October 1, 2025 • 15 mins
Rick Morton was writing about the restructures happening at several universities earlier this year when documents from the University of Technology Sydney caught his eye.
UTS had hired KPMG to help it save $100 million through a restructure. That restructure has now led to the announcement of 400 job losses, with the entire School of Education gone.
Rick noticed that UTS had asked KPMG to provide a spreadsheet ranking researchers by how much money they were bringing in, which raised the questions – were they using this to inform their restructure? And if they were, what does that say about how Australian universities are grappling with the pressure to be profitable at a time when research and learning is under threat?
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Guest: Journalist Rick Morton
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, So, Rick, a spreadsheet might not usually be the
most exciting place to start a story necessarily, but this
spreadsheet is different.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
It was so red.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Hot that there were many people who.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Denied that it even existed for months.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
So tell me about the spreadsheet, what is in it
and when did you first hear about it?
Speaker 3 (00:20):
First of all, Ruby, how dare you?
Speaker 4 (00:21):
Spreadsheets are very exciting in my line of work, but
particularly this one.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Rick Morton was writing about the crisis at Australian universities
earlier this year when some documents from the University of
Technology Sydney caught his eye. Uts said, hired the big
consulting firm KPMG to help them save one hundred million
dollars through a restructure, and.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
It's a restructure we've now just seen start. They announced
eleven hundred subjects will be axed, the entire School of
Education is gone, and one hundred and sixty full time
equivalent jobs in academic workforce are gone, and there's about
to be two hundred and forty more across professional staff.
So this is a significant kind of swinging cut across
the university to save one hundred million dollars a year.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
As he read through the documents, he noticed there was
a request from UTS asking KPMG to create a master
Excel spreadsheet, one that ranked researchers by how much money
they were bringing in.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
Now that's interesting to me because you can't make someone
redundant purely based on performance. If they've got a performance
issue such as not researching enough for bringing in enough money,
that has to be dealt with under a separate part
of the EBA. So why would UTS be asking for
this breakdown from KPMG in a redundancy drive.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
That question sent Rick on a hunt to find out
was this list real, and what he found reveals a
lot about the way Australian universities are grappling with the
pressure to be profitable at a time when research and
learning is under threat. I'm Ruby Jones, and you listening
to seven AM Today journalist Rick Morton on UTS, KPMG and.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
The secret Spreadsheet.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
It's Thursday October two. Okay, so you hear about this spreadsheet.
Clearly there are questions about what it is, how it's
being used, and whether it's allowed to be used in
that way. So tell me a bit more about how
you go about finding out more about it.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
And how the university responds.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
It's a great question because you know, they could have
explained this away. I wouldn't have believed the explanation potentially,
but they could have said, look, we asked for it
as an input, but we weren't using it to make
any decisions.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
We've got all this other work going on.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
But what they ended up doing was it scenes from
the outside trying to hide the fact that this spreadsheet
was even handed over to the university. And that's when
my spider sense as a journalist starts to go off.
People were trying to get access to this thing. There
was mentioned in all of these work orders. There were
under Fredmin Information laws in New South Wales called Keeper
(03:08):
people were putting in requests for access to the contracts,
the work orders, the status reports, and in every one
of these there is reference to this master Excel spreadsheet.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Which UTS has asked for.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
And in the March contract signed by the Vice Chancellor
this year, Andrew Parfitt not only said they'd asked for it,
but that they'd completed it and so where is this
thing right? And so fys get put in. There's one
from the National Tertiary Education Union branch officials as another
anonymous person who submits a keeper request and the FYS
(03:41):
come back and there is no documentation. They say that
we can't find this spreadsheet. Yes, it was asked for
early on, but it never eventuated because the work was discontinued.
People say, this doesn't make any sense, so they're write
back clarifying emails to the head of Corporate Information at
the University of Technology, Sydney, who writes back, I can advise, however,
that this master spreadsheetem quoting did not eventuate and was
(04:04):
no longer required as an output of the OSI what
they call the Operational Sustainability Initiative, that's.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
The restructure, And I mean, what do we know about that.
Does the spreadsheet exist?
Speaker 3 (04:17):
It does?
