An anonymous group of employees at Goulburn Ovens TAFE have called the appointment of a new board chair “disastrous”.
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They wrote to Victorian Training and Skills Minister Gayle Tierney in March to voice their concerns, including perceived favouritism of one particular board member, the inference of kickbacks from contractors and potential staff redundancies.
“We are all most frustrated and deeply concerned about what has been happening at GOTAFE over the last four to five months,” the letter stated.
“Unfortunately we believe many of the problems are as a result of you and your department forcing the previous chair of the board to resign and to appoint a new chair (Joanne Dwyer) who in our opinion does not have the capacity to do the job.”
When the employees did not receive a response to their letter from the minister, they turned to Liberal Upper House MP Wendy Lovell.
She and Ms Tierney got into a heated argument in Victorian Parliament this week.
“How do you expect GOTAFE to restore their financial and operational effectiveness with a lack of leadership at an executive level and staff who not only are in fear of redundancies, but also have a lack of confidence in the chair’s leadership of the board?” Ms Lovell said.
Ms Tierney said she had passed on the letter to John Watson, who was leading the GOTAFE review and had been speaking with staff at all levels.
“In terms of that assertion about the chair, I think it is improper and inappropriate,” she said.
“There have been some issues at GOTAFE and we have been proactive in diving down and looking at what is triggering a number of issues.”
She called Ms Lovell’s questions “outrageous” and turned the attack back on the Liberal Party, saying “they went out of their way to smash TAFE to the point that we could barely turn the lights back on”.
Ms Tierney said GOTAFE was now functioning well generally and she would have another statement to make this week.
