Speaker 1: From Sports Media. I'm Daniel James. This is seven AM.
Speaker 1: When Bill Shorten finally gave up his hopes of ever
Speaker 1: becoming Prime minister. One door closed and another much more
Speaker 1: lucrative door opened. In his new role as Vice Chancellor
Speaker 1: of the University of Canberra, he could earn up to
Speaker 1: three times as much as the PM. His appointment comes
Speaker 1: amid a fight about the exorbitant salaries Australian vice chancellors receive,
Speaker 1: and at a time when his own government's new cap
Speaker 1: on international students raise big questions about funding shortfalls and
Speaker 1: higher education. Today National correspondent for the Saturday Paper Mike
Speaker 1: Sekham on how much vice chancellors earn and how they
Speaker 1: justify it. It's Wednesday, September eighteen. Mike, in his new
Speaker 1: role as the Vice Chancellor of the University of Canberra,
Speaker 1: is rumored that Bill Shorten may receive a hefty pay rise.
Speaker 1: How much money are we talking about exactly?
Speaker 2: Well, we don't know the exact figio. They're still negotiating that.
Speaker 2: But his predecessor, Patty Nixon earned just over a million
Speaker 2: dollars if you consider short and tried twice to become
Speaker 2: Prime minister and lost both times. Well, now he's going
Speaker 2: to be earning more than the Prime minister, quite a
Speaker 2: lot more than the Prime Minister. Anthony Albanezi gets an
Speaker 2: annual wage of six hundred and seven thousand dollars five
Speaker 2: hundred unshortened as a minister would earn a bit less
Speaker 2: than that. I forget the exact number, but essentially shortened
Speaker 2: stands to roughly treble his earnings.
Speaker 1: So a million dollars, of course, is nothing to sneeze at.
Speaker 2: No, no, indeed I wish I had it?
Speaker 1: Is Paddy Nixon just an exception? Or is this the
Speaker 1: case for all other university chancellors?
Speaker 2: Well might seem overly generous to some, especially when you
Speaker 2: consider that the University of Canberra is currently ranked four
Speaker 2: hundred and third in the world. This is not a
Speaker 2: particularly prestigious institution, and still a million dollar salary, But
Speaker 2: that's actually about part the course for vice chancellor paychecks
Speaker 2: in Australia. In twenty twenty three, the average vice chancellor
Speaker 2: pay was just over a million. The highest pay was
Speaker 2: for the vice chancellor of the University of Melbourne, which
Speaker 2: was just shy of one point five million. At least,
Speaker 2: you could say in the case of the University of Melbourne.
Speaker 2: They came in thirteenth in the world rankings and have
Speaker 2: a very big student body. So there is that.
Speaker 1: I suppose there's a bit of the dark art. It's
Speaker 1: about what vice chancellors actually do. In my mind anyway,
Speaker 1: what warrants the million dollar salaries.
Speaker 2: Well it's a good question. I actually looked up a
Speaker 2: couple of university websites, you know, and just googled what
Speaker 2: does the vice chancellor do? University of Sydney had a
Speaker 2: little thing that said, and I'm quoting the vice chancellor
Speaker 2: lead it's the university and determines its overall direction in
Speaker 2: close consultation with the chancellor and other fellows of the Senate,
Speaker 2: senior leaders and the academic board. So in other words,
Speaker 2: the sort of chairman of the board. I guess you'd say,
Speaker 2: but they actually do more than you know, set broad direction.
Speaker 2: I spoke to one vice chancellor who couldn't be named
Speaker 2: so they could speak freely, and they said they actually
Speaker 2: spend a lot of their time hunting for money. Was
Speaker 2: the way it was put. Hunting for money on behalf
Speaker 2: of the university, which means, you know, schmoozing business lobbying government,
Speaker 2: that sort of thing, and that role I think has
Speaker 2: changed in the late nineteen nineties early two thousands, as
Speaker 2: government funding was withdrawn, the internal structures of universities changed
Speaker 2: a bit. So you know those boards and senates, I
Speaker 2: think the universities have various names for them, but essentially
Speaker 2: they fulfill the same function as a board of directors
Speaker 2: and a private company. Well, it used to be the
Speaker 2: case that those boards had lots of internal appointees, and
Speaker 2: what's changed is that they're increasingly fewer of those and
Speaker 2: many more external appointees over the years. So a lot
Speaker 2: of those people come from the corporate world. The thing is,
Speaker 2: of course that those people you know, coming from the
Speaker 2: c suites of large private businesses and financial institutions are
Speaker 2: used to huge paychecks, you know, well over a million dollars.
