Mary O’Kane is incoming chancellor of the University of Queensland. She will replace Peter Varghese when he steps down after a decade in July 2026.
The university announced Professor O’Kane’s appointment Thursday, days after she ruled herself out as a candidate for chief commissioner of the Australian Tertiary Education Commission.
Professor O’Kane is the principal author of the Universities Accord, which proposed ATEC and is now its interim Chief Commissioner while establishing legislation passes Parliament.
Her qualifications for Chancellor are perhaps unique in Australian HE; a sometime dean of IT and engineering (Uni Canberra) and a reforming VC at the University of Adelaide (1996-2001). She went on to serve a ten-year term as NSW Chief Scientist and Engineer. Her 2008 review of the Cooperative Research Centre Program restored its then doubtful prospects.
Professor O’Kane has also built a career as a public policy and governance advisor and a specialist reviewer of public agencies and their failures, notably investigating the management of NSW fires (2020) and floods (2022). She is also wise in the ways of planning agencies, standing down in 2024 after six years as chair of the NSW Independent Planning Commission. At a national level she is present chair of the Australian Energy Market Operator.
Professor O’Kane brings a career of experience in giant and complex organisations which will ensure she is not daunted by the size and circumstances of Uni Queensland. She is also what all universities need in their chairs, a pragmatist. As she said in a recent speech, “a great lesson you learn as a reviewer is that opposition to a single recommendation can lead to a whole review being buried.”