna Stewart certificates

• Normality in family/caring roles shared between both parents.

• Quality free childcare.

• Diversity in all workplaces including parliament.

• Genuine opportunity for women in leadership.

For the first task, inspiration and reconnection to the purpose was a common thread. This has been a tough year, particularly for our sisters, and balancing work and home demands amidst a global pandemic has been an extraordinary feat; no wonder so many of us felt fatigued.

We spent the next four and a half days learning the techniques and finding the confidence to step forward, take charge and make meaningful change on these issues. Power comes from organising – and we are ready and equipped with the tools.

Finding confidence and conviction in our voices was another commonality between the women. Often, we find ourselves in male-dominated industries and trying to prove our validity can be a challenge. With one participant not even having access to female facilities at her workplace – it can often feel like an uphill battle to find equal footing.

We learned about how we can become great leaders who empower others, inspire action and turn division into solidarity.

For the second task, a blank piece of poster paper was placed on an A-Frame with the words: What is most important to you? We filled it with: • Secure employment.

We learned about how we can become great campaigners by experimenting with different leadership structures, team building tools and communication strategies.

We learned about the power of women by studying the great women who have shaped our society and continue to do so, by looking at social 'norms' through a range of lenses, and by finding the confidence to speak up.

• Superannuation equity: dignity in retirement.

Below, left: Angus Story (SA Unions Secretary) with Anna McCarron. Right: 2020 Project group participants.

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Anna Stewart Memorial Project ...continued from previous page All the women within the project were so respectful and supportive of each other. Everyone formed such a strong bond with each other in just five days and we formed a Facebook group to keep in touch, invite each other to union related events such as ‘Feminism in the Pub’ and to support each other as women and unionists.

Anna Stewart Memorial Project Graduates A number of Anna Stewart Memorial Project (ASMP) graduates have gone on to become Union leaders.

Elizabeth Dabars and Gail Gago are two ASMP graduates who became union leaders in SA.

It was fascinating to learn about how different Unions operate and the difference that women are making. It was energising to be surrounded by other women who shared the same ideologies and are committed to making change so that the women that follow us do not have to fight as hard for equal rights.

Elizabeth was elected Secretary of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation SA Branch) in 2008 at the age of 30. She still holds that position. In 2014, she received an Order of Australia award (AM) for her services to medical administration, particularly to nursing and midwifery, and to community and mental health organisations.

At the conclusion of the week we felt empowered, reconnected, confident and ready to make change.

Gail also was elected Secretary of the SA Branch of the Australian Nursing Federation Union and later was elected to the SA Legislative Council representing the Australian Labor Party. Between 2006 and 2016, she held 12 different Ministerial portfolios including Minister for Employment, Higher Education and Skills. She was also Leader of the Government in the Legislative Council from 2011 to 2016.

She retired from Parliament in 2018.

What do we want to see for the university sector? We want a sector that no longer requires 'diversity targets', as the workforce is naturally diverse. We want a sector where women are represented equally in the leadership stakes.

We want a sector that supports secure career progression for both academic and professional women.

We want a sector that is more than accommodating to flexible working arrangements and paid parental leave for both parents. And we want a sector that uses their resources to continue to progress women’s rights.

We know how to organise and to bring people together for a cause. We have the tools to progress each of these visions and we intend to use them. ◆ Anna McCarron, NTEU delegate, UniSA Jessica Jacobson, NTEU delegate, Adelaide

There have also been international participants in the Victorian program including six women who now work in their home country for APHEDA (Australian People for Health, Education and Development), the global justice organisation of the Australian union movement. Those women are Hoang Hang (Vietnam), Teng Rany (Cambodia), Vilada Phomduansy (Laos), Hiba Yasin (Palestine), Elizabeth Araujo (Timor Leste) and Ricar Pascoela (Timor Leste). ◆ Anna Stewart Memorial Project: www.unionwomen.org.au/asmp

Who was Anna Stewart?

A former journalist and active Victorian union official from 1974 to 1983, Anna Stewart died in 1983 aged only 35. Anna was a founding member of the ACTU Women's Committee established in 1977 and worked tirelessly on programs to be incorporated into the Working Women's Charter.

