Vice Chancellor Feeding Time; And it is All from Your Tax Dollars, Too! By Professor X
The Australian Financial Review article:
exposes a stark hypocrisy at the Australian National University (ANU), where Chancellor Julie Bishop racked up $150,000 in travel expenses in 2024, jetting off to New York, London, and Japan, while the university slashed costs to address a $200 million deficit. A leaked document reveals her Perth-based office burned through $620,000 on travel and other expenses, even as Vice-Chancellor Genevieve Bell launched a $250 million cost-cutting drive in October—slamming staff with job losses and pay freeze pleas. Specific spends include $10,599 for New York lodging, $4,320 in London, and $2,286 in Japan, tied to Bishop's roles like UN envoy on Myanmar and receiving Japan's Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun. ANU insists she did university business, but didn't detail it (she may well have done so); her travel budget's since been halved amid backlash.
The piece also flags a cozy deal: Bishop's office paid $2,250 to Vinder Consulting—run by her long-time mate and ex-chief of staff Murray Hansen—for speechwriting, despite ANU claiming her office doesn't hire external providers. Hansen, also principal of Bishop's private firm Julie Bishop and Partners, penned a welcome for Papua New Guinea's PM and an institute launch spiel, with payments ($1,500 and $750) contradicting ANU's procurement line. Senate grilling by Labor's Tony Sheldon last week probed this as a conflict of interest, noting two of Bishop's Perth staff double as her firm's employees. ANU defends the setup as standard—past chancellors had city offices too—and says Vinder's $35,000 over four years for 17 speeches fits policy, though staff must declare personal ties, which Hansen's decades with Bishop clearly are. The article paints a picture of elite excess clashing with austerity, spotlighting Bishop and Bell as the university bleeds.
In general, beyond this, Australia's university vice-chancellors are a gallery of grifters, presiding over a decaying higher education system with the shamelessness of feudal lords gorging at a famine's edge. The AFR exposé on Julie Bishop's $150,000 travel spree—while ANU hacks $250 million from its budget—isn't an outlier; it's a symptom of a VC class that's turned campuses into their personal fiefdoms, drunk on power and perks while students and staff choke on the fallout. These aren't leaders—they're parasites, fattening themselves as the sector starves.
The rot's systemic. VCs sit atop a governance farce—councils stuffed with ex-pollies with no skin in the game, rubber-stamping excess while rankings slide (ANU's at 73rd globally, per 2025 QS). They've turned universities into corporate husks, chasing metrics and donors, not knowledge. Students? Slapped with HECS debts—$50,000 average, per 2024 stats—while VCs jet-set. Staff? Casualised to death—60 percent at some unis, per NTEU—while Bell blames them for "inefficiencies." It's a sick joke: the grunts who teach and research get sacked; the suits who mismanage thrive.
There's no fixing this. Modernity's warped higher ed into a profit mill, and VCs are its greedy millers. They'll keep slashing—$100 million in ANU salaries, per Bell's plan—while their perks stay sacred. Call it what it is: a looting spree by a pampered elite, leaving Australia's universities broke, hollow, and ashamed. Bishop's $150,000 tab? Just the tip of their gilded iceberg.
"Bishop's office also used university funds to spend $2250 on speech writing services from her long-term friend Murray Hansen, which is at odds with a statement from ANU this week saying the chancellor's office does not engage external providers.
Bishop engaged Hansen, who was her chief of staff when she was a Coalition foreign minister, through his private company Vinder Consulting, according to the document which is a table of itemised spending. Hansen is also the principal of her advisory firm Julie Bishop and Partners.
An ANU spokeswoman said Bishop's travel budget has since been halved. "In line with campus-wide efforts to return ANU to financial sustainability, the chancellor's travel budget – including for staff – has been reduced by 50 per cent in the current budget," she said.
Spending on travel by the ANU Perth office included $10,599 for accommodation in New York, $4320 for accommodation in London and $2286 in Japan.
Bishop's social media activity shows she travels overseas regularly in her various official capacities. On a trip to New York last October she attended the United Nations as special envoy on Myanmar. While on a trip to Japan, she received the "highest Japanese honour from His Majesty the Emperor at the Imperial Palace – the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun".
The Financial Review is not suggesting Bishop did not conduct ANU business while on those trips. The university did not answer specific questions about her travel for ANU. Bishop did not respond to a request for comment.
Vice chancellor Bell said last year that she would cut $250 million from ANU's annual budget, including through an unspecified number of job cuts, after the university said it was facing a deficit of more than $200 million. Bell has also been under scrutiny for the salary she received for an external role she retained at technology giant Intel and for antisemitic incidents on campus.
The spotlight turned on Bishop last week during a Senate hearing when Labor's Tony Sheldon grilled Bell over whether Bishop's relationship with Hansen constituted a conflict of interest because the university had employed him on multiple occasions to write speeches for her via his private consulting firm.
The leaked document shows that Vinder Consulting received $2250 for two contracts in 2024 – one for $1500 and the second for $750 – both of which were paid for from Bishop's Perth-based chancellor's office.
One contract appears to be for a welcome address on February 8 last year ahead of a speech by Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape. The second was to announce a new institute at ANU, the Wiyi Yani U Thangani Institute for First Nations Gender Justice.
The entries seemingly contradict what ANU chief communications officer Steve Fanner told ABC Canberra on Tuesday morning. "The chancellor has never engaged a consulting firm at ANU," he said. "In fact, the chancellor's office does not engage external providers of any kind."
Fanner said Vinder Consulting received a total of $35,000 for speech writing over four years from ANU and that "all contracts were well under the minor procurement $5000 threshold with the ANU procurement policy".
That included the writing of 17 speeches, "ranging in cost from $300 to $3000 and every one of these engagements has complied with our procurement policies".
The ANU spokeswoman said the costs associated with Bishop's Perth office were "commensurate with the costs associated with other ANU capital city offices which have previously been established where the chancellor does not reside in Canberra".
She also said that the office does not directly engage contractors.
"The two procurements of Vinder were made directly by the ANU communications team pursuant to the ANU procurement policy. Vinder's quote for services was at the low end of market rates," she said.
However, that policy says staff must disclose if a supplier has a "personal relationship with any ANU employees involved in the procurement process".
Hansen has worked for Bishop since 2005 when she was aged care minister under the Howard government. He was her chief of staff when she was foreign minister under the Abbott and Turnbull governments.
Last week's Senate committee also heard that two staff members in Bishop's chancellor's office in Perth were also two of the three staff members of Julie Bishop and Partners. The third is Hansen.
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