Interview with Miss Pat White

From the ANU Oral History Archive
Interviews conducted 7 and 24 June 1991
Interviewed by Stephen Foster
Edited and transferred to web media by Nik Fominas and Peter Stewart

Biographical introduction: Miss Pat White commenced her administrative career with the university in 1962 when she was appointed as a Graduate Assistant on the staff of the Registrar of the School of General Studies.

In 1965 she was appointed as Sub-Dean of the Faculty of Arts, a position that had previously been occupied by a member of the academic staff. As Sub-Dean she was primarily concerned with student administration.

Her move to central administration came in 1973 when she was appointed Acting Assistant Registrar, Academic staff matters. This was followed shortly after by a promotion to Assistant Registrar, Student Administration.

In 1983 she transferred to the position of Assistant Registrar, Council and remained in this position until her retirement in May 1991.

In addition to her service to university administration, she served on the boards of a number of residential colleges and is currently a member of the Ursula College board.

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BEGIN TAPE 1, SIDE A

          Identification: this is an interview with Pat White for the ANU Oral History Project. It's 7˙June 1991 and my name is Stephen Foster.

          Pat, you've just retired from ANU, what was the date of your retirement?

3 May 1991.

          And you've been celebrating ever since?

Yes, I have. It's been marvellous.

          Can we go back to the beginnings of your career at the university or, indeed, a little bit earlier than that. You were working for the Joint Intelligence Bureau, then you went for a time to England where you were teaching, and then you came back and you joined the Joint Intelligence Bureau. What did that work involve?

It was not really intelligence gathering. It was administrative work, probably fairly similar to work done in other parts of the Public Service but it was special because of the nature of the material you were working with. Everything was classified and had to be treated with a great deal of care and discretion and what have you. It was interesting. I think I was wrong to go back. They pressed me to go back, but I found really that it wasn't much of a place for a woman in those days.

The sort of thing I could have expected was to go to one of the overseas posts. They had posts in London, Washington, Singapore and Hong Kong. In the United States you worked very closely with the CIA and in Britain with the Joint Intelligence Bureau there in London; in Singapore with the Defence setup, and similarly in Hong Kong. I think because the work was so involved with the armed services it was very much a male world. I got rather fed up finding myself training young fellows who'd then go off to these jobs while I sat around in Melbourne.

So that when we moved to Canberra in January '62 I decided to come with the Bureau. Actually, the planning for the move and the move was a very interesting piece of work. You had to get tons and tons of highly classified material up from Melbourne to Canberra by road, and wondering whether that would work - that was quite fun. But once I got here, I liked Canberra but I thought I would have to look elsewhere and I thought elsewhere would be somewhere else in the Public Service.

          It was a main stream Public Service position, was it?

What do you mean by ...?

          It wasn't a statutory authority as set down by the court?

No, it was just part of the Department of Defence.

          And were there many other women working in your area?

Yes, there were quite a few running things like libraries and whatnot - quite a few women - but the senior jobs were men's jobs. A lot of the men in the Joint Intelligence Bureau were ex-service people who'd worked in military intelligence or naval intelligence or air force intelligence.

          Was there a general feeling amongst the women that this wasn't perhaps the best place to be if you wanted to get ahead? Or was it just something that you personally felt?

I suppose it was general.

          And articulated?

No, those days one didn't. There was no great feminist push. But it was a nice place to work. It was fun. It was special. It was cliquey - you thought you were different and you were, in a way. I think a lot of us thought it would be much more interesting than other parts of the Public Service. I'm not so sure about that now. I think almost any job in the Public Service, if it's of interest to you, can be rewarding.

          So how did you come to be appointed to ANU? Did a job come up that you applied for? Or were you sought out?

Yes.

          And what attracted you about it?

The Faculty of Arts had decided that it must have its own administrator and so they advertised for a faculty secretary. Someone, I can't remember who, brought it to my notice. I talked to my dear friend, Colin Forster, whom I've known forever, and he said he thought it would be a nice job and that I'd like it. So I applied. Didn't hear anything for ages and ages. I applied in August and in early December Colin Plowman rang me to say could I come in and be interviewed.

So I was interviewed by Colin and Manning Clark. Manning was then Acting Principal - Joe was away for a while. And the then Sub-Dean, Ken McKay. And it was very interesting. We had a lovely chat. Then I heard nothing, nothing, nothing and one day Colin rang up and said, 'We'd love to have you. Can you come tomorrow?' which is typical of the way the university used to work. So I started on 10 December 1962, and the day after I started it was the Faculty of Arts Academic Progress Committee meeting which I had to look after. Every student who was up for consideration had a different condition imposed on his or her enrolment. It was absolute chaos. So that was really going in off the deep end - and it was great fun.

          Can you remember anything about the interview - the sorts of questions they asked? Was there any formality about the interview? Did you get the impression that they were interviewing a lot of people?

I have no idea how many people they interviewed. It was the first time I'd met Manning. Although he was still in Melbourne in my first year there, I didn't do his subjects. I'd never met him and so he was only a great and famous name in 1962. But, of course, he was deeply courteous and formal. And Colin was warm and friendly and put me at my ease very quickly. But I can't remember too much of what we talked about. I think they were keen, when employing administrators, not to get people who might see it as a back door to an academic job. So I think there were those kinds of questions and I was able to reassure them that I didn't want an academic job.

          What did attract you about the position? Why did you apply in the first place, apart from the fact that it was pointed out to you? Was it something about higher education? Something about the university? Or more was it that unhappiness that you've hinted at in Joint Intelligence?

I thought that I would find work in the university very rewarding and very interesting because I thought that higher education is one of the most important things and that it would be nice to play a part.

          And did you know much about the university? You'd been in Canberra only a fairly short time.

I knew a bit about the university because of my friends, the Forsters, so that the moment I got here I began to meet their friends, nearly all of whom were from the ANU. So I knew a lot of people at the university, and I liked them. They were very welcoming, very friendly. They were very encouraging, that: 'Come and work with us. It'll be nice.'

          Let's get you back to that introduction to the university and you arrived and you were thrown immediately into this meeting situation. Can you describe that first day?

(Laughs) Colin [Plowman] was there, of course. He used to go to all the faculty meetings. He was Acting Registrar of the School of General Studies because Tom Owen .... No, I'm sorry. He was then Registrar. He had been acting but when Tom came back from leave he moved to another job and so Colin was Registrar. But it was a tiny staff. We all fitted into half a corridor in Childers Street. The council room was at the end, then there was the principal's office. We went Val Brett, the business manager, Colin, Molly˙[Bouquet], me, three or four other people˙- Des Kennard looking after student administration. And at the other end of the building was part of the Faculty of Economics.

Childers Street was great. We were all together there. The Faculty of Law was there. The library was there. Economics was there. Arts had moved into the Haydon Allen Building and the science buildings were up. Economics and law and the library were all in Childers Street, and we had a common room where everyone met together at least twice a day. And people were just enormously friendly and welcoming.

I think of - political science was still down in Childers Street and Fin [Crisp] was wonderful. Fin made you a member of the community instantly. I'd been there a very short time when Fin invited me to join the Staff Association. I suppose he was president at the time. I think he was on a number of occasions and he was certainly very interested - and I did. That was typical of the kind of welcome you had. You were part of the academic enterprise and very much seen to be a valuable part.

          The Staff Association, that's the academic Staff Association, presumably?

That's right, yes. So I've been a member of that since early '63, I think.

          So while there were fears about administrators who wanted to be academics, there was no hesitation in allowing administrators to be part of that association?

No.

          And was there any division in the tea room, for example, between academics and administrative and secretarial staff?

No, certainly not - all together. And there were no: 'this is the law table'; 'this is the economics table'. There was nothing like that. Everyone just went and sat where there was a space so you'd be sitting with different people all the time.

          So taking into account secretarial, administrative and academic staff ...

And library staff.

          ... and library staff, what would be the total numbers in the Childers Street building? Very roughly.

I suppose fifty or sixty.

          Well, what is the critical point, in your view, when departments start to go to their own tables?

Certainly when I moved up to the Haydon Allen Building, I always sat at the history table. People talked to each other but in the common room in the Haydon Allen Building there were tables.

          And do you think that's a function of size? I'm thinking about this in the context of the Coombs tea room, in a way.

Well the Coombs did. I suppose it's very much organised into tables, is it? - from various departments.

          This is an area in which Hancock had a great interest, I suppose, this communication amongst academics and between the disciplines and so on. And I'm just wondering if there is a critical point where the number's just so great that you don't get that adequate communication or whether it's something about the shape of the building or what? - the architecture of academic life as it were.

Childers Street probably functioned very well because it was rather ramshackle and temporary and perhaps not too many people.

          And you were all on first name terms?

Mm, very much so. In those days I always called the Principal, Professor Burton. He was a dear - lovely man. But everybody else - first name terms. Certainly, with all the professors, they were most informal and, as I say, enormously welcoming. There was Burg Cameron, and Heinz Arndt was still in the Faculty of Economics then, and Jack Richardson was down at law.

          You must tell us more about these people in a little while, but for the moment what sort of structures existed. It was chaos at that first meeting but, in general terms, were there reasonably well formed administrative structures or were you given the task of imposing them?

Before I came there was one person who ostensibly looked after all the faculties, and it was Ian Paton. Of course, even though we were small then, one person couldn't handle that job properly. I mean, they could really just prepare an agenda as specified by the dean and do routine minutes. They couldn't really give the faculty any help - it was just too much work. And this was the reason why Arts decided they wanted their own dedicated administrator. So I started off looking after Arts and Asian Studies. Asian Studies was very tiny. But in a fairly short time I found that I couldn't do justice to Asian Studies.

          This is Oriental Studies or Asian Studies?

