YOU ARE HERE: &The Republican proposal relies on deep cuts in spending on state workers, the mentally ill and the disabled, as well as an optimistic revenue projection, and no tax extensions. Democrats attack the plan.|By Shane Goldmacher, Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Sacramento -- Republican lawmakers on Thursday produced their first detailed plan to balance California's budget, relying on deep spending cuts for state workers, the mentally ill and the disabled. The proposal also contains optimistic revenue assumptions and, unlike Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown's current budget plan, no extended taxes. The plan, unveiled by Assembly Republicans four days before Brown will update his financial blueprint, would fund public schools at roughly the same level as the governor has proposed and avert further reductions to state universities. It also contains a razor-thin reserve of less than 1%. The plan may run aground in the Democratic-controlled Legislature, which has already rejected many of the Republicans' ideas. Their proposal would cut roughly $1.3 billion in services for the needy, which Brown proposed in January and which Democratic lawmakers have blocked. Those services include welfare grants, adult day-care centers, in-home assistance for the elderly and help for the disabled. The state workforce would face layoffs or pay cuts totaling 10%. An additional 10% would be taken out of departments' operating and equipment budgets. Combined, those cutbacks would save $1.7 billion. Voters would be asked to sign off on a temporary shift of $2.4 billion from mental health and early childhood programs to shrink the deficit. Californians rejected such a move two years ago, but Republicans said their plan disproves Brown's repeated contention that severe cuts to schools and police — to which they devote an extra $500 million — are inevitable without more taxes. Connie Conway of Tulare, leader of the Assembly's Republicans, said in a letter to Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles) that the plan "represents the common-sense solutions that we believe can be embraced by Democrats and Republicans alike in enacting a reasonable, no-tax-increase budget compromise." Republicans in the state Senate embraced the plan. "We can get there without raising taxes," Sen. Tony Strickland (R-Moorpark) said during a floor debate. But Brown's administration immediately dismissed the document as a papering-over of the state's fiscal troubles. It's "nothing more than a transparent attempt to disrupt and distract from a real solution, and we'll be treating it as such," said Gil Duran, the governor's press secretary. The Republicans said they could save nearly $1 billion by trimming what they identified as government waste — for example, by reducing Medi-Cal fraud ($300 million) and transferring prisoner medical care to the University of California or the private sector ($400 million). Their plan also includes provisions to hire private contractors instead of state workers to perform many services, such as electronic court reporting, saving $700 million. The proposal would wipe away the biggest chunk of California's estimated $15.4-billion shortfall by projecting $5 billion more in tax receipts than Brown assumed in January, when he released his initial plan. Tax collections have outpaced forecasts by roughly $2.5 billion in the last four months, and Republicans said they expect the trend to continue. Democrats and their labor allies, meanwhile, are still pushing for more taxes. On Thursday, the state Service Employees International Union announced that it would begin airing, in the districts of five Republican legislators, more than $1 million in TV ads saying, "Stop these extreme cuts." Union officials said they believe those lawmakers might be persuaded to support Brown's call for more taxes. State Treasurer Bill Lockyer, a Democrat, said in a statement that the Republicans' plan amounted to "fairy-tale budgeting" that would quickly unravel and leave California with a yawning fiscal chasm. "Maybe," he said, "they think Tinkerbell will fly in and make the shortfalls vanish with pixie dust."Elizabeth StinsonAuthor: Michael CaloreAuthor: Arielle PardesAuthor: Elizabeth StinsonAuthor: David PierceAuthor: Elizabeth StinsonWe RecommendPowered By OutbrainFran?ois Hollande will require a more detailed and far-reaching economic strategy if he is to turn France’s ailing economy around
Langenkamp, Andy
Fran?ois Hollande will require a more detailed and far-reaching economic strategy if he is to turn France’s ailing economy around.
LSE European Politics and Policy (EUROPP) Blog
(06 Feb 2014).
Blog Entry.
Like many countries across Europe, France has suffered economically since the beginning of the financial crisis. As Andy Langenkamp writes, French President Fran?ois Hollande’s recent ‘responsibility pact’ outlined a number of reforms designed to restructure the economy, making it more competitive in the long-term. He argues that while Hollande has the political resources required to implement bold reforms, his current plan is too vaguely stated to turn France’s economy around.
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Downloads per month over past yearThe University of Newcastle: prelude to
Dawkins, by John Biggs
The University of Newcastle: prelude to
John Biggs
&Chapter 9 of The Subversion of Australian
Universities, edited by John Biggs and Richard Davis (Wollongong:
Fund for Intellectual Dissent, 2002), pages 127-148.
John Biggs has prepared a
(June 2009) of this chapter.
A university of contradictions
In 1973, I took up a Chair in Education at Newcastle
University. In arriving at this
decision, I noted that it was a new University, and was developing a
reasonable academic reputation. Newcastle, as an area, came out tops
on all the life-style indicators: size, location, climate, proximity
to beach, vineyards and other extra-curricular activities, and Sydney
was only two hours away.
What the indicators didn’t reveal was that here was a city,
and an institution, seized with cultural contradictions. In ethos it
was a large working class town, but many leadership roles were filled
by figures imported from - or who worked strenuously at the
appearance of having been imported from - an expatriate
Establishment. It’s a familiar scenario in Australian academe,
but at its most obvious in Newcastle. As the redoubtable J. J.
Auchmuty, the founding Vice-Chancellor, put it: "What I was proposing
to establish was a university in the British tradition."
This went down very well locally, because "Few people in Newcastle
understood such matters and those who did wanted a university of the
most traditional kind."
After ten years as Vice-Chancellor, Auchmuty retired in 1974. He
was replaced by Don George, an engineer from the University of
Sydney, who could hardly have been more different in style of
operation, and who had to face political pressures of a kind that
Auchmuty did not. The fact was that from the late seventies onwards,
things began to unravel. The nature of what went wrong, and why, is I
think important for understanding what later happened to the
Australian university system.
