The first hearing held outside NSW Parliament took the university inquiry to Newcastle \u2014 and that mattered. The hearing was held at Newcastle City Hall, in the region served by the University of Newcastle, and it brought the inquiry\u2019s central question into sharper focus: what does public accountability mean when a university is not just an education provider, but a major regional institution?<\/p>\n
The University of Newcastle is central to the Hunter and Central Coast. It educates local students, trains the region\u2019s workforce, supports research and industry transition, and carries a public mission that cannot be reduced to a balance sheet. Vice-Chancellor Professor Alex Zelinsky spoke about the university\u2019s role in equity, access and regional opportunity, including its high proportion of first-in-family students, low-SES students and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.<\/p>\n
But the evidence also showed the gap between regional mission statements and the way universities are actually governed. Newcastle\u2019s senior leadership came to the hearing with polished language about public purpose, sustainability and access. Under questioning, however, that language gave way to a much more troubling picture: opaque financial framing, weak accountability for change, and serious unresolved questions about psychosocial safety.<\/p>\n
Much of the questioning focused on the University of Newcastle\u2019s Business Improvement Program, the financial case used to justify it, and the wellbeing of staff. Professor Zelinsky said the program was designed to deliver $26.6 million in ongoing savings, with a net reduction of fewer than seven full-time equivalent staff. But the hearing exposed deeper questions about who decided the savings target, what consultant advice informed it, and how the university explains its financial position.<\/p>\n
The discussion of Newcastle\u2019s \u201ccore operating\u201d result was one of the most revealing moments of the day. The university argued that its adjusted result gives a clearer picture of the cost of teaching and research. But Committee questioning highlighted the risk of universities relying on internal financial models that are not transparent enough for staff, students or the public to test. Professor Zelinsky was pressed on whether the university was effectively asking people to rely on one set of audited accounts for formal reporting, and another adjusted narrative to justify savings and change.<\/p>\n
That concern deepened when Chief Financial Officer Paul McCubbin gave evidence. Mr McCubbin initially gave a narrow answer about whether he had presented directly to council on the Business Improvement Program, before later acknowledging that he was involved in the program, including financial assessment of savings and the preparation of papers. The exchange exposed exactly why transparency matters: when universities rely on adjusted financial models to justify major change, the methodology, assumptions and exclusions should be clear, public and independently testable.<\/p>\n
The senior executive evidence on work health and safety was no more reassuring. Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Belinda Tynan was asked whether the university had conducted a risk assessment of its academic workload model, after it was put to her that the model had been raised as a psychosocial hazard. Her answer was that she did not believe so. That admission matters. When staff are reporting serious psychosocial risk, listening is not enough. Universities have legal obligations to identify hazards, assess risks and implement controls before harm occurs.<\/p>\n
That point became even clearer when the NTEU session began. Associate Professor Terrence Summers, University of Newcastle NTEU Branch President, appeared alongside Dr Tim Connor, Professor Paul Dastoor and Dr Elena Aydos. Their evidence shifted the focus from management\u2019s financial framing to the lived consequences of decision-making: psychosocial harm, fear of speaking up, workload pressure, declining morale, and staff trying to keep teaching, research and student support going under serious strain.<\/p>\n
Dr Aydos gave deeply personal evidence about returning to work after cancer treatment and then sustaining a workplace injury through aggravated PTSD. She described systemic failures in psychosocial risk management and said responses were procedural rather than protective. Her evidence was a reminder that workplace safety in universities is not an abstract compliance issue. It is about whether staff can work, recover, speak and teach without being harmed.<\/p>\n
Dr Connor connected those harms to governance. He told the inquiry that the university has moved from a more collegial model to a top-down structure where heads of school pass down decisions from above and staff are told there is no choice. Professor Dastoor warned that financial sustainability is necessary but not sufficient: without teaching, research and the staff who make them possible, there is no university worth sustaining.<\/p>\n
The hearing also heard from University of Newcastle students. Imogen Reid, Liam Brenner and Jennifer Lowe from the University of Newcastle Students\u2019 Association gave evidence about damaged trust, weak consultation, academic governance being bypassed, SSAF concerns and the impact of psychosocial safety issues on students as well as staff. Their evidence reinforced a key point: students are not passive consumers. They are part of the university community and should have real power in governance.<\/p>\n
The hearing then turned to Charles Sturt University. Dr Anna Corbo Crehan, CSU NTEU Branch President, appeared with Dr Emma Rush, CSU NTEU Branch Vice-President, and Claudio Dionigi, Faculty Librarian and NTEU member. Their evidence was brief but powerful. Dr Corbo Crehan told the inquiry that CSU is part-way through a change program aimed at saving $35 million, with more change proposals expected later in the year and professional staff jobs now in focus. She also said the recent staff wellbeing census identified 82 per cent of CSU respondents as experiencing significant psychosocial risks because of their work, while the Vice-Chancellor\u2019s response was simply to query the response rate.<\/p>\n
CSU matters because it is a regional university with campuses and responsibilities across large parts of NSW. Job losses at CSU are not just numbers in an institutional plan. In regional communities, a university job may be tied to a family\u2019s home, schooling, local employment and long-term connection to place. The impact of restructuring spreads well beyond the individual worker.<\/p>\n
The CSU Vice-Chancellor is expected to appear at a later hearing. That will be an important opportunity to test the university\u2019s account of its change program, its approach to psychosocial safety, and its understanding of its public mission.<\/p>\n
The final session of the day returned to the University of Newcastle through the evidence of Associate Professor Patricia Pender. Her evidence was one of the most powerful moments of the hearing. She spoke directly to the culture of fear, distrust and psychological harm that staff have been describing throughout the inquiry.<\/p>\n
Associate Professor Pender said the University of Newcastle\u2019s response to poor national staff wellbeing results was not to listen, but to deny, attack and blame the NTEU for circulating the survey after management declined to do so. She described that response as a classic attempt to reverse responsibility, and said the university\u2019s first response to evidence of psychological harm was to inflict further psychological damage on staff.<\/p>\n
Her evidence also made clear that the problem cannot be reduced to the number of jobs formally cut. Newcastle did not face the same scale of announced job losses as UTS or Western Sydney, but still recorded the worst psychosocial safety result among public universities. Associate Professor Pender said that speaks to something deeper: a management culture that leaves staff feeling disenfranchised, fearful and morally injured, even where they are not personally targeted for redundancy.<\/p>\n
That evidence brought the hearing back to its central point. The issue is not only whether a university balances its books. It is whether the people who teach, research and support students can do their work safely and with dignity. A regional university cannot serve its community while breaking the staff who make that work possible.<\/p>\n
This hearing showed why NSW Government action is required.<\/p>\n
Regional universities need sustainable funding, but they also need transparent and accountable governance. Financial pressure should not become a licence for opaque modelling, inadequate consultation, unsafe work practices or regional job losses without proper public scrutiny.<\/p>\n
NSW needs modern university Acts with enforceable public-good duties, clearer financial reporting, stronger psychosocial safety accountability, transparent disclosure of consultant inputs, Auditor-General performance audits, and councils with majority elected staff and student representation.<\/p>\n
The Newcastle hearing showed the stakes plainly. In regional NSW, universities are anchor institutions. When they are governed well, they expand opportunity. When they are governed poorly, the damage is felt by workers, students, families and whole communities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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