Renowned ANU demographer Liz Allen is better known this week for her heart-wrenching testimony to a Senate inquiry this week than her academic expertise.
Wall-to-wall coverage of Dr Allen’s recount of her time on the ANU Council and allegations of her treatment by the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor during and after Council meetings prompted Independent ACT Senator David Pocock and the NTEU to call on Education Minister to intervene and for Chancellor Julie Bishop to stand aside.
The Education Minister has been reluctant to engage, shooting complaints off to TEQSA to investigate, but faces some difficult choices in the near future.
Dr Allen’s story is the latest of many concerns raised in relation to the University’s savings plan, but struck a chord nationally, because it was deeply personal. Dr Allen told the Senate Committee that she had been accused of leaking information to the media during a Council meeting and in a subsequent discussion with a smaller group Ms Bishop had laughed at her emotional response and then blocked a doorway to prevent her leaving. The pressure had led her to consider suicide and had had detrimental impacts on her career, Dr Allen said.
"I've lost the opportunity of a promotion. I fear for my job and my career has been derailed,” Dr Allen told the inquiry.
"I felt threatened and became extremely fearful. I believed my job was at risk."
The ANU is contesting some aspects of the account and has declined to comment further pending an investigation of the case, but compounding concerns, Dr Allen’s replacement on council, Francis Markham, also resigned from the Council as a result of “concerns about governance practices within the Council”.
The Nixon Review of culture and practices in the ANU College of Science and Medicine earlier this year found the University had a "remarkable tolerance for poor behaviour and bullying."
While all attention has been focused on the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor, the entire 15-member Council will soon enough be under scrutiny – with the majority appointed by Mr Clare. In the grand tradition of appointing people with grand CVs but little experience in the workings of the HE sector, he has signed off on two new members this week – Wayne Martin, a barrister and former judge from Julie Bishop’s home state of WA and Andrew Metcalfe, a senior public servant who spent the last six years of his career with Ernst and Young.
It is the Council that appoints the Chancellor and ultimately, the Vice-Chancellor – and each Council Member must bear some responsibility for the university’s governance crisis.
However, Mr Clare knows that Councils across the country are plagued by members with little understanding of the sector, qualified only by their familiarity with appointing Ministers at various State or Territory Governments or by a CV glittering enough to beguile the plodding headhunters appointed to fill boardroom chairs.
In the ANU’s case most Council Members have voiced confidence in the existing leadership and its approach, logged in Council Minutes, and so if Mr Clare acts on calls to sack the Chancellor and/or Vice-Chancellor, he must also consider terminating the entire Council.
This would create a significant precedent, which would then create challenges for Ministers in other States as institutions awaken to the failings of their governing councils.
On the other hand, if he does nothing, he is tacitly endorsing the work of his appointees on the Council, despite pressure from the union movement, independents and the Greens, and he needs ANU to find better ways to respond to mounting pressure on governance and strategy.
Sidelining enquiries to TEQSA will only keep the questions at bay for so long.