Speaker 1: I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven AM. One
Speaker 1: of Australia's most prestigious universities is now at the center
Speaker 1: of three investigations and could be about to face a fourth.
Speaker 1: Last year A and You Vice Chancellor Genevieve Bell resigned
Speaker 1: after pressure over a massive restructure and the hidden role
Speaker 1: consultants played in shaping it. Now two inquiries are looking
Speaker 1: at whether the change is meant to save two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty million dollars were ever justified. A separate investigation
Speaker 1: is looking into bullying allegations against former chancellor Julie Bishop,
Speaker 1: and Bella herself has been suspended from an ongoing role
Speaker 1: as Distinguished Professor, accused of serious misconduct. It comes as
Speaker 1: powerful firms of reshaping higher education. A recent four Corners
Speaker 1: investigation found Australian unis are spending roughly one point eight
Speaker 1: billion dollars a year on consultants and contractors. Today, we're
Speaker 1: bringing you episode from twenty twenty five. The senior reporter
Speaker 1: for the Saturday Paper, Rick Morton, examines how consultants came
Speaker 1: to shape Australian unis and what that's meant for higher education.
Speaker 1: It's Sunday, April nineteen. This episode first eve in June
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty five. Rick universities as a sector have
Speaker 1: been sounding the alarm for a long time. The government policy,
Speaker 1: including funding cauts and student caps, has been having a
Speaker 1: big impact on their ability to function. So can you
Speaker 1: give me some examples of how consultants fit into that?
Speaker 1: How are universities using them?
Speaker 2: So consultants appear to be coming in and great example
Speaker 2: of that is one I covered recently at a University
Speaker 2: of Technology Sydney where KPMG were brought in. But we're
Speaker 2: essentially told go and look at individual research output from
Speaker 2: individual researchers and produce a master list of those who
Speaker 2: are not contributing enough profit to the university, which, as
Speaker 2: it was put to me, would probably contravene the enterprise
Speaker 2: bargaining agreement at that university because you can't you can
Speaker 2: performance manage someone for not meeting expectations. You can't make
Speaker 2: redundancies based on performance. That's not how this is meant
Speaker 2: to work. And so the consultants, of course took a
Speaker 2: particularly corporate view across the board. They're looking at profit
Speaker 2: and loss, they're looking at ways to rationalize and centralized services.
Speaker 2: But the actual structure of the university is incredibly special
Speaker 2: for a reason. It's meant to be a kind of
Speaker 2: a distributed network of knowledge centers, faculties, people who are
Speaker 2: learned in their field, who contribute to the life of
Speaker 2: the university and who are cooperative in the way that
Speaker 2: university is run. And increasingly, particularly with consultants like the
Speaker 2: NOUS group, which is one that will come to in
Speaker 2: quite a bit of detail. The advice is centralize all
Speaker 2: of your functions and to the degree possible handicap what
Speaker 2: it is the faculties and the academic staff are able
Speaker 2: to do and the say they have over the future
Speaker 2: of this institution, which would make it a lot more
Speaker 2: like a corporation and a lot less like a university.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are a number of consultancy groups involved in
Speaker 1: all of this, But you did mention Nowscroup, which is
Speaker 1: a global consulting firm and they do a lot of
Speaker 1: work with the Australian National University. So what did you
Speaker 1: find out about the role they are playing there?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 2: This is fascinating and I particularly there it in on
Speaker 2: them because I think they've had the most astounding growth
Speaker 2: off the back of their participation in higher education advisory services.
Speaker 2: And of course this story was first being told through
Speaker 2: the Australian Financial Review. A former colleague of mind, Julie
Speaker 2: her who's a fantastic reporter, was looking at misgivings, I
Speaker 2: guess is one way of saying it. Early on within
Speaker 2: the tenure of the new vice chancellor there, Professor Genevieve
Speaker 2: Bell and her chancellor, Julie Bishop. Now Genevieve Bell had
Speaker 2: announce his kind of two hundred and fifty million dollar
Speaker 2: restructure at the a and U because they said that
Speaker 2: they were running out of money structure and they were
Speaker 2: going to be six hundred to something job losses. But
Speaker 2: what they didn't do is tell anyone that they were
Speaker 2: using the Nouse Group's advice or paying them for that advice.
Speaker 2: In fact, they were incredibly tricky with how they disclosed
Speaker 2: any mention at all that they were using external consultants
Speaker 2: to advise on this enormous restructure.