Oriental Studies in those days, yes. I worked very closely with Colin seeking his advice. He was quite marvellous. He told you how he thought things might go, so you'd try to do it that way, but he left you absolutely free to do the job the way you saw it best. He was always there with advice but he made it very plain that he trusted you and had confidence in you. After years of working in the Public Service this was absolutely marvellous, 'cause in the hierarchical structure there you do something, then it gets passed up and passed up and passed up and by the time it comes down again you scarcely recognise it. You have very little scope for initiative really, but at the university Colin just gave you your head - it was wonderful. He was very inspiring.

          What models were followed? I mean what models did you follow? Did you translate your public service experience to the university context or did you draw more on Colin for ideas as to how things should run? Or, indeed, were some of the academics suggesting that this should proceed in this particular way - that this was an appropriate form to follow?

Certainly, the way the job panned out was very much influenced by the dean and the sub-dean. The sub-dean was responsible for all student matters and so I had to learn from him. That was Ken McKay. He was a meticulous sub-dean. And later on, Bill Ramson. By the time Bill became sub-dean I felt pretty confident in the job and we worked very well together.

When I first started Manning was dean but he was tremendously non-directive (laughs). I'm trying to think of the words that Don [Baker] quoted in his eulogy at the funeral - Manning, on being a head of department: 'You should talk to everyone and find out what they'd like to do and then tell them to go away and do it'. He was a bit like that as dean, too. The faculty sort of ran and Manning was kind and courteous and pleasant to everyone. But as for telling people what they should do - never. So I found him a fairly elusive dean. I hated to bother him because he always seemed to be working very hard. So I think that I got more from Colin than I did from Manning in those first few months.

          This is a good time to compare various deans you have known, as it were, and their administrative styles.

Alec had been dean but that was before I came, so ...

          That's Alec Hope?

Yes. He was the first dean, I think. I've lost my list of deans.

          A cup of tea arrived just as we were fishing out the list of deans. You were going to comment, Pat, on various deans that you'd worked with.

In the time I was in Arts - that's from end of '62 until almost the end of '73 - I had five deans. Dick Johnson I worked very closely with over two periods of his deanship - that covered five years in all. He followed Manning in '63. That was his first term as a young professor of classics. But he was a very good dean and a very strong dean. The two periods he served were ones of great growth in the faculty, and he devoted a great deal of his time to the office of dean.

Derek Scales - Derek would say he took his turn. I think Dick, perhaps, very much wanted to be dean and saw it as a very important part of his academic career. Derek Scales took on the deanship out of a sense of duty. That as a senior professor in the faculty he should take his turn. He was lovely to work with but, of course, that period of mid-'60s was one of great growth and lacking in almost any kind of difficulty. What you wanted to do you were able to do. You were able to get staff. You weren't over-burdened with students. So that I think Derek would say that he wasn't a startlingly good dean, but in another way he was, he was excellent. He quietly encouraged people. He was unfailingly courteous and friendly with everyone, and it was quite a serene and happy period.

Andrew Learmonth, who was Professor of Geography, a Scotsman, followed Derek. He was, perhaps, a little more interested in exercising authority as dean. But then again that was a pretty happy sort of time, and uneventful.

Dick Johnson's second term, from '69 to '72 - that was a three-year deanship - where the faculty was beginning to realise that it needed more continuity, not a one-year or a two-year term but they moved then to three-year terms for deans. There was quite a lot of discussion at the time about whether we should go the way of universities like New South Wales and Monash which had very long term, almost permanent, deans. There was a lot of debate on it and the faculty always drew back in the end from saying yes, we will have a permanent dean.

          Was that because faculty thought that they ought to be able to control the dean to an extent?

Yes, certainly - very much so.

          And did deans view it that way? Can you recall any direct clashes between deans and faculty?

No, it might have got close at times but no, I think essentially it was pretty harmonious. The last dean I served with was Eric Fry and he was the first of the non-professorial deans. We could see it coming. Professors were beginning to not to want to be the head of the department for the whole time. They wanted a break from it, wanted a second chair, for example. Certainly, a lot of professors in the faculty did not want the deanship. It was beginning to become a very busy job, indeed, and some professors didn't have the skills, I don't think. People like dear Peter Herbst, they're not awfully good administrators and they'd be terrible deans, and they'd be the first to say so.

At the time when Dick Johnson's second term came to an end - the end of '72 - I think that Hanna Neumann would have been made dean, and she would have been excellent. She'd already been dean of students, and then she died very suddenly when she was overseas, and she had agreed to let her name go forward. So that was an added sadness. I think she would have been the first woman dean in an Australian university, and she certainly would have been lovely to work with.

          So what made a good dean?

In those days, I think it's a little bit different now because deans have so much more authority devolved to them, in particular authority to manage the budget. But in those days they didn't have so much of that kind of worry and there wasn't so much of the concern about making do with a much smaller amount of money. A good dean was someone who understood what his academic colleagues were about and wanted to do; was able to encourage them; was able to suggest ways in which they might be able to fulfil their wishes without extra members of staff, without more money for this, more money for that; to be encouraging, to suggest ways of cooperative working between departments. I can't add much more than that, I think.

          Do you think there was anything in a particular person's background that would lead them either to be a successful or a less successful dean? Was it advantageous, for example, to have had some sort of public service experience or other direct administrative experience?

I don't know of any deans who did have that kind of background. In a sense, I don't think Manning would have been a terribly good dean, and I don't think Alec would have been either. But they were deans in the very early days of the faculty when it was small and there were not enormous problems, and of course they had a great deal of prestige. Whereas Eric Fry was an excellent dean - very well organised, very hard working. Dick Johnson was an excellent dean.

          How did faculty work? I mean, faculty meetings. And what was your role in faculty meetings?

I prepared the agenda, with the dean.

          Now, what did that mean in practice? That you jotted down a series of notes and then went along to see the dean and to talk it through with him?

Yes. We lived next door so you didn't have to have formal meetings. We were in and out of each other's rooms all day. Sometimes items would come directly from heads of departments. There were, of course, many continuing items: student matters and so on. But yes, agenda items would be worked out between the dean and me, and I would take notes at the meeting.

          And were you expected to speak occasionally in faculty?

Yes.

          Did that differ from one dean to another?

No. Well, particularly after I became sub-dean I then had pretty full responsibility for student matters and so at times I did need to say something. Colin was excellent in this way, and later on George Dicker. I mean they were quite superb and you could learn from them - that you were there to help, you had to know the rules, you had to have a good memory for precedents, you had to let people know when there were difficulties that they mightn't foresee in something they were proposing. Both Colin and George played very constructive roles in this way, but it was to facilitate, not to tell faculty what it should be doing or how it should be doing it, but to suggest difficulties and then to suggest ways round them. That, I think, was the role of the registrar's representative on faculty.

END TAPE 1, SIDE A

BEGIN TAPE 1, SIDE B

          Identification: this is tape one, side B, of the interview with Pat White.

          Were there occasions that you can recall where faculty went entirely wrong and you had to just sit there, in effect, and see significant errors taking place?

There weren't many but there was one that I recall very well and I probably shouldn't be talking about it - but perhaps I should. It was when, in Dick's second term as dean - we worked very well together as dean and sub-dean 'cause, as I say, it was over a five-year period with the two terms and we knew each other very well and it was a good sort of teamwork.

We were beginning to be worried about student numbers. Money was getting short and we knew that academic staff couldn't go on expanding forever. So the faculty decided, rather than set a quota, as law had done by then, we would not accept late applications for enrolment. That is quite a reasonable way of controlling your numbers. If you're very short of students you accept applications right up until the last minute. So that was the policy.

It had been approved by faculty and the Deputy Chairman of the Board, Cec Gibb, at the time had said, 'You have got to observe this very strictly because if you don't it will be on your own head if you over enrol'. So I had administered that, and it's not easy. It's really very hard when someone comes along a bit late with an excellent excuse and you have to say I'm sorry, no. It's a very, very hard thing to do, particularly if - I loved working with students and [inaudible] and so on. Then, at the first faculty meeting of the year, which was in March, Professor Gibb, who was Head of the Department of Psychology, had said to the faculty that he was admitting some non-degree students into Psychology I because he had a little bit of room left.

Now, I was mortified because it was directly against the faculty's policy which we had been exhorted to adopt by him, and he was just breaking the rule. Now, the faculty had delegated to the dean and the sub-dean the authority to make all decisions on student matters, and that these would never be overturned. If the faculty didn't like what the dean or the sub-dean was doing, they could say don't do it again. I saw this as a direct flouting of that authority. I'd been turning students away and Cec had been admitting them. So I resigned because - I wrote to Colin and I said it is clear that the faculty no longer has any faith in what I'm doing.

          You resigned as sub-dean?

Yes. I wrote a letter of resignation as sub-dean. I mean, we had to listen to Cec at faculty saying: 'It's like, envisage a box of oranges, you think it's full but you can drop marbles in.' Now, a lot of people at faculty - there was quite a debate on whether late applications for single subject students should be accepted and faculty agreed that they would allow it. And I just felt that all the students I'd turned away were suffering because they didn't have a powerful patron. So I wrote resigning and asking Colin would he move me somewhere else, and then all hell broke loose.

          In response to your resignation?

Colin told Dick and Dick was horrified. I think Dick should have been just as cross as I was because it was his authority, too, that was being flouted. And of course, Cec was very powerful - Chairman of the Board. So I took no part in all the performance that followed but it was rescinded at the next meeting, and I had a lasting non-friend in Professor Gibb, I think.

          So he was just essentially overruled in the first instance by the dean and that was confirmed by faculty subsequently.

No, faculty went along with Cec at that meeting and I felt that that was showing a total lack of faith in what we had been doing. We had been carrying out the policy and now they were reversing it, and by doing that a large number of students had been disadvantaged.

