The Australian National University probes leaked texts on Bell removal
The australian national university has launched a full-scale investigation into how confidential conversations on encrypted messaging apps were leaked, including texts about how former vice-chancellor Genevieve Bell might be removed. Senior staff phones have been examined as the university tries to identify who passed on the messages.
The internal probe comes six months after Bell was ousted and later resigned from the top job in September, while keeping her academic position at the university. The leak has pulled a private leadership dispute into a formal investigation and raised questions inside ANU about records, messages and who handled them.
Genevieve Bell and September
The leaked texts from last year dealt with Bell’s possible removal, at a time when frequent protests were building on campus. The union said an attempt by “corporate types” on the governing ANU council to oust her more consultative replacement was underway.
Bell resigned in September but remained at the university as an academic. The investigation now circles back to the period when the leadership struggle was active and the texts were being exchanged.
Rebekah Brown messages
Rebekah Brown, now ANU provost and Bell’s deputy, exchanged messages with other senior academics, particularly the deans, during the months leading to Bell’s resignation last year. Brown became ANU provost in June 2024 and later took over in the top job just over a year after that appointment.
One leaked message quotes Brown as saying, “I think it would be really helpful for Deans to do an assessment of VC's performance”. The leaked material also includes messages between Brown and the dean of the College of Business and Economics as he and four other of the six deans drafted a letter of no-confidence in Bell.
Phones, texts and FOI
Phones of senior people at ANU have been confiscated, searched and returned by the university’s cyber-security people, according to people with close knowledge of the situation. The investigation includes undeleted texts and texts that may have been deleted, while some people at the university were asking whether deleting texts might break the Freedom of Information Act.
The details of the texts were revealed by The Saturday Paper, and The Canberra Times confirmed the accuracy of the text details. There is no suggestion of improper behaviour by the people involved, but the leak probe has moved the dispute from private messaging into the university’s formal internal machinery.
For staff and students, the immediate issue is not the old messages themselves but how far the university is prepared to go in tracing them and what its own record-keeping rules allow. The next pressure point sits with the investigation, the phones already examined, and whether the internal review produces discipline, policy changes or a wider look at message retention.
