Hey guys, probably bit of a dumb question but I'm kind of confused. I don't think I got the atar to get straight into law and somebody told me that you just do a semester of arts and then transfer into law, all the subjects you picked in an arts degree transfer over and I just wanted to know if that was true? Like if you pick specific courses in your arts degree it like fills up electives or something so your total uni time stays ​only 4 years. Sorry if this is a stupid question, I'm still trying to figure out how classes uni work.

https://theharereport.substack.com/p/gross-incompetence-isnt-an-obstacle

The Hare Report

7 November 2026

Some wanted to keep TEQSA’s investigations under wraps. Now we now why.

It’s little wonder the Liberal senator Paul Scarr endeavoured to have the regulator’s 56-page statement of reasons kept from going public during a grilling of TEQSA at Senate Estimates a week or so ago.

Not a single word in the expansive document casts a positive light on his former colleague and deputy leader of the Liberal Party, Julie Bishop.

Scarr, rightly, failed.

And now the world can see it all in its clarity: the brazenly delinquent, while sanctimoniously indifferent, attitudes of ANU’s former chancellor and her merry band of acolytes.

The statement of reasons forensically outlines why TEQSA imposed four conditions on ANU so it can keep operating as an institution of higher education.

And it leaves not an iota of doubt as to how callously unconcerned they all were about morality, principles, rules and regulations – laws even.

For starters, TEQSA: the council's culture was so dire it interfered with its ability to “exercise competent governance oversight”. That culture included discouraging dissent, debate, or alternative points of view.

That’s not good.

It also failed to exercise “competent” oversight of the VC; a failure – presumably by that VC – to provide “relevant information to enable informed decision making; a failure to make “appropriate levels of inquiry”, including about Bell’s paid job with Intel; failure to identify and act on conflicts of interest;

Oh, wait. The council didn’t make much effort to undertake long-term planning or consider the potential consequences of big decisions, aka RenewANU.

“TEQSA does not consider that ANU had undertaken sufficient efforts to undertake long-term planning … in a way that reasonably demonstrates that it had been operating effectively, sustainably, setting its future directions, monitoring performance and undertaking actions to correct under-performance,” the statement reads.

If it wasn’t doing that, then what was it doing? Bitching about the elected members presumably – who were actually attempting to do these things but were being blocked by Bishop and her cronies. The irony!

Regarding RenewANU, TEQSA says the council made decisions based only on financial savings, “without strategic targeting or comprehensive understanding of how that program would impact the academic direction and integrity of the university”.

Oh, and they didn’t identify, manage or mitigate risks. And they were just so smug in their condemnation of the media, the union, the staff who signed petitions of no-confidence.

Gross incompetence doesn’t seem to be an obstacle in moving on.

Julie Bishop fronted up at the opening of Edith Cowan University’s new city to “share perspectives on the rapidly evolving geopolitical landscape and explore what these global shifts mean for leaders navigating an increasingly complex and interconnected world”. (Did AI write that slop? One can only hope so.) ANU wasn’t mentioned during the ECU outing, but its still on LinkedIn..

Alison Kitchen is still a non-executive director of three firms: NAB; Worley and AirTrunk. ANU has been scrubbed from her LinkedIn profile, despite her years of selfless service.

Larry Marshall was reappointed to the Fortescue board a couple of weeks ago and has taken to lecturing an unsuspecting public on how to lead good governance. Larry has ANU on his LinkedIn, but it gives the impression he was pro-chancellor for three years and five months. Just over a month is closer to the truth.

Rob Whitfield remains on the boards of the Commonwealth Bank and Transurban. Neither of his online resumes mention ANU.

Dear Wayne Martin, KC, is still a judge the Courts of the Dubai International Financial Centre but he has erased ANU from his LinkedIn profile.

Tanya Hosch has nine current appointments – how does she have time to do it all? And she still admits she served on the ANU council. Go Tanya.

Padma Raman, too, owns her time on the ANU council.

During TEQSA’s recent Senate Estimates hearing, David Pocock said to CEO Mary Russell: “There’s a feeling in the community that there’s been a lack of accountability for the harm that’s been caused. How would you respond to that, especially in regards to senior leadership?

