Page 344 - Week 03 - Thursday, 1 June 1989
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However, I very much echo Mr Humphries' remarks in saying this: it behoves me and it behoves us in this Assembly, on this issue, not to be partisan or one-eyed. I have in recent weeks made renewed direct contact with the Canberra College of Advanced Education, especially with the public relations unit and the department of media and communications. I have had direct involvement over the years with members of the staff of the school of education and, briefly, other schools of the CCAE.
While I was Dean of Students at the Australian National University, my office cooperated closely, directly and personally with our counterparts in the CCAE. One of the great joys of that exercise was travelling around schools in New South Wales: Dubbo, West Wyalong, the Sydney area and the New South Wales south coast. We did that by way of cooperation with other institutions such as the University of Wollongong, Mitchell CCAE, and the Albury, Wagga, and Riverina CAEs.
One clear message that we all gave to students at all those schools was that there are different types of institutions with varying philosophies and agendas and educational aims, and that students should seek to be part of the most appropriate of those institutions for each student.
In that long exercise, over several years, I felt that it was our brief not to compete with other universities or the CAEs but to put forward those areas in which the ANU offered special benefits. Think, for example, of the national and indeed international standard faculty of Asian studies; the forestry school; the equally distinguished faculty of commerce and economics - Mr Humphries has referred to that - and the faculty of law. There are many other areas of excellence which stand alone and which need no amalgamation with anyone.
Similarly, the CCAE has areas that are quite separate from the ANU - architecture, landscape architecture and city planning, the school of education, specialist training in library science, and many other areas. If the Assembly approves the setting up of this committee I would want it to look at those separatenesses as well as similarities and see how things could be put together or not put together and at what is appropriate to be done in terms of compromise and what is not.
I stress that the Assembly now has a much more direct concern with the CCAE than with the ANU. We need to be very clear about the future of both institutions, but particularly the latter, as well as the Canberra Institute of the Arts. I especially welcome this motion, because these vital matters are now put in the public arena of this Assembly. This will no longer be a series of enforced administrative arrangements emanating from the Federal Government but will be dealt with by the people of Canberra, by the representatives of the people of Canberra.
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