Speaker 4 (04:18):
It does, but only we only know this because people
much smarter than me kept going back to the university saying,
hang on a second, this doesn't make any sense because
in the workhorder, not only do they say that this
thing is requested, but there are clear status updates from
KPMG that explain that the work has been discussed with
the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Research, Professor Katherine McGrath, and
(04:41):
that the analysis will be prepared.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
You know.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
In the contract signed by Parthad it says activity one
point one validate diagnostic analysis was shown as completed before
Christmas twenty twenty four, So what's going on here? And
so people kept submitting more keeper requests. There was an
internal review of the one that was put in by
the Tertiary union and the barrister hired by a UTS
to conduct that internal review was himself misled about the
(05:09):
existence of this spreadsheet.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Right, tell me more about that. So the university hired
this someone to look into their own response to these
essentially freedom of information requests and tell me about what
they told the barrister.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Yeah, So the barrister can only report and they're from
Wentworth Chambers, so they're an independent legal expert. They can
only report and find what they're told by the university
and the university. This barrister sets out a bunch of questions,
essentially saying this is what has been asked for. These
are the contentions an issue for this internal review? Can
you give me the detail of them? And one of
those questions is was there a spreadsheet? And they say no,
(05:46):
there was no spreadsheet. And the barrister in the internal
review found that there was no excess spreadsheet, and again
people came back and said, we don't believe this, and
it's only because of this kind of you know, months
of pushing that suddenly low and behold the university finds.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
The spreadsheet.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Coming up.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
What this saga says about the state of Australia's universities. Okay,
so they did not reveal the existence of the spreadsheet
to Freedom of Information requests. They didn't tell the barrister
(06:30):
they hired about the spreadsheet. So the university, I mean,
for starters, are they breaking the law here by not
revealing information they potentially should to an FOI request?
Speaker 4 (06:42):
By their own admission, they told the barrister conducting the
internal review that if this document existed then absolutely it
should have been handed over under the Geeper law, the
access to information public access law in New South Wales.
And also accidentally not supplying it is not an excuse.
You have to do a proper thorough search for these
docums and it's when they're requested. Now, how hard could
(07:02):
it have been to find this spreadsheet? Well, as it
turns out, not very hard at all, because there is
an email with it to the Deputy Vice Chancellor Research
Professor Catherine McGrath at her request discussing the breakdown or
the research output by staff name, staff id, staff, position,
(07:23):
category of research, category of employment. It's all there and
we know that the DVCR, the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Research,
was the senior person responsible for the Research Priority and
Investment section of the KPMG restructure, So that would have
been the first person you go to and go, hey,
(07:44):
you know that whole section of work that we paid for,
that was listed in the work order, that was listed
in the status updates that said there was an ex salesprea.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Sheeet did you get it? And we now know that
she did because she asked for it.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
How do we know that?
Speaker 4 (07:57):
So in October last year there was an all day
leadership retreat, but it was held at uts On campus,
so I don't know how much of a retreat it was,
but all the senior leaders were there, the vice Chancellor,
the Deeputy Vice Chancellor Research, the vice Chancellor's chief of staff.
They were all doing a hands on. There was a
huge presentation from KPMG. Part of that presentation was about
the Research Priority and Investment part of their work, which
(08:19):
is Katherine McGrath's business and during that day she emails
a KPMG partner.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
We don't know the name because all the KPMG names are.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
Redacted and says hi, I assume you have a list
of all the individuals from level A through level E
that are in the bottom twenty five percent or have
no research er. It's kind of like research income or
research outputs McGrath wrote, And that was on seventeenth of October.
Would you be able to send that to me so
I can get a sense of this now. The KPMG
(08:47):
people were doing the retreat that day, but they respond
the following week on the Monday. We hope that you
were well and that you had a lovely weekend.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
How nice. Twenty first of October.
Speaker 4 (08:55):
For the initial diagnostic analysis work, we focused on identifying
level D and E reason searches only who are in
the bottom twenty fifth quartol for research income and publications,
and the list of level DN E researches with zero
income and or zero publication across the same three year period.
