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A damning report has revealed widespread governance failures at ANU, as fresh documents detail former vice-chancellor Genevieve Bell’s $3.3 million exit package. By Julie Hare.
Exclusive: ANU management ‘reactive, short-term, and politically driven’
Decision-making at the Australian National University is often “reactive, short-term, and politically driven”, according to a damning report compiled by some of the university’s most senior academics.
The 103-page document, written by a coalition of 30 senior ANU professors and staff, found “repeated failures” in systems and processes and said these undermined both teaching and research. In interviews with 600 people at the university, 96 per cent said the current council was not fit for purpose and should be reformed.
“Rules are applied inconsistently, conflicts of interest unmanaged and executives are insulated from the consequences of poor decisions,” the report, by the ANU Governance Project Working Group, said. “Staff and students said consultation was often perfunctory or retaliatory, creating an unsafe environment and excluding precarious staff and students from any influence in governance forums.”
The report recommended a reform of the university’s council and the establishment of a university senate. It also called for transparency over misconduct and complaints and the end of “non-disparagement clauses or agreements in employment release, separation, and settlement arrangements”.
The report comes as fresh documents show former vice-chancellor Genevieve Bell will be given a $433,000 severance package following her abrupt departure two months ago – an exit that came after months of disquiet over her handling of the university’s $250 million cost-cutting plan.
Bell will return as head of the School of Cybernetics in December next year, with annual remuneration amounting to $583,500. The package includes 12 months’ paid study leave during her five-year term and a $200,000 grant for a start-up.
In all, the package and parachute amount to more than $3.3 million in payments to Bell.
These details were released on Tuesday in response to a question on notice from independent ACT senator David Pocock.
Another question on notice revealed ANU spent $605,958 on Chancellor Julie Bishop’s office in a high-rise glass tower in Perth last year and $473,455 to the end of September this year. The university paid at least $800,000 for renovations to the office in 2021, and rent amounted to $15,000 a month.
Bishop is the only university chancellor in the country to have a separate office off campus. ANU now says it will not renew the lease when it expires on April 30, 2026.
The costs did not include the two staff who work for Bishop in her capacity as ANU chancellor and also for her private company, Julie Bishop & Partners. Both are part-time in their two roles.
Bishop has been embroiled in numerous controversies over the past year – not least the premature departure of her vice-chancellor following concern over the consultant-backed restructure known as Renew ANU. Labor senator Tony Sheldon summed it up in a committee hearing in October: “There’s been a very long list of governance concerns raised by the ANU community, including financial mismanagement, a lack of transparency around Renew ANU, misleading statements about the Nous Group contracts, your conduct and the conduct of former V-C Bell, the amount of money being spent on your travel and your office, the damning findings of the Nixon review into workplace culture, and the complete loss of faith from your staff and students in the management of the university.”
Asked by Sheldon how she would rate her performance on governance, Bishop replied: “It’s for others to judge.”
Bishop, who has been chancellor since 2020, is under intense scrutiny – not just from the Senate but also as two separate investigations examine her conduct as chancellor, governance oversight and serious allegations of mismanagement at the university.
Since Bell’s departure on September 11, Bishop has repeatedly said she has the full support of the university’s staff, students and council and that she has no intention of leaving her role until her term concludes at the end of 2026.
These statements contradict the governance report and an ANU staff survey released a week ago, which suggests fewer than one in five employees agree that senior leadership demonstrate that “people are important to the university’s success”. Just 28 per cent agreed the leadership team keep “staff informed about what is happening”.
ANU is not alone in rising levels of unrest and discontent among staff and students over governance and leadership. It has become the exemplar for many of the complex issues afflicting the tertiary sector, however, including a forced reduction in international student numbers, widespread underpayment of casual staff, job cuts, rising student debt and declining satisfaction.
Pocock says ANU should be the best university in the country. Instead, he said, it has become a “distressing test case”.
