Feedback on the Change Principles Implementation Plan
The ANU Executive continues to ignore calls for transparency regarding university finance and modelling, and are pushing ahead by publishing their Implementation Plan. Here is our feedback.
5 May 2025
Sent to: org.change@anu.edu.au
CC: signatories to Open letter: Request for concrete information about the ANU Executive’s 2025-26 operating principles and the proposed scale and pace of change
We are a group of ANU staff members who are amongst the 478 signatories to the open letter sent to the university executive on March 21. We are writing in response to your solicitation for feedback on the Implementation Plan published on April 16. We wish to express our belief that the Implementation Plan does not meaningfully engage with staff feedback, including the content of the open letter.
We also believe that the Implementation Plan has been issued without meaningful prior consultation as required under clause 70 of the Enterprise Agreement.
We reiterate the request made by 478 staff in the open letter for transparency and meaningful consultation. In practice, this would require the university executive to withdraw the Implementation Plan and to return to and extend the consultation initiated by the university executive on March 6 2025.
Transparency and Information Requests
A key focus of the open letter was to request information that would allow staff to better understand ANU’s finances and the university executive’s plans. The Implementation Plan states that the university executive responded to the open letter by providing “further relevant information”. However, the university executive provided very little new information in response to the open letter. Instead, the university executive’s response (which is attached to the Implementation Plan as Appendix B) focuses on our first question about cash surpluses.
Our request for information was broader, including requests for:
Full disclosure of the financial data supporting the proposed strategy to address the claimed financial position of the ANU.
Full disclosure of budgetary data that will lead to local CMPs the Executive proposes for 2025-26
A transparent explanation of how the Executive determined allocated budgets across colleges and work units in 2024 and 2025
Disclosure of workforce impact projections
Moreover, the open letter provided a series of bullet-points listing very specific documents and data that we were requesting. Again, they are:
Papers tabled for the University Council (UC) when it approved the Renew ANU strategy and budget cuts, showing the data and models and assumptions that guided the UC and Executive’s decision to implement changes over 18 months, including $250 million in cost reductions—$150 million from non-salary expenses and $100 million from staff costs.
Papers tabled in 2024 for the UC when considering the University’s options regarding the pace and extent of change to underlying operating budget.
Quarterly financial statements covering the period ANU has been in operational deficit.
Projections for the ANU's cash surplus for 2025, including assumptions and data informing the model.
Consultancy advice received regarding financial strategies to address the operational deficit.
Details of modelling behind any projections the Executive is relying on to forecast revenue and costs with details about these model assumptions, confidence intervals, and scenarios considered.
The 2024 Annual report, including detailed financial information.
2024 and 2025 enrollment figures, by College. Real numbers and any models being used with assumptions.
College budget allocations for 2024 and 2025.
Papers detailing the Executive’s distributional decisions about budget allocations and the nature, extent and scale of cuts to local work units.
Evidence of all metrics and consultancy advice used in decision-making about budget cuts planned for 2025 and 2026 in Colleges and work units.
Quantifications of local budget reductions leading to plans for staff redundancies.
Evidence that these allocations are in line with the Executive’s responsibilities to staff under clauses 69 and 70.
Clarity on whether the proposed Principles for maintaining research and education quality informed these budget allocations.
The exact number of planned redundancies by college and work unit.
The impact on casual employment rates.
The specific principles and rationale behind decisions affecting professional, teaching, and research staff in work units where CMPs are planned.
The proposed mechanisms for redeployment and support for affected staff.
At the time the Implementation Plan was published, none of the specific information listed above has been provided by the university executive. Nor has the university executive given a meaningful explanation for why it is not providing this information.
We note that since the Implementation Plan was published and following a conciliation conference at the Fair Work Commission on April 29, the university executive promised to provide “high-level 2024 Financial Report information.” We note that even this promise falls a long way short of the financial and other information requested in the letter. We also reiterate the point made in the open letter that staff have the right to this and other information as a part of consultation prior to (and not after) the publication of Implementation Plans.
