By MARA PATTISON-SOWDEN
YARRA Ranges Council has floated the idea of relocating the council offices to Swinburne’s Lilydale site as an anchor tenant in light of a lack of serious interest from education providers.
The council says despite nine months of negotiations with the education sector, education providers have indicated they would only need part of the existing buildings to deliver programs.
It was responding to claims from the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) that the council had been “secretly negotiating” with Swinburne and local politicians to shut the campus.
Evelyn MP Christine Fyffe said she was disappointed at the purely political stance by the NTEU and said with so much land available it was logical the community should get use from it.
The Swinburne Lilydale campus is scheduled for closure on 1 July.
NTEU industrial officer Josh Cullinan, a former Labor candidate for Ferntree Gully, accused Swinburne of being “potentially in breach of its Federal funding agreement” and called for a rally at the campus on Friday 14 June.
“We have found out the Swinburne vice-chancellor is hosting Liberal politicians and council management at a party to shut the campus,” he said.
“We’re not going quietly so we encourage everyone from the community to come together and deliver a very clear message that our campus is not for sale.”
Swinburne University vice-chancellor Professor Linda Kristjanson responded to the claim in a letter to staff, telling them the Federal Education Department confirmed in December 2012 that “the Commonwealth supports Swinburne’s proposed rationalisation of its campuses, as outlined in your letter… Lilydale and Prahran will be removed from the funding agreement for 2014-16”.
She also wrote that despite finding it important to acknowledge the contributions that Swinburne had made through the Lilydale campus, the gathering of guests – including state politicians and council staff – would be cancelled for the sake of comfort and safety.
Mrs Fyffe said it was clear that the union was planning demonstrations and rallies in the lead up to the Federal election no matter what the positive outcomes were for the Swinburne site.
She said the Education Department had asked to see the results of a report into the training needs of the region, but these had not been made public as yet.
“The council and the State Government have been working tirelessly to attract education providers,” she said.
“But there is no one university in Victoria who is interested in running their university at that campus because there’s not the demand.”
Yarra Ranges mayor Jim Child said there was no secret and he made no apology for the council looking at ownership of the site.
“This will provide us with the best opportunity of master planning a civic/community precinct for the whole community with an active TAFE/University facility,” he said, “without the council’s political and financial intervention that won’t happen.”
The union also claimed Federal MP Tony Smith had “not been fighting for our campus in Canberra”.
But Mr Smith said the claim was nonsense, after he spoke in parliament on 23 August last year, saying he believed the university didn’t have its heart in the Yarra Valley long before funding cuts were made.
“I have consistently advocated that the Swinburne location should remain an educational precinct for a new forward-looking education provider.”