          But after that meeting?

At the following meeting they rescinded the resolution and resolved ...

          I'm just interested in how pressure was brought in the meantime.

I took no part in the pressure but it was exerted, I think, and there were lots of arguments because they didn't want me to leave.

          Yes, and presumably they recognised that the policy was in fact ...

It was a very silly thing to do. It was so unfair to students. And you can't put up with that - you can't really.

          At that initial meeting, did you have anything to say?

I can't remember. I might have just said that it did seem unfair that hundreds of students had been turned away because they were late but that it appeared that some were being accepted.

          Because it raises large questions about the role of the administrator, or what recourse the administrator has in such situations where the decision-making body reaches a decision which the administrator thinks is patently wrong and contrary to precedent and so on - unjust. And the only step that you thought you could take, presumably, is to resign. There was nothing you could do short of that rather drastic action.

I suppose I could have tried to do something else but it just seemed to me a perfect and clear example of lack of faith in what the dean and I were doing, but the dean chose not to see it that way. I thought it was the Chairman of the Board acting in an entirely inappropriate way because it suited his department to do so.

          Do you think it was partly a structural thing? - I mean the different responses of the dean and yourself, in that the dean saw himself more as the representative of faculty and he was in a position to be swung one way or the other by faculty where, on the other hand, you as an administrator had a commitment to precedent, to notions of natural justice and so on?

I don't know. It might have been. It's never been talked about.

          It's a very interesting issue and I'm sure such issues would have arisen right around the university from time to time, although maybe they didn't reach the level of crisis that that one obviously did.

Yes. I think it shows, too, that it's very important for a faculty administrator to be a member of the staff of the registrar, whatever that person may be called. I can recall a permanent dean of the Faculty of Arts of the University of New South Wales saying to me, 'Heavens above, I wouldn't have a registrar's person in my faculty. My administrator is responsible to me.' Well, I don't think that's the way to go at all because I think the administrator can be under tremendous pressure. The registrar is there to uphold the rules, to help people to do things properly, but not to let them get away with blue murder. I think it's very important, and I never found any conflict between being responsible both to the registrar and to the dean - never.

In those days the administration was trusted and respected by the academic staff. Certainly, I can see why when you had people like Joe Burton and Colin Plowman running the administration of the School of General Studies. It was really part of all a very close-knit team, and there was absolute trust. I think it's gone now - I mean, I'm sure it's gone - and I don't quite know why. I think a vice-chancellor's role has become different and difficult, and quite often a vice-chancellor can be imagined to be out of sympathy with what the academic staff are there to do. As I say, there was never ever any conflict in being responsible to two people.

          By this time, of course, you were sub-dean, which was perhaps an anomalous position, was it? Were you the only administrative sub-dean in the university?

Yes.

          How did it come about?

It must have been such a terrible experiment that they've never repeated (laughs). It came about, Dick was dean, Bill Ramson was sub-dean, I was faculty secretary. Bill was due to finish his term. I think they were finding it increasingly difficult to get academic staff to volunteer to be sub-dean for a couple of years. It was a very busy job and it would mean for an ambitious young member of the academic staff that they wouldn't be able to get on with their research - something would have to give. And I don't think a period as sub-dean would carry much weight with a promotions committee. Those kinds of problems, I think. I suppose they thought I'd done reasonably well at sub-deaning-type work which Bill and I used to share.

          But the appointment seemed to be rather in conflict with the attitude that you mentioned earlier that administrators should not pretend to be academics. Did you guess that there was some fears at the time of the appointment?

I kept right out of it. I didn't really care one way or another. I loved the job I was doing and just assumed I'd go on doing it. But there was quite a push to appoint me as sub-dean, but there were concerns. I only know about them because˙- I'll give you this to read after. It's Molly's notebook. Molly had to take two faculty meetings for me where it was discussed and then there was quite a long discussion at the steering committee of the board, which was then basically a committee of the deans, the chairman of the board and the vice-chancellor. And it was discussed at great length there.

There was a difficulty about - sub-deans came from the academic staff. There didn't seem to be opposition to my appointment as sub-dean but I wasn't a member of the academic staff, so what did this mean. What repercussions would it have for other faculties? Was it really necessary to do it this way? Could you call it something other than a sub-dean to avoid the difficulties? - that kind of thing.

          Well, most of your work was to do with students. Can you tell us a little bit about what that involved? What was a day's work, say, in the mid-'60s, the late '60s? How much time did you spend talking to students? Were you the first line of approach?

Very often, and certainly at enrolment time I would talk to students all day, would make quarter-hour appointments all day, every day. Students were encouraged to come and talk about what they wanted to do.

          Were most of the discussions - obviously at enrolment time they would be about course structure and so on˙- but at other times what sorts of problems were students bringing to you?

Problems of falling behind, being ill, wanting to withdraw - all kinds of things.

          Personal problems for the most part?

Yes.

          And how did you handle these problems? Obviously they differed so much you'd handle them in different ways, but˙...

Just the same as you'd handle problems with friends if they wanted to talk to you about something. You'd listen and give whatever advice you could. Send them off elsewhere.

          Did you have your own unwritten rules, as it were, for relating to students? Did you have a set of precedents that you followed? Were you able to identify instantly whether this student should be put in this category of response, or this student should not be?

No, I used to just listen.

          Can you recall some of the specific student problems that you dealt with?

No, I can't think of anything interesting to say about that.

          It's a hard question, I know, but I'm just thinking back, my time in Armidale there was a great crisis relating to a student who came in and actually stole an exam or an essay - I've forgotten the details of it - and that caused mighty disruption around the university.

I don't think I had to deal with anything so exciting (laughs).

          A fairly happy situation, I guess.

Used to have students who would keep coming back.

          With the same problem?

No, sometimes they'd just come to tell you that everything was going all right, and that's nice.

          You had a close involvement with the colleges, of course.

Not then. I was a member of the governing body of Burgmann from when it began but I wasn't in the faculty then. I had one year in Bruce Hall, when Bill Packard went on leave and Bill Ramson took over as acting warden and Bill persuaded me to go in for one year as a deputy warden. He was saying, 'How can you be a good sub-dean when you've never lived in an academic community, and so many of our students live in halls, you should know what it's like'. So that was quite fun. One year was enough. I found I never got away from students that year in Bruce Hall. It was just night and day, seven days a week.

          Did you think 'academic community' was the appropriate expression for Bruce Hall?

(Laughs) It was, it was good. It was great fun. I had Megan Stoyles in the room next to my flat and - you remember Megan? She was a great girl. I said, 'I don't care what you do but don't be noisy'. We had Des Ball, he was in Bruce Hall in that year. No, it was good fun.

          We must come back and talk about the colleges in a little while but let's get back to the faculty in the '60s and some of the academics. We haven't really talked much about the academics - not just in the Faculty of Arts but in the university generally. You were going to say something earlier, I think, about Joe Burton. Joe Burton has, in fact, been interviewed for the Oral History Project some years ago by Bob Gollan. So we've got him on tape but it would be very interesting to have your recollections of him.

Just that he was one of the nicest people that you could ever meet. Thoroughly genuine and civilised and sensible. Enormously kind. He and Barbara were the sort of people who should have had a hundred kids. They were warm and friendly and - I can't think of any better person to look after the School of General Studies than Joe. He was superb.

          Did you have much direct contact with him?

Yes, because we were all so small. We were all in a little corridor, and he was the most informal of people. Yes, so one did.

          Were there types of problems that you'd expect to take to him rather than to Colin, for example, or the dean?

No. I don't think I would have seen it as appropriate to go straight to Joe without going to Colin.

          And what about some of the other people?

I've mentioned Fin and how very welcoming and friendly he was. A very strong presence, Fin always was. He used to talk about 'those people up the hill' meaning the institute. He'd been, I think, opposed to amalgamation. Yes, perhaps you'd better ask me about particular people.

          I think of people like Heinz Arndt and generally the way the academic community, if you like, if you can use that term in relation to Childers Street - how it functioned. Was there a dominant presence? Was there a constant exchange between particular people? Were there conflicts between various people in that community? Recurrent conflicts, I mean.

Not that I knew of. Perhaps I'm looking back at the Childers Street time as a golden, happy period and might be romanticising a bit about it, because it didn't last all that long. The Copland Building was built and the economists moved away. And then after the chancelry was built and central administration moved in there. The old hospital buildings were knocked down and the law school was built. And, of course, the Chifley Library.

But by then the decision had been made that I would move up to the Haydon Allen Bulding instead of toing-and-froing. This was a decision mainly of Colin's, I think, but certainly in consultation with Professor Burton that we would move to have faculty secretaries in each faculty and the administration would be decentralised. I think either works well. Queensland has a very centralised one that, I think, is pretty effective. But we made the decision that the administrator would go out and be with the faculty and then similarly the school secretary would live within the school.

In times of financial hardship when staffing's cut and so on that kind of administration is hard. Well just now for instance, in the last couple of years the registrar decided that she couldn't afford to have a faculty secretary in Asian Studies. So now we're back to the way it was when I started - Arts and Asian Studies looked after by the one faculty secretary. It doesn't work well. If you had a centralised administration people can cover the bases more easily. I think it would be hard for us to change now because, I think, the faculties and the research schools have got very used to having their person on the spot. And they'd hate it if they had to just ring up someone in the chancelry. I imagine Paul Bourke working without his Christopher [Marshall]; he'd find it very difficult.

          I would guess so. What sort of links did you have, apart from social links presumably, with other faculty secretaries or faculty administrative staff?