The University of Newcastle, along with several other
universities, faced many difficulties, and instead of admitting there
were problems and endeavouring to correct them, generated poor public
relations by appearing to refuse to admit that any problems existed,
or that if they did, it was because of recalcitrant and difficult
individuals outside - never inside - the Administration. By the mid
to late 1980s, public sympathy for universities in general was low.
Worse, there was a strong public sentiment that they had got out of
control and needed bringing into line. The stage was set. Enter
Dawkins, upper right.
Newcastle had its own unique problems beyond those besetting other
places. Academic decision-making structures within the University
were side-stepped, partly for political reasons, partly through fuzzy
management, but whatever the reason, the stake academics themselves
had in decision-making was undermined. This is similar to
today’s managerial institutions, except in their case the
situation was imposed by deliberate choice, top-down, and was much
more thoroughgoing. In Newcastle at the time in question, the
responsibility for decision-making was simply diffused. When things
went wrong, as they inevitably would under those conditions, the
academic staff would not admit that anything could be wrong.
Part of the problem here was that Auchmuty had built up a power
structure from scratch, and it worked - for him. George, however,
tended to delegate. This may have been a personal preference, but it
was also a consequence of his positions outside the University -
Deputy Chairman of Council of the Asian Institute of Technology in
Bangkok, Chairman of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission -
positions he took because he thought it would "be good for the
University’s standing." The
student paper Opus saw this differently, and in one
particularly testing time politically, dedicated a lead article to
solving what the headline screamed as: THE CASE OF THE MISSING
VICE-CHANCELLOR.
In such a situation, it is inevitable that others come forward to
fill the vacuum. Insecurity appeared to be in the air, so that when
several knotty procedural problems presented themselves,
Administration - and I mean this collectively, although the buck must
eventually stop at the VC’s desk - tried to solve them by
seeking legal advice. Lawyers, however, advise on the questions that
are put to them, not on those that should have been
put. Thus, if incomplete or inappropriate questions are asked, the
answers may be less than helpful. And as lawyers frame their answers
in legal rather than in academic terms, one should not be surprised
if the final resolution of some problems were reached in court,
rather than within the University.
And so it was. Let me give two examples.
The Spautz case
In 1977, Alan Williams was appointed Professor of Commerce in the
University of Newcastle. Michael Spautz, a Senior Lecturer in the
same Department, had studied Williams’ Ph.D. thesis, recently
completed at the University of Western Australia, and by the second
half of 1978, was questioning the methods Williams used, and the
conclusions he reached. Spautz then claimed to have discovered
unacknowledged secondary sources, which he thought amounted to
plagiarism. Spautz considered that
such lack of scholarship made Williams unfit to hold a Chair, so he
informed Williams that he would make his evidence public if he
didn’t resign. Williams didn’t resign. Spautz then demanded
that Administration rectify their lack of judgment in appointing
Williams by dismissing him. The same condition applied: if they did
not do as demanded, Spautz would "blanket the campus like snow" with
his evidence of the alleged plagiarism.
The Vice-Chancellor thought it was not up to his University to
investigate the award of another university. Let UWA investigate the
plagiarism charge. So for a long time he did nothing. Spautz, on the
other hand, acted quickly and vigorously. The campus was duly
blanketed, as promised, not only with the alleged plagiarisms and
their presumed sources, but also with his bulletin In Vita
Veritas, in which he attacked senior University administrators
and Council members. Late in 1979, a committee chaired by Professor
Michael Carter investigated and reported to Council. They expressed
their confidence in Williams and ordered Spautz to stop. He
didn’t stop.
Another committee, chaired by Justice Michael Kirby (the Deputy
Chancellor), was asked by Council to determine inter alia if
Spautz’s behaviour constituted g that is,
if they resolved to dismiss Spautz, would they have "good cause" for
doing so. However, the By-Laws of the University required the
committee to be a "committee of Inquiry," as fact-finding, and so the
question of what constituted "good cause" for dismissal as requested
by Council in the original terms of reference was confused.
So while the Kirby Committee found that Spautz did behave as alleged,
and had disobeyed the order, the question as to whether that
constituted "good cause" remained unresolved. Back to the
university’s lawyers, who advised in essence that "misconduct,"
and hence "good cause," could mean what Council decided it to mean.
Thus, when Council decided to sack Spautz in May 1980, disobedience
became "good cause."
The problem with this interpretation was that it revived Justice
Green’s ruling that the relationship between an academic and a
university council was that of Master-Servant. In other words,
academics were required to be "obedient" to Council. It will be
remembered from Chapter 3 that Orr was sacked for "failing to answer
to allegations against him pursuant to his obligations." Both Orr and
Spautz had been dismissed essentially on the ground of
disobedience.
So here was the University of Newcastle undoing all the work FAUSA
had done in the 25 years since the Orr case (see Chapter 5).
Another problem with Spautz’s manner of dismissal was that some
of those involved in the dismissal proceedings were the subject of
his public fulminations, which included threats of libel.
Prima facie, then, it would appear that Spautz had been
handed the grounds for a wrongful dismissal suit on a plate.
Certainly, he was granted legal aid on that basis. But instead of
pursuing that central case, he foolishly pursued his string of libel
suits, some 20 or so, against the Chancellor (Sir Bede Callaghan),
Justice Michael Kirby, ‘The Don’ (George), Carter, and
Williams, amongst others. He lost them all, and in 1982, was ordered
to pay costs. He refused, and was jailed in Maitland high security
prison. Although a prosecution for declaring him a vexatious litigant
failed, he was seen as a nuisance, a negative image hugely reinforced
by his imprisonment in a high security prison. When finally, in 1991,
the all-important wrongful dismissal case was heard in the NSW
Supreme Court by Justice Rolfe, he lost. In the judgment, his
behaviour was cited as a major issue. It wasn’t until December,
1996, that it was admitted he had been wrongfully imprisoned, and was
awarded $75,000 damages in compensation. But this recognition was far
too late. The damage had already been done. Williams, meantime, had
quietly resigned in 1994.
