Mr BAYLEY (Clark) – Honourable Speaker, I rise to talk on the University of Tasmania Lands bill, and I say upfront that we supported the original bill as it was introduced. This is very much deja vu because we’ve been here before. We debated the original bill that was amended in the other place and, ultimately, we had to oppose that bill, and here we are now considering effectively, not exactly the same bill, but a bill that gives the exact effect of that amended bill from almost exactly this time last year.
Let me start with a congratulations for the community, because I want to acknowledge the community, whether it be Save UTAS, or the academics or whether it be UTAS students, experts, or colleague MPs and MLCS, there has been a community campaign that has pushed back strongly on UTAS’s proposition to move holus‑bolus into the city. That’s not an easy feat. Having come from the campaign space where you’re pushing back against large institutions with money, with access to media and with power, that’s not an easy place for a community group to be in, but with tenacity and advocacy, they have shifted UTAS from that wholescale move into the city and that’s a welcome thing from our perspective, and they got the university to anchor back to the Sandy Bay site.
The Sandy Bay site is a spectacular site. Any other university in the country would give their left arm for a site like the Sandy Bay site. It’s a couple of kilometres out of the city, it has incredible views, it has incredible facilities, and that is why people have fought so hard to protect that site. They know it’s a valuable asset. They know, despite the decision of UTAS to move, they know, or they knew, that it was a really valuable asset. It’s very welcome that UTAS were finally forced into a situation of basically accepting that and accepting that they needed to anchor back to Sandy Bay, and that they would do that with a STEM facility. Facilities that we need, having just been at an ITC event downstairs, we know that we to stimulate engagement in STEM faculties and STEM disciplines and we do need the university to focus on that.
I congratulate the community for forcing the government to act in this space as well, because they did act. To recap, in 2024, the Liberal government took a policy and an election commitment to that election that was to put a check and balance over the disposal of any and all land at the Sandy Bay site. The intent was to ensure that we, as the parliament had some oversight on public land that was gifted to the university 70 odd years ago and this was government responding to community pressure. That’s really welcome, and it was a check and balance on UTAS where it was clear that people felt UTAS was not in full control of making the best decisions.
The bill as we knew it, as originally promised and introduced, has descended in many ways into perversity. It was amended by the government this time last year to fundamentally defeat the original intent. I completely agree, we disagree fundamentally on the outcome of this bill, Mr Winter, but I completely agree that the amendments made completely undermine the original intent and the pledge that was taken to that election. It means that the site is now carved up, parliamentary oversight does not apply to part of it, and there is a parliamentary rezone. Effectively, a unilateral parliamentary rezone to inner residential of segments of that land above Churchill Avenue. In doing this, the Liberals have betrayed their commitment, they’ve betrayed some of their fundamental supporters, and they’ve betrayed proper planning processes.
We do not support parliamentary rezones, that is a fundamental principle, because they simply do not work and they do not deliver good decision-making. It sets a terrible precedent that we’re never going to support and it undermines the existing process or the previous process that was underway in terms of the Hobart City Council, Sandy Bay and Mount Nelson neighbourhood planning process. People had invested genuine time into that process. Experts, community members – they turned up to forums, they turned up to workshops, they were engaged in that process. It’s really disappointing, I have to say, it’s really disappointing to hear the minister say that this bill avoids the lengthy Hobart City Council rezoning process. I agree it does. This is a shortcut, it avoids a process, but part of that process is about bringing people along on the journey.
Part of that process is about ensuring that there is compromise made along the way, that views are heard, that the best possible community outcome is delivered. To shortcut that and simply say, ‘We’re going to rezone it, it’s going to be residential’ is a fundamentally bad decision. With an elector poll of Hobart City Council residents on this issue of delivering effectively a 75 per cent of people that don’t support the wholescale move into the city, it’s really clear that people have a stake in this decision. They have a stake in this decision and they want to make sure it’s done right, and that proper planning process is the way to do it.
We’re not going to support parliament engaging and reaching into the planning process with this rezone. We Greens have been utterly consistent on that. It’s a shame. This parliament is increasingly reaching into the planning process to deliver planning outcomes for developers, whether it be the state postal policy, whether it be Stony Rise, whether it be the stadium. We can’t be reaching into planning processes and making these decisions because they fundamentally cut out community and deliver bad outcomes.
