Labor to work with states to improve university governance after campus staff underpay sagas

The Albanese government will work with the states and territories to deal with failures in university governance.

Student safety could be improved with better university governance, the Universities Accord report says.

Labor will work with the states and territories to deal with failures in university governance, which have seen staff underpaid and students and staff put at risk on campus.

The government has accepted a recommendation from the Universities Accord interim report to improve the legal structure under which universities operate and how their governing bodies operate. It will work with the states and territories through national cabinet and focus on making universities better employers, and improving staff and students’ safety.

National cabinet will also look at the membership of university governing bodies – councils or senates – and whether they should include more members “with expertise in the business of universities”.

“Australian governments should work together to strengthen university governing boards by rebalancing their composition to put greater emphasis on higher education expertise,” the report says.

“Governing bodies must as a priority do more to improve student and staff wellbeing and become exemplary employers.”

The move to ensure universities are better employers follows a major scandal in which universities admitted to underpaying casual academic and professional staff nearly $100m in the past decade.

In its submission to the Universities Accord panel, the Fair Work Ombudsman accused universities of “entrenched noncompliance” with workplace agreements and pointed to corporate governance failures. Governance and regulatory arrangements for universities are complex and involved over the commonwealth, state and territory governments. This mishmash of arrangements had compromised safety on campuses, the panel was told.

“The complex and fragmented legislative framework for governing, funding and regulating Australia’s university sector… coupled with considerable jurisdictional differences in state and territory legislation… challenged the adoption of … nationally consistent approaches to addressing campus sexual violence,” says a submission from Alison Henry, a doctoral candidate at the Australian Human Rights Institute at UNSW.

Most universities operate under state or territory legislation, while the regulator operates under commonwealth legislation and most funding comes from the commonwealth.