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When University of Wollongong leaders discussed the creation of a new job to oversee the office of the vice chancellor, one staff member seemed confident they would get the $389,000-a-year gig.
“That will be me,” chief governance officer Alyssa White allegedly told head of people and culture Alison Bourke on January 25 last year.
The Independent Commission Against Corruption is probing allegations that White subverted proper recruitment practices by sending interview questions in advance to her friends and associates. It is also examining whether private consultants were improperly awarded contracts to do work for the institution, among other allegations.
At the inquiry on Tuesday, Bourke detailed how she was “shocked for various reasons” at White’s certainty. They spanned the optics of creating a new executive position (the university posted a deficit of $95 million in 2024) to a lack of a competitive process and legal risks for the institution.
“I said there were many considerations at play here including the optics of creating a senior role, the extent to which any potential changes trigger an obligation to consult so we need to work through this carefully,” she told White, according to notes of their conversation aired at the hearing.
Bourke began taking notes of her conversations because she was aware of external whistleblower complaints of conflict of interest concerns regarding the recruitment of Matthew Dawkins – an Eldserslie High School friend of White. Those complaints were referred to the ICAC.
According to her notes, Bourke discussed the job plan with White and raised concerns around the optics; White replied that chancellor Michael Still and incoming vice chancellor Max Lu were “insistent it was her”.
White handed in her resignation two days before the corruption hearing began last Monday.
On a call with Still on January 31, 2025, Bourke outlined “legal, industrial and cultural issues and risks”, the notes said. Still said they need to be “happy to work with a level of risk” and not allow “timidity”.
Other “file notes” aired show how two unnamed staff warned her “watch out” as “there is a history of those raising concerns being unfavourably looked upon or exited”.
Earlier in the day, the hearing heard how the chancellor Still had a history of being taken to Sydney Dance Company events, invited to the zoo, dinner and the launch of a poetry book written by the head of a consultancy firm later awarded two university contracts.
Still has stepped down pending the outcome of the inquiry.
Aspirall chief executive Tanya Diesel told the hearing on Tuesday she first met Still in 2004 at work and had maintained what she called a professional relationship.
“Morning, will you join us for the zoo excursion to see the giraffes?” texts from Diesel to Still.
After being shown numerous texts discussing social engagements, she said the pair were not friends but rather business associates.
“He’s not a friend of mine,” she said.
At one point, the inquiry’s commissioner Paul Lakatos SC asked her how she defined friendship.
“It’s someone from whom I ask emotional support … They are people who I go on picnics and holidays with,” Diesel said.
She told the inquiry she received an invitation from the university to attend a farewell event for its outgoing chancellor at NSW Parliament House in early 2024 and months later Diesel was invited to meet with White, to discuss “a potential program of work for the university”.
After that meeting, Diesel’s firm was paid $56,000 to conduct focus groups to identify the “aspirations, challenges, and competencies for next vice-chancellor” of the university.
Diesel told the inquiry in those focus groups, staff felt hopeless.
“They were disillusioned at the university’s capacity to attract a powerful, valuable, smart vice chancellor. They didn’t seem to have a sense of their own accountability in shifting leadership or culture in the university,” she said.
The hearing has previously heard allegations Aspirall was not selected for these engagements using the university’s prescribed procurement policies and the consulting projects were funded using the $2 million university council’s discretionary fund.
Aspirall was awarded a subsequent contract to run a workshop for university council members and executive staff. It was paid $74,450, the hearing heard.
There was also the possibility of a $163,000 contract to run another project but it never went ahead.
She was never asked to make a declaration of a conflict of interest when being awarded the contracts, Diesel told the inquiry.
She disagreed that there was a conflict of interest.
Under questioning from Still’s barrister Amelia Avery-Williams, she was asked about that first meeting with White, where she said she agreed she was “pitching” her firm to be hired by the university.
The inquiry continues.
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