By Sarah McCrea
Before she was Chancellor of the ANU, Julie Bishop was a different type of leader: a prominent politician and Deputy Leader of the federal Liberal Party. After quitting politics in 2018, Bishop was appointed Chancellor of the ANU in 2019, beginning her term the following year. She was reappointed for a second term in 2023, with the term coming to an end in December of this year.
In 2027, the ANU may have a new Chancellor. If this is the case, will the ANU take the same direction it’s been taking since…forever? Bishop’s appointment as a well-known politician may seem out-of-place, but really, it’s a continuation of a long-standing trend. Out of the ANU’s five most recent Chancellors, four are former politicians.
What actually is the role of the Chancellor?
The roles of the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor are distinctly different. The ANU Council Charter outlines the Vice-Chancellor’s responsibilities, which include monitoring and reporting on the performance of the ANU, determining university policy, and making financial and expenditure-based decisions.
The Australian National University Act 1991(Cwth) sets out that the Council appoints the Chancellor. The specific role is described not by the Act, but by the ANU Council Charter. The Chancellor’s job is to lead the Council, which includes chairing meetings, holding discussions with Council members, and ensuring the Council abides by the Charter. The Chancellor also represents the university to the public, specifically to “the University community, government, business, [and] civil society.” With politicians representing their constituents on a day-to-day basis, it’s no surprise former politicians are prominent candidates for the role of Chancellor.
Appointing former politicians as Chancellors is not unique to the ANU. Oxford University, as an example, has disproportionately hired politicians for the role since the end of the Middle Ages. From 1782 to 1986, all but one Oxford Chancellor was a previous Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The Oxford Student describes the rationale of such appointments as underscoring “the chancellor’s role as a bridge between academia and state power, often favoring figures with establishment credentials over purely scholarly ones”. They add “chancellors have occasionally influenced policy through external lobbying” and that the role is an “ambassadorial” one.
The history of politicians-turned-Chancellors at the ANU
The eighth Prime Minister of Australia, Stanley Bruce, was also the first Chancellor of the ANU. Aside from his time as a politician, he acted as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and served in the League of Nations. In the ceremony in which Bruce was installed as Chancellor, one of the speakers referenced his “career of remarkable public service in both domestic and international affairs”.
Liberal Senator Peter Baume held several ministerial portfolios, including education, before becoming ANU Chancellor in 1994. Vice-Chancellor at the time, Deane Terrell, reported Baume would offer “the strengths have characterised everything he has done in his academic and public careers”, including his public career as a politician.
Kim Beazley (jr) had a short-lived term as Chancellor at the ANU from 2008 to 2009. He acted as a leader of the opposition in the federal Labor party and also had experience as a Minister for Education. Vice-Chancellor Ian Chubb justified the decision to appoint Beazley saying he was “very well connected in the political, bureaucratic and business world”.
“A lot of the things that you need to add value to the university through a job like that are things that he can bring”, Chubb stated.
Gareth Evans, Chancellor of the ANU from 2010 to 2019, was a federal Labor politician for over two decades. He was a prominent figure in the Hawke and Keating Labor governments in the 1980s and 1990s, serving multiple roles including Attorney General and Minister for Foreign Affairs. When he was appointed Chancellor, Chubb, Vice-Chancellor at the time, commented on Evans’ placement, saying his “national and international standing makes him a perfect fit for ANU”.
We finally get to our current Chancellor, yet another former federal politician and former Minister for Foreign Affairs: Julie Bishop. Within a year, Bishop went from being Deputy Leader of the Federal Liberal Party, to quitting politics, to being announced as the next Chancellor of the ANU. She was appointed to her position the following year, in 2020.
The Pro-Chancellor at the time, Naomi Flutter, stated she was confident Bishop “will have a compelling and effective advocate for our university, including with the Australian Government”. Bishop remarked “ANU’s strong links globally, and in our region, make it one of Australia’s most important institutions, and I look forward to working with it as we continue to support and further our national interest”.
This mindset is how Bishop represented the expenditure on her now-closed Perth office. In 2025 she told the Senate “there was great enthusiasm” about the ANU having “a base in the Indian Ocean city of Perth”. She referenced “the connections that Western Australia as a state has with China, India, and the Indian Ocean”. The ANU’s ‘global engagement and international strategy’ draws back to the “civil society relations” aspect of the Chancellor’s roles.
What does this mean?
From the roles these politicians played and the remarks made upon their appointments to Chancellor, there’s a clear pattern. The politicians who became ANU Chancellors held national prestige, often as former Cabinet ministers and party leaders who held connections with policy-makers. They had strong international ties, such as having been former Foreign Ministers or High Commissioners. They may have even wanted to utilise the international connections of Western Australia via interstate offices.
It all circles back to the purpose of the Chancellor: what does the ANU want from the highest-ranking official in the university? Is it an “ambassadorial” role, as The Oxford Student describes? With last year’s Renew ANU initiative causing dissatisfaction across campus for staff and students, should the role of Chancellor expand beyond global connections and political lobbying as the context of the ANU changes? In the case that Bishop leaves the ANU at the end of her term, her replacement may reveal what direction the university is looking to head in.
More to come.
Graphics by Eve-Lily Kelly
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