ANU Council was prevented from voting to pause the controversial cuts known as Renew ANU two months ago. The ANUSA President Will Burfoot told a senate inquiry into quality of governance at Australian higher education providers on Tuesday that a motion to pause Renew ANU was dismissed by the council chair, ANU Chancellor Julie Bishop. 

When asked by ACT independent senator David Pocock why a vote couldn’t go ahead, President Burfoot told the inquiry he didn’t know “how it wasn’t brought to a vote,” stating that when the motion was brought up, Chancellor Julie Bishop “dismissed the motion.”

Burfoot continued, “She said that it wasn’t appropriate for us to vote on it; that other members needed to come back into the meeting.”

After the dismissal of this motion was leaked to the media, Vice Chancellor Bell announced that she would, in National Tertiary Education Union ACT division secretary Dr Lachlan Clohesy’s words, “hunt down leakers.”

Dr Liz Allen, an academic at the ANU and the former staff-elected member of the ANU Council brought up concerns of “curation and manipulation of information that is presented to council,” with ANU leaders “[keeping] council in the dark and [failing] to adequately disclose conflicts.” 

Another ANU Council member, Francis Markham, has resigned overnight preceding today’s Senate committee investigation, citing “concerns about governance practices within the council” as the reason for his resignation.

Notably, when the University appeared before the Committee in the afternoon, neither Vice Chancellor Bell nor Chancellor Julie Bishop were able to attend  Woroni will continue to report as we receive more information.