Reconstituting Universities in Conformity with their Legislative Foundations: The case of the University of Tasmania and the 2022 Tasmanian Parliamentary Review of the University of Tasmania Act (1992)

null, Jeff Malpas (University of Tasmania)

Reconstituting Universities in Conformity with their Legislative Foundations: The case of the University of Tasmania and the 2022 Tasmanian Parliamentary Review of the University of Tasmania Act (1992) 

Despite the radical changes to Australian universities over the last thirty years, the extent to which those changes are consistent with the various state legislative provisions under which Australian universities are constituted has seldom been given detailed scrutiny. Earlier this year a parliamentary review was undertaken of the Act that founds the University of Tasmania – a review that was initiated largely as a result of public concern at the operations of the University with particular reference to its proposal to move its main campus into the Hobart CBD. That review offered an unprecedented opportunity to reconsider the legitimacy both of past university reforms and of the current mode of university operations with implications, not only for Tasmania, but for higher education across Australia. This talk will examine the Tasmanian legislation, whose character mirrors that of similar legislation elsewhere in Australia, with specific reference to the founding principles it contains. The main contention is that there is a clear lack of consistency between those principles and other elements in the relevant legislation, that there is a lack of consistency between those principles and the so-called ‘reforms’ of the last thirty years, and that there is a lack of consistency between those principles and the current configuration and mode of operation of the University of Tasmania. The wider conclusion is that this lack of consistency extends across the entire sector and that the current mode of operation of Australian universities is thus inconsistent with the idea of the University that sits at the center of every University Act around the country. It is also, it will be argued, inconsistent with the idea of the university that continues to be endorsed by the majority of Australians.

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