In 1974 Anna joined the Federated Furnishing Trades Society of Australasia as research officer. She quickly saw that the few places that employed women failed to provide job security, flexibility, skills recognition, childcare and unpaid maternity leave.

In 1975, she moved to the Victorian Branch of the Vehicle Builders' Employees' Federation of Australia where she fought for childcare facilities in car plants, argued work value cases, initiated campaigns against sexual harassment, and compelled employers to recognise sexual harassment as an industrial issue.

Above: Anna Stewart (Miranda Salt)

She assisted with the ACTU Maternity Leave Test Case, regarded as a breakthrough in winning the right of working women to 52 weeks of unpaid maternity leave and the right to return to the same job. ◆

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Sara Ranatunge awarded 2020 Carolyn Allport Scholarship Sara Ranatunge is the 2020 recipient of the Carolyn Allport Scholarship, for postgraduate work in feminist studies.

Sara is undertaking a PhD at Victoria University exploring the impact of the Victorian Government’s Free TAFE initiative in empowering socio-economically disadvantaged women who completed a Certificate III or IV in Education Support between 2019–2021 Sara is a teacher in the TAFE sector with a passion for improving the education outcomes for learners from culturally and linguistically diverse and underprivileged backgrounds.

'I could see that I and my students were travelling a parallel path,' she says. 'I was 19-years-old when I came to Australia as a migrant with my family from Sri Lanka. I began studying teaching at Melbourne University, but when I fell pregnant, I left study to look after my daughter.'

'I too returned to study as a mature age student when my eldest daughter started attending high school.

In 2012, Sara completed her undergraduate degree at Victoria University and went on to complete a Masters, where she focused on the experiences of refugees and migrants studying in Adult Migrant English Program (AMEP) courses.

Sara then worked as a trainer and assessor for the Certificates III and IV in Education Support. This course is what was formally known as a Teacher Aide Course and the participants were placed in primary and secondary schools and in TAFEs for their work experience.

'Inspired by the transformation of the students I was teaching and assessing, I decided to make this group of women the focus of my PhD which I started earlier this year,' she says.

wanted to study but never had the opportunity and most had minimal technology skills. Some hadn’t studied for decades and those who were struggling in their personal life, persevered.

'I watched their confidence and self-esteem boom, especially during placement. For many it was a transformation.' She says.

'I can already see how being able to study at TAFE for free has made it possible for many women to undertake useful study that they would have otherwise not been able to afford. This Education Support course is a steppingstone for the women to get a job and for some to undertake further study.'

Sara hopes this research will contribute to knowledge in three areas: informing the development of future government education policies; enhancing the capacity of women from social and economic vulnerable backgrounds; and improving the quality of the educational support students are receiving. ◆ Helena Spyrou, Union Education Organiser nteu.org.au/myunion/scholarships/carolyn_allport Dr Carolyn Allport was NTEU National President from 1994 to 2010, becoming a lobbyist at both the national and international levels.

In her application, Sara outlined that, in 2019, 118% more women enrolled in TAFE compared to 2018 since the introduction of Free TAFE. A high number of students who took advantage of Free TAFE study are women returning to study after years of absence and women from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) and underprivileged backgrounds.

Described as a ‘warrior for women’, Carolyn advocated for women’s rights to employment equity. Influential in the struggle for paid parental leave, she established NTEU as the setter of high benchmarks for other unions and employers to match.

In her PhD study, Sara sets out to explore race and gender as simultaneously lived experiences for women undertaking vocational education. 'As a woman of colour, I am interested in social activism and particular forms of intersecting oppressions – and since oppression cannot be reduced to one fundamental type – I bring a feminist intersectionality lens to the data collected because gender discrimination is shaped equally by racism and class inequality.'

Carolyn worked as an academic for over 20 years at Macquarie University in economic history, urban politics, public housing and women’s history. Carolyn sadly passed away in 2017.

In describing the demographics of the group of women who studied Educational Support, Sara highlighted that most always

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Carolyn is also recognised as an advocate for Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander education, employment and social justice. She was a driving force to ensure that A&TSI business is core NTEU business.