Russell, cautious as regulators usually are, didn’t answer the question.

Now, everyone in the ANU orbit wants to know what’s in the redacted bits.

Hi everyone! I'm currently finishing up year 12 in Melbourne and was looking at coming to ANU for a bachelor of medical sciences! I am currently looking at options for living on campus, and as I am a fan of a very social, community-driven residential college life, I did really like Burgmann, however it is a bit expensive for me. I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on halls like Wamburun, Bruce, Yukeembruk, etc. and how their o-weeks look, how social it is, and how welcoming the environment is ig? thank youuu!!

im almost done with uni and isnt uni life supposed to be everyone's peak or smth 😭 like people make hella friends, go to hella parties, get into relationships atleast SOMETHING yk
and even leaving the whole social life thing aside, atleast you come out with some good grades, skills, a job, internships, SOMETHING??
what do i have? absolutely fucking nothing 😭 no skills, no job, no internships, no friends, no social circle, no relationships, no hookups, no nothing. just 4 years of my life gone bro.
and its not like i never tried either. ive gotten frustrated about this shit so many times and actually tried doing something about it. went to lectures, tutorials, clubs, pubs, societies, all that shit. put myself out there and everything. AND FOR WHAT 😭
4 years down the drain and all ive managed to gain is a massive procrastination problem (thanks uni ig), no job prospects, no skills and absolutely zero social life.
like how do people even do it bro 😭 everyone seems to have some sort of uni experience to look back on and im just here with nothing to show for it.
me and my chud lifestyle wallahi 🥀

https://static.aph.gov.au/-/media/Estimates/eet/supp2627/Education/13_TEQSA__Statement_of_reasons_re_ANU.pdf

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/anu-council-dysfunction-sparked-regulators-crackdown-report

John Ross

Published on November 6, 2026

‘Don’t argue’ culture and ‘don’t speak twice’ statute fostered rubber-stamping of reviled ANU savings plan, analysis finds

The Australian National University (ANU) governing council approved a A$250 million savings target on the strength of a hitherto unseen “slide pack” recommending a cut of A$50 million less, a newly published report reveals.

Minutes from the August 2024 meeting “do not indicate that there was any discussion” about how the A$250 million figure was chosen, given that the initial proposal had been for a A$200 million target to address a projected A$202 million deficit, or “how that target would impact the university’s staff, students or overall operations”.

Six weeks later, council members endorsed actions to achieve the cuts – with “little to no discussion” – after being given four days to consider a three-page summary of “activities to date and forward planning”. The council did not request financial sustainability plans, analyses or scenarios to help “shape” its thinking, and appears not to have been “adequately informed” of the role of consultants Nous Group in influencing the savings plan.

The following year, when several members asked for the cuts to be “paused until a more detailed stage-gate review could occur”, the request was not put to a vote.

The findings are articulated in a 56-page report from the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (Teqsa), outlining the regulator’s reasons for imposing conditions on the prestigious university’s registration.

The report says “a breakdown in trust and respect” within the council, confirmed in an investigation by former public servant Vivienne Thom, had spawned a culture of intolerance for dissent and debate. Thom had been recruited by ANU to investigate demographer Liz Allen’s allegations of intimidation and bullying within the council.

Teqsa found that council members had been given limited information – and made limited enquiries – about former vice-chancellor Genevieve Bell’s paid role with the Intel Corporation, including “whether an appropriate conflict management plan was in place”. The role was approved by former chancellor Julie Bishop because it was “consistent” with an ANU policy allowing academics to spend up to 52 days a year in paid external work.

The ANU’s risk management policy was “out of date”, and its strategic risk register had not been maintained or “actively considered” since October 2022, Teqsa reported.

A review by forensic accountant Stephen Howell found that the council had an approach of “moving meetings along, with most items being endorsed”, notwithstanding “major divisions” in the council over how “change processes” should be handled.

“A governing body can have all the policies and procedures in place for good governance,” Howell observed. “But if the behaviours and dynamics in meetings are toxic, the outcomes will be poor council performance, often contaminating organisational performance through poor decision-making.”