Williams had weak credentials to be appointed to a Chair, and in
refusing to examine a challenge to those credentials, the University
was probably no different from nine out of ten universities anywhere.
Clearly, too, Spautz was being extra at one
stage, he stood outside the classroom where Williams was teaching,
and loudly exhorted students not to go inside as they would be
wasting their time. Understandably, perhaps, the University saw it as
more important to shut Spautz up than to address the issues he
raised. But all that notwithstanding, over 15 years of expensive
litigation suggests that the University administration and its
advisers had made some grievous lapses in judgment.
The GS case
In another case, the University achieved the unusual distinction
of losing twice over in a three-way dispute between a graduate
student, GS; her supervisor, Associate Professor of Geography, Don
P and the Administration of the University of Newcastle.
I have asked all three parties to comment on my first draft of
writing up this case. All agree on one thing: the account was
unbalanced, to use the mildest term that was applied. Since all three
were pulling in a triangle of opposing forces, any balanced account
would inevitably be so judged. So, too, would a completely incorrect
account be so judged! To complicate matters further, I had been
informed that the case and matters arising are to be the subject of
further legal action (see Acknowledgments), and so naming the
student, and giving any detailed account of what happened, would be
unwise. Professor Parkes presented detailed submissions to the recent
Senate Inquiry in which he gave full
details of how he saw the case, and the how the University had acted
wrongly in many ways, including compelling evidence that the
University attempted to set Parkes up as the "patsy" in the event of
litigation by the student. This too, the University got wrong,
because they were, and as I understand it still are (in 2001), under
threat of litigation. Parkes attempted to clear the matter up finally
with his submissions to the recent Senate Inquiry into universities.
When the matter was presented, Senator Tierney, himself from
Newcastle and recently associated with the University, was not
present. Despite Parkes’s
detailed submissions and supporting evidence, which are available on
the Senate Inquiry public website, Item 320 (see ), nothing has emerged on this case so far from the Inquiry. The
University defended itself by ignoring what had been tabled.
Given all the above, the following account is thus somewhat
In February 1980, GS enrolled at the University of Newcastle as a
doctoral student. In 1984, her supervisor, Parkes, submitted a
statutory report to the Doctoral Degree Committee in which he raised
a number of matters, concerning both academic and legal
considerations. One legal matter concerned dual enrolment at another
university, which Parkes thought breached the University’s
enrolment regulations. The University of Newcastle’s lawyers,
however, advised that the matter in question was not in breach of the
regulations, and so the Doctoral Committee endorsed GS’s
candidature. They did not, however, consider the other matters Parkes
raised, both legal and academic, which the Committee was required to
do under another regulation, which states that a supervisor’s
report has to considered and decided one way or another by the
Doctoral Committee. Parkes’s advice as supervisor had illegally
been ignored, and he resigned as supervisor. Another supervisor was
appointed, Professor Michael Carter, a sociologist, who saw the
thesis through to the point of its being sent out for
examination.
Parkes, feeling that the University had acted contrary to its own
regulations and procedures, and with legal advice and the support of
the Staff Association, appealed in 1986 to the Visitor to the
University, His Excellency Sir James Rowland, for a ruling. The
Visitor agreed that the University had breached its own regulations,
and ordered that the University stop the examining process, to be
continued only when Parkes’ report as supervisor had been
properly considered.
But the examiners’ reports had already been received. The
June 1987 meeting of Senate, now chaired by the new Vice-Chancellor,
Keith Morgan, had before it a motion framed on the Visitor’s
ruling: that the examiners’ reports lie on the table until the
Inquiry into Parkes’ original report had been held. Parkes, who
was not a member of Senate, asked permission to attend and to speak
to the motion. Although his request was granted, Morgan made it
embarrassingly clear that he regarded Parkes as a troublemaker. This
divided Senate along irrelevant lines. The majority, in typical
fashion, closed ranks against the "troublemaker," and voted against
the direction of the Visitor.
Then, in a remarkable volte face a month later, the
Doctoral Committee recommended that GS’s candidature be
terminated on the enrolment ground raised originally, that she was
enrolled at Newcastle and at Loughborough Universities for
essentially the same work. Loughborough had already terminated her
enrolment on this ground, as soon in fact as the matter had been
pointed out. Morgan announced GS’s termination at Newcastle in
September. However, the University lawyers had suggested earlier that
that matter did not constitute a breach of Newcastle
University’s regulations, and had thoughtfully provided
GS’s lawyers with this opinion.
Not surprisingly, GS herself now appealed to the Visitor, seeking
reinstatement, resumption of the examining process, and compensation
and costs. The Visitor, now Sir David Martin, ruled that the
regulations as cited by the University were the wrong ones, and
recommended, not compensation, but a modest "solatium." GS went to
the Supreme Court, where in 1990 Justice Allen ordered the case back
to the Visitor for him to consider full compensation, not just
solace, for deprivation of her status, consequent loss of salary, and
costs. She received an undisclosed
amount in an out-of-court settlement. The University ordered yet
another supervisor, and another set of examiners. She was awarded the
degree in 1995, with yet another Vice-Chancellor, Raoul Mortley, in
Parkes had by now taken early retirement, completely disillusioned
with the University, although he had won in the important sense that
the Visitor had supported him on the major point he had raised: the
University had not followed its own regulations. GS had also won. She
had fought the University’s dithering for over ten years, and,
finally, she obtained her doctorate. The University Administration
had lost all round, oscillating between academic and legal advice,
evidently oblivious throughout to the enduring academic issues and
principles involved. In 1988, the Council of the University resolved
that an Inquiry into the case be established, but this has not
neither has the University investigated the substance of
Parkes’s initial 1984 report to the Doctoral Committee, contrary
to its own Regulations. The current Administration, under yet another
Vice-Chancellor, is pleading immanent legal proceedings seventeen
years after the GS case as an excuse for inaction, and has forbidden
the sale of the official history of the University on that basis (see
The damage caused by the University’s handling of just the
Spautz and GS cases was colossal: to the people concerned, to the
University’s own national and even international reputation, to
its finances, to staff morale and division amongst staff, to
time-wasting, to the general functioning of the University as an
educational institution. One could be forgiven for thinking that the
Administration of the University of Newcastle was unable to get
anything right, no matter who was Vice-Chancellor.