We are confused, moreover, by the university executive’s statement in Appendix A of the Implementation Plan: “We [the university executive] recognise the desire [amongst staff] for greater detail and note that the Consultation Paper includes the information available to the University at this time.” We would suggest that the information requested in the open letter was both available to the university executive at the time and not included in the Change Principles Consultation Paper or made available to most university staff.
We note, with dismay, that reporting in the AFR on April 27 (‘ANU secret document raises questions over whether Senate was misled’) suggests that the executive can, and has, made workforce projections, but has chosen not to release those to staff.
We respectfully re-iterate the request that the university executive provide the information requested in the open letter as part of a meaningful consultation process.
Meaningful Consultation Before Implementation
A second and related concern of the open letter was that since the requested information was necessary for meaningful consultation on change proposals, the consultation period should be extended. As 478 staff said in the letter:
“We call on the Executive to make their words real for staff with clear data so that we can genuinely provide feedback on this Change Management Proposal. This consultation must stay at the university-level and cannot proceed to local changes until the Executive has shown its ‘evidence-based resource allocations’ are indeed in line with the University mission and our shared commitments to education and research quality.”
The signatories also noted that:
“The Principles informing this university-wide CMP remain vague in the extreme. They include: ‘missions focused transition.’, ‘collaboration and shared governance’ and ‘data driven resource allocation’. Yet the Executive has been proceeding to local changes before giving staff any detailed information about the Executive’s distributive decisions impacting staff … The ANU community deserves better than vague principles, rushed decisions, and a process that disregards the expertise, contributions, and well-being of its staff.”
The letter went on to request:
6. Halt on local CMPs and other preemptive changes in local work units until each of these conditions have been met
7. An extension of the consultation period
We are disappointed by the university executive’s refusal of these requests. We do not find the university executive’s rationale for doing so to be clearly articulated, convincing, or in line with staff’s legal entitlements under the Enterprise Agreement.
Furthermore, the Implementation Plan even seems to suggest that by accelerating the change process, the university executive is acting upon the feedback provided in the open letter. In this regard, the Implementation Plan states that: “Given the requests for further information as part of the feedback, the University will proceed to prioritise developing particular proposals for change underpinned by the principles referred to below.” The Implementation Plan then proceeds to outline, with some very minor modifications, the same principles contained in the Change Principles Consultation Paper.
The requests for information contained in the open letter are in no way served by the university executive’s plan to move more rapidly onto “particular proposals for change underpinned by” the Change Principles. Quite the opposite. 478 staff members have specifically requested information in tandem with an extended consultation period on the initial Change Principles CMP. This was because we did not and do not believe that consultation on that CMP could be meaningful without the information and the clarity requested in the open letter.
The Implementation Plan claims to be acting upon staff feedback requesting more information, it is in fact acting in direct opposition to what staff are actually asking of the university executive.
Mechanisms for Consultation and Feedback
As well as reiterating the concerns and requests of the original letter, we would also like the university executive to please consider opening better and more appropriate channels for consultation and feedback.
In the official response to the open letter, as well as in statements to the media, the university executive has expressed some confusion and uncertainty at what staff were saying in the letter. We have likewise spoken with many colleagues who are similarly confused by the university executive’s response to our letter.
Further dialogue is clearly desirable to clarify these confusions and to develop a better level of understanding between staff and executive. Since no individual or group can or should claim to speak on behalf of the 478 signatories to the letter, and since the letter raises concerns shared by many members of our community who did not sign the letter, that dialogue must be one to which all members of the ANU community are invited to participate. The most obvious mechanism for that would be university-wide town halls.
In preparation for these town halls, we request that the university executive release the information requested in the open letter in order for staff to have time to digest and understand it. We also request that the university executive remain at town halls until all questions have been exhausted.
Finally, we ask that the university executive provide mechanisms for anonymous feedback on current and future change proposals and implementation plans. Unfortunately, many staff in the university have concerns about Renew ANU but are afraid to raise them in case doing so makes them a target for reprisals. We believe that this is further undermining opportunities for meaningful consultation.
It is in the University’s interests to restore a level of trust at the ANU so that staff feel secure to speak their minds. In the meantime, we respectfully request that the university executive provide avenues for staff to raise legitimate concerns and feedback anonymously.