It’s ironic that today, in the other place, the stadium order is being to be debated and it seems it’s going pass because it’s effectively symbolic of why we’re here. The Liberal government, this government, is unwilling or unable to stump up $100 million as a state contribution to the $500 million STEM rebuild price tag for the STEM redevelopment; $100 million, a fifth of the $500 million commitment that’s needed for this development, the other $400 million coming from the federal government.
I read into the Hansard a statement from UTAS that was made this time last year just before we debated this bill just after UTAS announced that it was going to anchor back to Sandy Bay, UTAS said:
To achieve this plan, the next major steps for the University are to secure funding from the Tasmanian and Australian Governments to develop new STEM facilities at Sandy Bay.
They were looking for $100 million from the Tasmanian government to match and unlock the $400 million from the federal government. Compare this to the stadium being debated upstairs as we speak – $1.3 billion, and progressed against all independent expert advice; Nicholas Gruen, the Tasmanian Planning Commission and others, and to secure the vote at the Legislative Council, the government’s been happy to put a $105 million commitment on the table for community sports infrastructure. Now, we fully support community sports infrastructure, don’t get me wrong, but we can’t have it delivered in a way that is not equitable. It should be done through a fair merits-based and independent assessment process. For the government to pull $100 million of extra funding for community support out of its hat, simply to get the support of upper House members, when they can’t actually find $100 million to invest in the future of our children in this state and STEM, is another indictment on this government. It’s a complete failure to invest in STEM and it clearly shows that STEM and education is not the priority of this government after all.
The government’s going to be pouring 11 times more money, at least, into the stadium, an inward-facing kind of colosseum on our waterfront, than what is needed for STEM. It’s shameful. So much for STEM being an anchor. The minister’s response to that statement from the university was:
We intend to strongly advocate to the Commonwealth to invest in Tasmania’s STEM-led future. What message does it send to Tasmanians if the Commonwealth is unwilling to invest in this vital sector?
Well, minister, what message does it send to Tasmanians if the Tasmanian government is unwilling to invest in this sector? You’re more willing to spend $100 million to buy the vote of Legislative Councillors than you are to invest in the future of our children. It’s a real shame. The fact that you have not managed to stump up this kind of money for foundational tertiary education is indeed an indictment.
I want to say, and put on the record, that I’ve had some long and detailed and really positive engagement with UTAS over this issue over the last few years as well, and I really appreciate that. I’ve really got to know some of the representatives from UTAS, and I know they are genuinely trying really hard. They have been left in a really difficult position over many years. Some of the position is because of decisions of their own making. They are legacy bad decisions by past vice-chancellors and past councillors.
At the same time, we know the university sector is in really deep strife all around the country, whether it be because of COVID and the impacts of COVID, whether it be because of international student caps, whether it’s because of HECS fees. It’s a really challenging space and I absolutely acknowledge that.
UTAS as well, it is well understood, as has been demonstrated by the Legislative Council review into the legislation that governs UTAS, that there are issues that need to be dealt with in its statutory framework as well. UTAS is Tasmania’s only university and it is way too important to fail. We can disagree on many things, I’m sure, about this bill and other issues, but we all, I know, in this place and elsewhere, are united on the fact that UTAS is just simply too important to fail. This, the land sale and STEM, is only one part of the story.
The Legislative Council report made some really clear recommendations that we, as a parliament, really do need to treat seriously and really do need to get on with the job of addressing. It’s 19 recommendations in total and identified that the UTAS Act needs to be amended, in many ways to deal with the constitution of the University Council, so that it:
- Includes a minimum of two student members, with at least one elected by the student body;
- That it includes a minimum of two members from the academic staff, elected by academic staff;
- That the act be amended to provide the constitution of the University Council to include a minimum of two members from the professional staff, elected by the professional staff;
- The act to be amended to ensure there’s more balance between the number of appointed and elected members on the University Council;
- That it be amended to clarify the purpose and function of ministerial appointments to the University Council; and
- The act to be amended to ensure that when considering the best interests of the university, the University Council must explicitly include consideration of the university’s obligations to the Tasmanian community.
That’s just a handful of the recommendations that have been pulled out and made by the Legislative Council Select Committee a few years ago. It is really important that we do get on with that.
I will highlight, and I don’t want to make a big deal of this, but I do think it needs to be put on the record while we are talking about UTAS, that I do have concerns, and we Greens do have concerns, about the recent revelations about the Vice‑Chancellor taking a paid position on the board of Deloitte. This is a position that is in charge of our only university. He’s paid to the tune of $1 million-plus a year, and we, and others, think he should have a full‑time focus on the university itself.