How to please our lords and masters and avoid
amalgamation
In 1981, I was appointed to the Council of the Newcastle College
of Advanced Education (NCAE), as it was then known. The Labor State
Minister of Education, concerned about many reported problems at
NCAE, had reconstituted the Council and had asked me to be a member,
first sounding me out (as were other new appointees) as to our
willingness to adopt a watchful role over the College administration.
Then the game changed.
The Fraser Government’s Razor Gang ordered the amalgamation
between the NCAE and the University. The CAE’s management
problems promptly faded into insignificance, as far as the State
Minister was concerned. The issue now was that the CAE (the State
body) should get the better of the University (the Federal body).
This was Newcastle, Labor’s heartland, with a Liberal Federal
Government. The Labor-dominated CAE Council swiftly closed ranks
against the elitist enemy at the University. It became very clear to
me that the University would be outmanoeuvred in short order. I
thought I should keep Don George abreast of what was happening, but
he did not wish to know. "You," he pointed out, "are on the CAE
Council in your own right, not as a University representative. I do
not wish you to apprise me of their business."
So I didn’t tell him directly (although I told other senior
administrators who I thought should know) about the sudden splurge in
NCAE staffing, or about the promotions and granting of tenure that
would strongly advantage NCAE staff over university staff, or about
the financial Trojan Horse that was being cunningly designed, whereby
the long-service leave funds would, in the fullness of time, create a
deficit of over one million dollars. A new amalgamated institution
would very quickly find itself with a superfluity of invulnerable
staff, and a very large and unexpected debt.
Nor did I elaborate to George the details of the "equal partners"
model that Eddie Richardson, the Principal of NCAE, was working on.
The plan was to abolish the University of Newcastle, and replace it
with a new amalgamated institution structured on CAE rather than on
traditional university lines. As a new institution, it had to have a
new name. It is said that Richardson out of devilment proposed the
"Southern Hunter Institute of Technology." Had it not been for the
change in Government in the 1983 Federal Election, NCAE, with its
carefully cultivated political links and far superior tactical
sense, would certainly have won the
day, leaving Newcastle’s tertiary sector in a state befitting
Eddie’s acronym.
But if Richardson’s nomenclature did not endure, his concept
certainly did, outlasting the man himself. In 1989, Vice-Chancellor
Morgan impetuously agreed to the equal partners model without
appearing to have read the fine print, and without consulting his
University colleagues. For his pains, he earned a unanimous vote of
no confidence from the Staff Association, and close calls in like
votes both in Senate and in Council. The proposal was withdrawn, and
the University of Newcastle continued as a legal entity.
But back to events concerning amalgamation in 1981. The
amalgamation did not come off, but that was due to good luck rather
than to good management. Labor won the 1983 election, and
amalgamation was off the agenda - at least for the moment. So the
life of the University went on as usual, with Spautz, GS, the Rose
incident (whereby a newly appointed professor left within weeks
claiming he had been misled), the Academic Plan (which selectively
disadvantaged departments without prior consultation), Outside
Earnings (an issue of staff moonlighting, see below), the Rigged
Failure Rates (another face-saving case where the University breached
its own examination regulations), to keep us amused.
Then in 1985, the Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission
(CTEC) raised the matter of rationalisation between NCAE and the
University. There were rumblings, yet again, about amalgamating the
two institutions.
In 1986, the year of his retirement, Don George became convinced -
probably not on legal advice on this occasion - that if the
University handed over the graduate Diploma in Education course to
the College, as a full and sufficient sacrifice, "our lords and
masters in Canberra," as he referred to CTEC, would be
placated. So in secret talks with
the College a deal was struck. Our Dip. Ed., in numbers our most
important programme in Education, was to be traded for five
Master’s courses involving trade subjects, for which we
didn’t have the staff and the College did, to be offered
externally, which we weren’t empowered to teach and the College
was. The Department of Education stood to lose over half its staff,
while eight or nine other content departments in the Faculties of
Arts and Science stood to lose a steady flow-through of some hundred
or so students. And this was at a
time when the University was being criticised by CTEC for not meeting
its student numbers. From the University’s point of view, the
scheme appeared to most as self-destructive lunacy. The College
leadership, for their part, couldn’t believe their luck.
George made this announcement at a Planning Committee in
September, 1986. I, as Dean of Education, and Ross Telfer, as Head of
the Department, were in attendance and were stunned. This was the
first we had heard of it. Yet Senate was to ratify it within three
weeks, and pass it on to the October Council meeting, there to become
official and immediate University policy!
I called an emergency meeting of Faculty Board. We passed two sets
of resolutions for Senate to endorse: (1) expressing grave concern at
the way the matter had been handled, especially the appalling lack of
consultation, (2) requesting the proposals be withdrawn and
alternatives explored.
Senate agreed with both resolutions by a large margin. The
VC’s wrist was slapped for his modus operandi, and
Council was asked to scrap the plan and go back to the drawing
boards. Council was to meet two weeks later.
This is where Auchmuty’s rather personalised structuring of
the University might have caused things to go awry. Usually in
universities, the Vice-Chancellor does not chair the senior academic
body, the Professorial Board or in this case the Senate, precisely so
that that body remains advisory to the VC, and upon whom its
decisions are not necessarily binding. Auchmuty, wanting to be part
of the decision-making process, set up a different structure to
accommodate that point:
The Vice-Chancellor himself presides over
the senior academics, but the Deputy Chairman is elected by them
and is in fact expected to represent the opposition, if there is
an opposition, to whatever the Vice-Chancellor is
The Deputy Chairman of Senate is thus ex officio on Council
specifically to move and to speak to Senate’s motions,
especially when they are in opposition to the
Vice-Chancellor’s position. The incumbent at that time, Michael
Carter, refused in this instance to represent Senate’s views.
