War of words erupts as Buti pitches uni merger passion project

Key points

• WA Tertiary Education Minister Tony Buti is pressing ahead with a plan to merge Curtin University, Murdoch University and the University of Western Australia. He says the merger would address duplicated courses, fragmented investment and limited scale.
• Curtin and Murdoch vice-chancellors have strongly opposed the plan, while UWA called it an opportunity. Opposition Leader Basil Zempilas criticised a Deloitte cost-benefit report that contained errors.
• Deloitte has described the errors as minor and Mr Buti says he will ask the firm to return part of its fee.