Senator Mehreen Faruqi, Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens and Spokesperson for Tertiary Education, has responded to NTEU’s report “Ending bad governance for good.”
As stated by Senator Mehreen Faruqi:
“The shocking extent and impacts of the ‘corporate university’ are laid bare by this report. It is obscene that staff have been robbed of hundreds of millions in stolen wages, yet VCs and executives walk away with hefty pay packets.
“The harsh reality is that staff and students have become expendable cogs in the machine of a corporate campus where staff and students are suffering, while the executive class is splurging on consultants and largesse.
“Decades of neoliberal policies by governments and universities have made a mockery of universities as democratic institutions of public good.
“We need an overhaul of university governance to shift the balance of power away from the managerial class and corporate executives back to staff and students.
“We need to reimagine better universities that are well-funded, accountable, democratic and transparent. Universities must be places of public good where staff have secure jobs and the best pay and working conditions, and students have fee-free access to quality education.
“It is high time to fix these systemic problems, and the Greens support NTEUs calls for a parliamentary inquiry.”