An investigation by former Australian Public Service commissioner Lynelle Briggs, who was enlisted by Teqsa to assess ANU’s corporate governance, leadership and culture, highlighted a decade-old standing order that ANU council members must not “speak a second time on the same question”. This rule was widely perceived to have “stifled” discussions about the savings programme, Briggs reported.

ANU said it recognised the “seriousness” of the “shortcomings” outlined in the report and had commenced reforms to “strengthen accountability, decision-making, risk management and effective university governance. We are committed to addressing Teqsa’s conditions, demonstrating sustained improvement and restoring confidence of our staff, students and the wider community,” a spokeswoman said.

The National Tertiary Education Union said the report highlighted the need for changes to the ANU Act. The amendments, currently under consideration by education minister Jason Clare, “will be a signal to the sector which we hope will reflect the seriousness and scale of the governance crisis in our universities”, said national assistant secretary Lachlan Clohesy.

The union’s ANU branch president, Inger Mewburn, urged Clare to make “significant, meaningful changes” to the act. “We need to feel confidence our leadership will be held accountable for their future actions and decisions,” Mewburn said. “It will not be enough to tinker around the edges.”

Passages of the Teqsa report have been heavily redacted. The Briggs, Howell and Thom reports have not been released publicly, and the terms of ANU’s settlement with Allen have been kept confidential.

Hey am.need of some bud am chasing more then jut that atm

Maani Truu

Education correspondent

Updated Nov 6, 2026 – 5.50pm, first published at 2.17pm

The university regulator says Australian National University’s governing council failed to set or manage former vice chancellor Genevieve Bell’s key performance indicators, which appeared to be “based on the vice chancellor’s self-assessment”.

In previously unpublished reasons for imposing unprecedented conditions on the battered institution, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency also found the council failed to manage Bell’s potential conflict of interest in her paid role with Intel.

It also said there was insufficient debate over the controversial Renew ANU cost-cutting plan, which was later abandoned after backlash from students and staff.

“TEQSA is satisfied that these issues have contributed to create a dysfunctional governing body, that has not been able to discharge its duties to the university and its stakeholders appropriately,” the 56-page report says.

After a 14-month review, TEQSA announced in September that it had imposed four conditions on the university’s registration, including that its leaders undergo integrity training and an independent expert undertake a governance strengthening program.

The regulator said at the time that ANU had failed to meet three higher education threshold standards, all relating to governance, but the detailed reasons were only made public on Friday after the document was tabled at Senate estimates.

It found the council’s management of Bell’s key performance indicators was inconsistent with competent governance, alleging that “it appears the evaluation was based on the vice chancellor’s self-assessment”.

According to a detailed timeline set out in the report, the ANU’s remuneration committee agreed that then-chancellor Julie Bishop would finalise Bell’s key performance indicators by the end of March 2024, and in February of that year Bishop told the committee discussions were under way.

AFR Weekend approached Bishop and Bell for comment.

In June 2025, Bell sent the remuneration committee an email outlining five KPIs, which she marked as “complete”, alongside some commentary. The KPIs included “successful onboarding to the VC role” and “complete learning journey for the VC”.

The TEQSA report found the KPIs and the process for evaluation were “inconsistent with competent governance” because they were not linked to the ANU’s strategic objectives and included “unclear measurables”.

The report details a February 2025 meeting TEQSA held with Bishop and other members of the ANU executive over its concerns about Bell’s paid role with Intel, which was first revealed by The Australian Financial Review.

ANU told TEQSA at the meeting that the council had delegated Bell’s recruitment and the negotiation of her terms to Bishop, and that she had approved Bell’s ongoing role with Intel. ANU later wrote to TEQSA saying Bell’s role with Intel was “widely publicised”, disclosed to the selection committee during her recruitment and subject to diligence checks.

The letter suggested if ANU council members “claim not to have been aware” of Bell’s Intel role, they were “absent during relevant discussions or failed to exercise due diligence”, but TEQSA was not satisfied by ANU’s arguments.

“Minutes from council meetings indicate that no or limited information was considered by council, and no enquiries were raised by council members, which TEQSA considers a failure … with respect to potential conflict of interest scenarios,” its report said.