They were always very close. We were all doing similar things. We would come together fairly regularly to decide on procedures for next enrolment period and so on. We'd design and redesign forms. We'd talk about common problems. We were always very close. I don't think it's been the same with school secretaries, and I think that's rather a pity. I can remember instances where we recruited very good people and then put them in a research school straight away and I think that's pretty unfair because the person is totally isolated. If you're hired as a reasonably efficient administrator and then you're dumped out in the John Curtin School or wherever and you think, I can't be ringing up the registrar all the time to find out how one does this. You really need university - ANU - experience before you go out into one of the research schools, I think, because they tend not to come together in the way that faculty secretaries do.

          Well, that presumably relates to the broader structure of the institute in comparison with the faculties. The faculties are just tied together by students in a way that the institute isn't.

That's quite so.

          Can we talk about the attitude to 'up the hill' as Fin Crisp put it? You arrived two years, three years, after amalgamation. Did you sense soon after your arrival a degree of discomfort towards the institute?

I suppose one always was told that they were very well off and their research students were very much better treated and so on. But for all the time I was in the Faculty of Arts I think my concern was for the faculty and I didn't really have a broad view.

          But it might have been difficult to escape from a fairly strong expression of opinion on the part of some members of faculty that the institute was better off in a whole range of respects, not just in terms of the way students were treated.

I think it's just a fact that it was. I had an early experience of cooperation between the institute and the faculty when there was talk of introducing sociology. It was seen as a bastard discipline - terrible, worse than geography˙- and that you should never have undergraduates enrolling in sociology. So what we did - it'd be easy enough to check - but I can't remember when it started, it was agreed to introduce an MA by course work and thesis in sociology, and this would be the way of easing in. There was a committee headed by Mick Borrie. It included Ken Inglis who was then - it was before Ken went to New Guinea - had the second chair in history in the Faculty of Arts; Frank Jones, George Zubrzycki, Sol Encel, maybe some others, and I looked after it. And the discussions at that committee were marvellous. You should only introduce to this dangerous study people who had a good honours degree in something like history, politics, philosophy, and so on. And so that's how we started. We had an excellent group of students, most of whom have gone on to academic careers in sociology - spreading the discipline through just about every university in Australia. But there was this terrible doubt that undergraduates should be subjected to this. This MA course was an excellent example of cooperation.

END TAPE 1, SIDE B

BEGIN TAPE 2, SIDE A

          Identification: tape two, side A, of the interview with Pat White.

          We were talking, Pat, about sociology.

Yes, about the MA in sociology. It was a very good example of cooperation. I enjoyed being involved with that - enjoyed it very much.

          Did post-graduate students have much to do with one another in those days - post-graduate students from the institute and the school?

I don't think so. They might well have gone to seminars - history students from the institute and vice versa - but I think they were fairly separate.

          Let's move you out of Arts across to chancelry.

Dragged screaming. Yes, I looked after academic staffing for about six months and then Jack Sharp, who was assistant registrar student services - student administration - retired and George [Dicker] asked me to apply for the job. Now, that had to be an application because I'd been Acting Assistant Registrar and it would in effect be a substantive promotion, I suppose.

          Let's just go back a bit. If you'd say what you were telling me earlier about the actual circumstances of your translation to the chancelry.

Yes. Colin Plowman was going on secondment to head the Arts Council for twelve months which meant that George would replace him and Molly [Bouquet] would replace George, and they needed another person in the chancelry, so that's how that happened. And I suppose I was acting because it was expected that Colin would come back in twelve months. But part way through that secondment to the Arts Council he was appointed Registrar at the University of New South Wales, so he was lost to us for this period of what? - five years or whatever, before he came back as Assistant Vice-Chancellor. So Colin was away through all the troubles - the period of student unrest.

          Sorry, I interrupted you when you were talking about the promotion. Could you tell us a little about how the promotion system worked? And indeed, when the promotion system was introduced, because I imagine back in the early days, in the early '60s when you first joined the university, perhaps they didn't have such a thing as a promotion system.

No. The way it used to work was that you'd proceed through the range of whatever job you were in - a graduate assistant grade one or grade two or whatever - and then the academic registrar, whoever the boss was - names changed over the period - would review everyone's progress each year. Sometimes it would be decided to make someone a senior graduate assistant. So it was done very much then on the level at which the person performed rather than any job description. So as a faculty secretary you could begin as quite a lowly graduate assistant and with time, experience, doing well, you could become a senior graduate assistant. It's very different now because the job is classified and the system takes no note of the level of a person's performance in it. So someone can perform at barely minimum standard or superbly well. It's common now, the Public Service does it, too - you grade the job, not the person.

          And who made those decisions in the earlier system about gradations?

It would be Colin and the principal.

          On a formal basis? Did they sit down once or twice a year?

An annual review, yes.

          And was that committed to paper or was it more a matter of just Colin and the principal sitting down and running through a list?

I don't know. I know that when I was involved in the process, when I was Assistant Registrar and George Dicker was the Registrar, he would meet quite formally with the assistant registrars every year. And before that meeting those of us who supervised staff, and when I was looking after student administration that was a very big staff job, there were fifty or so, and so I had to provide assessments of everybody's work for that meeting. And Molly would do it for all her staff.

          And these were oral assessments?

No, I'd write them down.

          And just from your own perception, were you happy with those opportunities for progressing through the system? I'm just recalling your reservations about the way Joint Intelligence worked, particularly in relation to women. Did you think the system worked well enough at ANU? That the opportunities were there, and that it was a just system?

Yes, I think it did. In latter years, I think, those of us who work in academic administration have felt that the criteria for grading jobs can sometimes be a bit lopsided. Some of us have felt that there can be rather too much weight put on the amount of money you control and the number of staff over whom you have a supervisory role. Some of us think that perhaps business manager-type jobs are valued more highly than those who work in academic administration.

          In those early years, what was the role of the business manager's office? And when did the notion of business managers actually emerge?

So far as I know, there have always been these business and laboratory managers in the research schools, and they've performed a very important function. The business manager of the School of General Studies looked after all faculties. That remains the same now. It's divided in the institute. It's a unified system within the faculties. And, of course, it's become increasingly important as the university's budget is enormous, financial cuts are huge, you've got to have great skill in managing your finances. It's become more and more important.

          And what sort of relations were there between, well, first off - I'm going back to the Faculty of Arts now - but you as sub-dean and the business manager? Were they day-to-day relations? Was there a clear division of responsibility?

Total.

          In other words you didn't really need to have much contact with the business manager, at all?

No. Through the '60s, the Faculty of Arts would ponder at its meetings on what its next academic development would be. And there would be lists of things: should we go into fine art before music? When will we have anthropology? And then, after a while, could we possibly have sociology? Great arguments about what was needed to round out the faculty academically. And occasionally someone could say 'but we won't be able to afford all that' and the answer would be 'that's not our function. What we put up to the Board is what we would like to have as new academic developments. It's up to the Board to decide whether there is money for it.' So it was probably living in cloud cuckoo land.

          Well, not really so because the money was there.

The money was there, and I guess it started drying up in the early '70s - you had to be very careful.

          I took you out of chancelry. I should leave you in chancelry now, and if you can describe just the sorts of jobs that you were doing in chancelry - first off, in staffing for that short period and then with student matters.

Academic staffing - you've talked to Molly at length so she is the superb person on academic staff, she really is. I didn't like it terribly much. It's not a job I would ever have sought. I'm much more interested in the academic staff when they're here and doing what they're hired to do. So I don't think I'd ever want to run a staff office or a personnel office or a human resources division or whatever they call it these days. It was interesting. I had to look after a couple of electoral committees for headships of research schools and that is interesting. A lot of very impressive people are involved when you're searching for a head of a research school, and there is interest in that. But I was pleased to get back closer to students, quite frankly, and so I welcomed the job in student administration.

          Just before we leave staffing, those appointments of headships of research schools, what was your role in that exercise?

The role is from advertising right up to letter of appointment and to look after all the electoral committees.

          And in that sort of situation are there references to precedent?

Very much so, yes.

          How were they manifest?

They were manifest in the meticulous records kept by Molly. You could always go back to the procedures that had been followed the last time they were searching for a head of school - beautiful records.

          And in the actual discussions of appointments, were the committees, and presumably they would have been committees of what? - five people or thereabouts.

No, very much bigger for a head of school in those days, probably ten or eleven.

          Did you get the impression that in the discussions the committees were following particular forms? Or was there very much an ad hoc approach to appointments?

No, they were following procedures which had been thoroughly tested and reviewed and amended over the years. It depended very much on the chairman. The chairman for the head of school committee is always the vice-chancellor. And I think the committees are very well run, indeed - not much adhockery about it at all - very careful.

          Let me let you move on to students.

I moved on to students in the middle of '74, and that was just after the first sit-in in the chancelry. It was a very troubled time. I hated it. I really hated it.

          You were in chancelry though, but in staffing when the troubles began.

I retained my close connection with student politics by being on the Students Loan Fund Committee which always met in the Students Association office. I was on it for about twenty-five years. It's just a small group of three people who meet.

          That was in the Union, presumably? - the Students Association office.

Yes, so I always had access to the Students Association office. Now, that became very important in '74 and '75 because the administration, the academic staff were the enemy, quite plainly. It was a very unpleasant atmosphere but I could always, and did, walk into the Students Association office any time. I mean, I had to have a meeting there at least once a week. And in a sense, I think that I managed to keep a fair degree of trust. I also managed to know what was going on, and what might be happening.

It was particularly difficult because the student leaders .... I was quite close to a lot of them; I knew them very well - Amirah's daughter, Judy [Inglis]. It was really most painful. The students didn't have much of a quarrel because Sir John Crawford as Vice-Chancellor was just light years ahead. He had student representation on Council, on the Academic Board, on faculties. We had faculty education committees - you know about those? And students were encouraged to play a full part in all of these committees. The only committee that there wasn't a student on was finance committee, and that just happened in the last few years. So that we were a long way ahead of every other university.

