Reading between the lines

Three resignation letters from former ANU council members have emerged. What can we glean from the psychology of their authors?

Reading a resignation letter is a bit like reading tarot cards in reverse: you are looking into the past and trying to interpret a narrative from oblique sequences of words that both reveal and disguise the truth.

Three of the six resignation letters from ANU council members were handed to Senators on Friday. This is what we can discern from them.

Wayne Martin was first out of the blocks, just 13 hours after chancellor Julie Bishop spat the dummy at 11.30 the previous night and a mere one hour and 42 minutes after the news of it hit the headlines.

Martin – let’s call him WayMar – is a KC from Perth and a good mate and loyal supporter of Bishop’s reign at ANU. Much has been made in recent times of nominations committees chaired by chancellors and stacked with their mates, who then recommend more of their mates to sit on councils alongside them. It came up in Senate Estimates on Friday. Martin could possibly be one such beneficiary.

To understand just how close Bishop (aka JBish) and WayMar are, check out the photos of them alongside a posse of other Perth blue bloods at a knees-up fancy dress circa 2016 in Perth Now.

WayMar’s resignation letter is filled with indignation, chest-beating braggadocio and snide pomposity. He hadn’t been at the unscheduled council meeting the evening before. Neither was he at the council meeting the next morning.

But he had been “advised” that TEQSA had overstepped its mark in getting the council to agree to a “voluntary undertaking” to control the appointment of the next chancellor, and that was good enough for him. (For the record, it was a majority vote of the council – JBish had lost the numbers following the resignation of pro-chancellor Alison Kitchen in April, and Andrew Metcalfe had joined the bloc of elected members to get the voluntary undertaking through).

Reading WayMar’s letter makes one’s head spin like Regan’s in The Exorcist.

“I sincerely hope that you (interim chancellor Larry Marshall – let’s call him LaMar) and the council are able to mitigate the damage that has been done to the reputation and standing of a great University by unidentified, malicious actors within either the staff of the university or possibly both,” WayMar wrote.

This is the enemy within theory.

Pretty rich, considering the recent leaks to the media that sought to embarrass and slander interim VC Rebekah Brown, suggesting she had behaved corruptly while Provost. Those leaks were clearly coming from within the council, very likely at the highest levels.

And richer still, given that Senate Estimates was told on Friday that reputational damage stemming from Renew ANU is estimated to be around $100 million. Not that WayMar and his appointed ilk had anything to do with any of that.

He goes on to then assert that “the council has allowed TEQSA to unlawfully usurp council’s role in the governance of the university”.

Hmmmmmm. No. The regulator's intervention was precisely because the council had been inept in its conduct, oversight, accountability, and transparency, all findings writ large in the ANAO report, which was tabled on Thursday (and which JBish and each of the council members, including WayMar, had read in March).

At the time of endorsing Renew ANU in August 2024, ANAO had this to say: “Council had no clear evidence that $250 million in annual, ongoing savings by January 2026 was needed, achievable, urgently required or likely to have the intended impact”.

To give WayMar some credit, he wasn’t on the council at that time.

But he’s not off the hook. ANAO makes clear that the council's failings extended beyond its approval of the Renew ANU strategy, and that it continued to overlook multiple challenges to its credibility. Even as ANU’s budget position improved, there was no change to the $250 million savings – a number, according to ANAO, that was plucked out of the air.

“A more robust decision-making process by the council should have considered additional information, options and perspectives to achieve sustainable improvement to the ANU budget. As of January 2026, people risks and revenue remain,” the ANAO report says.

Next is Tanya Hosch’s resignation letter. Hosch waited until 4.25 pm on Friday, May 8, to tender her letter to LaMar. It actually contains a shred of humility.

“I recognise events over the past few years have taken an extraordinary toll on everyone connected with and part of the ANU communities,” TaHos wrote.

“I am sorry for the harm and hurt that has been caused to many.”

However, TaHos did not resign because of the chaos, the reputation damage, the toll of inept governance (see aforementioned ANAO report) but because there “was a lack of commitment and recognition of the importance and priority to ensure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in decision making and I do not accept that it should be withing the entire control of a non-Indigenous people to determine the criteria under which an Indigenous person can participate”.

This strange explanation, it appears, stems from the fact that she lobbied for TEQSA to include an indigenous person on the committee that would select the next chancellor. TEQSA appointed former University of Canberra chancellor Tom Calma.

But no, TaHos was not satisfied with that. Why? Because he had been appointed by non-indigenous people. Very hard to understand the logic of that, given TaHos had been appointed to the ANU council – and no doubt many other boards and advisory positions she sits on – by non-indigenous folk.

The timing is also questionable. TaHos, who has been a council member since 2020, resigned just hours after she had read the Thom review and just days before the ANAO report, which she has already read, due to be made public.

To resign over indigenous appointments when ANU has been reeling from the aftermath of appalling planning, strategy, implementation and fallout from Renew ANU and exceedingly poor governance and management, just strikes me as kind of solipsistic.

“I had hoped my departure from ANU could be under far more respectful terms,” Hosch writes.

As for Padma Raman, who waited until midday Saturday to send her resignation letter, TEQSA’s overreach is again the theme. However, there is a strong current of humility and perhaps, even, regret.

That leaves the resignation letters of Bishop, Alison Kitchen and Rob Whitfield. They, too, will make reverse-tarot reading a fun and stimulating activity.

Before I sign off, some gossip.

I have been told by multiple well-placed sources that the strategy to undermine IVC Rebekah Brown – ReBro – including the aforementioned leaks of text messages – was well advanced. So advanced that a replacement for ReBro had been lined up and ready to step into the breach with the expectation that she would resign at the Thursday evening council meeting.

It didn’t all go to plan.