Vatican questions ACU faith; Another legal eagle chases lawyer over unpaid fees
It’s not just Sydney Archbishop Anthony Fisherwondering aloud whether the Australian Catholic University is still, well, Catholic.
We’re hearing senior officials in the Vatican have been apprised of the troubles at ACU and are themselves cogitating over the divergence of the university from the church and its mission.
As revealed on Tuesday, it was this very question that circled almost every paragraph of an extraordinary six-page letter written by Fisher to Pro-chancellor Virginia Bourke on November 13.
Rebuking the university’s leadership, the archbishop spoke of his shame with ACU over the abandonment of union leader Joe de Bruyn last month following his delivery of an honorary doctoral speech which sparked a mass walkout in the audience, saying “our largest educational institution seems to be ambivalent about its Catholic identity”.
Copied into the letter was ACU vice-chancellor Zlatko Skrbis, who was recently in Rome to inspect an ACU campus in the city. While there he was also summoned to appear at a meeting with the Holy See’s Dicastery for Culture and Education.
And apparently that meeting didn’t go so swimmingly. Skrbis denied that Vatican officials raised any concerns with him about ACU, and it’s certainly possible that no questions were put to him directly. If they’re not saying it to his face, they’re definitely bringing it up behind his back.
“It was a private and confidential meeting,” an ACU spokeswoman told us. “The vice-chancellor’s meeting with the Dicastery was collegial and mutually beneficial.”
What’s unable to be denied, however, is that high-ranking members of the dicastery are privately raising concerns about ACU’s perceivable deterioration as a Catholic institution. Multiple sources have confirmed it.
The treatment of de Bruyn was one incident that raised pulses, but so did the appointment in January of a pro-abortion academic, Professor Kate Galloway, as the university’s Dean of Law.
And where’s Galloway now? She was paid $1m to give up the position after a conservative backlash; her new role at ACU is Strategic Professor for Law and Social Justice, a pursuit that’s hardly simpatico with Catholic social teachings.
Does Skrbis survive this mess? Chancellor Martin Daubney is mighty keen on renewing Skrbis’ contract in the face of his detractors. And these detractors are many. They’re all watching closely the chapel on the North Sydney campus, waiting for the white smoke to start billowing. YB
Barrister’s burden
Peter Cashman, noted class action barrister at 3 Wentworth Chambers, tells us he’d like to be added to the list of people chasing raffish lawyer Charles Bannister over unpaid fees.
Bannister clearly owes money all over town. Last week we reported that he’s being pursued by the Australian Taxation Office over a set of bankruptcy proceedings.
Former colleague Greg Mackey is also at Bannister’s heels; he’s joined a creditor’s petition seeking $54,000 in unpaid superannuation and wages. A third lawyer, Louise McBride, chased Bannister for $50,000 and ended up getting the money just as legal proceedings commenced.
Cashman tells us that he accepted a brief last year to represent Bannister and his firm, Bannister Law, at a Federal Court hearing before Justice Steven Rares. The substance of the case was a class action into Tyro Payments over a service outage in 2021.
Despite Cashman’s repeated demands and Bannister’s repeated assurances that the $20,000 in fees would be paid, Cashman says he’s still without the money and is now considering joining the bankruptcy petition with Mackey and the ATO. Civil proceedings are also possible.
Asked whether he minded if we named him in a story, Cashman was entirely at ease, telling us: “No by all means quote me. I like Charles but this has got beyond a joke.” YB
No Go zone
The perils of trying to predict the outcome of an AGM …
Over the weekend we said Marina Go would probably be dumped from the board of Southern Cross Media (the hint was in her name, of course). Well, we were proven quite wrong on Monday. Not only was she elected but she did so with about 99 per cent of the vote. We could make an omelette with the egg currently on our face.
But in our defence, it had been said on Friday that SCA chair Heith Mackay-Cruise was unsure of her survival, so we took our lead from his pessimism.
The results clearly show he had nothing to fear after all. And besides, with the company’s share price hovering around 54 cents – half of what it was trading at this time last year – the chair would have much more on his mind, anyway. YB
New flame
Speaking of perilous suggestions, we hear Atlassian billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes has found himself a new partner, a woman with whom he became acquainted via the NSW Southern Highlands community, where he owns much property.
MCB split with wife Annie in the middle of last year, and while Fairwater, formerly owned by Lady Mary Fairfax, had notionally been the family home in Sydney, it’s a truth universally acknowledged that the software geek has an attachment to his expansive Southern Highlands portfolio.
The identity of this flame? We hear she’s a civilian, a local, not one of similar public profile or distinctive hair styling.
We put it to MCB but he didn’t reply, so we tried Atlassian’s spokeswoman, Ana Keltchina. “No comment,” she said. YB
Chamber of secrets
Rumblings of dissatisfaction at the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry as the lobby group comes off a big annual loss and sheds members.
VECCI, as it’s known, shed staff this year after booking a $6.3m loss for the financial year – including a $4.7m operating loss on revenue of about $36.3m. That’s a hefty figure, and comes off the back of a $5.9m operating loss the year before.
At the same time VECCI shed 1586 members, finishing June with 3829. And raised fees on the rest, judging from the fact that membership subscription payments went up slightly, despite close to 30 per cent of the membership base falling off in the year.
But when you’re losing money and shedding staff, it’s really not a great look to have your chief executive and senior staff trotting the globe, even if it’s in support of a major event you’re running.
This year VECCI boss Paul Guerra has been stopped off in Singapore, Samoa, Istanbul, Riyadh, New Zealand, Britain, France and Belgium. Chief of staff Chanelle Pearson shared a fair few of those long haul flights as well.
That is all, according to Guerra, in aid of promoting the World Chambers Congress in Melbourne next year, an event in which global business chamber bosses will fly into the city to “share best practices, exchange insights, develop networks, and address the latest business issues affecting their communities”.
It’s being billed as the “Olympics of Business” by VECCI. And it also sounds a little like – as one irritated VECCI member described it – a reciprocal junket to justify the international travel of every other city’s chamber of industry boss. And as for the annual losses, that’s just a sign VECCI is doing its job, Guerra told us. A tough year for business meant VECCI’s investments didn’t pay out as well as hoped. VECCI did, in fact, book a $5.7m operating surplus back in 2021.
“Our view as an organisation is we’re here to support business. So we decided, at a board level, to continue to support business, even though the impact to our business would be negative in that year. We’re not fussed by it, because we know the investment return varies year by year,” he said.
No suggestion that VECCI is in danger of going broke – it still has about $82m in investments under management, about the same as it did three years ago.
Its members quitting? Nothing to see there either, as businesses are buying the organisation’s services instead. Some chose to be members, some chose to be customers, Guerra said.
And the recovery plan? Well, VECCI took over the Committee for Melbourne a few months ago, and Guerra said more acquisitions are on the way. NE
More wrongs than rights at the AHRC?
A case of curious priorities over at the Australian Human Rights Commission where hand-picked appointee Giridharan Sivaraman seems to prefer playing politics over action on anti-Semitism.
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