NTEU established the scholarship in 2014 in recognition of Dr Carolyn Allport. The scholarship is available to a person undertaking postgraduate feminist studies, by research, in any discipline. It pays $5000 per year for a maximum of three years.

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2020 Joan Hardy Scholarship goes to Sonja Dawson Sonja Dawson is the 2020 recipient of the Joan Hardy Scholarship for postgraduate nursing research, for her ethnographic study of humanitarian (non-disaster) nursing and nursing practice on hospital ships.

Her research is part of her work towards a PhD through the University of Technology, Sydney.

From 1994 to 2006, Sonja was a volunteer nurse on Mercy Ships. Mercy Ships (www.mercyships.org) is a global charity that offers health care services to low-middle income countries using ocean-going vessels. They are fully contained hospital ships, working alongside other agencies to offer acute and complex surgical procedures that are not obtainable in the host countries.

This charity also provides education in prevention and primary health care to villages and communities, dental care, and further specialist training of National Medical/Nursing staff.

Sonja’s long-term connection to Mercy Ships began when, as a young nurse, Sonja had left Australia for a working holiday in Switzerland. While in Europe, she stumbled on the Mercy Ship, Anastasis, docked in Norway. She made her way on board for a tour of the ship and was inspired to apply.

She was so excited about the work Mercy Ships were doing that she signed up, initially for three months, and ended up doing 12 years of almost continuous voluntary service from 1994-2006.

Even though Sonja suffers from sea sickness, she speaks passionately about her motivation for social justice and her inimitable sense of adventure as impetus for doing this work.

'I put it all down to my in-utero life,' she chuckles. 'My Australian mum met and married my Swiss dad, and they returned to Australia by ship, on the SS Oriana when my mum was seven months pregnant with me.'

'The Government of that country invites us to come and we send our negotiators ahead of time to talk about how the ship will conduct itself while it’s docked in the local port of the host country.'

In 2006, Sonja returned to Australia to spend time with her family and undertook further study and work. But the experience on the Anastasis was still very much alive in her memory and in 2015 she started her PhD with a focus on nursing practice on Mercy Ships. Sonja hopes to make visible, nursing in this setting and to give other nurses an understanding of what nursing practice is like on these ships.

In 2016, Sonja returned to the Mercy Ship with her husband to work as a nurse and collect data for her PhD. She says that her husband came because he wanted to know more about her experience. He loved the six months he spent on the ship with Sonja. ◆

'I worked as a nurse on the surgical ward and it was a steep learning curve for me because in Australia, I had been an ICU nurse.'

Helena Spyrou, Union Education Organiser

The Anastasis had 44 beds in the ward, two operating theatres with three beds and 350 staff, with one-third being medical staff. All were volunteers and all had to pay their own way – this included crew fees, travel to the ship, insurance and living expenses.

Joan Hardy was active in higher education unionism for over 30 years and was the first woman President of UACA (one of the predecessors of NTEU).

'So, the incentive for volunteers,' says Sonja 'was to do something good in the world that could change people’s lives.

'All these nationalities coming together with all these different belief systems and living on the ship together and it works.' Says Sonja. 'Some bring their whole family and we have a school with teachers that teach the International Baccalaureate. We have engineers and tradies and cooks and librarians and cleaners. I really enjoyed being a part of families’ lives without having my own family on board.

nteu.org.au/myunion/scholarships/joan_hardy

Joan was a tireless advocate for union amalgamation and was a key negotiator in the formation of NTEU, becoming VicePresident when the Union was formed in 1993.

This $5000 scholarship, established by NTEU in memory of Joan who died in 2003, is available to a student currently enrolled in an academic award of an Australian public university and undertaking postgraduate study of nurses, nursing culture or practices, or historical aspects of nursing as a lay or professional practice and expects to submit the thesis within one year of being awarded the Scholarship.

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Tasmania farewells Kelvin Michael In October we farewelled Kelvin Michael after his resignation from his position as Tasmanian Division Secretary.

