The University of Notre Dame Australia (known simply as Notre Dame; ; French for 'Our Lady') is a private Catholic university with campuses in Perth, Sydney and Broome. It was established in 1989 by the Parliament of Western Australia with early support from its founding partner and namesake, the University of Notre Dame (NDUS) in the United States. It was originally conceived as a means to train teachers and nurses for the Archdiocese of Perth's Catholic education and healthcare network, but has since expanded into other disciplines. Its campuses include heritage places, mostly built in the mid-19th to early-20th centuries.
Its founding campus is in Perth, where it expanded into colonial-era maritime buildings in the Fremantle West End heritage area, later becoming ubiquitous with the precinct as a university town. Its restoration work and the influx of students has formed a symbiotic relationship with the local economy, culture and tourism industry. It also has a campus in Sydney, divided between two sites in the city's Inner West. The main Blackfriars site on Broadway is located between the University of Sydney and the University of Technology Sydney. The smaller Darlinghurst site is focused on medicine and is affiliated with the wider St Vincent's Integrated Healthcare Campus. It also has a regional campus in Broome and seven clinical schools across New South Wales and Victoria.
Notre Dame's academic activities are organised into three faculties, which are subdivided into constituent schools and research divisions. The faculties comprise disciplines including commerce, education, healthcare, information technology, law and various fields in the arts and sciences. In 2024, it enrolled 11,990 students with a total revenue of and a total expenditure of . Although founded as a non-profit private university, it progressively entered the public funding system until 2021, when it attained full Table A status under HESA. It is also a de facto Global Gateway for the University of Notre Dame, with which it has maintained staff and student exchanges since its inception, but remains independent.
The university crest displays an open Bible at its core with the opening verse from the Gospel of John inscribed in Latin. The verse was chosen as its motto to symbolise everything that exists beginning as an idea. The waves below and the Commonwealth Star represent the port city of Fremantle, where the university was founded, and Australia as a nation surrounded by water. The symbols are affixed to an Oxford Blue badge over a Cambridge Blue Greek cross. Notre Dame is affiliated with the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, the International Council of Universities of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the International Federation of Catholic Universities and St John of God Health Care.
History Early discussions Following the end of World War II in 1945, a Congregation of Holy Cross priest serving as a U.S. Navy chaplain at Naval Base Sydney was travelling between parishes to provide lectures and sermons. Cardinal Norman Gilroy, then the Archbishop of Sydney and a sceptic of secular universities, befriended the Holy Cross chaplain Father Patrick Duffy and they discussed the idea of the University of Notre Dame in the United States (NDUS) and the Congregation of Holy Cross being involved in the establishment of the first Catholic university in Australia. Father Duffy in the same year wrote a letter to the superior general of the Congregation of Holy Cross, Father Albert Cousineau, outlining its feasibility and reasons supporting it.
At the time, a fifth of the Australian population was Catholic and there was an established network of Catholic primary and secondary schools. Cardinal Gilroy believed that there was a strong appetite for a Catholic university and that it would enable the education of an "elite Catholic laity that had been the glory of the church in the United States". The archdiocese also expressed openness in providing financial support and land should the proposal be successful. In a report, Father Duffy included that almost all of the federal cabinet members were Catholic and noted the influence of Irish Australians in the governing structure of the country, resembling it with the Irish history of NDUS.
Father Cousineau and the Holy Cross' assistant provincial, Father Chris O'Toole, visited Sydney in 1946 to investigate the viability of the institution, including its opportunities and possible setbacks. While their report highlighted Australia's existing Catholic school system and potential to increase opportunities for the Catholic faith and its members, the report had also found possible obstacles. These included the lack of universal support or enthusiasm between interstate bishops, the distance between major cities, perceived competition from existing institutions and the substantial government lobbying required for support or funding. There was also the limitations of technology and the issue of distance between the American institutions and Sydney, a future cause for stagnation of progress in the university's establishment.
The Holy Cross order sent additional personnel in the following years to evaluate its plans. This included the name University of St. Mary, faculties, locations and fundraising options. The project was pursued for a few more years and was purchased in 1948 on behalf of the Holy Cross for a future campus. Ultimately, opposition from the press and the further stretching of Holy Cross resources due to the Korean War led to the required charter to establish the university not being acquired. Existing commitments in the development of educational institutions elsewhere by the Holy Cross and NDUS also limited the personnel and funding available to support the project. Despite positive reception from Pope Pius XII and the then dominance of Catholics in the governing Labor Party's hierarchy, non-Catholics were more sceptical of the plans. This included concerns from other religious denominations over the level of academic freedom at a denominational institution and the endeavour was later abandoned.