The Staff Association member, Don Wright, did so instead, which one
Council member mysteriously saw as "provocative." Another remarked
that the matter of the Dip. Ed. "was beyond the wit of Senate"; yet
another opined that "If Council is headed for a confrontation with
Senate, then so be it."
Senate’s official representative on Council anticipated with
admirable prescience the corporatisation of Universities by some ten
years. He said: "University Councils over all the Western world are
assuming more power, precisely because the Senates find it impossible
to make the hard decisions."
I had sought to be present, and I
was given permission to speak. I summarised our case, and then drew
the attention of Council to the constitutional problem that was by
now painfully evident:
The Senate motions ... put Council and
Senate on a collision course. The Senate has adopted a clear
position on certain academic matters: the nature and structure of
masters degrees, the question of consultation with departments,
and the question of whether the University of Newcastle will
continue to offer preservice teacher education ...
If Council endorses the present proposal, ... it will precipitate
a profound crisis in the government of the university. The only
parallel I can think of is the Tasmanian situation, which in 1955
led to a Royal Commission which found for the senior academic body
(Senate), and which in turn led to the agonisings of the Orr Case.
This University must avoid such a humiliating and costly outcome
My reference to Orr was appropriate. A major cause for staff
dissatisfaction in the lead up to the Tasmanian Royal Commission was
precisely over the issue as to who should make the academic
decisions. However, at Newcastle, unlike Tasmania, the Senate’s
own voice on academic matters was speaking and voting against his own
constituency. But it probably made little difference to the outcome.
The Council had recently been reconstituted by yet a different State
Minister, who had appointed several NCAE senior administrative staff
to it. Possibly my remarks too were seen as "provocative." At any
rate, this new Council rejected Senate’s recommendations,
although only by two votes.
At the Standing Committee meeting prior to the next Senate, two
other Professors, John Keats (Psychology) and Godfrey Tanner
(Classics), moved that Senate’s original position be maintained.
After that meeting the day before, Professor John Hamilton (Medicine)
"What are you going to say tomorrow? I’ve a meeting in Town
and will be unable to attend Senate. I’d just like to know how
things might go."
I was honest rather than wise. "Well, however the vote goes on the
Dip.Ed., Senate has problems, which should be raised. One is the role
of the Deputy Chairman. He’s clearly not fulfilling the role
he’s elected to carry out. I think we have a structural crisis
"Are you going to move a no confidence motion?"
"No. I don’t think we need go that far. But we do need to
discuss the structural problem."
Sitting down at the meeting next afternoon, I discovered Hamilton
was sitting opposite me. He had decided not to go to his meeting
after all. The Keats-Tanner motion was put and passed. Senate wanted
the Dip. Ed. still. It was then time to raise the constitutional
issues. I summarised the problem, which in a nutshell was that Senate
had been deprived of its advocate on Council. I foreshadowed two
motions: that Senate express its concern over this situation, and
that Senate set up a committee to look at the structural problems,
with particular reference to the role of the Deputy Chairman. I then
elaborated:
"We appear to be run by an oligarchy, the same faces are on almost
every important Committee in the University. And the same mistakes
keep recurring ..."
I began to recite the mistakes (see )
Hamilton interrupted. "It sounds as if Professor Biggs is about to
move a vote of no confidence ..."
"No, I’m not. As I told Professor Hamilton yesterday, I think
these are matters Senate needs to discuss. You’ve heard my
foreshadowed motions ..."
"Well then, let’s be quite clear about it. I hereby move a
vote of confidence in the Deputy Chairman."
"With acclamation!" shouted Professor Clarke, sitting beside
Hamilton, and from the same Faculty. Clarke stood, clapping
Slowly, Senate stood, except for one member, and with acclamation
expressed its confidence in its representative on Council, when he
had not, on this occasion, represented Senate on Council.
Senate’s resolution on the Dip. Ed. went again to a specially
convened meeting of Council, and for the second time Council rejected
Senate’s advice on an academic matter, this time by only one
It was time to go. I decided to take the advice Polya enjoined
upon Orr in the words of the Turkish proverb:
Instead of taking your righteous case to court,
I saw that the University of Hong Kong was advertising the Chair
in Education. Yes, Hong Kong was probably sufficiently distant. So I
followed the egrets and the ibis in their migration from the
Shortland Wetlands, which border the University of Newcastle, to the
Mai Po marshes in Hong Kong.
On whistleblowing
One question has bothered me for a long time, but that last Senate
meeting reminded me of it very sharply. How, in a university of all
places, can such things happen? How, when it is obvious that
something is badly wrong, can intelligent people, whose training and
daily work requires an open-minded appraisal of evidence, close ranks
against the whistleblower? Today, and forty years ago, we know why:
they would be dismissed, like Orr was in Tasmania in 1955, and like
Ted Steele was in Wollongong in 2001. But in the 1980s, academics
officially had tenure, and officially were encouraged to speak out on
academic matters.
Even, perhaps especially, in the halcyon days of last century,
most staff did not want to know if their University was stuffing up
on a grand scale. They resented those who provided this knowledge.
Why? Well, if the whistleblower is right, things would be
intolerable. What does this sort of talk do to the academic
reputation of the University? What does that then do to my research
funding applications, my job applications? How can we be so stupid as
to keep voting people onto committees who - according to some -
are performing so badly? Is one person right, and everyone
else, wrong? No, those who say such things have a chip on their
shoulder, they are destructively mischievous. They must be
marginalised. Such messengers should be shot on sight. And to
preserve the integrity and good name of our University, we must
re-affirm our confidence in our leadership, and in the decisions they
have already made.
When people think like this, things can only get worse. That is
part of it.
