Atec commissioners jettisoned following conflict concerns

Australia’s higher education steward is set to lose its inaugural leaders after senators raised conflict of interest concerns.

Federal education minister Jason Clare has announced that Australian Universities Accord chair Mary O’Kane’s tenure as interim chief commissioner of the Australian Tertiary Education Commission (Atec) will end on 31 December.

Interim first nations commissioner Larissa Behrendt, a legal academic who was part of O’Kane’s accord panel, will also leave Atec.

The two appointments were initially slated to last until legislation to permanently establish Atec had come into force. The bill was introduced in November but is unlikely to pass parliament for months.

Clare acted after members of the Senate’s education and employment committee raised concerns over O’Kane’s appointment as the next chancellor of the University of Queensland (UQ), during an estimates hearing in early December.

The committee’s deputy chair, Liberal senator Maria Kovacic, asked whether the UQ appointment posed “regulatory capture” risks. She also raised concerns about the role O’Kane and Behrendt had played in proposing Atec, heading the interim Atec and advising on the substantive Atec’s design.

“They’ve sat on a panel recommending the establishment of that new body and they sit on that new body and have had the input into the powers and functions of that body,” Kovacic observed.

Independent senator David Pocock asked whether O’Kane’s role with Atec remained “tenable” following her UQ appointment, given Atec’s role in funding universities.

Education Department secretary Tony Cook said both interim commissioners had issued “standard” conflict of interest declarations. Behrendt, who has an institutional affiliation with the University of Technology Sydney, had “been able to manage those conflicts of interest very clearly”.

But Cook said O’Kane and Behrendt had taken a back seat on funding issues and O’Kane had been advised to recuse herself from discussions involving any Queensland university “should she continue in the role” of interim commissioner. “I anticipate there will be continuing conversations with Professor O’Kane about her role,” Cook added.

Clare said he was “indebted” to O’Kane and Behrendt for their work on the accord and the interim Atec. “Mary O’Kane didn’t just design the accord,” he said. “As the first Atec commissioner, she has helped build it. She has helped to lift the words off the page and make them real.”

Clare said the government would announce two new interim commissioners in early 2026. Jobs and Skills Australia commissioner and accord panellist Barney Glover will retain his advisory role with Atec.

The legislation to formally establish Atec is unlikely to pass parliament before late February at the earliest. The Senate committee’s inquiry into the bill is due to report on 26 February.

While the Labor government has the numbers to pass the legislation in the House of Representatives, it faces a difficult passage in the Senate where Labor lacks a majority. The opposition has questioned the rationale for Atec’s establishment, most recently in the Senate committee’s report into university governance.

“Neither the government nor any stakeholder has presented this committee with a clear policy problem that the Atec solves,” Kovacic noted in an addendum to the report. “There is no persuasive case that an additional body in the form of an Atec is required to improve governance in the sector.

“Indeed, there is a very real risk that…this new body will only add complexity and make things worse.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com