The university was way late in providing its annual report to state parliament. Now we know why

The Victorian Auditor General’s Office reports the university did not meet the statutory timeframe, “because management needed more time to assess the financial impact of underpayments to casual academic and professional employees before providing this information for us to audit.”

VAGO reports that the university investigated underpayment of casuals, “in some cases dating back seven years” during ’21.

“As a result of this exercise, the university became aware it had wage underpayments caused by a misinterpretation of conditions in their enterprise agreements. This meant casual academic and professional staff had been preparing and lodging timesheets for hours less than their minimum entitlement hours.”

And it is not over yet. “There will be further work undertaken by the university in 2022 to finalise the calculation of specific amounts owed to individual staff, and for payments to be made, “ VAGO states.

While VAGO provides no details of underpayments for what, who and where in the university these payments will be, the campus branch of the National Tertiary Education Union has warned it was occurring for years (CMM June 5 2019 and umpteen subsequent stories).