The parents’ committee of a preschool with 40 toddlers and an annual budget of a few thousand dollars is subject to far more onerous reporting requirements than a public university with 1000 times the number of students and revenues in the hundreds of millions.

That’s the assessment of University of Canberra law lecturer Andrew Henderson, who told a federal inquiry into university governance about the “apparent incongruity” in state and federal approaches to regulating universities compared to community-based organisations, including pre-schools, sporting clubs and interest groups.