Former NT Chief Justice discusses new role as Chancellor of Charles Darwin Univeristy

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Former NT Chief Justice Trevor Riley has made a career of sentencing criminals, but in his new role as Chancellor of Charles Darwin University, he'll be focusing on getting them an education instead. Trevor Riley stepped into the role in July and with federal government caps on international students, along with the NT's small population, he has challenges ahead.

Transcript

00:00There are conversations going on at the moment between Corrections and the University with

00:07a view to the University providing through its TAFE program training for low risk prisoners

00:15and possibly on the Catherine campus. The idea being that the people will come in who

00:21do not have any skills at all and largely have problems with getting employment. We

00:28as a University can provide them with skills and then ultimately when they go back into

00:34the real world they have skills which will enable them to get employment and perhaps

00:39avoid re-offending. We really do need to be looking at not just warehousing people but rehabilitating

00:45them and this is perhaps a good way we can do it.

00:49How do you walk that line as a University to make sure that you're still able to be maintaining

00:54ethical standards and I guess ensuring what you're talking about there with rehabilitation?

00:58I think that's all about leadership. We've got a very fine leadership team at the University

01:04and my understanding is their relationship with Corrections is very strong and I'm sure

01:10Corrections is aware of the same issues and there won't be any treading over lines so I'm

01:16very confident.

01:17With this partnership it is unusual. Should we expect to see more partnerships like this

01:23between Corrections and the University?

01:26Between the University and many organisations I'd like to think. One of the ways forward of

01:31course is with partnerships and we have partnerships all around Australia, particularly in research

01:37of course. But as we speak there are people in Timor-Leste who are looking at developing a partnership

01:45with the Timor-Leste people to encourage them to take TAFE courses in aged care. We're already

01:52in there doing that but expanding it.

01:55We've spoken a lot in the media around the CAP on international students and how that's

02:00impacted Charles Darwin University. How is it looking going forward with those kinds of

02:05partnerships attracting international students?

02:07It's still a very big issue. People coming into the Northern Territory to study, it's just vital

02:12to keeping our university going. You've got to appreciate that we're a population of 250,000,

02:20I think somewhere around there. To be able to offer the range of courses that we offer,

02:27including the TAFE courses and the higher education courses, you have to have a population

02:34base. And we've got some 20,000 students. When you think about that, 250,000 people total

02:40population, 20,000 students. We couldn't survive if we didn't have all those interstate and international

02:47students. And so it's very, very important to us and to the Territory that we have them.

02:53And that means we can offer the wide range of subjects and courses that we do.

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