I will just read quickly into Hansard a comment from Dr Ruth Barton, the Tasmanian division Secretary of the National Tertiary Education Union, and it’s hard to disagree with this. On 2 September, she said:
The Vice‑Chancellor’s role is meant to be a full-time position requiring complete dedication to the university and its students. Taking on additional paid board positions while drawing a salary of over $1,000,000 raises fundamental questions about priorities and commitment.
When university leaders start collecting additional stipends from major consulting firms, it creates obvious conflicts of interest and questions about where their loyalties lie. [tbc]
Now, I’m not casting any aspersions on the Vice‑Chancellor in relation to his motivations or any actions that he has taken, but it’s clearly a bad look for the VC of our university to be paid to undertake a board position for another entity.
I also fear for UTAS in the face of this decision, and I did put this on the record last time as well. I do fear that this could be a Pyrrhic victory for UTAS. It gets the planning decision that it wants, but it loses further in the social licence space, and that is a really bad outcome. It’s a bad outcome being driven by bad government decisions and the inability of this government to step up and support the future of students and support STEM.
I want to finish on this point, with some words from Emeritus Distinguished Professor Jeff Malpas, who I know and respect dearly. He wrote this in The Mercury as recently as yesterday, and I think it highlights some of the dismay and despair at the university and some of the decisions being taken. He writes:
There are clearly larger issues here of governmental, regulatory and institutional breakdown that go well beyond the university alone. One might hope that what has happened, and is happening, with UTAS will provoke some serious reconsideration of what has occurred, how it occurred and where we are now heading.
For those of us who have spent a large part of our lives committed to UTAS and to furthering teaching and research in the humanities and social sciences, there seems little we can do but watch in grief and dismay at what is occurring.
That’s tragic. It’s tragic that we have such long‑standing, distinguished and respected academics feeling utterly powerless and utterly despairing at the decisions of UTAS and the future they’re going towards. I’ll leave that there.
I do want to say, on the record, that we are obviously strong supporters of housing ‑ the need for new housing and the need for housing reforms ‑ and with the greatest respect, Mr Winter, I’m not going to be lectured by you on housing so long as the Labor Party is standing in the way of important reforms in the housing space, like rental reforms, like reining in Airbnb, like delivering minimum standards for tenants, like making sure that no‑cause evictions are ended for sure. They are the low‑hanging fruit. They are the things that we can be doing today when it comes to housing and they can make a real difference.
Of course, we can bring Homes Tasmania back into the purview of government itself. We can fund it adequately to actually build public houses that are needed, and we can start to get the 5336 priority applicants on the waiting list trending downwards, as opposed to trending upwards.
When it comes to this site, yes, of course we need more density in city areas. We were disappointed with the sale of the K&D building when it went to a car yard and wasn’t delivered to some kind of mixed-use development that certainly included higher‑density or medium‑density housing.
Federally, our colleagues are strongly prosecuting the need for reform when it comes to negative gearing reform, capital gains tax reform, and the like. We are working hard in the housing space, and we do accept that there’s surplus land at UTAS. I think even many people within Save UTAS and Save UTAS itself accepts that there is surplus land at UTAS. Then there is possibly capacity for a rationalisation of that land and that there is potential for housing there, but to rezone it holus-bolus is pre‑emptive and ill‑informed, and it is not informed by expert advice.
A question for the minister to answer when she sums up is ‑ exactly how did you land on the Inner Residential zoning category? How did you get there? What advice was received from whom in relation to the decision to write Inner Residential into this bill, as opposed to General Residential, or as opposed to Rural Living, for example, which is actually one of the zonings that’s in very close proximity to this site?
If you do look at the current zoning map on the list, the majority of the site actually is bounded by low-density residential, and the lower part of the campus is bounded by general residential. Inner Residential certainly borders some of the northern part of this site, but it’s not the majority of the site at all. The question is, how did you arrive at the Inner Residential categorisation for this in this bill, minister?
When it comes to the Sandy Bay and Mt Nelson neighbourhood planning process, the latest discussion and engagement report, which was from August last year, had the Hobart City Council explicitly addressing the UTAS campus issue. They couldn’t ignore it because people from the community, the people that were being consulted, were raising this. I’ll read it into Hansard:
In developing the community plan, council will review the feedback received from the community and consider a scenarios-based planning response which will contribute to the sustainable growth and development of the city. This role involves balancing a wider range of social, economic and environmental objectives.
The process was incomplete. More work was to be done. Community was engaged and that community engagement was being considered. Minister, what scenarios-based planning response have you undertaken and considered when coming to the the conclusion that this needs to be zoned as inner residential?