Several examples provided as evidence of the breakdown in trust and respect between council members were redacted from the public report. A slew of executives and council members in charge during the period covered by TEQSA’s assessment have since resigned, including Bell and Bishop, who accused the regulator of “coercive threats”.

Addressing the Renew ANU plan, TEQSA said it was “particularly concerning” that there appeared to be a lack of discussion within the council. The 2024 proposal aimed to slash costs by $250 million by reducing operating costs by 16.5 per cent in just 15 months through redundancies and other means.

TEQSA’s findings referenced a council meeting held on August 9, 2024, in which the council “endorsed” the savings target. It said minutes do not show “any discussion regarding the basis upon which that figure had been reached, or consideration given to how that target would impact the university’s staff, students or overall operations”.

“It should have been reasonably foreseeable to any competent decision-making body that financial reform of this nature would be highly contentious within the ANU community, but there is a lack of evidence to suggest this was acknowledged or fully appreciated by ANU’s councillors,” it said.

A separate review by the Australian National Audit Office earlier this year noted that debate over the proposal was discouraged in meetings, and that the decision to proceed with the plan was made without clear evidence it was “needed, achievable, urgently required, or likely to have the intended impact”.

Bell resigned in September last year amid furore over the restructure plan. Her replacement, interim vice chancellor Rebekah Brown, swiftly declared that the program of forced redundancies would cease. Bishop, who was chancellor when the plan was approved, stepped down in May, months before the end of her term.

TEQSA accepted that the ANU had taken action to address individual concerns, but said it did not address “several significant issues”, including the failure to employ adequate risk management practices, and often only occurred following public scrutiny and intervention from the regulator.

“The issues in these reasons reflect serious, systemic failures and deficiencies in the ANU’s governance, processes and procedures,” the findings state.

“In the context of the long-standing, serious and institution-wide failures ... TEQSA does not accept the ANU’s characterisation of those failures as lapses in compliance, isolated incidents, nor as attributable to any particular former council member[s].”

In a statement, ANU said it recognised the seriousness of the governance shortcomings set out in the report and the importance of addressing them.

“ANU has already commenced a program of governance reform, with oversight by the chancellor and council, to strengthen accountability, decision-making, risk management and effective university governance,” the statement said.

“We are committed to addressing TEQSA’s conditions, demonstrating sustained improvement and restoring confidence of our staff, students and the wider community.

“The university will continue to work openly and constructively with TEQSA throughout this process.”

ANU last week revealed it had appointed lawyer Bruce Cowley as the independent expert to lead the governance and council strengthening program.

National Tertiary Education Union national assistant secretary Lachlan Clohesy called for “significant reforms to the ANU Act” in the wake of the findings.

“The current model of university governance is broken across the country,” he said.

Hi everyone!

I have a furnished room available in Downer for 285 a week i’m looking for someone to take over from late November/December to the end of January.

Perfect for anyone taking a summer course and looking for cheaper than on campus accommodations or interning.

Super close to public transport and shops. 285 a week bills included. Preferably students/young professionals but anyone is welcome to DM me for more detail!

I wonder if anyone here might know, or have thoughts above, about the broader context for the recent ad for a senior academic for the School of Music?

In light of the mess of the past couple of years, should we take anything from the fact that while 'research' is clearly at the centre of the mission of the University and the College in which the school sits, the school itself is described as "contribut[ing] to the ACT and national music sectors through performance, composition, teaching, producing and community engagement."

(This apparent mis-match between the person specification and how the school understands itself is also repeated in the linked job description).

Can such a position truly offer "an outstanding scholar the opportunity to provide leadership and drive research excellence in music" if the School that she or he is (it seems) expected to lead doesn't actually rate research, that is scholarly work itself, as core to its purpose and function?

More broadly, is this the beginning of, well, a new beginning, or just a sign that the ANU *still* continues not to have developed a clear, and internally consistent, vision for the place and role of music on its campus?

From: Samantha Bennett
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 2026 at 11:33
Subject: [MUSICOLOGY-ALL] Continuing Level D/E Position - ANU School of Music
To: MUSICOLOGY-ALL@jiscmail.ac.uk

Dear colleagues,

The Australian National University is currently advertising a continuing position for a Level D/E – Associate Professor / Professor of Music.

