Our June speaker was Rachael Bahl, the NTEU secretary for the ACT.

The National Tertiary Education Union represents academic and professional staff, full-time and casual.

Tertiary education continues to come under attack from threats of massive budget cuts and the casualisation of the workforce. The speed of change has removed any secure connection between coursework and degree, and the job market.

The Liberal government was unable to get its 2014 budget cut of 20% from higher education through the Senate; and it has also had to back down from plans to deregulate university fees. The 20% cut is still a possibility, though; and other plans include partial deregulation of “flagship” courses, Higher Education Loan Project (HELP, formerly HECS) repayments to begin at lower income levels, and increasing the student contribution as a percentage of the cost of their courses.