A Bad Year for Australian University Governance

In the last year, the public was made aware of several high-profile failures of university governance in Australia. Following the Office of the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) finding the University of New South Wales (UNSW) liable for $32 million of underpaid wages to staff, the university entered into an Enforceable Undertaking with the FWO in July. Meanwhile, the Australian National University (ANU) and the University of Wollongong (UOW) have both seen their chancellors resign in May and July respectively amid scandals, with the latter facing an ongoing inquiry from the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC).

A Senate report on the quality of governance at Australian higher education providers was finalised in December 2025. The report made several recommendations, including the re-centring of research and education as the primary roles of universities by state governments and university boards, as well as a significant expansion of responsibility for the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) to support the "proactive adoption of key compliance, oversight and governance measures" at universities. 

A similar investigation by the NSW Legislative Council is underway, with an interim report from April recommending strengthening public oversight on university compliance and a legal requirement for all universities in the state to disclose all consultant expenditure.

UNSW: $32 million in systematic underpayment uncovered by the FWO

On July 3, UNSW entered an Enforceable Undertaking with the FWO to pay over $32 million in unpaid wages and superannuation to staff as well as a $500,000 contrition payment to the Federal Government. This comes after an earlier $213,120 fine from the Federal Circuit and Family Court last December after it was found that UNSW had failed to meet minimum record keeping requirements. 

UNSW was first put on notice in 2018 when a casual Business School academic contacted the FWO concerning missing time records. The Fair Work investigation began in 2020 when UNSW voluntarily reported underpayments to the FWO. 

The FWO found that UNSW had been systematically underpaying staff members from 2014 to 2023 at UNSW's campuses in Kensington, Canberra, and across regional NSW. A total of 33,069 staff members were found to be affected, with 11,119 casual academics accounting for over 75% of unpaid wages. 

UNSW consistently underpaid PhD academics below the entitled rate, and time spent by academics grading or attending meetings outside of teaching tutorials was wrongly counted under the tutorial rate. The FWO also discovered that even accounting requirements as basic as keeping regular timesheets weren't being met. In a media release from January, Fair Work Ombudsman Anna Booth summarised that, "UNSW’s failures were systemic, long-standing and long-lasting."

Booth further stated that, "it is completely unacceptable for an employer’s record-keeping practices to be so poor that they prevent our inspectors from assessing what hours its employees have worked and whether employees have received their full lawful entitlements."

In addition to committing to pay $32,710,122.12 in unpaid wages, interest, and superannuation to the affected staff as part of the Enforceable Undertaking, UNSW must also implement a variety of compliance measures to address the underlying issues found by the investigation. These measures include commissioning compliance audits to ensure all ongoing entitlements are being met, establishing dedicated platforms for regular communication with UNSW employees and unions on compliance issues, and reporting to the FWO twice a month on these ongoing processes.

Despite UNSW's unlawful failures before legal action was taken, over $30 million in rectification payments have already been made. Ombudsman Booth is optimistic about UNSW's dedication to the process, saying that "UNSW deserves credit for committing significant time and resources to put in place corrective measures that will ensure both full remediation of impacted staff and improved compliance for the future."

UOW: Chancellor resigns amid ICAC inquiry into hiring processes

Chancellor Michael Still of the University of Wollongong resigned on 3 July amid an ongoing inquiry by the NSW ICAC investigating his role in radical changes to UOW governance and conflicts of interest with the consulting firms Aspirall and KordaMentha. 

Michael Still, as well as former Chief Governance Officer Alyssa White, had been under investigation since June for "partially exercis[ing] their official functions by intentionally subverting recruitment processes for governance roles" from 2024 onwards. 

The ICAC inquiry found that before Patricia Davidson's early resignation as Vice-Chancellor in April 2024, Still had discussed Davidson's resignation with her in "many conversations" prior to the public announcement. Through Chancellor Still's 22-year connection with Aspirall consultant Tanya Diesel, the firm was awarded over $123,000 for the Vice-Chancellor recruitment process and consulting on the university's strategy. Neither Diesel nor Aspirall were asked to declare a conflict of interest, and neither did so.

