University Accord - Graeme Innes

Speaker 1 00:29

Hello there, welcome to New Horizons, I'm Vaughn Benison, thanks for joining us this week. Graham Innes is no stranger to this program, but we've not discussed higher education with Graham before, he joins us now. Graham, once again, thanks for joining us.

Speaker 2 00:43

It's great to be here, Vaughn.

Speaker 1 00:44

We've spoken to you many times on this program, but one of the things that we haven't really done certainly in recent years is talk about you in the context of your professional role. Tell us a bit about your role and what it is that you do.

Speaker 2 00:59

Well, I suppose it's one of my roles, because I'm a board member of a couple of other boards, but probably my main function is Chancellor of Central Queensland University, which is a small regional university based around Rockhampton, but with campuses all throughout original Queensland, so Cairns, Mackay, Townsville, Bundaberg, Gladstone, and then campuses in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, and also in Adelaide. So, and the reason for that, of course, is that we make much of our income through international students, and so we have city campuses to mainly cater for them. 

But the role is, if you like to think about it as a university as a company, the Chancellor is the Chair of the Board, and the Vice -Chancellor is the Chief Executive, and so I have all of those governance responsibilities of chairing the Council of the University and everything that goes along with that, looking to appoint and shape the Council, and then guide the Council in its deliberations. But as well as that, I have the privilege, and it is a privilege, of handing out degrees to graduating students, and someone said to me, when I started in the role, oh, you'll love the graduations, and I sort of thought, Oh, yeah, after the fifth or sixth or tenth one, it'll just become a matter of form, but it's not, it's a day of great celebration, and everyone there is very pleased and happy with what they've achieved, and so there's a lot of positive energy around those graduations, and it's really probably my favourite part of the job.

I live in northern New South Wales, and I travel to the campuses for the graduations, and the main time I'm on campus is for graduations, and I also meet with donors and people who bequeath money to their, or their families of people, or people who might bequeath money to the University, so I tend not to meet a lot of the students. I've tried to go to a few student representative council meetings and get to know them a bit, and because I'd been seen on the drum, and I think because I lived in regional Australia, so in northern New South Wales in Tweed Heads, they were two of the factors that led to my appointment, so I've got the ABC and where I live to thank for being the Chancellor of the University.

Speaker 1 03:34

When you're undertaking board roles like this. I mean, it's a pretty significant role as chair of such a significant body and you're on other boards as well. What do you have to think about as a blind person to manage all of that?

Speaker 2 03:47

I think the main thing that's different from anyone else who works in these roles is thinking about the logistics of accessing the material that I need to read. So I have to be quite widely read, not just reading the board papers for the university, but I need to be across current affairs, particularly in the higher education sector. And so I need to think about how I can best get access to that material. And I use an RSS reader called LIRE, L-I-R-E, which means that I can subscribe to a whole lot of links for newspapers and relevant publications.
One of the publications I look through pretty carefully is The Conversation, which is the sort of the academic publication, and as well I read other newspapers. 

And because I've got to be across that material, because one of your roles as chair is to be, you know, if you're like reading the signs, testing the wind to use a sailing analogy, and knowing what's going on, and then thinking about how that might have an impact on the organisation that you're chairing. There's other logistics that I need to think about, you know, travelling to and from the various campuses on the university. And we had to spend a bit of time talking through the graduation process, because I've got 100 or 150 people cSo we need to think about the logistics of doing that in front of large crowds of people and online, because it's streamed online for people who can't attend. So I have to think about those things, but they're probably the key things as a blind person that you need to think about when chairing a board.

Speaker 1 05:48

Do you think there are advantages to having a disabled person as chair of a board like the Central Queensland University?

Speaker 2 05:55

I think it sends a message, there's no doubt about that. It sends a message about as do any people with disabilities performing in any senior or public role like that. It sends a message to other people with disabilities that yes, you can aspire to these sorts of roles and it also sends a message to the community that we as people with disabilities can perform successfully in the community if we're given the opportunity by the community to do so. So I think those are important messages for sure. But one of the ways that CQU distinguishes itself is that it seeks to support students who experience disadvantage either because of where they live or because of their originality or coming from a different cultural or linguistic background or because they live in regional and remote Australia or because they have a disability. 

And so having one of those things demonstrated in their Chancellor who stands up and hands out the test [?], I think that definitely indicates a progressive organisation.

Speaker 1 07:13

Recently, the University Accord was published... and I just discovered a couple of days ago a media release which talks about the Accord and it talks about some rather disturbing comments around disability or the lack of disability mentioned in that Accord. Can you firstly tell us what is the University Accord and what does it mean?

