Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

James Cook University is in my home city of Townsville. The majority of the current councillors of the James Cook University Student Association were elected last year on a campaign platform of ‘Save Our Services’. That was based on an anti-VSU perspective. Their smear and scare campaigns, in true Labor/union style, unfortunately resulted in their election. But they have not done anything to save the services; just the complete reverse.

The ‘Save Our Services’ team, headed by president Karla Willis, vowed to fulfil the promise of their team name. Upon election this president and the majority of council have consistently shown a complete disregard and lack of understanding of corporate governance. Their approach to many extremely important issues has been completely unprofessional—none more so than their recent handling of leases within the university.

The association developed a business plan to restructure the association at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars of student fees. But unfortunately they produced two different versions of the business plan. One of the versions, showing reduced profit margins for the commercial sector, was provided to the university. That is outrageous. After email dialogues and meetings with the university, the council resolved at a special meeting on 15 August 2006 to cease trading and existence on 1 December 2006. This resolution is in direct contradiction to their campaign title ‘Save Our Services’. They should have called it ‘close our services down’. It is another example of Labor hypocrisy. I find it appalling that this student association did not exhaust the bargaining process with the university. This council has given up, and the ramifications for the students are very significant.

I have seen emails confirming that the ‘Save Our Services’ team were working with local state members Lindy Nelson-Carr and Mike Reynolds. The hypocrisy of that is that Lindy Nelson-Carr is on the council of James Cook University. So on the one hand Lindy Nelson-Carr is working to look after the university and on the other hand she is working to remove the student services that are currently provided. The outcome is most unsatisfactory for the tertiary students within my electorate. The team elected under the ‘Save Our Services’ umbrella has displayed a complete disregard for any form of corporate governance, any form of responsibility and standard business practice and behaviour. It is a dismissal of the opportunities created by voluntary student unionism, a misappropriation of student fees towards a business plan that was not even executed and shows absolute contempt for the students they were elected to represent. I want all of the tertiary students in Townsville and Thuringowa to know that this is how the current Labor aligned committee runs the university student association. (Time expired)