Kelvin’s rather long and extensive record sheet with the NTEU indicates that he began taking an active role in the Union, albeit for only a month, as Division President on 1 May 2004. From 2006-2008 he was then a Branch Committee Member, before his first nomination for an executive position. Across the ensuing 12 years Kelvin’s considered, nuanced and resolute commitment to Union values has underpinned his leadership of the Division in our fight for the rights of our members in the increasingly corporate higher education sector.

In the Tasmanian Division, Kelvin was Division President for 6 years from 2008 to 2014, and then Secretary for 6 years from 2014 until 28th October this year. During this time, he was a member of the National Executive and has been a National/Division Councillor for many of these years He served as National Vice President (Academic Staff) from 2012 to 2014, during which time he was on the Academic Staff Working Party.

This, Kelvin’s final year as an office-bearer, has presented many challenges. Kelvin’s negotiation skills and deep knowledge of our unique position in the Tasmanian tertiary education community has been instrumental in protecting the jobs of our members. His passionate representation at National Executive for a local JPF variation followed by organising to ensure a 92% member vote reflected in a 92% all staff vote is testament to the respect afforded to him at all levels in which he engages. Kelvin’s instrumental roles in the Division – leading EBA negotiations, negotiating change, organising, recruitment and national representation – will be difficult to fill. In these, we will miss his circumspection, his encyclopaedic knowledge and memory, and his dry witty comments that were often used to defuse heated situations. His wisdom, experience, kindness and comradery will be missed by the Division and members alike.

We wish Kelvin well in retirement, but warn him that we may be chasing him down the fairways and across the greens to ‘pick his brain’ when problems arise! ◆ Janine Bryant, Tasmanian Division Organiser

Pep Turner takes over as Tasmanian Division Secretary I am currently an Honorary Associate with the School of Natural Sciences (CoSE, UTAS), and the new Tas Division Secretary! I was previously the NTEU Casuals representative on Division Council and have held Lecturer and Research Associate roles at UTAS, starting in 1999.

After majoring in plant ecology at the University of Melbourne, I began my ecological career working as a Scientific Officer at the Arthur Rylah Institute of Environmental Research. I was successful in gaining a PhD Scholarship to study plant ecology at both Melbourne and UTAS. Whilst Melbourne offered more prestige, UTAS offered better field work opportunities, so I moved to Tasmania, and stayed.

I am a director with the Ecological Society of Australia, holding the position of Chair of the international scientific journal, Ecological Management and Restoration. I relish community work and recently joined my local Tasmania Fire Service brigade. And I am President of the Tasmanian Catholic Schools Parents Council. My network spans government, industry, large and small landowners, top research institutions, education, and community.

I understand what insecure work is like, especially for casual workers. It is this life and work experience and voice, for all workers, that I bring to NTEU Tasmania Division and National Executive. ◆ Pep Turner, Tasmanian Division Secretary

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MY UNION ◆

Jonathan Hallett steps down as WA Div Sec Dr Jonathan Hallett took over from Gabe Gooding as the WA Division Secretary in 2018, having served as a WA Division/National Councillor and committee member for the Curtin University Branch.

During his tenure as Secretary, Jonathan steered the Division through a restructure, increased the Division’s social media profile and supported Branches in their struggles against an exciting range of management bastardry, such as the recent – successful! – campaigns against non-union ballots at Murdoch and Curtin universities.

Most importantly, Jonathan’s advice, enthusiasm and hands-on approach have led him to build the strength and activist capacity of the Division, laying the groundwork for organising, recruitment and campaigning on the ground in preparation for the next round of bargaining.

Following his two-year secondment, Jonathan will now return to his substantive position as a Senior Lecturer in the School of Public Health at Curtin University, focusing on health promotion, political theory and policy advocacy.

Jonathan has made a tremendous contribution to the work of the WA Division and his full-time presence will be sorely missed.