Speaker 2: The CEO of the Commonwealth Bank, for example, earned seven
Speaker 2: point three million dollars in twenty twenty three. So my
Speaker 2: point here is that when someone coming from that world
Speaker 2: enters the remuneration committee for a university, they think that
Speaker 2: giving a million dollars to a vice chancellor is actually
Speaker 2: pretty cheap, you know, And when one vice chancellor gets
Speaker 2: a million dollars. It then sets a benchmark for others
Speaker 2: to ask for the same, if not more. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's essentially human nature. So, you know, a lot of money.
Speaker 2: But in their defense, that anonymous VC that I spoke
Speaker 2: to highlighted that, you know, senior departmental secretaries in government
Speaker 2: earned salaries similar to vice chancellors, and that's true. The
Speaker 2: head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, for example,
Speaker 2: receives just over a million dollar. The head of Treasury
Speaker 2: receives just under a million dollars. I think there's a
Speaker 2: dozen or more other senior bureaucrats who pocket more than
Speaker 2: nine hundred thousand. So, you know, my vice chancellor was
Speaker 2: making the point a that it's not enormous in the
Speaker 2: scheme of things, But their bigger point was that and
Speaker 2: the word they used was furfey. That's distracting from the
Speaker 2: real issue with universities, which is that they're grossly underfunded
Speaker 2: by government. And they're not wrong about that. You know,
Speaker 2: right now, universities have far bigger problems on their hands
Speaker 2: with money than just the paychecks of vice chancellors.
Speaker 1: Coming up after the break, will Bill Shorten fight his
Speaker 1: old colleagues on university funding. When he takes on his
Speaker 1: new job, Bill Shorten is going to be the vice
Speaker 1: chancellor of the University of Canberra and he's going in
Speaker 1: at a time when there's a lot of criticism about
Speaker 1: the huge pay packets that vice chancellors receive. But you've
Speaker 1: been speaking with people who say that master much more
Speaker 1: significant problem. Can you tell me about that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, Well the heart of the problem is that universities,
Speaker 2: in the absence of other funding, have come to rely
Speaker 2: on the revenue from the fees paid by international students,
Speaker 2: you know, to compensate what government isn't giving them. And
Speaker 2: of course now the government is talking about cutting that
Speaker 2: revenue stream as well by capping the number of overseas
Speaker 2: students that can come to Australia. The Head of Universities Australia,
Speaker 2: Professor David Lloyd, talked to the National Press Club about
Speaker 2: this about a week ago, and you know, he said,
Speaker 2: the stark and frightening reality was that two thirds of
Speaker 2: publicly funded universities in Australia were in deficit in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two and twenty twenty three. The Other and Easy
Speaker 2: government and the Peter Dotton Coalition are now outdoing one
Speaker 2: another in a roush to reduce the number of overseas
Speaker 2: students studying at Australian's Australia's universities. You know, he made
Speaker 2: a very strong case. Universities were hammered during the COVID
Speaker 2: period when the Morrison government pushed overseas students to leave
Speaker 2: Australia and denied university's access to the job Keeper income
Speaker 2: support scheme. So they suffered badly from that and now,
Speaker 2: of course, just as they're recovering, both the major parties
Speaker 2: are engaged in this pol driven attack. Was what Lloyd
Speaker 2: called it, making international students, you know, scapegoats to blame
Speaker 2: the housing crisis on. But really, you know, the problem
Speaker 2: began long before the pandemic. I think the pandemic just
Speaker 2: brought it into sharp focus. In the decade to two
Speaker 2: thousand and seven, under the Howard government, public investment in
Speaker 2: universities in Australia fell seven percent, and across the rest
Speaker 2: of the OECD there was an average increase of forty
Speaker 2: eight percent. So you know, you can see a big
Speaker 2: difference there.
Speaker 1: For us friends and this movement, the labor movement.
