ICAC hears UOW executive role proposal included false salary benchmark claim

Chancellor was warned of looming disaster

Jul 01, 2026

UOW’s chief people and culture officer Alison Bourke spent much of the day being cross-examined by Alyssa White’s counsel Peter O’Brien. Image by Google Gemini

A paper pushing a $388,000-a-year executive role that Alyssa White was expected to fill herself contained false claims about an independent salary evaluation that had never taken place, the University of Wollongong’s most senior HR executive has told a corruption inquiry.

Alison Bourke told the Independent Commission Against Corruption on Wednesday that a position paper proposing a new vice-president role stated the salary had been benchmarked against the Korn Ferry job evaluation framework. Suspicious of the claim, she checked directly with her Korn Ferry contact, who confirmed no evaluation had occurred and that he had never seen the position descriptions.

When counsel assisting Emma Bathurst asked whether that discovery led her to conclude the relevant statements were false, Ms Bourke’s answer was a single word: “Yes.”

Interim vice-chancellor Professor John Dewar was so alarmed by the proposal that he text Ms Bourke warning the current course was “a terrible mistake”, then called to say he had delivered the same message directly to Chancellor Michael Still, telling him the university would be “courting a disaster”.

The inquiry heard Mr Still pressed ahead regardless. He later put in writing that Korn Ferry’s salary guidance should be treated as non-binding advice. It was a comment Ms Bourke interpreted as signalling a willingness to pay above whatever the framework recommended, regardless of any evaluation.

‘Target on my back’

Ms Bourke told the inquiry the period was deeply stressful. She had recorded a private note warning of “a potential target on my back”, fearing that People and Culture’s professional resistance to the proposal would be held against her and her division. Mr Still had told her, she told the inquiry, that People and Culture had been known to “stop things” and “put barriers in place”.

Asked directly whether she felt pressured by Ms White and then Mr Still to proceed despite her own advice, she confirmed: yes.

Ms Bathurst used her re-examination to highlight what she put to Ms Bourke as a pointed discrepancy: the UOW Council Handbook had been updated in 2025 to reflect the precise wording Ms White had earlier advanced in an email to Bourke: changing “reporting link” to “reporting line”. Ms Bourke confirmed handbook updates are made by the Governance and Policy Division, Ms White’s division, and that People and Culture had no role in those changes.

Disclosure dispute intensifies

Ms White’s counsel Peter O’Brien, who has raised document access concerns repeatedly during the inquiry, escalated the dispute at day’s end, formally objecting to Ms Bourke’s discharge after a volume of documents was put to the witness in re-examination that had not been disclosed to Ms White's legal team.

Ms Bathurst acknowledged the oversight. Commissioner Paul Lakatos declined to formally discharge Ms Bourke, leaving open the possibility she may be recalled early next week.

Mr Still’s counsel Amelia Avery-Williams put to Ms Bourke that Mr Still had understood the VP role to be an extension of an existing position rather than a newly created one. It was a characterisation Ms Bourke and general counsel Rebecca Lim disputed at the time, the hearing was told.

Ms Bourke spent all of Day 8 giving evidence. A second scheduled witness, UOW’s chief financial officer Matthew Wright, is expected to appear on Thursday.

ICAC has made no findings in Operation Scandi. All named individuals are subject to allegations at a public inquiry.