Another part, which is undoubtedly much more significant today, is
the sheer cowardice of too many colleagues. Today, the stakes are
much higher, but even twenty years ago academics were all too easily
intimidated. They might agree with you in private, but in public they
did not want to become involved. Too much might be at stake: internal
research money, promotion, support for one’s proposals. Not life
threatening, but distinctly uncomfortable if things went the wrong
My belief is that had academics stood up to be counted, in those
days when their bread was not at stake even if their cake might be,
universities might not be in quite such a bad state as they are at
present. But they didn’t want to rock the boat, and now what
they feared the most has become the case. Whistle-blowers in the
present university structures can be deprived of their livelihood
very easily, even more easily now, under the redundancy rules that
FAUSA incredibly agreed to in 1988, than Orr was of his.
There are several theories of whistleblowing.
Whistle-blowers can have a variety of motives - power, martyrdom,
obtuse self-interest - but essentially they are motivated by
principle. They can be prickly company. Yet, when you think about it,
whistleblowing is the essence of being an academic. As I told
Opus, the Newcastle student paper in August, 1987:
There’s a strong belief amongst
academics that going public is somehow bad form. But
really, the whole thing about being an academic is ‘publishing’ - literally ‘going public’ - on
what you perceive to be the truth, and why. If you believe
something is wrong, there are two ways to go. One is to close
ranks for the sake of form ... the other is to speak out, because
that way something might be done about it. ...
... Of course any large institution has its odd blip, but here
we’re looking at a whole string of things, and most follow
the same pattern: a problem, a long period of indecision, then a
sudden decision made by one or a few select senior administrators,
with minimal consultation (least of all with those most affected),
and little or no published rationale or case made. Such a style is
the antithesis of everything a university is supposed to stand
for. The essence of academic work is to arrive at the best
approximation to truth or the best decision. So, you base a case
on evidence and s you invite criticism, not
reject it as an impertinence.
Academics are committed to speak the truth as they see it on
academic matters. If they are too afraid to do so, they are not
fulfilling their academic role. When I was a student, I heard Orr say
something very close to this on many occasions. In fact, as the Dip.
Ed. issue unfolded, I was increasingly conscious of Orr’s
example of going public. He made me aware that people can
speak out against incompetent or malevolent administrators, and even
win, as happened in the Tasmanian Royal Commission. The differences
are that Newcastle had no Royal Commission, and I didn’t win.
But then, I didn’t lose so drastically as Orr did in the
What I found particularly infuriating was that my Department,
which just prior to this had had a better record for obtaining
research funding than any other Department of Education in Australia,
was apparently being crippled for political reasons. And those who
were doing so were the university administration, whose job it was -
then, but alas no longer - to facilitate the work of academics, not
to sabotage it. I think that several others who resigned around the
same time thought along similar lines to me.
It is infinitely sad that now university administrators
universally in Australia do not agree that academics should speak the
truth as they see it. But that theme is taken up in the final
Setting the stage for Dawkins
Events at the University of Newcastle were dramatic and singular
enough, but in several respects they were symptomatic of problems in
the tertiary sector as a whole.
An issue that caused considerable public outcry, not only at
Newcastle, was the perception that some academics in professional
faculties were "moonlighting," some running their businesses from
university offices, using university secretarial staff and resources,
and undercutting local professional services. There was more than a
suspicion that they were neglecting their university duties in so
There were clear rules for outside earnings, but Don George denied
that the guidelines were being exceeded. He went further. He said
there were two groups of people who objected to academics doing
outside work: those in the community who regarded it as a challenge
to their own incomes, and those in university who did not have the
capacity to earn income from outside work: "Jealousy sometimes comes
into it..." Such a statement could
be seen to endorse moonlighting. The resulting public image was
hardly positive. Where George might have been different from other
VCs in addressing this issue was his refusal to admit that anything
could be wrong. Now, of course,
moonlighting is compulsory, as long as the university gets its
Another public perception - again general, not only at Newcastle -
was that study leave was misused. Study leave is based on the
assumption that research, the discovery and creation of new
knowledge, is a complex and cooperative venture, undertaken by
building on the knowledge accumulated by scholars who may reside in
universities or institutes anywhere in the world. The process of
creating knowledge is greatly facilitated when it is a dialectic one.
That is, talking with knowledgeable others about your ideas sparks
off new ideas. Researchers need to travel to where their particular
research action is at its most active. They need public time to
disseminate and test their ide they also need
individual time for reflection. Study leave is designed to provide
for these complex needs.
In many universities - and colleges, which raises different issues
- staff who were not seriously undertaking research were nevertheless
granted study leave as of right, generously supported with travel
grants, with little or no obligation to produce serious evidence that
the time and money spent was in fact an investment of public funds
for the eventual public good. This was particularly the case in the
advanced education sector, where academics were not even expected to
undertake research, but where many were still granted study leave
(admittedly a lower proportion than was granted to university
academics). I have heard some boast about what a terrific rort it
was. In many institutions, study leave had become a hugely generous
long service leave, and like long service leave, was seen as earned
retrospectively, and free of obligation. Study leave was not meant to
be retrospective at all, but prospective, an academic investment.
We shouldn’t therefore have been surprised when a Dawkins
emerged. It had become only too easy to make the case that
universities generally had mishandled their freedom, a perception the
antics at Newcastle would have done little to dispel. As David Clark,
a reporter with The Australian Financial Review,
Do we really need more than the 19
universities we have already - or fewer but better ones? Take, for
example, the University of Newcastle. Currently it is plagued with
the following problems:
• Allegations that members of the Commerce Faculty used the
university’s tax-exempt status to operate a tax avoidance
scheme for their personal benefit.
• Friction between the community and the university over
academic "moonlighting" and concern from many academics that
academic standards are declining as a result.
• Intervention by the Governor of NSW, Sir James Rowland, who
is Visitor of the University, after an Associate Professor called
for an investigation of the administration’s handling of a
dispute ...
• A long running dispute involving a former member of the
Department of Commerce, Dr. Michael Spautz, who alleged in 1979
that the then head of the department was guilty of plagiarism
• A decision to build a $0.5 million new Council/Senate
chamber at a time when the university has staffing problems and
departments are facing cuts in teaching funds.
• Demands that the University Council be dismissed ...
