IF YOU GET a casual job as an academic at an Australian university, you think you are very lucky – a job working in your own discipline, a beginning to an academic career. You may be given casual teaching while you are a postgraduate student. You may expect that when you graduate you will get a real job, a staff job, a permanent position.

You eventually begin to notice that you are employed for only a few hours a week but it feels like you have a full-time job. Still, you’re working in your chosen field and it’s all leading to something.