Fortunately, Jonathan will continue his work as a union activist and advocate, continuing to represent NTEU at UnionsWA meetings and forging a productive partnership with the state and national union movement. Jonathan is also currently acting as the Assistant Division Secretary (Academic) to ensure a smooth transition for incoming Division Secretary Cathy Moore. ◆ Sanna Peden, UWA Branch President Image: Jonathan with ACTU Secretary Sally McManus at a Change the Rules event in Perth, 2018

Cathy Moore elected new WA Division Secretary I joined the university sector in 2009 after a varied career spanning accounting and auditing, running a small business, secondary school teaching, career counselling and ultimately specialising in assessment across nine subject areas at the Curriculum Council of WA. It was in my capacity as an assessment specialist that I was recruited to Edith Cowan University. My PhD thesis was 'Learning to See, Seeing to Learn' with a focus on the role video and discussion can play in supporting our learning.

Within a few years my academic role was made redundant. With the support of the NTEU I was able to transition to a professional role in the Centre for Learning and Teaching. This experience ignited my desire to become more active in our Branch, and across our Union in general.

My deep involvement in Union activities (on the local Branch committee, as Branch President, as Division President and on National Executive) has dramatically increased my awareness of the many injustices in our sector. This awareness is the foundation of my desire to reclaim worker power and to build strength through unity, so that we can collectively address injustice and inequity in our workplaces and co-create a vibrant tertiary sector that truly is for the benefit of our whole society . ◆ Cathy Moore, WA Division Secretary

ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020

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â—† MY UNION

New NTEU staff Please welcome new staff in our Branches & Divisions.

Having experienced first-hand the challenges of life as a precarious university worker, one of Stevie's key goals as UNE Organiser is to encourage participation by casual and professional staff.

Samantha Ramsay NSW Division Samantha Ramsay started as an Industrial Officer in the NSW Branch in June.

She has recently completed her Advanced Masters of Global and European Labour Law at the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands.

Previously, Sam has worked as an Industrial Officer at the Independent Education Union in Queensland and as a lawyer in private practice specialising in employment and safety law.

Callen Parsons Vic Division Callen Parsons has been appointed as a Victorian Division Organiser on a fixedterm basis. He has worked as an Organiser and Industrial Officer for the vast majority of his working life.

Callen has recently rejoined the union movement after a period away with a small business and most recently working at a peak body. He’s looking forward to the challenges of building power post-pandemic with a focus on using data to assist planning.

Staff appointments Stevie Howson UNE Branch Stevie Howson is the new Branch Organiser at the University of New England.

Before joining NTEU, Stevie was an NTEU member and casual academic at the University of Wollongong. Prior to this Stevie has also worked in other roles at UOW, including as a student library assistant and in student services.

Roberta Stewart has been appointed as a Victorian Division Organiser. She will initially be based at the Monash Branch.

Nashell Ireland has been appointed to the WA Division Industrial Officer position.

Justin Hester has been appointed as National Office Finance Manager while Glenn Osmand is on extended leave from November 2020.

NATIONAL OFFICE STAFF Director (Industrial & Legal) Wayne Cupido Senior Legal Officer Kelly Thomas National Industrial Officer (Research & Projects)

Ken McAlpine National Industrial Officer Campbell Smith Industrial Support Officer Renee Veal Director (Policy & Research) Policy & Research Officers

National A&TSI Director National A&TSI Organiser

Paul Kniest Terri MacDonald Kieran McCarron Adam Frogley Celeste Liddle

National Organiser (Media & Engagement)

Michael Evans National Organiser (Publications) Paul Clifton Communications Organiser (Digital) Jake Wishart Education & Training Organiser Helena Spyrou Executive Manager Peter Summers National Membership Officer Melinda Valsorda ICT Network Engineer Tam Vuong Database Programmer/Data Analyst Uffan Saeed Payroll Administrator/HR Assistant Jo Riley Manager, Office of General Secretary & President

Anastasia Kotaidis Executive Officer (Meeting & Events) Tracey Coster Admin Officer (Membership & Campaigns)

Julie Ann Veal Receptionist & Admin Support Leanne Foote Acting Finance Manager Justin Hester Senior Finance Officer Gracia Ho Finance Officers Alex Ghvaladze, Lee Powell, Tamara Labadze, Daphne Zhang, Jay Premkumar

Jay Premkumar has been appointed as Finance Officer (Fee Income) while Lee Powell is on leave in 2021. â—†

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ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 â—† NOV 2020

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