But, I think, that our students really took the lead from Monash, and Albert Langer was held up as the great revolutionary - he was going to change everything. And I suppose what I and most people found so unpleasant about those years was that the students told lies constantly, and many of them were very fine students of history: Michael Dunn, who's the only president of a Students Association I have not liked - he was very cold and very tough; and Julius Roe. And if you look through the names of the students who were student leaders in those times, many of them came from Manning's [Clark] department and it caused him incredible hurt, and it's not the only reason why he retired early but it's very much one of the reasons why he retired early.

He felt that he had been a complete failure as a teacher; that he'd devoted his life to teaching students history and some of his most brilliant students were behaving in this way. And he never got over it. And it was also one of the reasons why Fin [Crisp] went early. Fin lasted a couple of years longer than Manning but he was deeply disappointed at the kinds of values that these students were espousing - the nonsense they were talking, the lies they were telling. He felt, too, that he'd devoted his life to teaching humane, liberal values and felt he'd been a failure. So it was a bad time.

          Where were you when the troubles manifested themselves in a physical way in chancelry? Were you there actually when there was a lock-out, wasn't there?

Yes, I was there. The staff in the chancelry were very badly equipped to handle this kind of thing because they were always so remote from students. I think everyone in the chancelry should be sent out every couple of years to get into the real world, but people in the chancelry think it is the real world, and they're terrified of students because, of course, those were the days of the long-haired fierce look (laughs). And secretaries would barricade themselves in, fearful for their safety. I knew most of the students. I could talk to most of the students but they were playing some fairly funny games.

          And did you talk to them?

Yes.

          During the sit-in?

Yes.

          So in that first sit-in, what happened? They actually tried to - they just barged in. The door, presumably, was open.

Of course, yes. I met Julius [Roe] and Judy [Inglis]. They were coming into the chancelry as I was on the ground floor, and I said, 'Hello, what are you doing here?'. And Judy said, 'Oh, I just wanted to get a drink of water' and she was on her way to occupy the Mills Room.

          She was followed by large numbers?

Yes.

          They stayed there for how long?

The first time, I think - well, they certainly stayed overnight and most of the next day. But the first sit-in, Michael Dunn was president, and he was pretty implacable and cold. Later on there was an occupation of the chancelry annex which, as you know, is a funny sort of building. It was designed for a student union and so it's fairly hard to lock up. I knew it was coming and so I managed to get all the student files out of open areas and decided that we would do nothing to prevent it, that we would let the students occupy the open areas and just see what happened. They came, and it was a fairly - it was a bit of a fizzer for them, I think, because the people in the chancelry annex, in student administration, couldn't possibly be seen as the enemy. They were the people who helped them and gave them their bus passes and forms for this and forms for that and were always terribly kind and nice. And Michael Dunn ordered me to send the staff home.

          Which you did?

No. I said, 'Oh Michael, don't be stupid' but that wasn't nice, either.

          You knew it was coming though?

I can't think how I knew it was coming but I did. I'd had some warning. There were always mass meetings in Union Court. Flags would be waved and off they'd go.

          You had enough friends amongst the students who would tell you just what was happening, I suppose.

There was that but there was also the fact that I was able, freely, to go in and out of the Students Association office and I was able to be seen as someone who was not their enemy - I hope.

          Did you have conversations with those in chancelry? - I'm thinking particularly of Crawford and Coombs, who I think was fairly active at this stage - about tactics?

No, I didn't.

          Do you know if there were such discussions?

Yes, I'm sure there were. But this was when Dr Williams was Vice-Chancellor, though I think he had a very hard time.

          Pat's just been consulting her diary about the dates of the sit-ins and so on, and we're at 10 August.

No, sorry, it's 8 August. On that morning there was a special meeting of the Board and that was looking at this 10-10 Committee - you've got all that in records. So it was a fairly heightened kind of day. My memory now is that after the Board meeting the students were dissatisfied and so they came and occupied the chancelry annex. I'd had word of it, I can't remember how, and had managed to get all the student files away safely, so that we could look after things but allow an occupation without any problem. And so they came and the president of the Students Association, Michael Dunn, ordered me to send the staff home, that they were occupying the building.

          Where did you actually put the files, Pat?

We had, off the main area which is open - it was the old refectory - we had a number of small offices that had doors which could be locked. So we just put all the student files that were out and being used behind those locked doors, and I wouldn't have allowed them to open the doors.

          And the students would not have been aware that they were there?

I don't really know that they wanted to damage student files or damage property at all, but I thought it was my duty to make sure that they didn't. No, there was no question that they were after their records or anything.

          How was it done? I mean, was there a sense of panic in that you were grabbing at files and ...

No, the staff were very good. They just went about it and put everything away. I locked my room because I had stuff everywhere and so I just locked my room up.

          And you put the records on trolleys or you took a bundle of records under one arm ...

There weren't as many files out as that and the whole student filing system was kept in the annex and that was in a lower ground floor and that was sealed off. That was a fireproofed area for safe-keeping so it wasn't very difficult. So the students came, and Michael ordered me to send everyone home and I said no, I wouldn't do that, but they were welcome to stay. And so they stayed and then they got awfully bored because nothing was happening and they didn't really know what to do. I think that out of that kind of frustration .... They were obviously not satisfied at what had happened at the special Board meeting. They didn't have much fun in the annex because these people were their friends and it wasn't much fun in taunting them. They began to get hungry and whatnot.

So then in the early afternoon we heard that a small group of students had occupied the PABX - you know the little gatehouse at University House. And that was very serious because in the science research schools it was essential that there be lines open for safety reasons so the decision was made that it couldn't be allowed to continue. I was over there. I'm trying to think who else was there - George, of course. We tried to persuade them to come out but they wouldn't.

          How many students were there?

There were masses milling around outside, of course, because this was really something. This was taking control of the university. And so there were lots and lots of happy, excited student spectators. I don't suppose there were more than about a dozen inside.

          Led by one particular student?

I can't recall now, and it would be silly .... I think the president of the Students Association would accept responsibility.

          And he was there?

Mm.

END TAPE 2, SIDE A

BEGIN TAPE 2, SIDE B

          Identification: tape two, side B, of the interview with Pat White.

          Pat, what happened to the switchboard operators in the PABX?

They were inside the building for most of the time, and sadly enough most of them were terrified - they were frightened. They thought that something awful was going to happen. I'm certain the students meant them no harm but they felt that they had to stand by and protect the telephone exchange and I think the students were wanting them to leave, they refused to, and they were very frightened. I can remember .... Noel Dunbar was there, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, George Dicker and trying for a long time to get them to come out the decision was made to call the police. And that was fairly momentous because it had never happened at the university before.

          Who made that decision?

Noel, in consultation with George and people. I think it was the proper one. There was the concern for the staff. There was certainly the safety worry that if something had gone wrong in one of the laboratories there couldn't be ready access to help for fire brigades or whatever. I think it was entirely proper. In a sense it's what the students wanted. They did want that kind of showdown. They did want to say that the university used force on them. And, of course, in those days the police didn't come on to the campus. Right through the worries of Vietnam and so on when there'd be marches and demonstrations in town, the police would stop at a magic line - where the family courts are now. So our students were very privileged. And this is the first time that I can recall them coming on to the campus and it was at the wish of the administration. And they were arrested.

          Do you think that Dunbar and the others made the decision that there was a point - that the PABX was the point at which they had to take a stand?

Yes.

          That it was going to come at some time and ...

I think Michael [Dunn] was determined that it would come, absolutely determined. We put up with sit-ins, put up with damage to the Mills Room; put up with occupying the vice-chancellor's office; put up with all of those things and never once confronted them with the police. But I think Michael was determined that this would happen. I mean, you've got to find the example of police brutality. Some of them would allow themselves to be dragged out.

          Did they have a particular bogey within the university? Or was it just academics generally or chancelry generally or was the vice-chancellor the particular brunt of their ...?

I don't think there was a particular bad man. It was the whole university system they were seeking to reform. Their view was that the whole university system and the whole curriculum was wrong. Students must play a full part in setting the curriculum, in assessing. See, they had to go as far as that at the ANU because Crawford's reforms had given students what they were fighting for in other universities. Crawford was so far ahead, so they had to settle on the curriculum. We demand the right to say what we will be taught and the way it will be taught and the way it is examined. They were seeking a revolution in the way universities were run. I suppose that went back to Paris but the ANU was very different from Paris.

          So how did the story end? The students went to court.

The students went to court. I've just marked things in my diary here. It went on for months and months and months and I can't remember the outcome. I think the university didn't press charges. I can't remember whether they were fined. I don't think anyone had any martyrdom of gaol.

          Did it influence your long term relations with individual students?

Yes, it did.

          Students generally?

No, just those who'd, I thought, been very unfair - terribly unfair. I mean, even Richard Refshauge stirred himself up, and he was then not president, he was Chairman of the Union Board of Management, but he urged an occupation of the chancelry and I was down in the Union Court when Richard was carrying on in this silly old way and managed to get a phone call through to the chancelry. At that time Helen Cumpston, who was then sixty-two or three, was Acting Registrar. They locked the chancelry and Helen stood outside the front door˙- this tiny little thing - with a loud hailer, and the students pressed in on her. I managed to get in and stand in front of Helen so that she wouldn't be crushed. I was very cross with Richard about that. He wasn't dishonest but the others were.

          Do you find it faintly ironic now that he for one is a pillar of respectability and ...?

He always has been. He's superb - he always has been. I would like to see Richard as chancellor one day - he's splendid. Even Richard was caught up in this. It did affect my relations with Judy [Inglis], for instance, for a long time and that's a pity. I haven't talked to Amirah about this; I must some time. It made me realise that playing the revolutionary is a very unattractive game.

