Four private Australian universities allowed to access jobkeeper payments

Four of Australia’s private universities have been made eligible for jobkeeper, while three more public universities have rejected a deal negotiated by the tertiary sector union to save jobs in exchange for pay cuts.

Notre Dame University, Bond University, Torrens University and the University of Divinity have been granted an exemption to the existing jobkeeper rules that currently exclude all of Australia’s public universities from accessing the now $70bn support payment.

Australia’s public universities are currently ineligible for the scheme because they must show a drop of revenue over six months, rather than over one month or one-quarter like other charities and businesses.

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Under the current rules, a university must suffer a 50% drop in revenue over the past six months if their turnover is above $1bn, or a 30% drop for those with a turnover less than $1bn, to be eligible.

But on Monday, the federal education department confirmed the four “Table B” private universities had been given an exemption from the six-month requirement.

A spokeswoman said: “The government determined that it is appropriate to differentiate between Table A and Table B universities, given Table B universities are private without implicit backing of governments and typically have less access to support from commonwealth sources in ongoing revenue.”

Labor MP Graham Perrett said that the government should now “extend jobseeker to all universities”, and Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi said it was “an act of pure malice” to “continue to exclude public universities” from the scheme.

More public universities have abandoned a deal struck by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) to respond to the financial hit from Covid-19.

The deal, which was agreed between the NTEU and the universities’ representative body, the Australian Higher Education Industrial Association (AHEIA), aims to protect more than 12,000 jobs in return for up to one-year salary reductions between 5% and 15%.

But on Monday, Deakin University in Victoria announced it would not sign the agreement, known as the jobs protection framework.

Vice-chancellor Iain Martin said “each university across Australia is in a different position”, and that Deakin would pursue its own cost-cutting plan, which includes staff jobs.

The University of New South Wales and the University of Central Queensland said they would abandon the deal over the weekend, and the University of Melbourne also opted out last week.

Deakin University has estimated its operating revenue will decline by “between $250m and $300m in 2021”, and that cuts would remove 300 full-time equivalent jobs.

The UNSW vice-chancellor, Ian Jacobs, said in a letter to staff the university would reject the NTEU-AHEIA plan because “we are concerned about being constrained in making important decisions”.

He also said the university recently completed a “voluntary wage-reduction process”, affecting the senior leadership team and more than 1,000 staff.

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A national spokesman for the NTEU said the union still stood by the terms of the framework.

“They were difficult negotiations in very difficult circumstances. In our view the framework is the best chance to save the most number of university jobs,” he said.

“Without further assistance, the sector is likely to lose up to 30,000 jobs this year. Surely the government would want to protect these jobs, and it now has an extra $60bn with which it can extend jobkeeper, so why won’t it?”