LIVELY AND TIMELY PUBLIC FORUM ON ACADEMIC FREEDOM AT UWA ON THURSDAY
22 November 2007
Dr Carmen Lawrence, former federal member for Fremantle and former premier of WA, will be introducing the main speaker at what promises to be a lively public forum on academic freedom to be held between 1pm and 2pm at the Wilsmore lecture theatre at UWA on Thursday 22nd November.
The main speaker at the public forum is Dr John Buchanan, co-author of the “Australians @ Work Study” which found that workers on AWAs were $100 per week worse off than those on collective agreements.
The study by academics at the Sydney University Workplace Research Centre was attacked by Joe Hockey because it was partly funded by NSW trade unions. However, the study was also partly funded by an Australian Research Council linkage grant, which was approved by federal education minister Julie Bishop.
Mr Hockey had said the work was that of “former trade union officials who are parading as academics”. (This was factually wrong). What he neglected to mention was that this wasn’t just another quickie union-funded hatchet job on Work Choices. It was a major peer-reviewed research program that, against the stiffest competition and close scrutiny, had won funding as an Australian Research Council “linkage project”.
The study was defended by Gavan Brown, Vice Chancellor of Sydney University, who said “Mr Hockey had played the man and not the ball in attacking Buchanan and other researchers over their findings…it is legitimate for a minister to criticise conclusions but it is extremely silly to simply smear on the fact that the study was partly funded by the union movement…I believe that universities have a sacred trust to do a critique of society…I certainly think there should be no undue pressure placed upon researchers. Academic freedom is under attack”.
Vice chancellor of Melbourne University, Professor Glyn Davis has also spoken out in defence of academic freedom at a recent forum in Melbourne.
The report was also defended by Professor Alan Robson, vice chancellor of UWA and chairman of the Group of Eight top universities in Australia, who will participate in the forum as a member of the discussion panel.
Professor Robson said he was disappointed at the Government’s “attack on the intellectual honesty of the investigators”. He said “I think it’s appalling that a legitimate study is attacked because one of the funders is the unions…I have absolute confidence that this is a rigorous study that, as I understand it, it is an ARC linkage grant, so it was peer-reviewed, and there’s no reason whatsoever to assume that the results will be biased…if the funder was a business organisation, would the same have arisen?”
This event is the fourth in a series of public forums taking place across the nation at Australia’s most prestigious universities, and is hosted by the WA Division of the NTEU.
For further information contact Paul Halfpenny, NTEU Industrial Officer at UWA on (08) 6488 1969