Speaker 2 07:34

The University Accord is a bit like the Accord that was made under the Hawke Government between unions and employers. It's a report leading to a rethinking of the way the higher education sector is structured and more importantly from the government perspective funded. And so it looks at whole higher education and VET sector and it will over time, and this won't happen in 12 months, it'll happen over four or five years probably, it will change the way the sector is structured and funded. And one of the things that the Accord did was have a very strong focus on disadvantage and Minister Jason Clare, who's the Federal Education Minister, for him that's a very strong focus as well. 

And so it's a document that looks at disadvantage and how we ensure that people from regional Australia and remote Australia have the same opportunities as people from the capital cities. You know in the capital city you can get on a bus and go to three or four or five different universities, but if you live in Rockhampton or somewhere even more remote than Rockhampton, you've really only got one choice. And if you live hundreds of kilometres from your nearest university, then the process is much harder for you. And one of the aims of the Accord is to try and address that disadvantage. And there are far fewer people proportionally studying from the regions than there are from the metropolitan areas. And that's not because people in the regions aren't smart, they clearly are, but they're experiencing greater disadvantage. 

But my one disappointment in the Accord is that the people doing the work on the report were misinformed in a very fundamental way around the data relating to people with disabilities. So that they did not include in their assessment of people with disabilities, people who experience profound disability. Now that would cover people who are blind or people who are deaf. It would cover people like Stephen Hawking, it would cover people like Rosemary Kayes, who's our current disability discrimination commissioner, and as I say it would cover you and I.

And so because they didn't include that category, they determined that only 8% of the population of university students would be people with disabilities. And universities are already achieving at that level. So the Accord basically says job is done in the disability sector, we don't need to do any more. And that's just a fundamental error. And that's what the focus of the media release was that came out quite recently from the education union and from the student union and from other representative bodies in the disability sector in higher education.

Speaker 1 10:48

One would think that logic would dictate that if 25% of the population of Australia is disabled that you could expect somewhere close to 25% of university students would be disabled. Do you know why that didn't occur to them?

Speaker 2 11:02

Well, no, and I've made that point very clearly, and if you look at the Gonski data, the school data that came from the Gonski report, that is exactly what it indicates, but they didn't refer to that data. They went on the Australian Bureau of Statistics data and then excluded people with profound disability. So that's how they got to the number of 8%. They assumed that people with profound disabilities, that is the highest or the most serious level of disabilities would not attend university, so they excluded them from the data. And they didn't look at what the definition of profound covers, and there are people with intellectual disability who are currently going and have gone to university, so it's a flawed assumption from right through.

Speaker 1 11:52

What can we do about this? How can we make change in this area?

Speaker 2 11:57

Well, this media release has been put out and a number of organisations have begun speaking to the minister, including myself as the chancellor of a university, because I think I have an important role to play there. And we are having conversations with the department about what can be done about this. And the department recognises that there has been an error in the way the data was dealt with or defined and that it has yet has not become something that the minister has made announcements about, but I expect that the minister will be recognising that this is a mistake in the Accord's work and looking to address that as the Accord moves forward.

But we have to address it for him, because if we don't, vice-chancellors and other senior people in universities will read what's in the Accord and say, Okay, we can take our foot off the pedal for people with disabilities, because we've hit our quota where we're getting it right, we don't need to do any more. And that's the last thing that we want to happen in higher education and VET.

Speaker 1 13:09

And particularly for people with profound disabilities, because they're often the ones that need the support services. You and I, for example, are regular Braille users. And whilst I didn't have access to much Braille when I was at university, it was certainly something that I needed for the music component. If they refuse to recognise profound disability, then suddenly I don't have access to Braille music anymore.

Speaker 2 13:33

Yeah, absolutely right. And there's all sorts of other services that would not be taken into account and need to be recognised. So that's why we have to correct this because if the assumption is left the way it is, then there will be significant disadvantage for people with disabilities going to university in the future.

Speaker 1 13:57

Graeme Innes is the Chancellor of Central Queensland University. If you'd like to contact Blind Citizens Australia, you can call 1-800-033-660. 1-800-033-660 or you can email bca@bca.org.au ... B-C-A at B-C-A - dot - org - dot - A-U. If you've got any ideas for New Horizons, anything you'd like to hear more about, or anyone you'd like us to speak to, contact me, new.horizons@bca.org.au ... New - dotr - Horizons - at - B-C-A - dot - org - dot- A-U. In the meantime, I'll talk to you next week.

Speaker 1 14:30

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