Just for explanation, DNA are kind of like the most
highly paid people at a university. So we're talking I
(09:18):
think assistant or associate professors and professors DN and so
if you're going to cut these people in a redundancy program,
you would save the most amount of money. So it's
quite significant in that sense. And so that's how they
set it out in the email. And then they attached
to that email the spreadsheet which was password protected and
it contained I counted them myself, eighteen pages of individual
(09:40):
staff names for the Deputy Vice Chancellor Research.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Okay, so now that we know that it does exist
and that's what's in it, what has the university said
about why they have it and why they didn't reveal
it for so long.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
It's a question we still don't have a proper answer to.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
But suddenly, when they are forced to hand it over,
after you know, multiple requests from people, they insert a
little context paragraph that says, oh, okay, yeah, look here
is the spreadsheet. What happened was that it was part
of a portion of work that was discontinued. It was
discontinued in May this year and it was never finalized,
(10:17):
but there was this spreadsheet that went to early on
the Deputy Vice Chancellor Research and she decided to intervene.
Now I asked them what intervene means? In this context.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
It's weird. It's weird.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
They kind of give you three options and say pick one.
So they said, UTS has previously responded tokeeeper and information
requests relating to KPMG documents.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Yeah, we know.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
However, those responses did not include the list that has
now been provided via this more recent keeper request. Yep,
this may have been this is fun this part. This
may have been due to search parameters being too broad,
inaccurate assessment of the documents, or genuine human error. Do
(11:01):
they tell us which one they think it is? No,
so take your pick. They say, UTS takes its keep
oblications very seriously. We can absolutely rule out any perceived
or actual conflicts of interest.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Well, what happened?
Speaker 4 (11:14):
Was it in an accurate assessment of documents? And if so,
who did the inaccurate assessment? Because we all know what
a spreadsheet looks like, we all know what was being
asked for.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Was a genuine human error? Who made the error?
Speaker 4 (11:25):
I asked them if they're going to retract the internal
review the findings of the internal review, and they did
not answer that question. So, you know, I don't know
what happened. We're not any closer to the truth. On
this front, but I think it does. It's a problem,
right because it then speaks to this border issue of well,
how transparent are the decisions being made? Not just in
(11:46):
this restructure, but as we know from the governance inquiries
in the universities across the country, there is a transparency
problem across the entire sector. And this is a great
case study in how easily those two insparency issues can arise.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
So the university has now admitted that the spreadsheet exists,
but they have said they didn't rely on it in
making decisions. And this is one story. This is one university,
it's one spreadsheet, but it does speak to these broader issues,
as you say, of governance in the sector. So what
does it tell you about how universities are grappling with
(12:24):
the pressure to be profitable versus their role, their public
role as you say, as places of research and learning.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Yeah, it's not good.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
I mean the parliamentary the Senate inquiry into governance Quality
of governance at Australian Higher Education Institutions was the interim
report was released just you know, a week and a
half two weeks ago now, and in that there are
so many examples, you know, there's an example from I
think the NTEU branch at Monash University, where apparently the
university commissioned this entire governance review of the council never
(12:55):
told staff or students that it was happening. The governance
review was apparently finished handed to the council, has never
been made public.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
What did it find? What say do people have in
how these institutions are run.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
We know more than we should now about what happened
at Australian National University. The vice Chancellor's resigned, the chancellor's
really bishop is still there. But there is a story
at every university for this issue. And partly that is
the fault of government regulation but also government funding.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
And so universities have been brought to this.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
Position of weakness by our own oversight and then they've
panicked in the face of these terrible policies. Rightly so, well,
the policy is bad, but they shouldn't panic. And the
panic is now going to harm these institutions by gutting them.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Some would say you're reparably for years to come.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Well, Rick, thank you for your time.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
I'm always happy to help Ruby, thank you.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
And Rick Morton's recent book Meanstreak about the Coalition's deadly
Robodette scheme was one of six winners of this year's
Prime Minister's Literary Award, taking the award for nonfiction. So
we just wanted to say congratulations from all of us
at seven am. Also in the news today, a former
(14:23):
Human Rights commissioner and one of Australia's most experienced international
legal experts is urging Australia to cut military ties with Israel,
warning the government risks being complicit in genocide if it
fails to act. Chris Sadoti, one of three commissioners selected
by the Human Rights Council which found that Israel's war
crimes in Gaza constituted genocide, has addressed the National Press Club.