• Suggestions that the Newcastle CAE and the University be
amalgamated. The CAE staff are keen to be transformed into
university lecturers but in the light of the above surely there is
a case for subsuming the University of Newcastle into the
Newcastle CAE.
This incredible ragbag of concerns suggests that the university
should at least be the subject of a wide-ranging external Inquiry
- with one of the options deserving serious consideration being
its closure.
Of course, such problems are not confined to the University of
Newcastle ...
This is strong, opinionated stuff, but it seems to indicate the
public concern over the dubious situations universities had got
themselves into. And the advanced education sector, with the help of
its political allies, skilfully exploited the situation, even though
the rorts and incompetence were undoubtedly greater there than in the
university sector itself.
Clark’s suggestion that the University of Newcastle might
better be subsumed under Newcastle CAE was actually what happened on
a national scale. Under Dawkins, the whole tertiary sector was
transformed into a university sector in name, but a massive advanced
education sector in structure, management, and function. Consider:
Universities were now to offer courses to provide for the market,
teachers were "multi-skilled" to follow the market forces, and
institutions were managed top-down, not collegially (see Chapter 4).
All these are characteristics that originally belonged to the
advanced education sector, but today are characteristic of
universities generally. With the exception of a few of the sandstone
universities, today’s universities are little more than
glorified teaching colleges, with a guided research agenda if someone
else pays for it. The classic idea of scholasticism, the creation and
learning of knowledge for it’s own sake, is virtually gone, a
quaint frippery of more frivolous times.
And part of the tragedy is that universities must take much of the
blame for this, in their refusal to listen to whistleblowers, and so
to clean up their act.
The burden of this chapter is that the demise of the classical
university was foreshadowed well before Dawkins got his axe from the
woodshed. One moment of truth was at the Newcastle University Council
Meeting in October 1986, when it agreed with Senate’s
representative on Council: You can’t let academics determine
policy. Once universities act on that assumption, the game is
lost. In a true university, the role of the university administration
is to facilitate the work of academics. When the role of academics is
to serve the purposes of administrators, you are dealing not with a
university but with something else.
Corporatisation has sealed this transformation, and universities
are now in the scholarly sense dead. In the 1996 Boyer Lectures,
Pierre Ryckmans said:
A true university is (and always has
been) anchored in values. Deprived of this holding ground, it can
only drift at the caprice of all the winds and currents of
fashion, and, in the end, is doomed to founder in the shallows of
farce and incoherence.&
The farce became tragedy for some at the Universities of Tasmania
and Newcastle, precisely because fleeting and irrelevant priorities
over-rode academic principle. That was what Sydney Orr was
fighting for in 1954. Whatever else he may or may not have done
is irrelevant in that context.
The universities began to lose the plot probably as far back as
the seventies, and it has steadily unravelled since then. And now the
university sector is paying for it, very heavily indeed.
Acknowledgements
I invited all major parties to comment on an earlier draft of this
Chapter. I am grateful to Professor Don George for his considered and
detailed responses, which I have endnoted where I thought most
appropriate. Professor Michael Carter replied that I was inaccurate
and selective. I asked him to point out where, or to compose a
general reply with the assurance of its publication, but I received
no reply to that invitation. GS at first stated that there were items
of information and innuendo that were "totally incorrect" but agreed
to "assist in any way I can," offering to provide a list of items
where she thought I was incorrect. She also in that letter pointed
out that proceedings between her and the University of Newcastle were
on foot in the Supreme Court. Shortly afterward, however, she wrote
that she was unable to provide the promised list of corrections, or
to make further comment, beyond saying that I and my publishers "must
take full responsibility should it transpire that your description of
matters relies upon incorrect and/or incomplete source materials." I
have therefore restricted myself here to the barest of facts, as they
appeared in Justice Allen’s judgment in her favour. Other
details on this case can be found in Parkes’s submission to the
Senate Inquiry (see ).
Postscript
Within days of going to press, I received news that Coral
Bayley-Jones - Ms. GS - died. This would allow considerably more
freedom in dealing with the facts of the case, and with the
University's torturous manoeuvrings, than I have detailed thus far,
but it would take too long to carry out the now permissable research.
I content myself with simply saying here that the full story would
make a fascinating study, not to say a great feature film, of human
deviousness and of administrative gutlessness. If this sounds
far-fetched, I suggest a close reading of Parkes's Senate submissions
(see especially third website, ).
[1]. Another account of many of the
events related here is given in Don Wright’s Looking Back:
The History of the University of Newcastle, University of
Newcastle, 1992, the "official" history of the University. That book
has had a stormy passage. One VC, Keith Morgan, held up production
for 18 months because he didn’t like what it said about him, and
when it was finally published, it immediately became the subject of
legal action from another party, and has been withdrawn from sale, as
I discovered when I wrote to the University to obtain a copy as
background to this Chapter. I eventually received a copy from Ken
Dutton, former Vice-Principal of the University and Professor of
French, who on its publication had wisely invested in two copies.
Writing histories about Newcastle University is evidently a risky
business (see Acknowledgments at end of Chapter).
[2]. Quoted in Ken Dutton’s
Auchmuty: The life of James Johnston Auchmuty. Mt. Nebo, Q:
Boombana Publications, 2000, p. 321.
[3]. Don Wright, op. cit., p. 99.
[4]. Private communication, 19 November,
[5]. For a fuller account of this case
see B. Martin (1983) "Disruption and due process: the dismissal of
Dr. Spautz from the University of Newcastle." Vestes,
26 (1), 3-9. On the specific issue of the alleged plagiarism,
see B. Martin (1984). "Plagiarism and responsibility," Journal of
Tertiary Educational Administration, 6 (2), 183-190.