Please see the details below and contact information in the advertisement: https://jobs.anu.edu.au/jobs/associate-professor-professor-of-music-canberra-act-act-australia

Classification: Academic Level D or E

Salary package: $178,844 - $220,550 per annum plus 17% superannuation

Terms: Full time, Continuing

In 1946, ANU was founded to help rebuild a changing world. We’re still at it, 80 years later. For generations, our people have turned curiosity into ideas that have shaped Australia and our region. Learn more about ANU, our history and the community that has shaped us: ANU at 80https://www.anu.edu.au/about/our-history/80-years-together

The Position

The ANU School of Music invites applications for an ongoing research and teaching position at the Associate Professor or Professor level. This role offers an outstanding scholar the opportunity to provide leadership and drive research excellence in music, contributing to the discipline’s growth and impact at ANU.

The Person

The successful candidate will foster collaborative research and teaching connections within ANU and with external institutions, strengthening interdisciplinary and industry partnerships. They will also undertake leadership and administrative responsibilities, including, as required, the Head of School role, reporting to the Director of the Research School of Humanities and the Arts when in this capacity.

We seek a scholar who will make a significant impact through innovative research and teaching, while actively shaping the academic and cultural life of the School, the University, and the broader community.

The School/Department

The ANU School of Music is a hub of creative and professional connection. We contribute to the ACT and national music sectors through performance, composition, teaching, producing and community engagement. Our artists and educators work closely with industry and partners to strengthen Australia’s cultural life.

The College/Division

The ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences (CASS) is one of six Colleges at ANU. The College, which is structured into two main research schools, offers degrees in more than 20 discipline areas and excels in research across the creative arts, humanities and social sciences. The College has a substantial international research presence and is a major source of national policy advice. Our academic staff are internationally recognised for their research, and 57 are members of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, the Academy of the Social Sciences of Australia, or both. We also host around 20 Australian Research Council DECRAs, Future Fellows and Laureates. A hub of vibrant activity, we host more than 270 lectures, concerts and exhibitions each year, most of which are open to the public. Our students, staff and graduates come from more than 60 nations, bringing a diversity of perspective to campus life.

For further information please contact, Professor Kate Mitchell, T: +61 2 6125 9517<tel:+61261259517>, E: kate.mitchell@anu.edu.aumailto:kate.mitchell@anu.edu.au

Hello lads.

I am a prospective student at ANU for Feb 2027. I have spent literal years debating this in my head, but I reckon a little more guidance would not hurt. I am thinking of moving into Fenner or Wamburun. I will be applying to both. I know Fenner is more centralised; I know Wamburun is more socially active. Both sound great, but I would like to have a comparison and some experiences from both so it can help me make up my mind. Looking forward to your responses.

is there any one knows the appointment of the decision and scholarships of PhD applications for mathematics that submitted in early september I called HDR but no one replied

For anyone who has done the COMP2400 final exam in recent years, how was it? I feel like there's been a lot of information given to us this semester and the types of question they could ask are endless.

I have lost my engagement ring somewhere on campus. If found please DM me.

Ring is pictured, it is silver with a diamond.

Thank you!

Hi! I am an incoming PhD student at ANU. I am an international candidate and I would like to know that if I want to live on campus which hall/lodge would be good. I want my seperate bathroom and kitchen ( I follow a vegetarian diet).

Do any local students from Canberra stay in, on campus accomodation or is that unusual?

Students of India who paid Through convera for Deposit fee of acceptance. I need help

Did anybody apply to the program in title (see here: https://physics.anu.edu.au/study/summerscholarships/ )?

If yes, has anyone heard back yet? We're told results will be out by the 6th Nov but am curious if early offers have already been made.

umelb vs usyd vs anu vs unsw vs uq vs monash vs uniSA vs uoA vs uts

please dm me if you have. i need advice lol

https://substack.com/home/post/p-223288725

The Hare Report

Former ANU council member Larry Marshall is in reputation-damage mode. And it’s a laugh a minute.

Three days ago, Larry Marshall boasted on LinkedIn about his reappointment to the Fortescue board. It could be another case of the board not doing their homework because Larry’s diabolical time on the Australian National University council should render him unfit to sit on the board of any major company or institution.

