Join Dr Sarah Kaine MLC, Australia Institute's co-CEO Richard Denniss, and hosted by Deputy Research Director Jack Thrower, who will examine what has gone wrong with university governance, who should be held accountable, and what needs to change.
Tue 6 Oct 2026 12.01 AEDT
The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing has released a consultation paper on excessive specialist fees. The paper can be boiled down to a simple question: when a specialist charges far more than their peers, or far more than the Medicare schedule fee, could government do anything about it? The answer is yes.
Australia’s criminalisation and detention of children as young as ten is a “crime scene and a human rights catastrophe,” disproportionately impacting First Nations kids, Senator Lidia Thorpe has said. In separate comments to the Senate inquiry into Australia’s youth justice and incarceration system, which reported last month, Senator Thorpe explicitly named detention centres as “sites of systemic child abuse".
For decades, successive governments have kept unemployment payments in Australia below all accepted measures of adequacy - JobSeeker now sits at just 41% of the minimum wage, and Youth Allowance is even worse at 34%. The results of this are clear in recent official data on death rates and ACOSS' latest Raise the Rate survey.
Australia’s universities are facing a governance crisis. While teaching and research should be at the heart of our higher education system, universities have increasingly been prioritising spending on huge pay packets for their senior managers, new buildings, advertising, travel, and consultants.
Australia’s universities have been plagued with scandals in recent years, from wage theft to conflicts of interest. Universities have even been taken to court for providing students with unaccredited degrees, and the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption has started an investigation into some staff from the University of Wollongong.
Hon. Dr Sarah Kaine MLC has led a NSW Parliament inquiry into the university sector over the last year, touring the state and uncovering scandals across the sector. The inquiry will table its final report in late September.
Join Dr Sarah Kaine MLC, Australia Institute’s co-CEO Richard Denniss, and hosted by Deputy Research Director Jack Thrower, who will examine what has gone wrong with university governance, who should be held accountable, and what needs to change.
SPEAKERS:
Hon. Dr Sarah Kaine MLC — Member of the NSW Legislative Council
Dr Richard Denniss — co-Chief Executive Officer, The Australia Institute
Jack Thrower — Deputy Research Director, The Australia Institute
This webinar was recorded Thursday, October 01, 2026 at 11:00am – 12pm AEST
