The council must meet urgently, and extend an invitation to all staff and students to observe proceedings. At such a meeting, the council should address not only the immediate reforms necessary to fix their own body, but also strengthen the very institutions that brought us to this point. Funding for student organisations cannot be controlled by the very institution that they seek to hold accountable. Staff cannot organise to protect their ability to teach when they lack certainty of employment. Council has the power to change not only the immediate composition of its own body; it can change the very landscape of ANU for years or even decades to come.

In 1974, more than a hundred students occupied the ANU Chancellery building to demand student representation on council. The then-chancellor, H. C. "Nugget" Coombs, responded by saying he preferred "activism, even if impolite, over apathy." How lacking such a presence of mind has been these last few years, yet how different the ANU would be if his outlook had prevailed in its most recent leadership.

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#ANU #AusPol #Governance

As the community-led ANU Governance Project raised in its final report, there are many crucial reforms ANU must undertake to avoid repeating past mistakes. Recommendations such as a representative university senate, directly electing chancellors, and elected representatives comprising a permanent majority on council are smart and suitable.

But what my time on council with Bishop taught me was that the failures of the cults of personality that abound so recklessly across our universities' boardrooms are systemic. A democratic university would not produce a better outcome because the calibre of elected representative is necessarily higher than that of a ministerial appointment. Rather, democracy understands success not as a personal undertaking, but a process of accountability.

A democracy is not merely an election of representatives. It includes and requires the institutions that create the social norms of healthy civic engagement. Australian national democracy cannot function without free media, a right to freedom of association, and public access to parliamentary debates. It is institutions of this nature that remain the fundamental blind spot in discussions about our universities. Our intuitive grasp of the necessary building blocks of democracy can evaporate when we attempt to apply such considerations to a university.

The ANU has lively student media publications, along with a student union that represents every student. Yet student media and representative organisations are funded almost entirely by the university itself, which could defund them at any moment through their complete control over student-services fees. The staff union showed immense courage in challenging Renew ANU, yet their power remains hampered by the mass casualisation of tertiary education, leaving staff in permanently precarious positions.

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#ANU #AusPol #Governance

During my tenure, Bishop's leadership style can only be described as dictatorial, an approach enabled by the appointees. Requests to meet for longer, more regularly, and to spend more time on particular agenda items (usually originating from the elected representatives on council) were consistently rejected, or more tellingly, simply ignored.

Bishop would repeatedly rush through agendas, sometimes citing impending plane flights as a motivator for brushing aside members' fair concerns. More explicitly, I was told on multiple occasions by non-elected council members how "lucky" I was that council did not exclude student voices entirely, and that I should always keep in mind how precarious my position was on the council. There were repeated references to other university governing bodies that supposedly, as I was told, instituted practices to exclude elected student representatives from substantial discussion and decisions.

It is easy to think of the ANU governance crisis as one of personalities and individuals, but as always, it is structures and systems that create our greatest failures. Despite our many political differences, the ministerial appointees were undoubtedly intelligent and capable high-achievers in their respective fields.

So where did it all go wrong? How did a room of experienced operators proceed to alienate an entire community and bring regulatory wrath upon themselves? There was no shortage of feedback; plenty of voices were in the room telling the appointees at the other end of the table that there was a problem.

Many appointed members repeatedly expressed their disdain for community perspectives; they believed that students and staff were too close to their communities to represent ANU's interests appropriately and with due diligence. It is this disdain that underpins the gap between the obvious capability of many appointees and the abject governance failure we've seen play out so publicly.

With only nine remaining council members currently serving, a democratic majority now holds the balance of power; the time has come for a bold statement. This historic five-member bloc comprises two academic and one professional staff representative, alongside a pair of student undergraduate and postgraduate representatives. Current legislation empowers this group to call an out-of-session council meeting, to constitute a valid quorum for that meeting, and to pass most motions by a simple majority of those present.

The currently elected representatives of council have an opportunity, even obligation, to call such a meeting to assure the community that the crisis will subside. This meeting should be held publicly, allowing the community an opportunity to observe a deliberation on the democratisation of their university.

2/n

#ANU #AusPol #Governance