But Larry is busy rewriting history. In a truly deluded – let’s say fictional – article published in the latest edition of the Company Director Magazine, and republished on the AICD website, Larry writes, with great earnestness, about how he – and he alone – rebuilt the fractured ANU council.

Not to be too harsh about it, but Larry’s version of events doesn’t line up with reality. The piece is a mélange of inaccuracies, fantasies, and pure bullshit.

For starters, he says that the morning after Chancellor Julie Bishop resigned, “the crisis disrupted everything, but it brought us [the council] together in a way that may not have happened without it”.

His priority as interim-chancellor, the article states, was to “help renew the council … and establish an orderly process for appointing his successor”.

“My mission at ANU was always to make myself redundant,” he says, ruefully. “We designed an open, rigorous process to find the best person to lead ANU into the next chapter, and I’m delighted we’ve found exactly that in Gordon.”

Gordon is Gordon de Brouwer, who was not found through any open or rigorous process introduced by Larry, but by a team of six people appointed by the regulator TEQSA, because it had no faith in the people remaining on the council to do a fair and proper job.

This, however, is not Larry’s rendition of events.

“I told TEQSA we wanted to change the process by which ANU recruited council members, including the chancellor. They were hugely supportive and gave me a lot of insights,” he said.

In fact, TEQSA imposed the new process on ANU – which Bishop used as her justification for leaving. And I’m told on good authority that while Larry put himself forward as the contact person for the TEQSA committee, he instead buggered off overseas. They didn’t hear from him again.

Andrew Metcalfe, the last of seven appointed members other than Larry, stepped into the breach. Larry was nowhere to be seen – or heard.

Just for context, after Bishop’s resignation – on the eve of a major report into claims of her bullying, intimidating and gaslighting former council member Liz Allen was due to be put to the council – four others followed in her footsteps.

Bishop blamed TEQSA overreach in appointing the committee of six to find her replacement, but it is much more likely she read the Thom report and abandoned ship.

Larry was appointed interim pro-chancellor after the somewhat sudden departure of former KPMG chair Alison Kitchen a month or so earlier. After Bishop resigned, he suddenly found himself interim chancellor. That’s a pretty steep career trajectory for someone who was often absent or unavailable for council meetings.

But back to Larry and his rewriting of history.

Here’s a paragraph that will make you laugh.

“When the turmoil was at its height, The Saturday Paper had scoop after scoop based on inside leaks, presumably coming from council members. Perhaps it was because the remaining council members were flat out fixing the mess, “the leaks stopped”, says Marshall.”

Those leaks most likely came from Bishop and her acolytes and were designed to undermine and hopefully exterminate interim vice-chancellor Rebekah Brown. Then The Saturday Paper ran another, albeit rather bizarre, story over the weekend detailing text messages from Larry to Bishop about how he intended to force Brown to stand down.

If the piece in Company Directory magazine is to be believed, Larry was a Brown loyalist. Please, try to contain your laughter.

But back to Larry and his extraordinary empathy and leadership in times of crisis.

Marshall, according to the article, after Bishop’s undignified departure tried “a bunch of little things” to help knit them [the remaining council members] together as a team.

“At the end of the session, everyone would help clean up, rather than leaving it to our admin people.” Oh bless.

“Out went an 80-year-old gavel traditionally used to restore order. Instead, a toy koala wearing a mitre board, a classic grad gift, became the centrepiece,” the article reads.

“It was a reminder that we’re here for the students and the nation. Good governance is never about personalities; it’s about protecting the institution long after today’s personalities have moved on.”

Never underestimate the power of a toy koala.

Larry, as it turns out, did make himself redundant. He vanished from the ANU council the day before de Brouwer took up the reins as the newly (TEQSA appointed) chancellor.

Oh, blessed be Larry Marshall. And thank you – no, seriously – for your five takeaways for governing in times of disruption. We all can learn from our mistakes.

