Impact Studios

rough.

I was at UTS University here the other day.

There's students in the audience about to graduate, and they're, like, curious what careers to do.

And, of course, they asked me my opinion, like, oh... what should we do? And I was like, I honestly can't answer.

I did my college here in Mumbai.

I actually did my MBA from UTS in Sydney.

So that was fantastic.

And I think that was a very eye-opening time in my life.

What was the objective of going there? And have you done anything differently since you've done that program?

Well, I've actually...

After my MBA in UTS, every 10 years I do a course just to keep up with what's happening in the world.

Now this legacy piece is very heavy with us.

Something else Sarah said to me was that she thinks the problem is actually more challenging at a tertiary level than a secondary one, because school teachers know their kids, they can tell when a student's voice is absent from what they've submitted.

Gordon Menzies is an economist who worked at the Reserve Bank, and then as an academic at the University of Technology, Sydney.

He's written for CPX for many years.

Currently, he's doing a lectureship at a college in Oxford.

I just got elected at the 2023 elections.

And prior to that, I had been an academic at UTS in the business school, an associate professor there for about a decade.

And during that time, I had been elected as a staff representative onto UTS Council.

So I got sort of an up close and personal view of university governance, if you like, which probably shaped my drive to hold the inquiry that you've mentioned.

Prior to that, I worked in the Latin movement in unions, but after being an academic, I then went into the public service in New South Wales for a while.

At the moment, as you'd be well aware, the ANU Act, which is the only university run by the federal government, the federal government, as you mentioned in your rationale for opening up this inquiry, is the pace setter in our sector and is actually the actor that imposed this governance structure on all Australian universities that we're living with now.

What would you like to see in those changes to the ANU Act? You know, what's the level of ambition you'd like to see the Minister Clare kind of push as a pace setter for the rest of the country?

Well, I think what came out loud and clear from our recommendations and I know from the ANU governance process, the UTS governance project, is that university governing bodies have to be much more representative of the stakeholders in the university community.

It's a 2GB morning show exclusive and it involves threats of political violence.

I've been contacted by a concerned parent of a student who is studying at the University of Technology Sydney.

And they've contacted me because of a flyer that's being circulated on campus.

Students are being handed a green piece of paper with the title Social Justice, which is advertising another one of these Say No to Hansen student protests.