          Is there anything else we should talk about in relation to students during that period you were in the chancelry? Were there any particular issues relating to individual students that you think raise broader questions - broader issues?

Individual students ...

          Perhaps if we could ...

Nothing leaps to mind on that.

          Maybe just to help your memory, if you could just talk through the sorts of things that you were doing in chancelry on a day-to-day basis in student administration.

In student administration?

          Yes.

Sometimes I'd get to the end of a day and think what on earth have I done, and I hadn't done much but be there for members of staff to come with problems. Of course, that's always the way when you've got fifty or so staff to look after and you're looking after enrolments and fees and examinations and student accommodation and such like. Student accommodation was always a big issue. We never had enough, and then when we had enough it was too expensive. And then we got Toad Hall and we thought that would solve the problems but it didn't - there wasn't enough Toad Hall. So Garran Hall and Burton Hall were then converted to this self-catering business.

          Were you a party to those decisions relating to self-catering?

Mm. Only as an administrator when I was in that student administration job - yes. It was a job that heavily involved the dean of students, and when Colin came back as Assistant Vice-Chancellor that was one of his areas of responsibility as well. But I can remember parts played by Eric Fry as dean of students, Peter Stewart as dean of students - very much involved with student accommodation.

I can remember going up to Corin Dam early one Spring day - you know those marvellous, bright, clear Canberra days - and there was snow still on the sides of the road, and we went to inspect these huts with the Corin Day construction site. And it was freezing outside. And we went inside one of these accommodation blocks - that's now parked beside Bruce Hall - and it was as warm as toast. I always remember that. It was very well insulated. And so we said yes, we'd have these - two of them. And so down they came and were plonked beside Bruce Hall. Bill Packard used to call them: 'those damn huts'. He didn't like them next door to Bruce Hall, but they did serve a purpose. I understand that the decision has almost been made if not made, to remove them at the end of this year.

And we also took over the front block of Lennox House and refurbished that. That was an interesting time when we gave the old part of Lennox House to the Students Association to look after and to let at really low cost accommodation. Di Riddell looked after that very well. But it was at the height of the times when we were having problems with hard drugs on the campus and there was one death there. I don't think the drug scene is as bad as it was then. Students seem to drink more beer, I think. Drink more alcohol than take drugs. But it was bad for a while and Lennox House was seen as being a place where heroin was freely available.

          Did you have much to do with that directly? Or was it more a matter for the university medical officer?

Yes. Robyn Jenkins - do you know Robyn? She's in the university health service. She did marvellous work in that time with students who were addicted to drugs. She just seemed to be able to help where others might not. I can remember there was one occasion where she was called to one of the halls - Burton or Garran, I think - and there was a student threatening to throw himself out the window and wouldn't allow anyone near but Robyn managed. He was a very big, powerful chap and she managed to stop him killing himself. She was concerned, as was Di Riddell - Di knew everything that was going on. She was quite a marvellous administrative secretary to the Students Association forever, and was absolutely trusted by them. She was a great help to students in need.

          Was there any perception on the part of student administration that people with drugs problems should have some concessions or that you should go easy on them, as it were, in terms of forcing them out of the university if they weren't pulling their weight academically?

That would, I think, be a matter for their teachers. I think there were some academic staff who would just be enormously sympathetic - some less so, some who wouldn't understand. I mean, I don't think I was ever aware, unless a student told me, that he was taking drugs. I didn't know how to recognise.

          And did some students tell you that?

Mm, yes.

          Many?

Quite a few.

          How would it come out?

They might come in to talk about their work or be in trouble in some way or another.

          Given that you were responsible for the whole division - the whole section - which is a fairly substantial section, how could you have association with individual students? They were referred to you by academic staff members or by your own staff?

Any student who wanted to come and see me could. Some still remembered me from when I was in the faculty. Some I had contacts with, as I say, through the loan fund and quite often they were students who had troubles of one sort or another. Or it might be suggested by someone that a student might call in and discuss a problem. But it was very little contact with individual students, except the politicians, compared with the way it was in Arts.

          We better leave students, Pat, and rush on to administrators and vice-chancellors and so on. You've seen what? - half a dozen vice-chancellors or thereabouts, and a whole range of senior administrators. From an administrator's point of view which of the vice-chancellors made the greatest impact? - and let me guess immediately at your answer - Crawford must have cut a swathe through the university?

Yes, he did. My personal contact with Sir John Crawford was very limited in the time that he was Vice-Chancellor. I wasn't in the building, I was in the annex, so there wasn't the occasion for informal chats. He would talk to me about enrolments at that time of the year when he was anxious to know how we were going. I got to know him .... I was rather afraid of him. I thought that if I had worked closely with him, I wouldn't have been adequate. He was very good, very quick and could be quite tough on fellow administrators who didn't come up to scratch. I think throughout his career in the Public Service and then later on in the university, he was used to having very good people round him and he expected it. He was very good himself and he expected it of others. So I was pretty much in awe of him.

When he became Chancellor and I was looking after Council, we were very close and he was then very mellow and almost gentle, and awfully nice. My worst experience is of Sir John's last meeting as Chancellor. He'd just come back from overseas, but as you know he was overseas all the time and just about lived in aeroplanes. But he wasn't well. Was I Acting Registrar? Yes. And I asked Graham Hutchens, my colleague, if he would come to the meeting as well. I said I would take the minutes but just if Graham could be there to sit beside the Chancellor and help him in any way. And, of course, he was just terribly sick and had this brain tumour which hadn't been diagnosed, and he thought it was jet lag. And it's the worst meeting I can remember. He couldn't think. He couldn't speak very well. It was terrible. My relations with him as Chancellor were a delight - he was so nice - but not close, as Vice-Chancellor. The Vice-Chancellor, of course, whom I was closest too was Peter Karmel, and that was when I was Acting Registrar - and I loved it.

          One would suppose that he was very demanding in the same way that you suspect Crawford would have been.

Yes, he was very demanding but he was very kind to people and he wouldn't be as sharp as Sir John would be if he found you lacking. Another thing about Peter Karmel - I attended endless meetings on everything under the sun and if the vice-chancellor was there, however dull the subject there was always a laugh. He was marvellous - absolutely marvellous˙- terribly irreverent. He'd go along to these conferring of degrees ceremonies - he wasn't mad keen on ceremony. He didn't have anything to do at these meetings. He just had to sit there and look grand in his robes and, of course, he'd get up - he'd never have an idle mind - to terrible mischief, and he'd tell me afterwards that so-and-so sounded like such-and-such, and 'didn't you think such-and-such was ...'.

          You were working, of course, right through this exercise because you were preparing the bits of paper and passing over ...

Working like mad - yes. And he was sitting there getting up to no good. I had a running battle with him all that time because he hated signing the testamurs. He'd say, 'I think I'm going to get a stamp'. And I'd say, 'You are not. You're going to sign it because every student wants to have your signature'. He said, 'But it takes so long, it's dreadful. Now, look, I get a Christmas card every year from Bob Hawke and all those Prime Ministers before him. You can't tell me he signs every one. They've got things now that you can't tell the difference.' And I said, 'No, you're not going to have one'.

          You won that one, I presume.

I won that one but Ros [Dubs] assures me that the moment I'm out of the place she and Laurie [Nichol] are going to get stamps, because I wouldn't let them, either. That's a very minor point, but I think it's nice for students to have the testamur signed by the Registrar and the Vice-Chancellor. Peter Karmel was tremendous.

          And other vice-chancellors, how would you compare their administrative styles?

I think that in many ways I'm not qualified to comment on that because I was not working closely with them, and if you're not, the vice-chancellor is quite a remote sort of person. See, Professor Low had a very distinct way of doing things. I get the impression that the academic staff responded better to Tony Low than they did to Peter Karmel. I think Peter is inherently quite shy. He didn't go out and about, whereas Tony Low was socially very easy and he loved going out and meeting people. He loved visiting research schools and faculties and so on. I think, certainly the academic staff respond to that. I think some of them saw Peter's working from his office in the chancelry as perhaps a lack of interest in what they were doing. I don't agree but I think that that impression was there with some.

          Could you tell us something about Williams, R.M.˙Williams, who is less well known as a vice-chancellor I guess than various others?

I had a bit to do with him because I think I was then in the chancelry looking after academic staffing, so inevitably I was on a lot of committees with him. I found him a very pleasant and agreeable person. I don't know that he was ever fully accepted, particularly by the institute. I don't think he realised that the research schools were run by a group of robber barons - they were all-powerful and always had been. They had their budget and they looked after it. They, by and large, set the academic program for their schools. I think Dr˙Williams thought that he would play more of a part in the running of the institute. He was constantly surprised at coming up against brick walls.

And then, of course, he was there through the very difficult time with the students, so it was pretty tough. I'm not surprised that he decided to leave. I think any vice-chancellor who'd gone through a couple of years of student unrest probably found a vice-chancellor's job unattractive.

I can tell you one nice story. They always have a gardener at the vice-chancellor's house and Williams was a keen gardener himself and he liked to grow vegetables. One day he came in, I must have seen him early in the morning, and he was a very genial sort of fellow but he was furious, he was in a rage. I asked him what the matter was and he said, 'Do you know what that bloody gardener's done?'. 'No, what's he done?' He said, 'He's pinched out all the laterals in my tomatoes'. Now I understood exactly what he meant. Do you understand that?

          Yes.

Yes. I mean, you do laterals the way you want to do laterals, don't you? - not anyone else. He was quite put out for the rest of the day.

          Did your perception of the university as a whole change greatly when you moved from Arts to chancelry?

