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“Would you like to change your evidence?”
Counsel assisting the Independent Commission Against Corruption Emma Bathurst was devastatingly effective as she dismantled testimony from Alyssa White, the final witness in the probe into the University of Wollongong.
White on Friday admitted that her claims the day before were undone by texts showing that she sent interview questions to a staffer to pass on to a preferred candidate.
White, the former chief governance officer, sits at the centre of an inquiry into allegations she gave her friends jobs and that then-chancellor Michael Still improperly awarded work to Aspirall Consulting. The inquiry is also examining how the university managed the conflict of interest between the interim vice chancellor John Dewar and consulting firm KordaMentha, of which he remains a partner and which won hundreds of thousands of dollars of work at the university.
On Friday, Bathurst put to White that she and Still had conspired to advantage KordaMentha so Dewar would take the job.
“I don’t agree,” White said.
White was in tears on Friday afternoon when she admitted she was wrong to be involved in developing a $389,000 job she wanted.
Asked by Commissioner Paul Lakatos, SC, why she subverted recruitment processes, White cried as she said she didn’t think her actions through.
“I was desperate to secure staff … I did not do the right thing.”
Over three weeks, the ICAC heard from various witnesses that former colleagues and friends were fast-tracked to the governance team, that White gave interview questions to preferred candidates in advance, that Still told Dewar it was “very likely” KordaMentha would win work with the university as it wooed him to take the interim vice chancellor job, and Dewar had ignored the secondary employment clause banning him from providing feedback to KordaMentha.
Multiple witnesses said that recruitment was a serious challenge for UoW, which is also mired in other problems. White resigned the weekend before ICAC began, while Still left the chancellor’s job days before he gave evidence, so the university is now missing both a chancellor (Greg West is acting) and a chief governance officer.
While the level of cronyism – prohibited for the public officers at taxpayer-funded universities – at UoW may be unique, its problems are shared by many of Australia’s regional institutions.
Wollongong was $17 million in the hole last financial year, its fourth year running at a loss. Also running at a loss last year: Bathurst’s Charles Sturt University and the University of New England, along with the University of Technology, Sydney, and Western Sydney University.
The UoW has seen a long-term decline in the international students who prop up universities in Australia, a scenario playing out across the country. Regional Australia has long battled to create demand from international students – while the University of Sydney and Monash University were each allocated 11,000 places for 2026, Wollongong received 3700.
It was also confronted with a $6.6 million wage-theft bill and forced to pay $169 million to exit an accommodation project that collapsed with the pandemic.
In Dewar’s words: “Everything was broken”.
The hearing has adjourned.
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