Last Friday TEQSA’s Mary Russell told the Senate Education and Employment Committee that it was important, “she address media reports” relating to the agency’s role in recruiting ANU’s next Chancellor.
In her opening statement to a Budget Estimates hearing Dr Russell stated:
- A majority vote of ANU Council offered a “voluntary undertaking;”
- ANU Council has responsibility, as per its establishing Act of Parliament, for appointing the Chancellor; and
- TEQSA has no role “in the deliberations of the selection panel” and “has not, and will not, seek or receive any details about the evaluation or recommendation of individual candidates by the panel.”
Good-o, but there is more detail in TEQSA’s announcement of ANU’s voluntary undertaking.
The Council will appoint a Chancellor selection panel consisting of:
- An independent chair nominated by TEQSA (it is the agency’s former chair and ex-QUT VC Peter Coaldrake)
- Two independent HE experts nominated by TEQSA
- An Indigenous person (unless a member of the Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander is one of the independents)
- Two members of ANU Council, nominated by Council, “who are accepted by TEQSA in writing.”
The panel can also “provide feedback or advice” to TEQSA including on “any issues or concerns encountered.” Plus TEQSA must get Council records of meetings on the panel’s recommendation for Chancellor, and “written reasons” if the nominee is rejected.
None of which impressed former chief justice of Western Australia, Wayne Martin, who pointed out in his letter of resignation from ANU’s council, also tabled, “the fact that the Council cannot nominate the so-called Council nominees on the Committee eloquently demonstrates the farcical euphemisms that are used in the Council’s dealings with TEQSA, along with the use of “voluntary” to describe an undertaking obtained by coercive unlawful threats. These euphemisms are obviously designed to obscure the fact the TEQSA has taken complete control.”
With Mr Martin’s resignation and those of four other Ministerial appointments, ANU staff and students control its Council.