The administration of the University of Western Australia has announced that the university will be sacking 300 staff in the new year.
The National Tertiary Education Union protested against the job cuts outside the university on December 17. In addition, students protested on December 11 outside the vice chancellor's Christmas party.
NTEU state secretary Gabrielle Gooding told Green Left that a representative of the university justified the cuts with the comment "we have a business to run".
She also said that the university ran on a surplus of around $90 million in the last year with only a small fraction coming from gifts and bequests.
Staff have been left with considerable uncertainty about which jobs the university plans to cut.
