The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) has called for all recommendations from a bipartisan Senate committee to be implemented as a vital step in fixing the university governance crisis.
The Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee on Friday released its interim report, which has 12 recommendations designed to improve university governance.
The report recommends crucial transparency reforms, including mandatory disclosure of consultant spending, conflicts of interest, executive pay packages and council composition.
This would include revealing which consultants are being used and why, and how much is being spent under each arrangement. The bipartisan report also calls for proper staff consultation to occur before restructures are made.
It also calls for an independent remuneration framework, with the government to work with the Commonwealth Remuneration Tribunal to set classification scales and pay ranges for vice-chancellors and senior executives – essentially implementing caps on pay.
The report also recommends much-needed improvements to the culture and practices of university councils and senates including the equal and respectful treatment of elected staff and students and a minimum proportion of members with higher education or public administration expertise.
There are also a raft of measures which would give more targeted powers to higher education regulator TEQSA to reign in universities over bad governance practices and review council appointments.
NTEU National President Dr Alison Barnes said the inquiry had highlighted decades of failed governance practices that have left staff and students paying the price.
"This report makes clear what university staff have long known – secrecy, conflicts of interest, executive excess and the exclusion of staff and student voices have corroded our public universities," Dr Barnes said.
"We strongly welcome the committee's recommendations to boost transparency, cap vice-chancellor salaries, reform university councils, and strengthen the powers of the regulator TEQSA.
"These are critical foundations for rebuilding trust in public universities, and for the many staff currently illogical job cuts these measures can't come soon enough.
"NTEU members have been calling for many of these recommendations for years so this marks a major milestone in our union's campaign to end the university governance crisis.
"Federal and state governments must fully implement all of these recommendations as part of a wider reform package to ensure universities return to their missions to provide world-class education and research that serves the public good.
"The fact that these measures have support from senators from across the parliament shows university governance reform is urgent and above partisan politics.
"We are hopeful the committee's final report will make additional recommendations to fix this broken system."
