WA Parliament session disrupted over university merger claims

Higher Education Minister Tony Buti claims Opposition Leader Basil Zempilas privately offered his support for the controversial three-way merger of WA’s universities.

The revelation came amid a chaotic parliamentary debate over AI mistakes in the Deloitte report being used by the Cook government to justify the merger, spurred by a question from opposition education spokesman Liam Staltari.

In his response, Buti said Zempilas offered his support for a three-way merger in a private conversation in Parliament House six months ago.

The chamber descended into chaos as Buti recounted the conversation.

“[Zempilas] said to me, ‘My personal view is that I agree with a three-way merger’,” Buti told parliament.

“Not only that, he said, ‘I know your side won’t agree, but can I stand by you when you make the announcement?’”

What followed was several minutes fiery back and forth between Labor and opposition MPs as Zempilas yelled, “You are a liar”, and, “You are a joke” multiple times across the chamber which resulted in Speaker Stephen Price calling him to order twice.

Zempilas was required to withdraw the “liar” comment, which he did, but later yelled it multiple times again.

“No wonder you can’t get anything right,” Zempilas yelled.

While being scolded by Price and told he could make a statement after question time correcting the record, Zempilas said: “So you can just say what you like in the meantime.”

“This is a disgraceful performance from the attorney general,” he said.

“You’re under all sorts of pressure. Now you’re making stuff up. Is that how it works? Is it? No wonder you can’t get anything right.”

Buti replied: “I’ll stand by what I said any day.”

“If I was making things up, I’d be misrepresenting parliament, and I’m not.”

Zempilas issued a “personal explanation” at the end of question time in response to Buti’s comments.

“The total of our 10-second conversation he refers to at the back of the chamber was as follows: ‘Where are you at on uni mergers? You should let us know’,” he said.

“Beyond that, Mr Speaker, I totally reject the characterisation of the conversation as given by the minister today, totally reject it.”

The AI errors were picked up by users on Reddit and included citations with incorrect links and even one link that sent users to the ChatGPT website.

Deloitte confirmed it had a team of people scouring the entire 200-page report for any issues after the citation issues were uncovered.

Earlier in the day, Zempilas lashed the errors in the report, describing it as “AI slop”.

“A university student, if they handed this in to their lecturer, they would get an F. Yet this is the information that Tony Buti is asking us all to believe when they say that university mergers are the right thing for Western Australia, and that’s what he’s relying on,” he said.

Buti said the content of the report and its findings are what we he was interested in and what will be analysed and interrogated further by the business case.

“It is unfortunate that some typographical errors have been found and I expect the report to be corrected as part of the company’s proper checks,” he said.

In parliament, Buti said the substance of the report was sound and the data that informed it came from public records and the Commonwealth.

He urged the opposition to keep an open mind on the prospect of a merger.

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