Yes. I've never had the opportunity to work in a research school and I would have enjoyed that, I think. When I acted as Registrar that was an amazingly educational process for me. I began to really understand then how the institute worked. Going along to Board of the Institute and meetings of heads of schools, in particular, gave me a great appreciation of the worth of the directors. I found some of them very impressive indeed, and very interesting. I think I then formed the impression that the institute was the precious jewel that had to be saved. I mean, not that one wishes any harm on the faculties - certainly not - they're a splendid university but I'm very impressed with the worth of the institute and its value to the country.

          Were you troubled about what sometimes appears to be a gulf between the two parts of the university?

A little, but not greatly. I think that if one can see any good that's come out of the last couple of years of Government attack, the good is that the two parts of the university have realised at last that they must get closer.

          Against the common threat.

Yep. It's hard, isn't it? Academic staff in the institute, their contracts are to engage in research and to teach post-graduate students. In no way are they enjoined to teach undergraduate students. It was always seen as a great worry that if, say, a historian gave a whole course in the Faculty of Arts, the Government could say, 'Hey, you're not funded to do that. We fund the staff in the faculties to do their teaching and research. We fund the institute for quite a different purpose.' So I think this quite genuinely presented a difficulty for a lot of academic staff in the institute who might well have wanted to take more part in undergraduate teaching.

It's still a problem and will continue to be one, but I think that for one thing members of the institute are feeling the need for good graduate students so that there are programs in, say, neuroscience which Ralph Slatyer was instrumental in setting up with the Faculty of Science - a fourth honours year program which is taught largely by members of staff of the institute. Now, there's a lot of self-interest there. They aim to recruit those graduates as PhD students. I think there will be more of this. Given that staff have quite separate kinds of contracts in the two parts of the university, I think it will always be up to the individual whether they want to do it. I don't know that it can be forced.

          That issue about institute staff teaching in the faculties and thereby depriving the faculties of Government funding was most of all, so far as I can see, an issue in Chemistry - at least that's one place where, with the beginnings of the research school, it became very evident. Can you recall it being a problem that was explicitly addressed in Arts during the '60s? Can you remember the debate coming up where so-and-so from the institute wanted to give a course but somebody in Arts said, 'oh no, look, we can't do that because ...'

END OF TAPE 2, SIDE B

BEGIN TAPE 3, SIDE A

          Identification: We're resuming the interview with Pat White, relating to the ANU on 24 June 1991. I'm Stephen Foster. This is tape 3, side A.

          Pat, we left off last time we talked, a couple of weeks ago, before you'd taken up your position as Secretary to Council. That's the title - Secretary to Council - or ...?

Assistant Registrar Council. Formally, the Secretary to Council is the Registrar.

          How were you appointed to that position?

It was a transfer from the student administration job, and it came about at the time when John Brocklehurst retired and the Registrar, George Dicker, asked me to do it.

          And you welcomed that appointment?

Yes, I did. I preferred it to the other assistant registrar jobs, except for student administration - I would have been happy to stay there. I welcomed going there. I thought it would be interesting to see how the power worked, and it was.

          And was Council the power? Did you see Council as the power at that stage?

Yes, I think so. If you've got a good Council it really does have the power. If you have a weak Council, I think the power resides almost entirely with the vice-chancellor. But in the time I was looking after Council with a number of different vice-chancellors, I think very often they had to go away and rethink something because Council wasn't entirely happy with it. And that's good when it works that way.

          So you would describe it as a strong Council throughout your experience?

Sometimes better than others. It's a very big Council - forty-four. It's about to be cut in half by the Government. This follows similar moves with New South Wales government, Victorian governments. They've reduced the size of Councils very much. Dawkins thinks it should be the same as a board of directors. He sees the ideal size as between seven and fifteen, which is not accepted by the ANU. But it will be cut from forty-four to about twenty-three.

          What's your own view? Did you find that number, forty-four, unwieldy?

No, because I'd never known any other size. It was big, certainly, but it didn't take you long to get to know people. It didn't take you long to work out who were the most effective and interested members. I think one half the size will work just as well and I think that in many ways it's desirable because the large size reflects history: you have two directors and two deans; you have non-professorial staff from the Institute; non-professorial staff from the School; professors from the Institute; professors from the School.

Now it will be a member of the non-professorial staff, a professor, and I think that will continue the proper bringing together of the two halves of the university. I see no reason in the world why a senior lecturer in the Faculties can't represent or reflect or put forward views of non-tenured staff in the Institute. I see no reason at all why they have to be different people. That will be the main difference.

          Was there ever a case when Council divided on Institute/Faculties lines?

I can't recall one of those but I can recall an issue in the last few years - I mean it keeps recurring - and it's the question of tenure in the Institute. As you know a very high proportion of staff in the Faculties have tenure but in the Institute they move into fifty per cent and less. It's always been very difficult for the non-tenured staff when they're told they can't stay longer than five years, or they may get extended to seven years, and so on. And the most recent debate was for non-tenured staff to be able to keep competing for non-tenured posts.

There were then on Council two members of the non-tenured staff from the Institute and that was unusual but they had actively campaigned to get on to Council to push this debate. And it was interesting because although it's very much an academic matter where Council would not wish to overturn a recommendation that came from a board, on this issue they were unhappy with the recommendation from the Board of the Institute which was really to pretty well hold the line, perhaps relax a little bit but hold the line on the length of time a non-tenured person could stay. And because the representatives on Council put their case very, very forcefully and there was a lot of lobbying of members of Council and sending out of papers to them and so on by the non-tenured staff, they raised a number of questions that they weren't happy about and asked the Board to look at it again.

The end result was more relaxation in the length of time that a non-tenured member of staff could stay. So that was an example of fairly direct lobbying that did have an effect on Council members.

          Can you think of other examples of lobbying?

The students are very good at it. If they've got an issue that they're interested in they'll write papers and shoot them round to members of Council and so on.

          And do some students have direct contact with individual Council members, aside of course from the student representatives?

There's no reason why they couldn't. The names and addresses of members of Council are freely available and I was forever giving them out to all sorts of people who might want to contact them for one reason or another.

          Going back to when you were first appointed to that position, did you have some preparation or were you just thrown in the deep end?

Actually, years before I'd done the job for three months. I'd looked after three meetings of Council when Helen Cumpston had gone overseas. It was ages ago, I can't remember the dates, but David Hodgkin was Registrar of the Institute at the time and Ross Hohnen was Secretary, and that was my first little sojourn in the Chancelry. So I was working under the supervision - close supervision of David Hodgkin and he was very helpful and I certainly got to know what he wanted. He was a perfectionist. He was extremely careful. If there was one typo in Council minutes he'd regret it very much, so it made one take great care with things.

I can remember when I gave him my first set of draft minutes, he said, 'Oh, it's easy to see you come from the Faculties. You start everything in the Garden of Eden.' So things had to be much briefer than I was used to doing (laughs). So when I went back to take over the job I wasn't too apprehensive about it because I thought I knew what was wanted. And it hadn't changed very much over the years. I think the Council records are very important. I think you've found them helpful when you've been going back into the early history of the ANU. So the greatest care has to be exercised, and it's a challenge too - that's nice.

          Who chaired that first meeting?

Which?

          The first meeting you attended when you were appointed to it on a permanent basis.

Crawford. It was Coombs before that.

          And as chairman, presumably Crawford dominated the proceedings?

Yes, but people used to, from time to time, say 'Can you give me a piece of paper showing how Council works? What are the formal rules?' And Crawford didn't like to work that way. There was very rarely a vote taken. It worked very much on consensus. And after an issue had been fully debated, he was very good in letting everyone who wanted to say something say it. He didn't like them saying it twice or three times and would chop them off then. There was nearly always an agreement reached without 'hands up' and 'please record my abstention' and so on - that came in later.

          But was that just because no major issues came up?

No, not at all. I think it was very much his style of chairmanship - the way he ran the meeting.

          How did other vice-chancellors contrast with that sort of approach?

Chancellors?

          Chancellors, I should say, sorry.

Sir Richard Blackburn was a good chairman, but we did have votes then. He was very fair, as one would expect a senior judge to be. He was extremely fair. Very often one didn't know where he stood on a particular issue. He was meticulous that way. Yes, Crawford was unique in my experience. Things became much more formal and votes were taken and abstentions recorded.

          Were there people on Council who constantly made an impression whatever the issue? - always had something to say and had either a favourable or an unfavourable impact on their colleagues.

We've got two long-standing members of Council: one is Dick Klugman, and the other is Richard Refshauge. Richard was president of the Students Association for two years. And it seems to me shortly after he finished his degree he was elected by Convocation. Now, Richard always makes an impression. He doesn't speak on everything - far from it - but when he does it's well worth listening to, and of course he has great experience within the university as a student, as a student politician and so on. He knows a lot about it.

Dick Klugman is a very different sort. He was elected by the Labor Party in the House of Representatives for a three-year term and continued to be re-elected until his retirement from Parliament about eighteen months ago. And then immediately Minister Dawkins had him appointed as a Governor-General's representative, so he goes back a long way. And Dick is a bit of a maverick. He has a lot to say on many issues and you can never be sure which way he's going. He certainly would not always follow the Labor Party line. He can be very critical of students. He can be very critical of postures which he thinks the university adopts. For instance, he believes that all the talk over the years of increasing and real cooperation between the Institute and the Faculties is just not true, and he says it. And this causes people to get a bit upset but then also to have another think. I think he must love the university or he wouldn't have sought to be appointed to Council under a different head after he'd ceased to be a Member of Parliament.

          What about the student representatives? Were they always accorded a good hearing?

Yes, they were. Sir John Crawford particularly, as is well known, was quite marvellous with students and he would be very, very patient, very, very helpful always. And that continued. I've not known a chancellor who didn't give students more than a fair hearing.

          And did they deserve it?