(14:45):
He says Camber needs to apply more comprehensive sanctions on
Israel and ensure no Australian made parts were going into
Israeli warplanes. And Prime Minister Anthony Abernezi has welcomed the
Trump Administration's proposed.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Peace plan for Gaza.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
The US President announced the plan alongside the Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, which involves Gaza being governed
by a transitional committee headed by Donald Trump and includes
a former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The plan has
received criticism, including from the Australian Greens, who say it
removes the right of Palestinians to determine their own future.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. Thanks for listening.
Okay, So, Rick, a spreadsheet might not usually be the
most exciting place to start a story necessarily, but this
spreadsheet is different.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
It was so red.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Hot that there were many people who.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Denied that it even existed for months.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
So tell me about the spreadsheet, what is in it
and when did you first hear about it?
Speaker 3 (00:20):
First of all, Ruby, how dare you?
Speaker 4 (00:21):
Spreadsheets are very exciting in my line of work, but
particularly this one.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Rick Morton was writing about the crisis at Australian universities
earlier this year when some documents from the University of
Technology Sydney caught his eye. Uts said, hired the big
consulting firm KPMG to help them save one hundred million
dollars through a restructure, and.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
It's a restructure we've now just seen start. They announced
eleven hundred subjects will be axed, the entire School of
Education is gone, and one hundred and sixty full time
equivalent jobs in academic workforce are gone, and there's about
to be two hundred and forty more across professional staff.
So this is a significant kind of swinging cut across
the university to save one hundred million dollars a year.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
As he read through the documents, he noticed there was
a request from UTS asking KPMG to create a master
Excel spreadsheet, one that ranked researchers by how much money
they were bringing in.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
Now that's interesting to me because you can't make someone
redundant purely based on performance. If they've got a performance
issue such as not researching enough for bringing in enough money,
that has to be dealt with under a separate part
of the EBA. So why would UTS be asking for
this breakdown from KPMG in a redundancy drive.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
That question sent Rick on a hunt to find out
was this list real, and what he found reveals a
lot about the way Australian universities are grappling with the
pressure to be profitable at a time when research and
learning is under threat. I'm Ruby Jones, and you listening
to seven AM Today journalist Rick Morton on UTS, KPMG and.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
The secret Spreadsheet.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
It's Thursday October two. Okay, so you hear about this spreadsheet.
Clearly there are questions about what it is, how it's
being used, and whether it's allowed to be used in
that way. So tell me a bit more about how
you go about finding out more about it.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
And how the university responds.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
It's a great question because you know, they could have
explained this away. I wouldn't have believed the explanation potentially,
but they could have said, look, we asked for it
as an input, but we weren't using it to make
any decisions.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
We've got all this other work going on.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
But what they ended up doing was it scenes from
the outside trying to hide the fact that this spreadsheet
was even handed over to the university. And that's when
my spider sense as a journalist starts to go off.
People were trying to get access to this thing. There
was mentioned in all of these work orders. There were
under Fredmin Information laws in New South Wales called Keeper
(03:08):
people were putting in requests for access to the contracts,
the work orders, the status reports, and in every one
of these there is reference to this master Excel spreadsheet.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Which UTS has asked for.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
And in the March contract signed by the Vice Chancellor
this year, Andrew Parfitt not only said they'd asked for it,
but that they'd completed it and so where is this
thing right? And so fys get put in. There's one
from the National Tertiary Education Union branch officials as another
anonymous person who submits a keeper request and the FYS
(03:41):
come back and there is no documentation. They say that
we can't find this spreadsheet. Yes, it was asked for
early on, but it never eventuated because the work was discontinued.
People say, this doesn't make any sense, so they're write
back clarifying emails to the head of Corporate Information at
the University of Technology, Sydney, who writes back, I can advise, however,
that this master spreadsheetem quoting did not eventuate and was
(04:04):
no longer required as an output of the OSI what
they call the Operational Sustainability Initiative, that's.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
The restructure, And I mean, what do we know about that.
Does the spreadsheet exist?
Speaker 3 (04:17):
It does?
