The ATEC legislation passed the Senate yesterday, after the government accepted amendments from the Greens and David Pocock. It now needs to be rubber-stamped by the House of Representatives and the Governor-General. Once that is done, it will become law after 28 days.

The amendments improve the legislation while still in my view leaving major flaws.

This previous post of mine links to my ATEC Senate inquiry submission and earlier posts on aspects of the legislation.

Objects of the Act

One of my criticisms was the entirely utilitarian and philistine set of ‘objects’ in the Act. While arguably no government since the 1970s has genuinely cared much about the broader functions of universities, they at least nodded to them in legislative objects. Not this government.

But the Senate amendment improves things:

Research

The ATEC bill read like a rushed committee job with nobody in enough control to ensure internal coherence. One example of this was research appearing in the objects of the bill but then disappearing from ATEC’s functions and matters on which it can give advice.

This is now fixed.

Read More »