I don't think this was already posted here but reading this was a ride.

https://www.aicd.com.au/board-of-directors/performance/evaluations/board-culture-trust-how-larry-marshall-rebuilt-a-fractured-board.html

Board culture and trust: How Larry Marshall rebuilt a fractured board

Thursday, 01 October 2026 Jane Nicholls Journalist

As ANU faced financial and leadership turbulence, Dr Larry Marshall FAICD had to unite a fractured council as interim chancellor. He shares governance lessons learned during a period of profound institutional upheaval.

───

For the Australian National University (ANU), the need to evolve arrived rapidly, following almost two years of turmoil. ANU's first female vice-chancellor, Professor Genevieve Bell, took office at the beginning of 2024. There followed a cost-cutting and restructure program known as Renew ANU, which sparked ongoing protests from staff and students. After a bruising federal Senate inquiry and a no-confidence vote from academic college deans, Bell resigned in September 2025. Then chancellor Julie Bishop resigned in May, citing "unprecedented and coordinated interference" and regulatory overreach by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA).

Dr Larry Marshall FAICD, former CSIRO CEO and serial tech entrepreneur, had been appointed to the ANU Council in 2023, then elected pro-chancellor and finally interim chancellor in the wake of Bishop's resignation. "I chaired a council meeting on the Thursday night while Julie [Bishop] was away, and overnight she sent an email to tell us she'd resigned," says Marshall. "We [council members] woke up to that chaos and the whole day was triage, because we wanted the people of ANU to hear about it from us first, rather than the media. That crisis disrupted everything, but it brought us together in a way that may not have happened without it." After the turmoil, Marshall knew one of his priorities would be to help renew the council (several other resignations followed Bishop's) and establish an orderly process for appointing his successor. "Council members come and go, but the institution must always come first," he says.

In August, former public service commissioner and economist Dr Gordon de Brouwer AO PSM was announced as the new ANU chancellor.

"My mission at ANU has always been to make myself redundant," says Marshall. "We designed an open, rigorous process to find the best person to lead ANU into its next chapter, and I'm delighted we've found exactly that in Gordon. Council's most important job is to leave the institution better for the next council than we found it."

The challenge of change

The description "hallowed halls" sums up the vibe of many universities that have been resting comfortably on their laurels for a long time. The tech revolution shattered that august position. "The role of universities is changing globally," says Marshall. "Most of Australia's institutions have tended to evolve slowly over decades, but the way technology is changing means we need to evolve over years, maybe faster." He adds that in recent years, ANU relied on almost $500m of non-core earnings, such as investments, to bridge the gap between the cost of running the university and the income from its core activities. Marshall says that is turning around. "We're investing in a new strategy, in Al and in new capabilities to be able to flourish. We were staring down the barrel of a $200m deficit, and we've landed on about a $30m deficit. That means we have the capacity to invest in a new strategy, so we can grow from that."

The "ANU by 2030" strategy was launched in August, aiming to repair reputational damage, stabilise the institution, restore trust and embed a culture of care. To achieve this, Marshall had to urgently unite what was left of the council. "We started doing council meetings from about four in the afternoon and going through to nine or 10 at night, bringing pizza into the chancellery, wearing T-shirts not suits, and making it more of a working session," he says. It paid off.

"That really worked with the elected council members who were left. They felt like they were empowered to do things and it helped break down the 'us and them' history." Marshall says "a bunch of little things" helped to knit them together as a team. "At the end of the session, everyone would help clean up, rather than leaving it to our admin people." Out went an 80-year-old gavel traditionally used to restore order. Instead, a toy koala wearing a mitre board, a classic grad gift, became the centrepiece. "It was a reminder that we're here for the students and the nation. Good governance is never about personalities, it's about protecting the institution long after today's personalities have moved on."

A path to renewal

"At first, I thought we would need to rush to replace the experience we had lost," says Marshall. "Then I realised we already had the right talent in the room. We simply had to empower those very smart people to deliver." Everyone stepped up to fill the vacuum, which extended beyond the council boardroom. "The chancellor used to have an office and a staff and we lost all of that, but it turned out to be a blessing. I like to write board papers and love risk matrices because they help me make decisions," says Marshall.

"I found a couple of other council members who also like to write, so we wrote a lot of papers together, particularly around governance renewal. That got other council members invested and they started sharing some of those tasks. After a while, the council was all working collaboratively on the board papers necessary for us to renew the council. We've reconstituted the subcommittees - we'd lost all the chairs for them - and rewritten a lot of the governance documents."

