Unforgettable quotes from every day of the three-week UOW ICAC hearing

In their own words ...

ICAC Commissioner Paul Lakatos SC heard more than 70 hours of testimony as ICAC investigated allegations concerning the University of Wollongong’s former chief governance officer and secretary, Alyssa White; former Chancellor Michael Still and other University of Wollongong staff and contractors.

You’ll be able to find reporting from every day of the three-week inquiry here.

Here’s a curated selection of quotes from every day of the hearing - some keen readers may recall and others that may have been buried among all the other testimony.

DAY 1: the core

Summarising the central focus of Operation Scandi, which is examining how the university's governance division was systematically stacked with at least 10 of Ms White's former colleagues and personal friends through compromised hiring practices, Counsel Assisting ICAC Emma Bathurst said:

"In short, the evidence is expected to show that the university’s recruitment processes were repeatedly subverted to benefit friends or associates of Ms White.”

DAY 2: inescapable bias

When questioned on whether an independent observer might perceive a conflict of interest with her sitting on an interview panel to hire a friend and former colleague with whom she had already been discussing the job, UOW senior institutional governance specialist Lucinda Wright said:

“Carrying that bias into the selection panel is going to happen because you've seen them work and you've seen them perform really well. It’s a bias that’s inescapable ..."

In reference to former UOW deputy chief governance officer Brenden Hooke admitting he signed off on a final recruitment report that had been quietly altered at Ms White's behest to bump her preferred candidate up the ranking list, without consulting the third interview panellist

Bathurst: "You ticked 'All selection committee members are in agreement with the selection decisions'?"
Hooke: "I did tick that, yeah."
Bathurst: "And that wasn’t true, was it?"
Hooke: "No, I don’t think that was true."

DAY 3: delete delete

When Commissioner Paul Lakatos SC asked a witness to explain the logic behind his decision to urgently delete the WhatsApp application from his phone while ICAC officers were waiting outside his door at 7am to serve him a summons, Mr Hooke said:

“That they may forcibly taken it from me, that it may have been an impersonation, and then through accessing my phone they would be able to access other materials."

Admitting why she and Ms White used their private email accounts to secretly draft a pre-interview exercise for a senior governance role that Stacy Oon herself was applying for, Ms Oon said:

"I knew that we were doing something that, you know, again would flag with HR. It was not an aboveboard process and that’s why we communicated using our personal emails."

DAY 4: cheers

Attempting to justify why he saw nothing wrong with his high school friend, Alyssa White, secretly guiding his application, advising him to take her off his reference list, and sitting on his interview panel to hire him for a role he had no prior experience in, onetime electrician Matthew Dawkins said:

“ … if I was to apply for a similar role at another university utilising her as one of my network, this, the conflict of interest wouldn’t matter, so from my point of view, using my network to help me build into a role, I don’t see that as an issue.”

Not far behind was this: Explaining why he did not feel it was inappropriate to go over to Ms White's house for a private drink immediately after she had formally interviewed him for the governance and policy coordinator position, Mr Dawkins said:

"I've had interviews where it’s happened at the pub, so it didn’t flag as something to concern."

DAY 5: a problem

Recounting his shock upon discovering that the chancellor insisted on personally chairing the recruitment panel for a mid-level associate director role, prompting Professor Sean Brawley to join the panel to ensure the integrity of the process.

"I informed Ms White of that, and she said, 'That’s a problem,' and I said, 'Why?' And she said, 'Because the, the chancellor wants to chair it.' And I said I was unaware, in all of my experience, a case where a chancellor would chair a, a, an employment panel for positions so far down the leadership chain."

DAY 6: a hard no

When challenged on his failure to scrutinise the resumes of Alyssa White’s associates before signing off on their lucrative appointments as the responsible executive:

Mr O'Brien: "So you were just a rubber stamp, were you, sir?"
Professor Brawley: "I'm not a rubber stamp. I was provided the documents from People and Culture and then my signature allows the position to then be implemented."

