ANU Gets Most of Its Supplement. (December 20, 2004)

    A press release at the end of last week didn't make it into the weekend papers but the news brought some holiday cheer to the Australian National University and its Vice-Chancellor, Ian Chubb.

At the beginning of October TFW reported:

The Canberra Times' redoubtable Emma MacDonald has grabbed a bit of the front page today with ANU's $22m loss may be payback.

    According to MacDonald the missing money relates to a 2.5 per cent Commonwealth pay rise tied to universities adhering to governance and industrial relations protocols. However, never underestimate the powers of governmental departments. When it comes to a choice as to whether it's a matter of skulduggery vs cock up, cock up has a decided edge in the scheme of things; which is not to say that given the circumstances cock up may not be seen to be of use.

The ANU's Friday media release reads:

ANU WELCOMES $16.5M SUPPLEMENTARY FUNDING

The Australian National University today welcomed the Australian Government’s decision to provide supplementary funding for its  research funding base.

    A unique feature of ANU is that, unlike other universities, a large part of ANU funding from the Commonwealth is a block grant for research activities. As these funds are not part of the Commonwealth Grants Scheme, which pays universities for student places, they had not previously been included for supplementary funding purposes.
    The Howard Government has confirmed it will provide an extra $16.5m in base funding for ANU over 2005 to 2007

We'll probably never know whether or not ANU's top rankings, for Australian universities, which it received in the international rankings stakes, as well as the good marks it got from its review committee, played a role but its unlikely to have hurt. Whether or not the payout is seen by the Prime Minister, John Howard, as anything other than a relatively inexpensive form of hush money - that's another question.