Damien Cahill starts as general secretary of the National Tertiary Education at peak-business time, with enterprise bargaining on or soon to start at universities across the country

And so Dr Cahill nominates, “fair pay rises, more secure jobs and sensible workloads,” as core issues.

But he also focuses on casual staff and the “far too many examples” of them not being paid for all hours worked. Plus, “the scourge of insecure work” – two-thirds of university staff are on fixed-term or casual contacts.

Apart from the obvious, that people should be paid the rate for the job, which they have not been at universities across the country, this makes political sense.

Early career casual staff will be voting in union elections for years to come. And they can be a powerful voting bloc.

Dr Cahill was elected comfortably, 60 per cent of the vote in the recent election. But his opponent Anastasia Kanjere campaigned hard among casual staff. With only 20 per cent or so of NTEU members voting this year, the challenge next election will be to get the vote out – and casual staff have a lot at stake.