By Brooke Corkhill and Saffron Geyle
The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) is conducting an ongoing report investigating the Renew ANU plan, a cost-cutting initiative introduced under former ANU Vice-Chancellor Genevieve Bell, in October 2024. The initiative involved cutting a total of $250 million in costs for the university, including an approximated 650 jobs for university staff, as estimated by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU). These findings have not yet been tabled in Parliament by the ANAO, and a date for the tabling has not been set.
On 30 March, the ABC released a report on the ANAO’s investigation, stating an unreleased audit office draft listed that there was no clear evidence that the university’s initiative to cut jobs and courses was necessary. The draft report questioned the long-term sustainability of the ANU’s financial situation, but also concluded that the university was not in immediate financial crisis when Genevieve Bell announced Renew ANU.
Last night, Four Corners also aired the special Campus Chaos, investigating the sweeping restructures affecting universities across Australia, due to financial pressures. They interviewed economist and former ANU academic Richard Denniss, who told them he believed the university’s leadership manufactured a “fake financial crisis” for Renew ANU.
Included in the Four Corners report, Denniss discovered a contradicting discrepancy in the ANU’s claims of necessary cuts. The university claimed a deficit of $145.5 million, yet did not count key revenue sources. Their Annual Report in 2024 had a surplus of around $90 million.
“ANU are cooking the books. They are declaring that they have a financial crisis that their own audited accounts say is not the case. Their audited accounts say they made a large surplus last year and the year before that.”
Furthermore, the 2024 budget forecast, the basis of Renew ANU, was revealed to have overestimated the size of the 2024 deficit by more than $60 million. The NTEU ANU Branch President Millan Pintos-Lopez stated, “given what we now know about the true state of the books, there is no financial reason for job cuts”.
While the Australian universities that Four Corners investigated experience “financial crises,” the Vice-Chancellors are paid large salaries. Former Vice-Chancellor Genevieve Bell earned a $1.1 million salary at the ANU, in addition to the salary she was continuing to receive from the technology firm Intel. She also received a severance package in 2025 of more than $400,000. After a period of study leave she will return to the ANU as a distinguished professor at the School of Cybernetics, earning $498,712 a year. These million-dollar-salaries have been called into question, at a time when universities are in financial crisis and ANU staff were asked to not take an already scheduled 2.5 per cent pay rise.
These changes led to ANU staff overwhelmingly supporting a vote of no confidence in the leadership of Bell, as well as ANU Chancellor, Julie Bishop. After five of six college Deans demanded Bell’s resignation, she stepped down from her position as Vice-Chancellor. Bell lasted twenty months as the ANU Vice-Chancellor
Under the Renew ANU initiative, the university’s 60-year-old School of Music was at risk of being abolished, collapsing it into a new School of Creative and Cultural Practice. This would see the school facilitating music, visual arts, design, heritage and museum studies, art history and theory, and creative research students in one faculty. Under the new term of Interim Vice-Chancellor, Rebekah Brown, this cut was not implemented.
Former ANU Council member Dr Liz Allen also spoke to Four Corners about how she was excluded from a key Council meeting where Renew ANU was discussed.
“ANU was doing well, and then all of a sudden there was this catastrophic financial crisis that was put to council by ANU leaders, by ANU executives … that hit the panic button to extreme”.
An ANU spokesperson stated to Observer, that since “September last year ANU has ended involuntary redundancies under Renew ANU; strengthened internal governance arrangements, including plans to establish an Integrity Office to manage complaints; and reaffirmed its commitment to the School of Music”.
They also stated that until findings are tabled, “the University cannot comment on the report”.
“As Australia’s national university, our work attracts close public attention and that is entirely appropriate. ANU is currently consulting widely with staff, students and other stakeholders about the next University Strategy.”
“The strategy will be launched in August this year and will guide the University through to 2031.”
The university claims that financial stability remains a priority and “expenditure controls have helped stabilise the University’s position. ANU is targeting a balanced budget by the end of 2026. ANU has realised cost savings under Renew ANU, with the program now in its final stages and to be concluded as remaining implementation activities are finalised”.
“Despite recent challenges, the University’s academic performance remains strong. The University continues to perform at the highest levels nationally and internationally.”
NTEU National President Dr Alison Barnes commented that these issues represent mismanagement that “is emblematic of the deep governance crisis we are seeing right across the country. We need real reform to stop the conflicts of interest and cultural decay of our public universities”.
Observer will be following along with updates on the ANAO’s report. More to come.
Graphics by Laudine Cao
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