Liberal Party heavyweight and former NSW minister Peter Collins has attacked the University of Sydney over its "precipitous" decision to shut down its art school at Callan Park.
"I cannot understand why the university has walked away from Sydney College of the Arts and its location at the Kirkbride complex," he said. "It is one of the most outstanding locations that any university could ever hope for."
The chairman of Barton Deakin lobbying company, Mr Collins also questioned the university's claim the art school was losing money because of its location.
He suggested the parliamentary public accounts committee could examine the university's internal taxing arrangement that had "all of a sudden, what appears to be a profitable bottom line for Sydney College of the Arts has turned into a significantly unprofitable bottom line because of the application of that device".
Sydney University spokeswoman Kirsten Andrews said the university's method of allocating the cost of services across faculties ensured a transparent allocation of resources.
"Those supporting no change to the SCA have argued that it is in surplus, but this is because the figures used are before any charges for energy, maintenance, student administration, marketing, finance, recruitment, ICT systems, telecommunications, research management, learning and teaching support, the learning management system for students and a whole host of other activities and services," she said. "It is when all those services are costed that the SCA falls into significant deficit.
"If there was no central mechanism for paying for these and the SCA had to fund all these services from its own resources, it would still be in significant deficit."
Mr Collins was NSW arts minister when then premier Nick Greiner offered the university the historic Kirkbride buildings on favourable terms.
He said the university had accepted there would be maintenance costs associated with the use of the sandstone buildings. "Any suggestion that now the university realises that the maintenance of sandstone buildings is costly is certainly a change of tune."
Ms Andrews said: "Not all of the buildings were refurbished at that time and, since then, they have become very run down and the continual upgrades have become financially unsustainable, especially considering they are heritage constrained."
Mr Collins said the university did not appear to see potential in expanding its teaching of the visual and performing arts.
"That is something that obviously the university no longer intends to do, presumably because, on the university's figures, which are questionable, it is no longer profitable for them to do so," he said.
Mr Collins did not believe the university would reverse its decision, despite ongoing criticism and student protests.
"The precipitous way in which the university announced the future of Sydney College of the Arts suggests it's a done deal and that the university is not open to consultation or persuasion that's its decision was incorrect," he said.
Mr Collins said he could not see how the SCA could be "shoe horned" into Sydney University's main campus.
"I'm not aware of any spare buildings that Sydney College of the Arts can be relocated to so significant relocation costs are likely to be involved," he said.