[6]. Report of the Executive to the
members of the Staff Association on the recent dismissal of a tenured
member of the academic staff of the University. Authorized by the
Executive of the University of Newcastle Staff Association. 11 July,
[7]. George disagrees: "My support for
FAUSA was, I thought, understood at Newcastle - I ... recall the
great work it did from 1960 (when I came back to Sydney from Lucas
Heights), to become a member of SAUT and ultimately its president for
two years and many meetings were taken up with the Orr case. I do not
remember FAUSA having any serious problem over our handling of the
Spautz affair ..." All this is true. George was a leading light in
FAUSA, including during some of the O and likewise,
FAUSA at Newcastle did not express any problems over the Spautz
affair. It should have done. Spautz held strong right wing views,
disapproved of FAUSA on principle, and was never a member of the
Staff Association. FAUSA appeared to be taking the view that it
supported members only, and in so doing, missed the point that a very
important pr specifically, that here was a
disturbingly close rerun of the Orr Case.
[8]. The following are the web addresses
for Parkes’s Submissions to the Senate Inquiry :
[9]. Newcastle Morning Herald, 25
July, 2001.
[10]. NSW Supreme Court (1990) 22 NSWLR
424. Most of the factual details have been abstracted from this
[11]. George comments: "If the inference
here is that I didn’t want to know what the College was up to,
you couldn’t be more wrong - we were totally distrustful of
Eddie Richardson and were, in the nature of things, pretty well
informed about the College’s shenanigans. My concern was for
your position - any member accepting appointment to a Board or
Council owes a certain loyalty to that body, respecting confidential
matters, and must of necessity declare any conflict of interest (not
just over financial matters), removing themselves from that
particular debate or in the ultimate, choosing to resign."
This raises the question of an appointee’s loyalty. I was
appointed by the Minister (along with two other University staff
members) precisely to try to curb the "shenanigans" at the College -
but before amalgamation was an issue. I always saw my loyalty as
belonging not to a specific administration of the College, but to the
higher education sector as a whole. My "conflicts of interest" were
declared loud and clear virtually every meeting of the CAE Council,
once amalgamation was on the agenda. But it was by then a futile
commission, and eventually I resigned.
[12]. See Wright, op. cit., pp 155-56.
This tide only started to turn when the University’s Staff
Association Executive started actively lobbying politicians.
[13]. See Christopher Dawson, "Newcastle
run like an oligarchy: professor" The Australian Higher Education,
26 August, 1987. This is an account of an interview I gave in
which I said, inter alia, "The root of the problem is
not because of the personal wickedness of individuals, but the
university’s structure ... it is an oligarchy." See also
Opus, University of Newcastle, August, 1987. I did not know
how prescient I was. This is precisely the structure of the new
post-Dawkins corporatised university.
[14]. George comments: "What I primarily
wanted was to avoid Newcastle University being singled out for
amalgamation with a CAE when none of the other 17 universities was
facing this downgrading. (Wollongong had earlier swallowed up its
adjacent CAE because their VC, Michael Birt, wanted it, and there was
no Eddie Richardson there with similar ambitions). I wished us to
stay in the ‘real’ university league. ..."
[15]. On this, George writes:
"Strangely, far from wishing to weaken the Education discipline, my
motivation was to preserve its rightful place in an un-amalgamated
university - my recollection is not any pressure from Canberra but
rather our own reasoning of a way out of the attack that the College
and we were doing the same things and not in co-operation."
Nevertheless, the common perception was that the decision was made in
the hope that "this sacrifice ...would appease the gods in Canberra."
(Wright, op. cit., p 199). One of our major concerns was that none of
these negotiations included anyone from the Faculty of Education.
Nobody on the University side, but everyone on the College side,
really knew the technicalities of what was involved. This is where
the University Administration was so arrogant, and where they were
accordingly taken to the cleaners on the deal. Hence the
"self-destructive lunacy" (see above) of the proposals.
[16]. Quoted in Dutton, op. cit., p.
[17]. Which also allowed me to take
verbatim notes of what had been said.
[18]. Polya J. B,. & Solomon, R.
Dreyfus in Australia, Sydney, 1996, p. 77.
[19]. B. Martin, C.M.A. Baker, C.
Manwell, & C. Pugh (Eds.) Intellectual suppression, Angus
& Robertson, 1986; Q. Dempster, Whistleblowers, ABC
Books/Allen & Unwin, 1997.
[20]. The Newcastle Herald (19
March 1987) reports my own resignation, that of two other senior
members of the Department of Education, and those of the Professors
of Mathematics and Computer Engineering. An editorial in the same
issue states in part: "The drain of distinguished academics reported
this week may not be worrying everyone at the University of
Newcastle, but it should. Good academics ... tend to grow roots where
they believe they have they have achieved a position of quality in
their disciplines. So when a drift is observed, the aspect of quality
needs to be looked at ..."
[21]. Quoted in "Students union calls
for Inquiry into ‘moonlighting’ academics." The
Newcastle Herald, August 13, 1986.
[22]. Don George: "On this matter, the
Council of the University backed the rights of staff to such earnings
and the merits of such activities but gave strict instructions that
the rules were to be obeyed without explaining how to deal with staff
(if any) who declined to provide truthful returns to my annual
questionnaire. I do not believe in an academic police force nor in
outside interference in internal matters but followed up any
whistleblower’s hints (never in writing) and generally was
confident that wrong-doing was rare. ... Both outside earnings and
study leave have always had many critics outside the university
system and needed, as I saw it, my public defence."
His final comment: "You are of course entitled to critically
analyse any or all of the administrative decisions of the University
of Newcastle during the years you were there, but surely the primary
cause of today’s troubles lies with the growth of economic
rationalism with all the damage this has done to caring
societies. When coupled with its twin, academic
rationalisation, and the vindictive attitudes of the present
government in Canberra, it is not surprising to read as one can on
today’s Australian Higher Education Supplement (November
29, 2000, p. 27), the top headline: Another team down the brain
Don George and I disagree about many things, but I am glad we do
agree on this.
[23]. David Clark, "Taxpayers are
supporting quantity, not quality academic institutions." The
Australian Financial Review, 3 November, 1986.
[24]. P. Ryckmans, The view from the
bridge. The 1996 Boyer Lectures. ABC Publications, 1996,