Speaker 4 (04:18):
It does, but only we only know this because people
much smarter than me kept going back to the university saying,
hang on a second, this doesn't make any sense because
in the workhorder, not only do they say that this
thing is requested, but there are clear status updates from
KPMG that explain that the work has been discussed with
the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Research, Professor Katherine McGrath, and
(04:41):
that the analysis will be prepared.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
You know.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
In the contract signed by Parthad it says activity one
point one validate diagnostic analysis was shown as completed before
Christmas twenty twenty four, So what's going on here? And
so people kept submitting more keeper requests. There was an
internal review of the one that was put in by
the Tertiary union and the barrister hired by a UTS
to conduct that internal review was himself misled about the
(05:09):
existence of this spreadsheet.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Right, tell me more about that. So the university hired
this someone to look into their own response to these
essentially freedom of information requests and tell me about what
they told the barrister.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Yeah, So the barrister can only report and they're from
Wentworth Chambers, so they're an independent legal expert. They can
only report and find what they're told by the university
and the university. This barrister sets out a bunch of questions,
essentially saying this is what has been asked for. These
are the contentions an issue for this internal review? Can
you give me the detail of them? And one of
those questions is was there a spreadsheet? And they say no,
(05:46):
there was no spreadsheet. And the barrister in the internal
review found that there was no excess spreadsheet, and again
people came back and said, we don't believe this, and
it's only because of this kind of you know, months
of pushing that suddenly low and behold the university finds.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
The spreadsheet.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Coming up.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
What this saga says about the state of Australia's universities. Okay,
so they did not reveal the existence of the spreadsheet
to Freedom of Information requests. They didn't tell the barrister
(06:30):
they hired about the spreadsheet. So the university, I mean,
for starters, are they breaking the law here by not
revealing information they potentially should to an FOI request?
Speaker 4 (06:42):
By their own admission, they told the barrister conducting the
internal review that if this document existed then absolutely it
should have been handed over under the Geeper law, the
access to information public access law in New South Wales.
And also accidentally not supplying it is not an excuse.
You have to do a proper thorough search for these
docums and it's when they're requested. Now, how hard could
(07:02):
it have been to find this spreadsheet? Well, as it
turns out, not very hard at all, because there is
an email with it to the Deputy Vice Chancellor Research
Professor Catherine McGrath at her request discussing the breakdown or
the research output by staff name, staff id, staff, position,
(07:23):
category of research, category of employment. It's all there and
we know that the DVCR, the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Research,
was the senior person responsible for the Research Priority and
Investment section of the KPMG restructure, So that would have
been the first person you go to and go, hey,
(07:44):
you know that whole section of work that we paid for,
that was listed in the work order, that was listed
in the status updates that said there was an ex salesprea.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Sheeet did you get it? And we now know that
she did because she asked for it.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
How do we know that?
Speaker 4 (07:57):
So in October last year there was an all day
leadership retreat, but it was held at uts On campus,
so I don't know how much of a retreat it was,
but all the senior leaders were there, the vice Chancellor,
the Deeputy Vice Chancellor Research, the vice Chancellor's chief of staff.
They were all doing a hands on. There was a
huge presentation from KPMG. Part of that presentation was about
the Research Priority and Investment part of their work, which
(08:19):
is Katherine McGrath's business and during that day she emails
a KPMG partner.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
We don't know the name because all the KPMG names are.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
Redacted and says hi, I assume you have a list
of all the individuals from level A through level E
that are in the bottom twenty five percent or have
no research er. It's kind of like research income or
research outputs McGrath wrote, And that was on seventeenth of October.
Would you be able to send that to me so
I can get a sense of this now. The KPMG
(08:47):
people were doing the retreat that day, but they respond
the following week on the Monday. We hope that you
were well and that you had a lovely weekend.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
How nice. Twenty first of October.
Speaker 4 (08:55):
For the initial diagnostic analysis work, we focused on identifying
level D and E reason searches only who are in
the bottom twenty fifth quartol for research income and publications,
and the list of level DN E researches with zero
income and or zero publication across the same three year period.
Just for explanation, DNA are kind of like the most
highly paid people at a university. So we're talking I
(09:18):
think assistant or associate professors and professors DN and so
if you're going to cut these people in a redundancy program,
you would save the most amount of money. So it's
quite significant in that sense. And so that's how they
set it out in the email. And then they attached
to that email the spreadsheet which was password protected and
it contained I counted them myself, eighteen pages of individual
(09:40):
staff names for the Deputy Vice Chancellor Research.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Okay, so now that we know that it does exist
and that's what's in it, what has the university said
about why they have it and why they didn't reveal
it for so long.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
It's a question we still don't have a proper answer to.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
But suddenly, when they are forced to hand it over,
after you know, multiple requests from people, they insert a
little context paragraph that says, oh, okay, yeah, look here
is the spreadsheet. What happened was that it was part
of a portion of work that was discontinued. It was
discontinued in May this year and it was never finalized,
(10:17):
but there was this spreadsheet that went to early on
the Deputy Vice Chancellor Research and she decided to intervene.
