Dr Kemp's workplace agenda
14 October 1999
The NTEU has condemned Dr Kemp’s leaked Cabinet proposal which attempts to play staff and students off against each other. Dr Kemp’s Cabinet submission specifically attempts to undermine the work of the NTEU and the strong relationship between students and staff.
\"The NTEU rejects plans to make students pay for salary increases for university staff\", Dr Carolyn Allport, NTEU National President said. \"Dr Kemp is attempting to collude with vice-chancellors to make students pay more for their education and to undermine successful collective action by staff.\"
\"Dr Kemp knows that our universities need more public funding, but he will only provide it on the condition that vice-chancellors implement the Government’s ideologically obsessed industrial agenda. The NTEU has made numerous approaches to Dr Kemp about increasing public investment in education. Unfortunately he is only prepared to provide extra funding by slugging students and marginalising the staff union.\"
\"We will call an emergency meeting of our National Executive to develop a national campaign in response to Dr Kemp’s proposals. The Cabinet leak recognises how unpopular this proposal will be in the community - we will be involved in a community campaign which tells all members of the Government that Dr Kemp’s plan is political suicide.\"
\"If the Government recognises that this is electoral suicide and scraps Dr Kemp’s proposals it must provide the country with an alternative package to deal with the underfunding of our universities. The only viable option left to the Government is to acknowledge that education is an investment in Australia’s future and substantially increase public funding to universities.\"