ANU board members quit after Julie Bishop’s departure
The Australian National University’s 15-member governing body is collapsing, with four resignations since chancellor Julie Bishop announced her departure on Thursday.
Bishop loyalists Tanya Hosch, Wayne Martin, Padma Raman and Rob Whitfield have submitted their resignations, according to senior sources who were not authorized to speak on behalf of the university.
That leaves just two of the seven members appointed by Education Minister Jason Clare. They are CSIRO boss Larry Marshall, also a Bishop loyalist, who moved to replace former pro-chancellor Alison Kitchen, who resigned on April 25, and Andrew Metcalfe, a former senior federal bureaucrat who only joined the council on July 1 last year.
The ANU council consists of 15 members; the chancellor, the vice-chancellor, seven members appointed by the minister of education, and six elected members representing staff and students. Bishop chaired the nomination committee, which made recommendations to the minister for new members.
An elected member of the council, who asked not to be named, said the seven appointed members were loyal to both Bishop and former vice-chancellor Genevieve Bell, who resigned last year amid a staff and student revolt over a program to restructure the ANU.
“The appointed council members never wanted Bell to leave. They supported him until the last minute,” the person said. “They still don’t understand how the ANU community felt last year and the level of frustration with the council and VC at the time.
“At every attempt to communicate to the council, the VC, the chancellor, senior leadership and executives that real problems exist and that something needs to be done, they have refused to see it.”
Amid fallout over dysfunction at the institution’s top levels, university secretary Phillip Tweedie also resigned last week, while sources say general counsel Philip Harrison is on extended sick leave.
Harrison appeared in the university’s response to a series of Signal messages. leaked Saturday Newspaper.
Messages between then-chancellor Rebekah Brown and the university’s deans discussed Bell’s alleged failings amid political, regulatory and staff and student dissatisfaction with his handling of Renew ANU.
In a memo to Bishop uploaded to the council’s online portal, Harrison wrote that Brown’s actions could be interpreted as an effort to advance his own position by replacing Bell as vice-chancellor.
Brown later replaced Bell and became interim vice chancellor. But since the notes and emails were first leaked two weeks ago there has been overwhelming support for him from students, staff, unions and local politicians.
Neither Marshall, the most senior administration figure to leave the ANU, nor a university spokesman will answer questions about moves at the council and senior staff.
“In my role at the Australian National University, I focused on taking care of the university and its people,” Marshall said.
Bishop said his departure from the council, eight months before the end of his term, was the result of excessive interference from the higher education regulator, which took the unprecedented step of preventing him and appointed council members from gaining insight into his successor.
“Following an unprecedented and coordinated response, the ANU council is now [sic] “I fear that future generations of students and staff will be the ones ensuring that legal and ethical obligations are met,” Bishop wrote in a statement announcing his resignation Friday morning.
The council resignations came hours after all members were given access to a highly confidential report examining allegations against Bishop, Kitchen and Bell raised by people recently or currently on the council during the Senate inquiry last year.
The university has been in chaos since the massive $250 million Renew ANU cost-cutting program was announced by Bell in October 2024, including compulsory redundancies and the loss of up to 650 jobs. That plan was scrapped following Bell’s resignation in September, less than two years into his five-year term.
Both the regulator, the Higher Education Quality and Standards Agency and the Australian National Audit Office, have expressed concern that appointed members of the council did not fully understand or review the plan or the financial information provided to them and did not ask whether there were alternatives.
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Julie Hare was the education editor of The Australian Financial Review.Connect with: X.
