Julie Bishop, the United Nations Special Envoy on Myanmar, is facing simultaneous leadership crises: In her diplomatic role, she has come under fire for alleged conflicts of interest; and as chancellor of the Australian National University (ANU), she stands accused of financial mismanagement and ethical lapses.
At ANU, university staff have overwhelmingly passed a vote of no confidence in Bishop and Vice-Chancellor Genevieve Bell, citing their questionable use of university funds and slashing of jobs. The ANU branch of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) has highlighted a litany of grievances, accusing university leadership of creating a “culture of fear and intimidation” and implementing austerity measures based on flawed financial forecasts.
According to Dr. Lachlan Clohesy, the NTEU’s division secretary for the Australian Capital Territory, where the university is located, Bishop and Bell overestimated ANU’s 2024 deficit by more than AU$60 million (US$37.7 million) and used these projections to justify the disestablishment of the College of Health and Medicine, as well as job and course cuts.
“ANU staff demand accountability,” Clohesy said, adding that leadership has “blamed staff and referred to them as ‘inefficiencies,’ raised parking fees, closed childcare services, and attempted to strip away a staff pay increase.”
These moves have reportedly had a devastating impact on staff and students alike at one of Australia’s premier institutions of higher learning. “Morale at ANU is at rock bottom. This is a great university, with great staff and students, but we’ve been let down by the decisions of leadership. This vote reflects the frustration and lack of confidence among staff,” said Millan Pintos-Lopez, the NTEU’s ANU branch president.
Meanwhile, there has also been growing international criticism of Bishop’s role as the UN Special Envoy on Myanmar, a position she was appointed to less than a year ago. Recently, a coalition of 260 Myanmar and international civil society organisations sent an open letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the UN General Assembly demanding her removal due to alleged conflicts of interest stemming from her advisory role with Energy Transition Minerals (ETM), an Australian-listed company closely tied to Chinese rare earths conglomerate Shenghe Resources. The Chinese company has been accused of contributing to environmental destruction and funding Myanmar’s military junta.
“It is untenable for the UN to keep Julie Bishop in her position given her serious conflicts of interest and mounting distrust in her integrity,” said Yadanar Maung, spokesperson for Justice for Myanmar (JFM), the watchdog group that exposed Bishop’s links to Chinese state-owned enterprises active in Myanmar.
“Civil society has no confidence in her as special envoy and the UN needs to open an investigation,” Yadanar Maung added, noting that Bishop’s troubles at home in her academic role should also be a “wake-up call” to Guterres that “continued inaction will only prolong the reputational damage she is causing to the UN’s peace brokering mission in Myanmar.”
In Australia, Bishop has demonstrated that she sees nothing wrong with mixing her official role with her business interests. She has also been criticised for failing to declare her consultancy work for Australian mining company Mineral Resources (MinRes) to ANU and for authorising AU$35,000 in university funds to hire her former chief-of-staff for speech-writing services between 2021 and 2024. Additional scrutiny has arisen from allegations that two ANU employees are simultaneously employed by Bishop’s private consultancy, Julie Bishop and Partners.
Senator Tony Sheldon, chair of the Senate Education Committee, questioned these decisions: “At a time when Ms. Bishop has been accusing university staff of being the cause of ANU’s financial problems, it appears she’s been lavishing university funds on political staffers and employees of her company.”
Bishop’s travel expenses in 2024, which doubled her AU$75,000 annual remuneration, have also drawn ire from ANU staff and observers alike. Incurred at a time when jobs and courses were being jettisoned in the name of fiscal responsibility, these expenses have struck many as an egregious waste of the university’s money.
All of this has led to growing frustration not only with Bishop, but also with those tasked with holding officials accountable.
“What does it take to lose your job as the boss of an Australian university in 2025? The ANU scandals have piled up higher than the Telstra Tower, yet the Council continues to back in leaders who have failed to take responsibility for terrible mismanagement,” remarked the NTEU’s national president, Dr. Alison Barnes.
“This is emblematic of the deep governance crisis we are seeing right across the country. We need real reform to stop conflicts of interest and the cultural decay of our public universities.”
In Myanmar, the stakes are even higher. As a country that has been torn apart by more than four years of civil war, it desperately needs the help of the international community to bring its suffering to an end. But as much as it desires the attention of the outside world, it can ill afford to place its trust in just anyone—least of all someone whose impartiality is in question.
As ANU staff await a response to their no-confidence vote, the people of Myanmar also deserve to have their concerns about Bishop taken seriously. To restore faith in the UN’s good offices, General Secretary Guterres should reconsider whether she really has the commitment, or the integrity, needed to carry out her duties as his envoy.