Speaker 2: Education is the engine room of the economy. Then of course,
Speaker 2: in two thousand and seven, Labor one power, and it
Speaker 2: came in, promising an education revolution and warning that Australia's
Speaker 2: prosperity would hit a wall unless the quality and funding
Speaker 2: of education was raised substantially.
Speaker 1: Mean by an education revolution. Let me take you through it.
Speaker 2: You know. From two thousand and eight, the enrollments of
Speaker 2: students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds rose by two thirds, enrollments
Speaker 2: of indigenous students and those with disabilities more than double,
Speaker 2: enrollments from regional and remote areas jumped fifty percent, and
Speaker 2: spending as a share of gross domestic product also went up.
Speaker 2: So Labour's promised revolution was in part realized, but it
Speaker 2: didn't last. By twenty twenty, when the coalition parties were
Speaker 2: again in power, the share of GDP being spent on
Speaker 2: higher education was lower than it had been in two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: So it's an obvious question, Mike, what has been the
Speaker 1: impact of the successive cuts to universities and how they
Speaker 1: operate well?
Speaker 2: To start with, academic staff are increasingly employed under very
Speaker 2: tenuous conditions, with casual or fixed term contracts now the
Speaker 2: dominant form of employment as of June one this year,
Speaker 2: also there had been confirmed under payments of staff at
Speaker 2: thirty public universities totally around two hundred and three million dollars,
Speaker 2: So you know we're talking big, big bucks here in
Speaker 2: essentially wage theft. So you know that's a pretty big
Speaker 2: deal for university staff. The NTEU, which is the Academics Union,
Speaker 2: is currently advocating for a cap on executive salaries and
Speaker 2: improved working conditions for tertiary staff. On top of this,
Speaker 2: we're already seeing impacts from Labour's cuts to student numbers,
Speaker 2: even though the legislation imposing caps is yet to pass.
Speaker 2: The former Minister for Home Affairs, Clara O'Neal, last December
Speaker 2: issued a directive which effectively slowed the granting of visas
Speaker 2: to potential overseas students dramatically. According to Universities Australia, visa
Speaker 2: numbers are down twenty three percent, which is equivalent to
Speaker 2: almost sixty thousand students and their suggestion is that the
Speaker 2: way things are going, there's going to be big job losses.
Speaker 2: They have nominated a figure of about fourteen thousand jobs
Speaker 2: in the sector that could be lost, and bear in
Speaker 2: mind this is one of Australia's major export in this street.
Speaker 2: You know, it's up there with coal and iron ore.
Speaker 2: It's a huge international money earner for Australia and you know,
Speaker 2: essentially during COVID Morrison told international students go home, and
Speaker 2: the way Lloyd puts it is what Albanizi is now
Speaker 2: doing is telling the international students stay home. You know.
Speaker 2: So the chances are this could get ugly.
Speaker 1: So University's Australia is saying thousands of jobs will be
Speaker 1: lost because of a policy announced by the government. Bill
Speaker 1: Swan's a part of it. Will be a vice chancellor
Speaker 1: in a few months, likely earning more than a million
Speaker 1: dollars or so a year. How's it going to navigate
Speaker 1: all that?
Speaker 2: That's a very good question if I might start with
Speaker 2: the observation that he doesn't have to take a million
Speaker 2: dollar salary. Back in twenty sixteen, the Nobel Prize winning
Speaker 2: astrophysicist Brian Schmidt whocame VC of the Australian National University,
Speaker 2: a very prestigious organization. He negotiated his salary down to
Speaker 2: six hundred and seventeen five hundred dollars, which was a
Speaker 2: cut of more than three hundred thousand on his predecessor
Speaker 2: Ian Young, and throughout his career, Schmidt continued to be
Speaker 2: one of the lowest earning vcs over eight years, despite
Speaker 2: the fact that you Know A and You is a
Speaker 2: global ranking of thirty and. In a twenty twenty one
Speaker 2: interview with The Australian Financial Review, Schmid said, I just
Speaker 2: don't care that much about money. All my excess money
Speaker 2: I donate, It's just not that important to me. I've
Speaker 2: got enough, he said, you know, meaning I've got a
Speaker 2: Nobel Prize. I guess good for him. More recently, the
Speaker 2: newly appointed Vice Chancellor of the Western Sydney University, Professor
Speaker 2: George Williams, revealed that he also had negotiated down his salary.