Speaker 1: How widespread is the use of consultants across the Australian
Speaker 1: university sector. I mean they're everywhere, they are literally everywhere.
Speaker 2: I mean KPMG was paid eight and a half million
Speaker 2: dollars for Business Advisory, which is consulting at the University
Speaker 2: of Melbourne. Deloitte was another one and a half grief
Speaker 2: of the university has paid now I think it was
Speaker 2: almost two and a half million over the last sixteen months.
Speaker 2: And then lots of boutique ones that are even like
Speaker 2: a tier below now, so they're absolutely everywhere. And the
Speaker 2: irony is that universities themselves offered have their own consulting output,
Speaker 2: but they won't use them because they're worried to push
Speaker 2: back from staff and letting their plans kind of leak
Speaker 2: out into the public. The way the system has been
Speaker 2: built up, there's so much money flashing around that to
Speaker 2: the extent that a firm wants to give you the
Speaker 2: tough advice, they're only prepared to do so if they
Speaker 2: think they can still keep getting work. I mean, that's
Speaker 2: just the sad reality is that you're not necessarily going
Speaker 2: to be told anything you don't want to hear.
Speaker 1: Coming up after the break, David Pocock takes on unibosses.
Speaker 2: Rick.
Speaker 1: Late last year, the A and U were brought in
Speaker 1: front of Center Estimates to ask about the real structures
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier, and David Pocock was trying to get
Speaker 1: to the bottom of how much the UNI had paid
Speaker 1: now Scroup for the very structure.
Speaker 3: Thank you question, Thank you chaan. Just finally, is it
Speaker 3: correct that you've engaged in our scroup and what work
Speaker 3: are they doing? Is it related to finding savings or
Speaker 3: what's the scope of that work.
Speaker 2: There was one example where the chief operating Officer, Jonathan Churchill,
Speaker 2: was asked, how much is this contract worth? Yeah, thank you,
Speaker 2: Soma sev. We have paid now I sort the fifty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: So far this year, okay, seven, fifty fifty to fifty yeah, okay, yeah, you're.
Speaker 2: Not with NUS. That's the question. Very easy to understand
Speaker 2: how much was his contract worth? And what he said
Speaker 2: was we have paid to date fifty thousand dollars to NUS.
Speaker 2: That wasn't the question, and there also wasn't correct as
Speaker 2: a standalone answer. And if he had been asked how
Speaker 2: much he'd been paid, because the invoices at that point
Speaker 2: were about four hundred and fifty thousand dollars to NOUS.
Speaker 2: Now we now know when he asked this question on
Speaker 2: November seven last year, that a contract for NOUS had
Speaker 2: been signed and set in motion. A month before, and
Speaker 2: that that contract was worth eight hundred and thirty seven
Speaker 2: thousand dollars. Genevieve Bell was also asked have you used
Speaker 2: NOUS to advise on the restructure, and the answer she
Speaker 2: gave was, I would argue deliberately obtuse.
Speaker 4: I initially engaged the now scroup a number of months ago, Senator,
Speaker 4: to help think about how to look at the role
Speaker 4: and the changing role of universities in a global landscape.
Speaker 4: I was interested in what were the ways that universities
Speaker 4: thought strategically and what was a global survey really And
Speaker 4: that's what.
Speaker 2: She said was I brought them in early on in
Speaker 2: my tenure when I got the VC job to advise
Speaker 2: on the university's position in relation to other universities and
Speaker 2: how we're tracking. Now, that makes it sound like that's
Speaker 2: not involved in the restructure. That's not true. And of
Speaker 2: course we now know subsequent to that fact that within
Speaker 2: seventeen days of the Vice Chancellor starting the job, she
Speaker 2: had authorized the pursuit of these consulting firms for enormous
Speaker 2: restructure at the A ANDU. When it was subsequently urge
Speaker 2: that David Pocock had been misled, he was furious, and
Speaker 2: he put out a statement in April this year essentially
Speaker 2: saying that it was appalling and that he takes this
Speaker 2: incredibly seriously. And the conclusion he reached was that he
Speaker 2: had been misled by these officials because they didn't want
Speaker 2: to answer the question. And of course after that there
Speaker 2: were also a bunch of questions on notice, which through
Speaker 2: the Parliamentary Estimate system, you can take a question on notice,
Speaker 2: you can take it away, you can use all your
Speaker 2: resources at your institution, your department, whatever it is, and
Speaker 2: answer the question properly and come back and tell the
Speaker 2: Senate the truth. And it is an offense to mislead
Speaker 2: the Senate. There were several questions on notice that printed
Speaker 2: outright mistruths about the use of now Consulting and about
Speaker 2: the value of those contracts. They had to be recalled
Speaker 2: and corrected. The question that remains is how did that happen?
