Ben Reid, Newcastle
On May 18, 400 people attended a joint student-staff "Save Our Uni" rally at Newcastle University to oppose the impending loss of 450 jobs from the campus. The rally was organised by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) and the Newcastle University Student Association (NUSA).
The job cuts — amounting to one-fifth of staff members — are the result of the combined effects of the failure of the federal government to adequately fund the higher education sector and the incompetence of Newcastle University's administration.
Jenny Macklin, deputy federal Labor leader and the shadow minister for education, told the protesters the ALP would press the government to reclassify Newcastle University as a regional university and provide an emergency funding package. She also called on the administration to review the size of the cuts and for them to be carried out over a longer period of time.
Both Macklin and Sharon Grierson, ALP federal MP for Newcastle, pledged to reintroduce indexing of higher education funding.
NTEU NSW secretary Chris Game told protesters: "The vice-chancellor likes to say that there is no alternative, but clearly there are ... the $30 million of savings from the cuts will have to be offset by the borrowing of $19 million to pay for separation packages. And, of course, for every job loss here, three more will go in the region because of the multiplier effect of the value of the university."
Game referred to earlier experiences of threatened cuts to regional universities in 1978. At that time a national stoppage was held by university staff, with the backing of vice-chancellors, to protest against job cuts in the engineering department of Deakin University. Game called for a similar broad campaign against the cuts at Newcastle University.
NSW Greens MP Sylvia Hale pointed to the absurdity of the lack resources allocated by society to higher education. She noted that the rally was held the same day that Macquarie Bank announced pay increases of $90 million for seven of its employees. This is three times the size of the university's deficit.
NUSA president Carl Harris called on students to organise as part of a community-wide campaign.
After the rally, Hale told Green Left Weekly that the cuts at Newcastle University "are part of a broader Howard government agenda to attack workers, whether they be students or staff ... It's just part of the broader agenda of privatisation which is happening at the expense of community welfare and the public benefit."
From Green Left Weekly, May 25, 2005.
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