Field of Dreams, Field of Nightmares – Part 1

Exactly one week after Sue Hickey’s supercilious Talking Point article comes Michael Field’s supercilious Talking Point article in The Mercury on 17 October, in which the former Premier (1989-92) and former Chancellor of UTAS (2013-21), makes his case for the relocation of UTAS into the CBD.

In the vision Mr Field sketches for a CBD campus, he constructs a field of dreams, which students and staff will have to live as a nightmare, if it goes ahead.

Mr Field makes many arguments in his article – I counted twelve at least – but this is all about quantity rather than quality.  As usual with pro-move articles written by UTAS’ senior managers and their supporters, the arguments are all about glib assertion rather than evidence.

• By evidence I mean substantive information that allows testing of sources, assumptions and calculations.

I have just had to submit a request for internal review of a UTAS decision to refuse to provide me with two critical papers that I sought under the Right to Information (RTI) Act 2009, namely:

• The Hobart STEM facility Business Case submitted to the UTAS Council on 23 September 2016 – a key document in Vice-Chancellor Rathjen’s agenda for a complete CBD move; and
• The Business Case upon which the UTAS Council made its decision to adopt a ‘City-Centric Campus’ model at its meeting of 5 April 2019.

Given their importance, these documents should clearly be in the public domain, and it should raise significant questions that they are not.  It is unfortunate that I have to go through an internal review process with UTAS of its initial decision on my RTI application, knowing from experience the likely outcome, before I can seek external review by the Ombudsman.

Perhaps Mr Field could use his good offices with UTAS to seek publication of these documents, if he is so sure of his case.

I do not intend to address all Mr Field’s arguments here. They have all been comprehensively dealt with at one time or another, whether it be through the many submissions by professional educators to the Legislative Council (LegCo) Inquiry, the hundreds of incisive letters to The Mercury or articles in The Mercury, such as the recent brilliant piece by architect and urban planner Peter Bicevskis.  I should also particularly mention the article by student representative leaders in The Mercury of 15 October, which seems almost to have anticipated Mr Field’s tired and vapid claims.  It also offers a totally in-touch, contemporary view.

I do, however, want to address Mr Field’s puerile name-calling claim, straight out of UTAS’ PR playbook (see Sue Hickey’s somewhat more subtle version), that “Nostalgia and NIMBY-ism is fueling a great deal of the negative reaction to the move.” In particular he claims that Save UTAS Campus was formed only when plans for Sandy Bay became clear.

I do not think that it is any great surprise that it took two years from UTAS’ decision of 5 April 2019 for mass opposition to the UTAS’ proposed CBD move to materialize.  The decision, while certainly publicized at the time, did not receive significant ongoing coverage as far as I can tell (and – to its shame – certainly not in the Parliament, as it should have). The period includes the trauma of the pandemic and there may also have been a certain unwillingness to accept that such a major, and such a bad decision, could have been made and implemented by the UTAS Council alone.  Unlike Michael Field, not everyone lives UTAS’ decisions like he did/does.  Even now I hear of people who are unaware of the move – and whose first reaction is “How dumb is that”.

I am absolutely certain that the vast majority of those opposed to UTAS’ CBD move are motivated primarily by concerns about student welfare and a desire to ensure UTAS provides educational excellence in teaching and research.  Hence the involvement of professional educators including in the LegCo process and hence the engagement of students themselves.  Many of those opposed to the CBD move also have university age children and/or other relatives telling them just how bad they believe the idea is.

To be so dismissive of opposition voices is just plain arrogance of a sort that has become all too commonly associated with UTAS’ hierarchy, and – again – where is the evidence for Mr Field’s glib assertion about nostalgia and NIMBYism?

There will always be some people who oppose a project solely because it is in their backyard but there will always be, normally, much more powerful people who support a project because they see it as an opportunity to make money.  Let’s be honest about this, there are people who would support the demolition of the Great Pyramid at Giza and its replacement by a poor-quality plastic replica in Cairo, if they thought they could make a dollar out of it.  The excessively cynical might point to the open letter to The Mercury published on 15 October.

Far from being objective in his arguments, Mr Field demonstrates only that he is fully invested emotionally in UTAS’ proposed move.  How could he not be? He sees a CBD UTAS as a proud legacy and his sense of self-worth and identity is clearly tied up with this. Unlike Mr Field’s attitude toward those with an opposing view, I do not question his good faith. I just believe that he is totally wrong.

In Part 2, I will discuss those claims by Mr Field on which I have gathered relevant information, including through RTI applications to government agencies.

I will also discuss Mr Field’s claims in respect of which I have sought information through RTI applications to UTAS and have been refused.