Wednesday, 29 July 2026

 Alison MARCHANT (Bellarine) (11:06): Just before I talk to my committee report, I would like to also thank the people who have just contributed on their really important committee work. I think committee work is very important in this state, but probably its praises are not sung as much as they should be over time. There are times in this place when we do really important work in committee work, and the outcomes are to make this place a better place – to learn from the past, but also to make a better future. So I just want to thank the other committee members for their contributions today.

I am pleased to make a contribution and speak to the final report, which I tabled yesterday, which is the Legislative Assembly’s Economy and Infrastructure Committee’s Inquiry into Enhancing Victorian University Governance. Universities have played a really important role across our state. They are educating our next professionals, they drive our research and innovation and they certainly contribute to an enormous part of our society and our cultural and economic status here in the state. I want to make this really clear – and we heard this throughout the committee inquiry – they are there to serve the public good. However, throughout the inquiry it became clear that the tertiary education sector is facing some significant challenges.

In recent years, not just here in Victoria but across Australia, they have experienced what I would call a crisis of public confidence, and it certainly has raised some important questions around their governance, their accountability and whose voices are being heard when they are making key decisions at the council level. It is important to note that when the councils of each university have been under scrutiny there have been concerns raised around underpayment of staff, the spend on executive salaries, the spend on consultations and consultants, transparency around decision-making and potential conflicts of interest, and decisions about when to cut courses or cut staff. Due to those concerns we have seen the federal government also conduct inquiries into university governance. Obviously we have got ours, and New South Wales has also undertaken a report. For universities to continue to fill their important role, this report really goes to the heart of bringing trust back – rebuilding public trust in our universities.

We did throughout the inquiry hear from a range of stakeholders across the tertiary education sector, and we received evidence from vice-chancellors. We have made 17 recommendations in this report, but there were some different perspectives before we came to those recommendations. One of the strongest themes that came through was the different views on the representation that sits on councils. Staff and students consistently advocated for legislative changes to increase that representation on university governing bodies.

Universities themselves, however, generally were reluctant to see those changes at a legislative level. A letter that the vice-chancellors sent to me and the committee shows their lack of support for these legislative changes. It was a joint signed letter, and I would just like to quote from it. It says:

We acknowledge the Committee’s interest in ensuring that the voices of students and staff, in all their diversity, are well understood and considered within universities’ governance structures including their Governing Bodies. We note that the current legislative settings already provide us with the flexibility to increase the number of elected staff and student members within our respective University Councils.

Despite the fact that we can have an increase in elected student and staff voices on councils, prior to December 2025 no universities had done that. The committee acknowledges that some are trying to work towards that now and have started to increase representation, but it is certainly a challenge that we found in the committee’s inquiry, as is making sure that legislation keeps pace with the outcomes that we are seeking.

I am going to run out of time, and I really would like to speak more on this. I would like to thank our secretariat and the staff that supported our committee, and I hope to speak more along these lines.