Radio Interview- 891 ABC Adelaide with Rory McLaren
RADIO INTERVIEW
891 ABC Adelaide
TUESDAY, 11 November 2025
SUBJECTS: Senate inquiry into higher education, Australian Universities, Uni SA and University of Adelaide merger
RORY McLAREN: HOST
Let's go to the new Adelaide University. And on January 1st, UniSA and the University of Adelaide, as we know them, they will be no more, and a new merged institution will be born. The Federal Parliament, specifically the Senate, is looking at the quality of governance at Australian higher education providers and they held a hearing here in Adelaide yesterday. Senator Karen Grogan is from the Labor Party. She chaired yesterday's inquiry. Senator, welcome.
SENATOR KAREN GROGAN: LABOR SENATOR FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA
Good morning, Rory. Thanks for having me on.
RORY McLAREN: HOST
Senator, for the uninitiated, what exactly is this committee looking at and what sparked the inquiry?
SENATOR KAREN GROGAN: LABOR SENATOR FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA
Well, if we go back a few years, there started to be some issues raised about various activities that were happening in universities, mostly connected to their governance - So how they run the university, the information that sprays in and out, some issues with underpayments - and a lot of this came up through the accord process, which was worked on some years ago. And so coming out of that, there was a very strong awareness that we needed to look more deeply at how the governance at universities across Australia was going, because some of the stories were really serious failures in governance.
RORY McLAREN: HOST
So that is the high-level reason behind this particular inquiry. Let's come to yesterday. Take us through some of the evidence that was presented because you heard from the outgoing Vice-Chancellors, Peter Høj from Adelaide and David Lloyd from UniSA. Given their commentary to the committee, Senator Grogan, do you have any reservations as to where the merger process sits?
SENATOR KAREN GROGAN: LABOR SENATOR FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA
No, I don't. Going in, I think did, because we had heard some concerns from students about how their qualifications are transitioning. We had heard, obviously, University of Adelaide had discovered an underpayment. They discovered that themselves and are working to fix that. So there were some questions for them. And also, you know, 1st of January is not that far away, Rory, so we're all, you know, our South Australian universities need to be the best in the country and we need to ensure that that's what happens. But they took us through in some significant detail about where they're at, where the challenges have been, and they were pretty open and pretty honest about it. I think they've got it. There will be some things that are a bit later than maybe everybody would have liked, which they acknowledged. Transitioning the students, particularly where qualifications are not going to be identical. They're kind of called something else.
RORY McLAREN: HOST
Well, the other element that stood out to me, me, Senator, was the fact that, you know, staff wouldn't find out until December the 19th if they'd have a new job description or not. And if they hadn't heard by then, their current job title would apply. That seems pretty late in the piece, doesn't it?
SENATOR KAREN GROGAN: LABOR SENATOR FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA
Yeah, it does. And I think what they did early on was confirm that people were going to keep their jobs. It's just that they may articulate a little bit differently. So they said that 92% of staff were transitioning into the same job or a very, very similar job. then there's 8% who are being case managed into where they would go because their roles were less straightforward in the transition.
RORY McLAREN: HOST
Now, Steph has texted in on 0467 922 891 at 11 minutes past 10, Senator, and Steph has gone to an issue that she got there before I did. I was going to ask you about this. And Steph asks, what was the context of the Deloitte report? Now, let's remind everyone about Deloitte and its involvement when it came to the business case. Now, what did you have to say about the release of that particular business case?
SENATOR KAREN GROGAN: LABOR SENATOR FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA
So the business case did get quite an airing at the hearing with one senator asking for them to release the full business case because what they've released at this point in time is a partial business case. Now, the rationale they gave for not releasing the whole thing was in part some commercial concerns about material they've utilised to come to various assumptions. So what they're doing at this point in time is they're going to go away, have a look at what they can release and give us a rationale for why they're not going to release various bits. That’ll give us a lot of clarity. But we get this a lot where people say, well, we have this material, but this bit of material we're not going to release because it will give away our commercial advantage to our competitors or various things like that. So they'll have to respond to us by the 24th of November on the bits that they aren't releasing and why.
RORY McLAREN: HOST
So there is still the prospect here that we could see more of this business case into the public sphere then?
SENATOR KAREN GROGAN: LABOR SENATOR FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA
Yeah. there is.
RORY McLAREN: HOST
Again, back to my previous point, Senator, it's quite late for that to be made public given this new institution gets up and running from the 1st of January.
SENATOR KAREN GROGAN: LABOR SENATOR FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA
Yeah, and they did acknowledge, you know, they've ploughed some more resources into trying to get everything done as swiftly as possible. They did express a strong confidence that all students and all staff will know exactly what's happening before the university kicks off in January. But I appreciate that must be quite distressing for some staff members. It's one thing to be assured that you're not losing your job, your, you know, your remuneration isn't going to change, but to not know exactly what you're doing in the next year can be really quite distressing. And that's unfortunate - so they've had two years to put this together, which may sound like a long but it is an enormous, task of, I think, 70,000 students coming into this new enterprise and about 10,000 staff.
RORY McLAREN: HOST
Now, it wasn't just, again, the outgoing vice chancellors that appeared before this committee yesterday. You had the Australia Institute and you also heard from the vice chancellor of Flinders University, Colin Stirling. What were some of his reflections on governance in the sector? Because he's a very experienced vice chancellor now as well.
SENATOR KAREN GROGAN: LABOR SENATOR FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA
He is. And I think some of his commentary, and this is no reflection on him, but when we look across the whole country and various other evidence that's come to light over the last 12 months, one of the things that was critical is that the view of the senior echelons of the universities on their governance seemed to be quite different to the view of staff, students and stakeholders, and I think there's an awareness piece of growing and understanding your role, not just in terms of looking narrowly at what's in front of you, but more broadly at your role across the community. Because our public education institutes, they are a public asset. They receive a significant amount of public funding, but they play such a central role in our civic, economic and social life.
Senator Karen Grogan, thank you for your time this morning.
SENATOR KAREN GROGAN: LABOR SENATOR FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA
Thank you.