The university declined to give a figure when approached by this masthead,but said it was less than the $300,000 publicly claimed by the union.
A spokesperson did not answer questions on who signed off on the ensuite build but said Swinburne had hired an Indigenous company to install a shower block,available for all staff,“as part of regular campus improvements”,featuring lockers,showers,toilets and changing rooms.
That made up most of the costs of the upgrades in the building,it said,with the private ensuite upstairs in chancellory less than a quarter of that.
“To ensure the university can get the best value for money for projects,the final cost is commercial-in-confidence,” the spokesperson said.
Staff fury at the vice chancellor’s new office upgrade has spilled over into strike action during recentindustrial bargaining.
In September,staff rallying outside the vice chancellor’s office against proposed cuts to working conditions were blocked from visiting the new ensuite by security,and some staff said their security card access to the office has since been removed.
Deputy Greens leader Mehreen Faruqi said the secrecy over the ensuite showcased a bigger problem with governance in the sector.
“Students and staff are struggling while the VC literally flushes money down the toilet,” she said. “The utter lack of transparency in the use of public money is not surprising,but what a waste.”
The vice chancellor’s office before the upgrade. Staff say security access has been tightened in the building since the ensuite build.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare has been pushing for an overhaul ofuniversity councils,which are at times accused of running public institutions like corporations.
Universities have been hit hard by government funding cuts in the past decade and engulfed in staff underpayment scandals. But some vice chancellors are now paidmore than double the salaries of presidents and prime ministers.
Researcher at The Australia Institute Morgan Harrington said the veil of secrecy over university governing councils came down in the 1990s,as corporate executives,rather than academics,began to fill out their boards,and they stopped publishing minutes of their deliberations.
“But in many ways they’re held to less account than these big companies which have to at least answer to shareholders,” he said. “Now you end up with silly things,where even the cost of a toilet can’t be talked about.”
Economist Jim Stanford,also at The Australia Institute,said universities were meant to serve the public interest,yet their senior executives were “uniquely overpaid compared to their peers in almost every other country”. It reflects a broader failure of governance in the sector,he said,and must be reined in as a priority by the government’sAccord review of higher education.
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Stanford said:“Only in a cozy,protected bubble could[they] justify to themselves that these roles require multi-million dollar compensation,lavish private suites,and other perks more typical of profit-driven corporations,not public institutions of higher learning.”
Julie Kimber,president of the union’s Swinburne branch,labelled the ensuite a “vanity project” while she said staff struggled with “broken systems and outdated equipment”.