The Australian Higher Education Industrial Association submission to the Senate inquiry raises five issues

* limitation on fixed term contracts: bad for short research funding

* Better off Overall Test: “the open-ended ability to reconsider agreements will create significant uncertainty and transaction costs for universities”

* change to management’s existing right to terminate enterprise agreements

*mandatory union approval of management bargaining offers. AHEIA wants managements to get once chance to put a deal to staff without union support. If it fails the Fair Work Commission gets involved

And then there is the one that appears to especially alarm AHEIA .

* multi-employer bargaining. The proposal for a “common interest test” may, “lead to the grouping of diverse universities, with  resultant not fit-for-purpose workplace arrangements.” To prevent this AHEIA proposes expanding the “nature of enterprise test” to include, criteria such as, number of staff, capacity to pay, as well as :the identifiable sub-sector groupings and differentiations in existence.” CMM thinks this means regional universities aren’t like the Group of Eight.

As to what other major interest groups think, who knows? The Group of Eight (member unis aren’t in AHEIA) isn’t talking, at least to CMM. Neither is the National Tertiary Education Union.