I’m also aware of concerns about the existing STEM facilities located above Churchill Avenue. Here stands the Life Sciences Building, the TIA glasshouses, the seismic vault and several buildings currently occupied by third parties with no intention or ability to move. There’s the CSIRO and TMAG herbarium up there. It is my understanding that they were deliberately collocated with UTAS to allow research interactions to be fostered in this state. What does the rezone mean for CSIRO and TMAG facilities, minister? The past commitment from UTAS was to ensure that no facility is abandoned until suitable replacements are made.
It does raise many questions, such as: what of the equipment that cannot or should not be moved, and the recent investments in facilities like the Biological Sciences glasshouses and Molecular Biology facilities? What if, in the decades to come, UTAS realises a need to expand its STEM capacity? Having its own cleared land ready to go gives options that are unavailable if it’s sold off now. Lastly, of those third-party facilities, so TMAG and CSIRO, what are the implications of having research and other facilities now located in a residential zone? I assume they can be approved as an existing use within that zone – an existing non-compliant use that is. But what do they need to do if they want to intensify their operations, if they want to get bigger? What is their flexibility in the inner residential zone to adapt and change for any future needs that might happen to those facilities?
In the past, the National Tertiary Education Union has raised strategic concerns about the potential loss of STEM facilities, the loss of integral education facilities and a hollowed-out Sandy Bay site. In correspondence I received last year prior to the debate, division secretary Ruth Barton expressed ‘deep concerns regarding the proposed rezoning of the land above Churchill Ave without proper consultation’.
Dr Barton also flagged the broken election promise and democratic process; UTAS’s educational mission being compromised, UTAS’s poor record of planning; the housing market context, and consultation and transparency issues. These are key issues. She concluded:
We strongly urge that the rezoning process be conducted through proper planning channels with genuine community consultation, not dealt with solely by way of legislative change. The educational importance of the site and the government’s pre-election commitments must be honoured to ensure transparency, accountability and the best outcomes for our staff, students and community.
They are wise and sound words from the local representative of the National Tertiary Education Union.
Ms Johnston has foreshadowed and distributed some amendments. We will be supportive of them because they remove this rezoning component. I have also distributed an amendment which speaks to the concern of the 99‑year lease limit being considered a threshold for consideration of this bill, and of the need for parliamentary consideration. A period of 99 years is a long time in anyone’s consideration. My amendment goes to 30 years, which brings it more in line with commercial terms. That doesn’t prevent a longer lease being engaged in if it is passed by parliament, but it brings it down from 99 years to that 30-year limit.
In the lead‑up to the debate last year, UTAS made a really profound commitment to return surplus land to the Aboriginal community. I acknowledge that this is not a commitment that’s been rearticulated by UTAS since then, and I understand that these matters are complicated and can take some time, but the Greens strongly support such a move. The Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania, seeing an opportunity with the campus move and the rationalisation of the land, wrote to UTAS in 2021 and put a formal claim on the table to say, ‘Well, if you are disposing of this land, you have natural bushland that is going to remain natural bushland. Why not return it to the Aboriginal community?’ That was well received by UTAS.
Several years ago, UTAS made an apology to Aboriginal people, including an acknowledgement that its institution is built on lands of dispossessed people and built on colonisation. It was a profound set of words from the university, really impressive, and they action to those words. I encourage UTAS to continue to pursue conversations with the Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania. I believe that is a concept that a lot of people can get behind. The government itself hasn’t returned land to Aboriginal people for almost 25 years. It has been the public that has led the way in the last 20 years in returning land: There’s been Tom and Jane Teniswood on the east coast, a block of land returned at Mathinna and one recently returned on the boundary of Kunanyi/Mt Wellington. This would provide incredible opportunities of interaction between Aboriginal people, Aboriginal land management and the university in its research opportunities. I urge UTAS to lead in this space because it is an incredible opportunity for all of us, not least for Aboriginal people, and an opportunity to right a profound wrong.
We Greens supported this bill in its original form, and we will support the amendments that will come forward. It’s a profoundly different bill now to what was originally promised by the minister and the Liberal government in the 2024 election. I fear what may flow from this if it goes through and the community is cut out of this conversation. UTAS is already significantly diminished. I fear that this kind of overreach into the planning process that cuts out community and delivers a poorer outcome for people will further deepen that mistrust and make the challenge of rebuilding the university into the institution that we all want it to be that much harder.