Speaker 2: Who's signed off on those questions? I noticed responses. The
Speaker 2: fact that there has been a pattern of behavior here
Speaker 2: now has led people to ask even more questions that
Speaker 2: they might have otherwise been happy to accept. The answers
Speaker 2: to which is what are your motives behind this restructure?
Speaker 2: Why are you paying now and what are you doing
Speaker 2: with the advice that you're refusing to tell us about.
Speaker 1: So a lot of secrecy and uncertainty around us all this,
Speaker 1: But what we do know is that universities are spending
Speaker 1: a lot on consultants, which begs the question shouldn't university
Speaker 1: management people like the vice chancellor and the people on
Speaker 1: the university council have a sense of how to make
Speaker 1: savings or where to spend money, or how to structure
Speaker 1: their business. I mean, isn't that their job?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is their job and they should do it.
Speaker 2: We have a fundamental structural problem with universities and to
Speaker 2: some extent they won't be financially sustainable, while the government
Speaker 2: that funds and regulates them doesn't seem to care about
Speaker 2: their role in society. But vcs are paid somebody around
Speaker 2: a million dollars on average in Australia to do these
Speaker 2: jobs because we're told they demand an incredibly astute and
Speaker 2: sensitive skill set, which is to manage the academic output
Speaker 2: and the rankings and the quality of the institution with
Speaker 2: the business of running such a large organization. But university
Speaker 2: councils have even fewer oversight mechanisms than a corporate board.
Speaker 2: There are no shareholders to whom they're accountable. There is
Speaker 2: no publicly used ASX meeting for these council members the VC,
Speaker 2: particularly at university, the Australian National University, the VC can
Speaker 2: only lose their job if they resign or if the
Speaker 2: council recinds it.
Speaker 1: So, Rick, what impact do you think all this will
Speaker 1: have on the university sector, The reliance on consultancy firms,
Speaker 1: the lack of funding from federal government to universities. What
Speaker 1: does the future of the university sector look like at
Speaker 1: the moment.
Speaker 2: It's pretty grim and you know, staff were already overworked
Speaker 2: and overburdened, particularly academic and professional staff are trying to
Speaker 2: just keep the wheels turning on these places that have
Speaker 2: been gutted, and you know, they tend to get gutted
Speaker 2: every other four years. You know, there's always a restructure
Speaker 2: happening at a university at any given point in time.
Speaker 2: And of course university vcs didn't want to make these
Speaker 2: decisions on their own because they're so much political blowback
Speaker 2: within the organization, so they'd get these consultants in. But
Speaker 2: of course, now ever, I'm very cranky that they're using
Speaker 2: these consultants. So you've got Griffith University now just hiring
Speaker 2: the consultants as full time employees. You know, someone told
Speaker 2: me to look at the vice Chancellor's office at Griffith
Speaker 2: and there's two employees there who were hired directly from
Speaker 2: NAUS who are principal consultants who are now directing transformation
Speaker 2: within the vice Chancellor's office. So it's pretty grim. I mean,
Speaker 2: what does it look like in the future. We just
Speaker 2: keep cutting And now some themselves a quite seplicity in
Speaker 2: their report where they interviewed the chief operating officers. They
Speaker 2: literally said that the academy's up for grats. That's how
Speaker 2: they phrased it's up for grats, which tells you everything
Speaker 2: you need to know I think about the way they
Speaker 2: see this.
Speaker 1: Rick, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2: Thanks, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Seven am. We'll be back tomorrow with an episode on
Speaker 1: the Around Wall and how it's created not just a
Speaker 1: humanitarian and economic crisis, but an environmental catastrophe as well.
Speaker 5: What happened was that Israel struck for fuel depots and
Speaker 5: refineries and Tehran, resulting in massive fires, sending plumes of
Speaker 5: toxic smoke over the city, which led to these horrifying
Speaker 5: scenes of black rain, effectively acid rain on steroids, you
Speaker 5: know as the oil mixed with a lot of the
Speaker 5: FOD that comes from burning oil, especially sulfur and nitrous oxide,
Speaker 5: but all these other really nasty heavy metals, other combustion products.
Speaker 5: An alphabet soup of toxins.
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel Giants, Thanks for listening.