Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Last night the Four Corners expose revealed that in just one year universities spend $1.8 billion of public money on consultants. And what did this $1.8 billion achieve for universities? It was governance failure after governance failure, thousands of job cuts and gutting of hundreds of courses across universities.

When university councils are stacked with corporate appointees and conflict-of-interests are rife, it's really no wonder that billions of dollars of public funds are lining the pockets of private consultants. So this is not surprising, but it is actually shocking that so much public money is splashed on consultants while staff and students suffer under unfair conditions, heavy workloads and higher and higher fees. University VCs who are paid obese and obscene salaries have been all too willing to sign the cheque and implement the neoliberal corporate agenda of their consultant buddies.

The corporate university model has resulted in $50,000 arts degrees courtesy of the disastrous JRG scheme. It is a model that has turned higher education, a public good, into a market for profit-seeking firms and posterity obsessed executives, even though they are very happy to walk away bloated pay packets. The Labor government is tinkering around the edges, and that's not going to cut it. The systemic decay of consultant capture and the ruthless corporate culture need complete overhaul of governance, accountability, transparency, funding and fees. The evidence provided by NTEU staff and students, very bravely, again and again, has been damning, so I shout out all of them. University staff should be— (Time expired)