'I compromised the process': UOW's ex-governance chief admits rigging recruitments
Sworn confessions spill out on Day 14
The University of Wollongong’s former top governance executive has delivered a series of sworn admissions to the state’s corruption watchdog, explicitly agreeing with Counsel Assisting that she had “knowingly, repeatedly, and seriously” breached the university’s code of conduct to rig recruitments for her friends.
While the ICAC Operation Scandi inquiry had previously laid bare the staggering paper trail of secret Gmails and WhatsApp backchannels used to advantage preferred candidates, Day 14 belonged entirely to the confessions of former chief governance officer Alyssa White.
Under cross-examination, Ms White abandoned any pretense of procedural misunderstandings, formally admitting to intentionally subverting recruitment processes, leaking interview questions, and instructing applicants to lie.
Ms White admitted under oath that she used her personal Gmail account to send pre-interview exercises and proposed interview questions to candidates - including her close associate Dr Stacy Oon - days in advance of their official interviews. She conceded she did not provide this crucial intelligence to any other competing candidate.
When pressed on a similar backchannel manoeuvre involving another applicant, Matthew Dawkins, Ms White admitted she directed him to send his draft pre-interview exercise to her Gmail because she knew her involvement was entirely inappropriate, actively seeking to hide their high-school friendship from the rest of the governance division.
In a further text exchange tendered to the commission, Ms White instructed an applicant to pretend they didn’t know each other upon starting the role to hide her blatant conflict of interest.
‘Staff cried in one-on-ones’
Under cross-examination, Ms White admitted her actions significantly undermined the transparency and integrity of the university’s recruitment process. She conceded her conduct seriously breaching the university’s conflict of interest policy, recruitment policy, and its code of conduct.
When asked why she felt the need to heavily advantage candidates she claimed were already highly capable, Ms White blamed the working environment at the university. To illustrate the severity of the crisis she claimed to inherit, Ms White testified that during her first week in the job, she conducted one-on-one meetings with every employee in her division, revealing that “in almost all of those, that the staff member cried”.
She described a broken team suffering from extreme burnout, financial austerity measures, and mistreatment from senior executives, arguing this distress drove her desperate measures to quickly secure reliable staff
“The difficulty in getting staff to stay in these roles and to work in the conditions at the University of Wollongong overwhelmed my ability to think clearly about what I was really doing in these processes,” Ms White testified.
“I wanted to employ people who wanted the job, who could do the job, and who were going to be able to start working and get some of the work done.”
She ultimately conceded her interventions were “totally unnecessary and inappropriate”.
The pulse check
The day’s testimony also revealed a massive blind spot regarding the internal HR investigation that ultimately triggered the ICAC probe.
In March 2024, UOW leadership initiated a “workplace culture review” into Ms White’s division. Ms White testified she genuinely believed this was a simple “pulse check” on staff wellbeing, as she had recently complained that her team was suffering from extreme burnout - including one staff member secretly logging unpaid overtime in a notebook because the HR software prevented her from recording accurate hours.
Ms White will continue her testimony on Friday, the last scheduled day of the inquiry.
ICAC has made no findings in Operation Scandi. All named individuals are the subject of allegations at a public inquiry.