DAY 7: that will be me

Describing her reaction upon being told by Ms White that the chancellor had already hand-picked her to step into a newly-created vice-president position, chief people and culture officer Alison Bourke said:

"I was shocked for various reasons ... just how brazen almost it was, for want of a better phrase, that she, ‘it’s happening and that will be me’ ... "

DAY 8: the darkness

When asked to explain why Professor Dewar feared the incoming vice-chancellor, Professor Max Lu, was deliberately being kept in the dark by Ms White and the chancellor about the governance risks of fast-tracking the new executive structure, Alison Bourke recounted a conversation with interim vice-chancellor Professor John Dewar:

"... he was concerned the information and the communication to Professor Lu was being, what he felt, tightly controlled by Ms White and Mr Still and that in those circumstances. ... he expressed concern to me that Max may be getting taken advantage of."

DAY 9: acceptance

Admitting that his push to simultaneously secure the interim vice-chancellor position for himself while ensuring his firm, KordaMentha, bypassed competitive tendering for lucrative diagnostic contracts risked compromising his statutory obligations to the university, Professor John Dewar said:

"I can see, yes, I understand that there was potential for if not actual then certainly perceived conflicts of interest, yes, I accept that."

DAY 10: the optics

Explaining why he strongly urged chancellor Michael Still and incoming vice-chancellor Max Lu against their proposal to rapidly create and directly appoint Alyssa White to a highly-paid vice-president position, Professor John Dewar said:

"One was just the optics of creating a new senior role in the VC’s office at a time when we were laying off staff. I just thought that looked terrible. I was also concerned about the proposal that this ... be a direct appointment because particularly of Alyssa who was quite a divisive character in many ways."

DAY 11: cheers

Explaining a text message he sent dismissing the university’s new head of people and culture, Alison Bourke, after she appropriately raised red flags about Alyssa White’s glaring conflict of interest in drafting the paper for her own executive promotion, former chancellor Michael Still said:

"I hope she hasn’t drunk too much Kool-Aid."

DAY 12: what basket?

Pushing back against the descriptor “basket case,” but admitting the university was in serious jeopardy when asked to explain why he felt compelled to adopt an unusually hands-on, executive style as chancellor, Michael Still said:

"The university was in some significant financial trouble ... The university also had serious leadership difficulties, very poor negative culture, scientists that had been there for a long time doing world regarded work walking out and about to walk out, a vote of no confidence in the council and the leadership being contemplated ... It was a very difficult situation."

DAY 13: interplanetary travel

Former chancellor Michael Still in attempting to justify why he took the highly unusual step of personally inserting himself into an independent workplace bullying investigation to defend Alyssa White, replied to UOW’s barrister Kate Morgan:

Morgan: "So, on what planet does it make sense that the chancellor of a university is trying to obtain information in a record of interview into a bullying investigation?"

Still: "Because it’s really important, I believe, that the Chancellor has absolute view of what’s happening in governance."

DAY 14: yes

Counsel Assisting Emma Bathurst summarises Ms White's stunning admissions of corruption following hours of testimony detailing how she systematically rigged multiple hiring panels and leaked interview questions to parachute her close friends into university roles.

Bathurst: "Your conduct in these recruitments involved you partially exercising your functions as chief governance officer and secretary to the council by intentionally subverting these recruitment processes to benefit persons associated with you?"

White: "Yes."

DAY 15: I disagree

Counsel Assisting Emma Bathurst accused Alyssa White of undermining the probity of the KordaMentha tender. Ms White deflected.

White: “I disagree that it was undermined from my behaviour. It’s clear that it was undermined by Matthew Wright’s behavior earlier in this commission.
“He shared data with Professor Dewar during this time as the probity officer”.
Bathurst: “That’s false evidence, Ms White.”
White: “I disagree.”