Still hired John Dewar as Interim Vice-Chancellor in May 2024. Dewar, having recently become a partner at KordaMentha, proposed to Still that "linked to [Dewar's] appointment as Interim VC, KordaMentha be engaged to conduct a rapid diagnostic of the current state of the university’s operations." After Dewar's hiring, UOW began the tender process for a university-wide review into operations and potential cost savings. ICAC found that the tender process had been slanted in favour of KordaMentha, with $3.8 million awarded by UOW over 2024-2025.

Under the UOW Transformation program, which followed KordaMentha's review, UOW fired 95 academics and disestablished four disciplines for $21 million in targeted savings. UOW aimed to cut 185 more jobs representing 10% of its non-academic staff in Australia, though this number was revised to 100 in August.

The other hiring processes under ICAC investigation include a position taken by White herself. As the Chief Governance Officer, White was involved in creating a new senior executive role that she intended to fill herself: the "Vice-President, Strategy and Executive Affairs."

The proposal progressed rapidly ahead of Max Lu's arrival as the new Vice-Chancellor in May 2025, with concerns from Chief People and Culture Officer Alison Bourke that information reaching him was "tightly controlled." When Bourke objected to the proposal in favour of a competitive hiring process for the role, she was sidelined by Still, who told her that her role was "to just do whatever a manager tells them to do."

The public ICAC inquiries were held over June and July 2026, and the investigation is still ongoing.

ANU: Chancellor Julie Bishop resigns ahead of governance report release

On May 8, former Liberal foreign minister Julie Bishop resigned as the Vice-Chancellor of ANU. This came only months after the resignation of Chancellor Genevieve Bell in September 2025, and Bishop's firm statement at the time that "there are no grounds for [her] to stand aside" as well. 

Bishop resigned on the same day that a confidential independent review of ANU governance, led by Vivienne Thom, was scheduled to be released. While the contents of the review are confidential, it is known that there were five adverse findings against former ANU Council members as well as a finding of mismanagement in the university's complaint handling systems. 

The review was prompted by a Senate hearing in August 2025 where former Council member Liz Allen alleged a "culture of fear and intimidation" under Vice-Chancellor Bishop. At the hearing, Allen stated that she had been threatened, harassed, and bullied to the point of miscarriage and the brink of suicide following continual allegations that she had leaked confidential information to the media.

A report by Professor Christine Nixon on the College of Health and Medicine, currently in its implementation phase, shows a "remarkable tolerance for poor behaviour and bullying" present there as well. Students at the college were subjected to a "very toxic work-until-you-drop mentality" by their supervisors, and an entrenched culture of discrimination and nepotism only worsened the response to people who raised concerns.

Recommendations made in the Nixon report include creating a single accountability mechanism for wellbeing and equity challenges, enforcing fair recruitment practices from the University level, and publicly releasing regular external reviews of progress taken to meet these recommendations. The first of these external reviews began this January, but the report has not yet been released.

Furthermore, an investigation by TEQSA into the ANU Council's ‘Renew ANU’ cost-cutting program proposed in 2024 is underway, with a draft Australian National Audit Office report finding that it was approved without clear evidence of its feasibility or even necessity. The Renew ANU program aimed to cut $250 million in recurring expenditure by the end of 2026 through widespread forced redundancies and restructuring, most controversially including the cancelled proposal to close the School of Music.

Rebekah Brown, appointed as Interim Vice-Chancellor in September 2025, has committed to ending voluntary redundancies previously planned under the Renew ANU program, although involuntary redundancies are still being implemented.

The process to appoint a new Chancellor to replace Julie Bishop has begun, with an independent selection committee formed on 18 May under TEQSA supervision as part of a voluntary undertaking made with ANU.

The road ahead

The successive governance issues surfacing at UNSW, UOW, and ANU aren’t a new problem spreading, but long-term structural faults that were only recently uncovered after dedicated regulatory intervention. As the NSW Legislative Council inquiry continues and the Senate report’s recommendations are considered at federal and state levels, Australia’s governments and universities have the chance to prevent these failures from continuing unchecked for the wellbeing of students, staff, and our academic culture as a whole.