Commercial accountability framework to be reviewed and strengthened

CAPA salutes the twenty-seventh recommendation of the Senate Committee report, Universities in Crisis, that a review be conducted into the commercial accountability arrangements of universities.

"The committee's call for a comprehensive review is most welcome, as it will protect universities themselves, their students and staff, and the public that funds universities in good faith that public money will be spent responsibly on public education," said President John Byron today.

The committee recommended that the review should be conducted by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs - the collective of State, Territory and Commonwealth Ministers with portfolio responsibility in these areas.

"MCEETYA is the right body to conduct such a review, since its findings will require both financial and regulatory support to be enforced - the responsibilities of the Commonwealth and the States and Territories respectively," said Mr Byron.

"It is unfortunate that such a review is so urgently required, but it is only in part due to the reckless actions of some university governing bodies that this situation has arisen - the Howard government must take its share of the responsibility for it too," he argued.

"Since the Coalition plunged universities into the current funding crisis, institutions have been under extraordinary financial pressure to raise funds by other means - any other means," explained Mr Byron.

"Furthermore, there has been considerable coercion exercised upon universities to pursue avenues that conform to the Minister's own ideological prejudices.

"The result is that some decisions have been a great deal less wise than others."

Commercial projects are particularly sensitive, as considerable public funds have been invested in speculative commercial enterprises without expertise or appropriate scrutiny.

"Students and staff of universities have endured a mounting sense of frustration in the context of ever-diminishing resources, as they watch their institutions invest large sums in dubious speculative projects.

"Furthermore, members of the general public, and their representatives in Parliament, have a right to be sure that their money is being spent wisely and ethically, and not being used to fund follies, or enterprises that may return personal profits to the very custodians of public institutions," he said.

"There have been some university commercial enterprises that have gone spectacularly pear-shaped over recent years, and it is well nigh time that some common sense in the form of prudential regulation was brought to bear upon the whole charade," concluded Mr Byron.