Associate Professor Gwilym Croucher, a higher education policy expert from the University of Melbourne, says chancellors are under increasing strain. “There’s obviously a lot that can go wrong in these big institutions. In the past, some chancellors haven’t always taken their role as seriously as we would have hoped. But Covid has really sharpened people’s appreciation of just how important those governance roles are.”
ANU’s turmoil has persisted since the announcement of Renew ANU in October 2024. The plan was criticised from the outset. One of the most ambitious restructures in Australian university history, it was meant to be done in a single year, with the loss of an estimated 650 staff.
Its rollout this year was characterised by a lack of transparency and consultation. Bell did not attend town hall meetings with staff and spoke little to the media. Questions about the validity of the financial data used to justify the cuts were dismissed.
Bell’s management style, honed over her 20-year career with the global microchip giant Intel, was unpopular at ANU, but she had the unwavering support of Bishop and the council. Until she didn’t.
Senior figures at ANU who asked not to be identified told The Saturday Paper that Bell’s exit came after the university’s deans wrote to Bishop with an ultimatum: either Bell went or they would resign.
Evidence provided to a Senate inquiry into university governance in August this year contradicted Bishop’s assertion that she has always had the full support of the 15-member council. Speaking about the council generally, student representative Will Burfoot told the Senate education committee he had seen members “intimidated, mistreated and gaslit”.
“My time on council has shown to me that there are serious issues with how the governance body operates – issues the community and, indeed, this parliament would consider unacceptable for an institution the size and significance of ANU,” Burfoot said.
Three other elected council members gave evidence of threats and intimidation, opaque decision-making, “manipulation of information” and other accusations.
Former council member Dr Liz Allen told the inquiry on August 12 she felt “violated and humiliated” during one interaction with Bishop, who she says had falsely accused her of leaking information to the media.
“I was so distressed I couldn’t breathe and struggled walking,” Allen said. “I cannot tell you just how traumatising this was for me.”
Allen testified that she considered suicide on the way home and miscarried a “much-wanted” baby a couple of weeks later. “I’ve experienced threats, intimidation and bullying because I sought greater probity of council conduct,” she told the inquiry.
Speaking to Senate estimates in October, Bishop said: “I reject virtually every allegation that has been made against me in the media about my personal conduct.” In a 25-page written response to the Senate concerning the August 12 allegations, Bishop said she was “blindsided”.
“I reject absolutely the allegations that I am ‘hostile and arrogant’ to staff, that I have ‘godlike powers, unchecked’ … there is a ‘culture of fear and intimidation’, that ‘dissent’ is ‘discouraged’, that council is ‘dysfunctional and toxic under the current regime’, that elected members are ‘afraid’, that council is ‘orchestrated cinema to make it appear that what’s happening is legitimate when ... it’s not’ or that the nature of council is ‘divide and conquer’,” Bishop wrote.
Croucher says it is impossible to know whether the intense scrutiny of Bishop is due to her high profile as a former Coalition minister or an accumulation of concerns about how universities are run.
“There’s obviously significant challenges with ANU. But that’s a symptom as much as a cause. It’s a symptom of bigger problems surrounding the sector,” Croucher says.
“And while there are some extreme examples with ANU, including some pretty horrendous stuff that came out in the Senate hearings, there’s just a lot more attention on university governance now.”
The evidence provided to senators in August is now the subject of another inquiry. Last month, interim vice-chancellor Professor Rebekah Brown announced that integrity and governance investigator Vivienne Thom would undertake that task.
This inquiry follows the announcement in August that the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency – the higher education regulator – had commissioned its own investigation, headed by former public service commissioner and head of Medicare Lynelle Briggs. Her remit includes examining whether ANU’s “corporate governance, leadership and culture is operating effectively”, specifically on potential conflicts of interest.
Briggs has been seen on campus in recent weeks as she interviews dozens of witnesses.
Thom has been given a full year to conduct her report. That leaves Bishop largely off the hook, since her term expires two months later. The Briggs report, however, is expected in April, and may only add to the intense pressure already on the chancellor.
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on November 29, 2025 as "Spleen takes Bishop".
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