Re-emergence and establishment In the mid-1980s, concerns were raised by the Catholic Education Commission of Western Australia and the Archdiocese of Perth that present state universities may not be able to sufficiently train school teachers and nurses to work in the state's Catholic education and healthcare network. This was partly due to the lack of public Catholic teaching colleges in the state found in the rest of the mainland, and their concern that the schools may eventually lose their Catholic identity. The idea of a private Catholic university again surfaced this time on the opposite side of the Australian continent.
Peter Tannock, who headed the Catholic Education Office of Western Australia, discussed these concerns with William Foley, the then Archbishop of Perth. They enlisted the help of Catholic businessperson Denis Horgan, also a childhood friend to Peter and founder of the Leeuwin Estate, who they hoped could provide financial assistance. Horgan, who had previously envisioned a private university in the state, was supportive of the idea so long as the institution would provide more than just teacher education, believing that a more comprehensive university would have greater fundraising potential from the state's Catholics.
A planning committee with Tannock, Horgan, Foley and Michael Quinlan, a Catholic physician, was also created and they developed a plan for a private Catholic university with multiple sites in the state that could extend to other fields including nursing and medicine. Horgan began purchasing property for the university, mainly unutilised heritage buildings in Fremantle in need of restoration, which were cheaper following the 1987 America's Cup as the colonial-era buildings didn't have many alternative use cases. However, he became insolvent that same year and the buildings were later purchased through loans and donations by the Archdiocese of Perth, Catholic Education Commission and the Sisters of St John of God.
Father Theodore Hesburgh and Father Ned Joyce, who had recently completed extensive tenures as the president and vice president of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, visited Fremantle as part of a retirement cruise and met with the planning committee in February 1988. They discussed the potential for involvement by the American university in the establishment of the planned institution. In the following months, members of the planning committee met with the newly appointed president, Edward Malloy, and other NDUS leaders in both Perth and Indiana. Malloy would later frequently visit the future university during his tenure as president, later describing founding it as a personal pride.
An agreement was reached for NDUS to commit in becoming involved in the development and governing body of the university, provide ongoing guidance and staff and student exchanges. Increasing the confidence of the state government of Western Australia in the feasibility of the institution, the proposal received support from both the WA Labor premier Peter Dowding and Liberal opposition leader Barry MacKinnon. The institution would be named "The University of Notre Dame Australia", after its founding partner the University of Notre Dame in the United States. Notre Dame, which is French for 'Our Lady', refers to the biblical figure Mary, another namesake of the university.
The university was established on 29 December 1989 following the passage of the University of Notre Dame Australia Act 1989 in the Parliament of Western Australia, where it received support from both sides. The Act was given royal assent on 9 January 1990 and the university was inaugurated at St Patrick's Basilica on 2 July 1991, where it was issued a canonical statute. It was signed by the newly-appointed Archbishop Robert Healy as Archbishop Foley, despite his role in founding the university, had died five months before the inauguration.
Prior to the decision to select Fremantle as the sole campus, the state government had offered the university a land grant in the Alkimos region north in Greater Perth. Under the plan, its main campus would have been built on publicly owned land and treated in effect as any other university in the state. The state government believed that the campus could potentially increase the land value and population of the then-sparse region, creating potential income and increasing investment from the private sector. The planned land grant accounted for approximately 17% of the region (excluding the coast) and Notre Dame estimated the value of the land to be up to 7 million in 1990.
The planning committee saw the main Alkimos campus as vital to the expansion of the university, with the existing development in Fremantle being perceived as limiting to student population growth and subsequent funding. Although the proposal was discussed extensively between the university and both sides of the state parliament, it led to a collapse of the Labor majority when the disillusioned Frank Donovan left the party. Support for the deal was later rescinded by the Liberal-National coalition and a parliamentary investigation was launched against the Lawrence government during the WA Inc political scandals. Following a motion of no confidence and the subsequent election of Richard Court as Premier of Western Australia in 1993, the proposal was formally withdrawn. As a result, Notre Dame remains the only university established in Western Australia to not receive a land grant by the state.
Growth and development