Speaker 2: He said that when he went into talk money, the
Speaker 2: chancellor was looking at a high figure and George was
Speaker 2: looking for a lower figure, and they eventually negotiated and
Speaker 2: came out somewhere in the middle. He said that his
Speaker 2: starting point when negotiating his wage was that a university
Speaker 2: was a public sector organization. It wasn't a business, so
Speaker 2: you couldn't look for business type salaries. And he said
Speaker 2: that you know, VC salaries were evidence of the fact
Speaker 2: that the university had lot lost their way, and that
Speaker 2: the sector was too inwardly focused and it needed to
Speaker 2: reset its conversation around students and staff and the community.
Speaker 2: So anyway, remuneration is only one of Shorten's considerations. The
Speaker 2: other bigger ones that put him in a very interesting position,
Speaker 2: I think is that before he entered politics he was
Speaker 2: a union official. He spent decades advocating for better pay
Speaker 2: and conditions for workers. Well, for a long time university
Speaker 2: managers have been screwing their staff and now Shorten is
Speaker 2: going to become part of that university management. So will
Speaker 2: he back the NTU and it's fight for fair wages
Speaker 2: and better working conditions for university staff? You know, is
Speaker 2: he going to be vociferous on the subject of wage
Speaker 2: theft by universities. Then there's of course a matter of
Speaker 2: caps on the number of overseas students. If there's one
Speaker 2: subject on which almost everyone in the tertiary sector agrees,
Speaker 2: it's that caps are a dog of a policy. I mean,
Speaker 2: the Vice chancellors say that, Universities Australia says that, the
Speaker 2: TOU says that, And of course this has been Labor
Speaker 2: Party policy. And Shorten is at the moment still a
Speaker 2: Labor Party senior minister. So will Shorten joined the chorus
Speaker 2: of opposition or copies big bucks and stay silent.
Speaker 1: It's a good question, Mike, given what we know about
Speaker 1: Bill Shorten and how he's operated in his career to day,
Speaker 1: what's your view about how he's going to work with government.
Speaker 1: Are we going to see him how spoken on some
Speaker 1: of these issues.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't have a crystal ball here. I do
Speaker 2: think it's interesting that Shorten seems to have been a
Speaker 2: bit freed up in his rhetoric since he's announced that
Speaker 2: he's resigning. But I suspect, you know, if he's a
Speaker 2: good operator, what he will be doing is not saying
Speaker 2: too much that will embarrass the government publicly. But I
Speaker 2: would think, and I might say, I would hope that
Speaker 2: behind the scenes he will be trying to bring a
Speaker 2: little more rationality to some of these policies.
Speaker 1: Mike, thanks for your time.
Speaker 2: Thanks very much, Daniel.
Speaker 1: Also in the use today, a secret audio recording of
Speaker 1: a meeting between former Liberal leader Mara Deeming and her
Speaker 1: then boss, Victorian opposition leader John Pisuto, has been heard
Speaker 1: in federal court. In the recording, mister Pursudo tells Miss
Speaker 1: Demi has serious concerns about her attendant at to Let
Speaker 1: Women Speak rally, which was attended by international anti trance
Speaker 1: rights activist Kelly Jade Keen and gate crashed by Victoria
Speaker 1: and neo Nazis. He says Deeman's attendance was causing him
Speaker 1: to be clobbered on social media for the perception that
Speaker 1: the Victorian Liberal Party was in lockstep with Nazi protests.
Speaker 1: Demi is suing Piseudo for defamation. She claims he tired
Speaker 1: her with the Nazi brush in a campaign of destruction.
Speaker 1: The trial is expected to continue for two weeks and
Speaker 1: Wait Watchers has confirmed it will have to cut staff
Speaker 1: positions from its Australian operations as it discontinues in person
Speaker 1: events and focused instead on its app. While the company
Speaker 1: did not specify how many jobs would be lost, a
Speaker 1: recent Company of report said it had one hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy six staff in Australia. The announcement follows news in
Speaker 1: January that weight loss drug Ozimpic's parent company, Novo Nordisk,
Speaker 1: is valued at more than five hundred billion dollars, making
Speaker 1: it Europe's most valuable company. I'm Daniel James. This is
Speaker 1: seven am. Thanks for listening,