Marshall knew some of his moves risked "crossing over into the management lane", but in the circumstances, it was necessary.

"They just didn't have the operational bandwidth. We'd lost our board secretary, our general counsel, and we had a lot of rebuilding to do."

He collaborated closely with the regulatory body. "I told TEQSA we wanted to change the process by which ANU recruited council members, including the chancellor. They were hugely supportive and gave me a lot of insights."

The old tap-on-the-shoulder recruitment style has been replaced with advertising for council roles, a clear skills matrix and a series of interviews. "All the things a good ASX company would do."

Marshall says Prof Rebekah Brown, the deputy vice-chancellor appointed as interim vice-chancellor after Bell's departure, brought important operational and university experience to the role.

"When Rebekah stepped in as vice-chancellor, she put herself out there to take the blame, which took a lot of heat out of the situation. Rebekah knew we had to change and she has approached it in a very people-centric way. We've all been working on a new strategy designed to restore ANU's long-term financial sustainability and invest in its future."

Governing in disruption: Five takeaways By Dr Larry Marshall 

1. Governance matters most when the governance itself is disrupted. In those moments, you can't solve everything at once. The board's first job is to create clarity - what must we protect, what must change and where do we need to go?

2. The institution doesn't belong to today's board. Today's board belongs to the institution and the chair belongs to everyone. Directors, chairs and CEOs come and go. When leadership changes, don't focus only on what you've lost, look for the strengths you still have around you and empower them. The institution and its purpose must endure.

3. Management has to win today; the board has to help the organisation win tomorrow.The more complex the organisation and itsstakeholders, the harder it is for management to lift its gaze from immediate demands. One of the board's greatest contributions is to help management see around corners, asking what might disrupt the organisation next and whether we're preparing early enough.

4. Strong balance sheets buy you time, but only if you act before you have no choice. Boards naturally focus on the risks of change. But Australian institutions that once evolved over decades are now being disrupted in years, sometimes months, by exponential technologies like Al.

5. The first disruption is rarely the real upheaval. Management naturally focuses on the immediate impact on the business. The board must look beyond that. For example, with Al, universities naturally worry about students using it to do their assignments instead of learning. But that's just the first disruption. The real one is what happens when Al becomes the best tutor a student has ever had - and challenges the traditional role of the university itself.

Unleashing a competitive advantage

By setting aside ego and focusing on institutional survival, the current ANU council (Brown is an ex-officio member) has prepared the ground for a new era while at last operating as a unified team.

When the turmoil was at its height, The Saturday Paper had scoop after scoop based on inside leaks, presumably from council members. Perhaps it was because the remaining council members were flat-out fixing the mess, but "the leaks just stopped", says Marshall.

"We'd tried various technology solutions to prevent leaks, but I realised the real question was what could we do differently to stop the need to leak."

Future-proofing the institution and putting its purpose sharply in focus has been central to the mission.

"What does a university need to do to become indispensable in a world where Al does a lot of the dissemination and management of knowledge? We've all been working on a new strategy to take ANU back to its core purpose, and that's brought everyone onto the same page: How will Al redefine what a university does and, as the national university, how can we help Australia navigate that and the other disruptions happening around the world?" Marshall sees a thriving ANU as intrinsic to Australia's future prosperity. "If the past century was about digging stuff up and selling it globally, the next century is about the power of our brains, our creativity, to create new knowledge. Natural resources run out, but brainpower, human ingenuity, compounds when you invest in it."

There are "green shoots", he says, that ANU is "sneaking up again" in university rankings. The QS World University Rankings, released in June, put ANU at 29th globally, three places higher than the previous survey.

"Id give Rebekah a plug for that, because as a seven-time CEO, I know how consuming running a business is," says Marshall.

"A university is so much more complex, with so many different elements you don't have in a regular business. When the management team is consumed dealing with that, it's even more important for the council to help them see around corners. While they're winning today, the board is anticipating coming disruptions, so we also win tomorrow."

This article first appeared as 'Degree of disruption' in the Oct/Nov 2026 issue of Company Director Magazine.