Higher Education Minister Tony Buti says his government hasn’t “articulated” the benefits of a university merger as a hostile upper house look set to kill the proposal before it even gets off the ground.
The three-way merger proposal has been beset with controversies since Buti and Premier Roger Cook announced earlier this month a steering committee would scrutinise the idea in a business case set to be delivered to government mid-2027.
Both vice chancellors from Murdoch and Curtin have come out in strident opposition to the proposed merger between UWA, Curtin and Murdoch, questioning the rationale behind it.
A 2025 Deloitte cost benefit analysis recommending the merger was riddled with citation errors because of AI use, which prompted Buti to request Deloitte pay back the $160,000 report cost.
Hundreds of students and university staff are expected to rally against the proposal on the front steps of Parliament on Wednesday.
Speaking ahead of the rally, Buti said he understood student concern about the merger, blaming “misinformation” and that he hadn’t been able to “articulate our position to them.”
Critics of the proposal cite the potential cost of a merger, which could be north of $1 billion.
Other critiques include the perception that a merger was a preordained outcome because Buti and Cook publicly backed the findings of the Deloitte report and a 2023 report that recommended a three-way merger.
Buti rejected those criticisms and said if the steering committee’s business case did not advocate for a three-way merger, it would not pursue it.
“I know what I believe should happen, but that will not happen if the business case does not stack up,” he said.
“We will have to look at other possible reforms, but all I ask students, all I ask academics… universities are centres of free thinking, of open debate, of looking at the evidence. Come along that journey with us. Let’s reimagine education at the tertiary sector in Western Australia, so it’s fit for the 21st century.”
Buti said the status quo of the WA university sector could not continue and he took aim at executive pay packets.
“This is about major tertiary reform. It is not right that we have senior executives in Western Australian universities who, as a totality, are earning over $36 million dollars a year,” he said.
“I want a lot of that money redirected to help students and to help staff.”
Any merger will require an act of parliament to happen and Labor does not have a majority in the upper house, meaning it needs to negotiate with the opposition and crossbench to pass any bill.
Labor needs two votes for any bill to pass.
The chances of passing the upper house were dealt a significant blow on Wednesday with the Liberals officially stating they would nor support the merger.
The Greens also do not support the merger and called on the opposition last week to join them in opposing it.
This masthead understands the Nationals, which hold two seats in the upper house, are still considering their position, as are One Nation and Legalise Cannabis’ Brian Walker.
“This is a mega-merger nobody asked for, and the more everyone learns about it, the less anyone wants it,” Opposition Leader Basil Zempilas said.
“Labor wants to spend hundreds of millions of dollars forcing three universities together while West Australians struggle to pay their bills, find a home or get the healthcare they need.
“The government can’t even get the facts right in its own cost-benefit analysis for a merger. How can West Australians trust it to get the merger itself right? And given Labor’s appalling record of cost blowouts, West Australians have every reason to fear the final bill will be much, much higher than the government claims.”
Responding to the opposition’s position, Buti said: “that’s interesting”.
“They’ve also painted themselves in the corner too if it comes out that there’s an overwhelming case for it,” he said.
Buti was invited to speak at the rally but declined because he was reading the Equal Opportunity Bill into parliament, which he relayed to Curtin Student Guild president Dylan Storer.