Now I asked them what intervene means? In this context.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
It's weird. It's weird.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
They kind of give you three options and say pick one.
So they said, UTS has previously responded tokeeeper and information
requests relating to KPMG documents.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Yeah, we know.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
However, those responses did not include the list that has
now been provided via this more recent keeper request. Yep,
this may have been this is fun this part. This
may have been due to search parameters being too broad,
inaccurate assessment of the documents, or genuine human error. Do
(11:01):
they tell us which one they think it is? No,
so take your pick. They say, UTS takes its keep
oblications very seriously. We can absolutely rule out any perceived
or actual conflicts of interest.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Well, what happened?
Speaker 4 (11:14):
Was it in an accurate assessment of documents? And if so,
who did the inaccurate assessment? Because we all know what
a spreadsheet looks like, we all know what was being
asked for.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Was a genuine human error? Who made the error?
Speaker 4 (11:25):
I asked them if they're going to retract the internal
review the findings of the internal review, and they did
not answer that question. So, you know, I don't know
what happened. We're not any closer to the truth. On
this front, but I think it does. It's a problem,
right because it then speaks to this border issue of well,
how transparent are the decisions being made? Not just in
(11:46):
this restructure, but as we know from the governance inquiries
in the universities across the country, there is a transparency
problem across the entire sector. And this is a great
case study in how easily those two insparency issues can arise.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
So the university has now admitted that the spreadsheet exists,
but they have said they didn't rely on it in
making decisions. And this is one story. This is one university,
it's one spreadsheet, but it does speak to these broader issues,
as you say, of governance in the sector. So what
does it tell you about how universities are grappling with
(12:24):
the pressure to be profitable versus their role, their public
role as you say, as places of research and learning.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Yeah, it's not good.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
I mean the parliamentary the Senate inquiry into governance Quality
of governance at Australian Higher Education Institutions was the interim
report was released just you know, a week and a
half two weeks ago now, and in that there are
so many examples, you know, there's an example from I
think the NTEU branch at Monash University, where apparently the
university commissioned this entire governance review of the council never
(12:55):
told staff or students that it was happening. The governance
review was apparently finished handed to the council, has never
been made public.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
What did it find? What say do people have in
how these institutions are run.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
We know more than we should now about what happened
at Australian National University. The vice Chancellor's resigned, the chancellor's
really bishop is still there. But there is a story
at every university for this issue. And partly that is
the fault of government regulation but also government funding.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
And so universities have been brought to this.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
Position of weakness by our own oversight and then they've
panicked in the face of these terrible policies. Rightly so, well,
the policy is bad, but they shouldn't panic. And the
panic is now going to harm these institutions by gutting them.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Some would say you're reparably for years to come.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Well, Rick, thank you for your time.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
I'm always happy to help Ruby, thank you.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
And Rick Morton's recent book Meanstreak about the Coalition's deadly
Robodette scheme was one of six winners of this year's
Prime Minister's Literary Award, taking the award for nonfiction. So
we just wanted to say congratulations from all of us
at seven am. Also in the news today, a former
(14:23):
Human Rights commissioner and one of Australia's most experienced international
legal experts is urging Australia to cut military ties with Israel,
warning the government risks being complicit in genocide if it
fails to act. Chris Sadoti, one of three commissioners selected
by the Human Rights Council which found that Israel's war
crimes in Gaza constituted genocide, has addressed the National Press Club.
(14:45):
He says Camber needs to apply more comprehensive sanctions on
Israel and ensure no Australian made parts were going into
Israeli warplanes. And Prime Minister Anthony Abernezi has welcomed the
Trump Administration's proposed.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Peace plan for Gaza.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
The US President announced the plan alongside the Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, which involves Gaza being governed
by a transitional committee headed by Donald Trump and includes
a former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The plan has
received criticism, including from the Australian Greens, who say it
removes the right of Palestinians to determine their own future.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. Thanks for listening.
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