Yes and no, but yes on balance because it's very difficult, for particularly say a third-year undergraduate student whose only experience has been in the Students Association, to come to Council and be confronted with this very large group which comprises a number of quite important people. They need a lot of help because it doesn't run the way Students Associations meetings run - it's quite different. They need to be made aware that they can't just dump a paper on the table with no notice and expect it to be debated and so on. They sometimes need help in preparing stuff to go to Council. But on the other hand we have had a number of students who are very self-indulgent, who just love the captive audience and do waste a lot of time.

          And they're not pulled up by the Chair?

Gently and with good humour always. But they make a very real contribution to Council, there's no doubt about it.

          Can you cite an instance of that where a student representative has perhaps overplayed his or her hand?

No particular instance leaps to mind but there have been many. They get carried away and perhaps need to be told, 'Well, Mr So-and-so, you have spoken. I'll give you an opportunity before we vote to sum up but I'd like to let other people speak.' That's the way, I think, it's been done.

          Was there a dichotomy on occasion between the academics and outsiders as it were, or academics and students, as against the outsiders?

Yes, I suppose so, on occasions. I can't think of anything where it's been divisive. On the whole I think that when people are elected to Council, they come to realise fairly soon that they're not there just to speak for the people who put them there, that their main role is to be a member of Council and to try and look at all issues from the point of view of the good governance of the university. And I think with very few exceptions most Council members get into the way of doing that quite quickly.

          Let's have a look at some of those issues. One of the big questions that came up during your period, of course, related to women in the university. Can you recall when that was first discussed and what the circumstances were? And was there a clear division there between proponents and antagonists of some particular cause?

When the university asked Marian Sawer1 to prepare her report, I think that most men in the university took little notice of what was going on but I think they probably didn't realise that when you have a vice-chancellor like Peter Karmel, when he says that he's going to do something about the position of women in the university, he really means it. He doesn't pay lip service to affirmative action. He just goes in and does it. And you can look at any number of appointments that have been made in his time at the university. So that he put a lot of resources and absolute one hundred per cent support for Marian when she was preparing this. It needed quite a lot of administrative back-up to get figures that were right and I used to hear the odd grumbles amongst the administration: 'Oh really, we're wasting all our time getting this stuff'. 'I've had to stop my real work to do this for Marian.' But I think the report when it came was a very well-prepared and careful one.

Now, it took Council at least three meetings with this as its major item to go through every recommendation. Now, Peter Karmel led them through it very, very strongly, very, very well. But in those debates - certainly in the first ones˙- it was clear that some of the men on Council, and many of them senior academics, didn't really take it seriously. It was obvious in the sort of off-hand remarks that would be made about some particular recommendations that they were going far too far.

For example, I think, in the science research schools they just accepted as a matter of fact that women didn't offer themselves for these jobs. It didn't occur to them that they should go out seeking. It never occurred to them to think why there weren't large numbers of women qualified for jobs, because the natural thing was for women to marry and have babies and let their careers go. They didn't really think it was important to try and offer women preference in fellowships to reenter the work force and so on.

But after the first couple of meetings, when it was clear that this was deadly serious (laughs) in the vice-chancellor's eyes, I found it amazing how quickly people - men - came to accept or at least to pretend that they'd accepted. I'm not sure whether all the senior men in the university really were won over but they ceased to make crass remarks and they ceased to make snide little jokes very quickly.

          And that was chiefly Peter Karmel's doing?

Yes, very much so, yes.

          Where did the initiative come from to set up the committee in the first place? - or to, I beg your pardon, not the committee but to ...

To ask Marian to do this? This was Peter Karmel's initiative.

          And what prompted him, do you know?

One could say he's got five daughters (laughs). No, I think that he, like Sir John Crawford, is very much ahead of the game always. He can see what's coming, he can see what's important, and he will really move mountains to get things done.

          Now, there was, of course, an earlier report on˙...

Yes, Marion Ward and Gwenda Bramley2. I think that was a good report, too. In fact, the ANU's been a pioneer in this. I don't know of any other university that was so early into trying to do something about it. But the Bramley-Ward Report, whilst most of its recommendations were accepted by Council, it wasn't really implemented. It just languished and I don't think this was any dark administrative plot to thwart what Council had recommended, but it just didn't get done. And I think the important thing is that the follow-up - it has to be formal and it has to be quite intensive. The Institute each year, I think, asks for a consolidated report on appointments so one can see the gender breakdown and, I mean, each year it's pretty dismal but it keeps it before people's notice all the time.

          And what happens when those figures come to Council? Is it the subject of recurrent discussion?

No, it's not. It's not. But where it does come up is in the presentation of annual reports. At each Council meeting, and there are eight each year, sometimes more than that when Standing Committee has to become a Council, at each Council meeting there are at least two reports presented, each faculty and each research school, the dean or director presents a report each year. This is where the questions are asked, and they're pretty constant. Lay members of Council really want to know what is happening, why progress is so slow.

For example, in the Research Schools of Social Sciences and Pacific Studies, where you'd expect there to be many qualified women, it's very poor. And directors are asked, 'What have you been doing to try and redress this?'.

          How close to home are some of these issues? Did you think when the discussion of the Sawer Report, for example, first came forward, did you see some of your own concerns being considered?

In the registrar's division there had almost always been more women than men in the middle range and senior jobs. I don't know quite why but some of my male colleagues used to say that they needed a bit of reverse discrimination. So it was not close to home in that sense.

          And yet the top jobs tended to be dominated by men.

Yes, until when Peter Karmel was Vice-Chancellor. George Dicker's successor was a young woman with five years in the work force. I mean that's a measure of Peter Karmel.

          And were you entirely supportive of Karmel in these sorts of initiatives?

I think I was probably entirely supportive of Karmel in everything (laughs), maybe no, not indiscriminately, but he was a marvellous person to work with.

          Can we move on to some of the other issues that came before Council? Some of the main debates that you can recall?

One that went on for ever and a day, and it wasn't just confined to the ANU was the question of compulsory membership of 'student unions'. This came to a head when we had the Fraser Government because there was a lot of pressure from Liberal student organisations to try and make membership of student organisations voluntary rather than compulsory. This debate had been before Council many, many times and the argument had always been that control of student organisations should be in the hands of students and that the good order and management of student organisations was an educational objective and that all students should be required to make a financial contribution towards the running of student organisations because all students benefited from such things as unions and students associations which represented students' views and helped pay for clubs and societies; all students could benefit from sports unions if they wished to avail themselves of the facilities. And the argument against that being that only those who particularly wanted to take part should be obliged to pay.

During the Fraser years the problem at the ANU came to a head when one student refused to pay money towards the Students Association because it had paid money to the PLO and had issued a policy statement supporting abortion on demand. Now, that was the issue that worried this student particularly because it was against his religious principles and he didn't see why he should have to give money to an organisation that did this.

END TAPE 3, SIDE A

BEGIN TAPE 3, SIDE B

          Identification: tape 3, side B of the interview with Pat White.

And payment of this general services fee was a condition of enrolment. So when the student said he wouldn't pay, he was told he must or his enrolment would be cancelled. And at this stage it was brought up in the Parliament and there was quite a debate on it. It's very easy to sympathise with the view that a lot of people - a lot of Members of Parliament - took that it just seemed appalling that a student's academic career would be stopped because of an issue like this.

This presented Council with a very great problem. It set up committees. It tried to find a way in which some people could be excused from membership on particular religious or social grounds - an almost impossible task. And the then Minister for Education who was, if I remember, was Carrick got very impatient. The Council had said, 'This is our job. It is not the Government's job. We will fix it.'

The committee they set up was headed by a High Court judge and a lot of senior professors, and they were supposed to be an appeal committee. And the terms of reference were such that almost no one could ever be excused from paying a particular fee. The Government became impatient - we were moving too slowly - and they moved to amend the ANU Act to make it impossible to require membership of a student organisation and furthermore to specify the kinds of things on which general services fee monies could be spent. It aimed to stop organisations supporting political groups so that students would be happier with the kinds of things they were doing. Look after sport, look after the union, provide recreational facilities and food but keep out of politics - that was to be the answer.

Council was very much exercised by what it saw as the Government usurping its role, and there were all kinds of protests. But nevertheless the most complicated legislation was enacted and we came to some resolution of this problem: that membership of every student organisation was voluntary but payment towards its upkeep was compulsory. So when a student enrolled or re-enrolled each year we had a particular form where they had to tick a box saying 'I wish to be a member of this, or I do not', and in effect it ceased to be an issue because students who had paid their general services fee enjoyed all the services and amenities.

If they chose not to be a member the only practical effect was that they couldn't stand for office in the organisation. But that engendered very many heated debates at Council and Council was united in being opposed to government intervention, although quite a number of members of Council were very much opposed to what the student organisations were doing and very much opposed to compulsory membership.

          So the larger issue of government intervention brought Council together.

Yes, certainly. And the other great debate, of course, in the last few years has been that under Minister Dawkins' wish that the ANU amalgamate with the CCAE.

          Let's just come back to amalgamation in a moment, but before we leave this student fees question - before Government tried to assert itself and impose its will upon the university, was there a breakdown in Council more or less on political lines? Was it possible to see the larger political climate being played out in Council?

Yes, and it always is, I think. We have four parliamentarians on Council, two from each of the major parties - two from the House and two from the Senate.

Now, on this issue - if I remember the Government members were Philip Ruddock and Senator Peter Rae. What we found on this debate and others which had political overtones is that the politicians will speak their party line or they will not say anything. And it's probably difficult for them to do otherwise. They can abstain from a vote. They can abstain from taking part in the debate if they're not particularly keen on what their government is proposing but they certainly can't speak against it. And Philip Ruddock was very outspoken in this debate, supporting the Government line.

And it was rather interesting, too, that at the time one of our students who had a part-time job in Carrick's office was Michael Yabsley, and this is where Michael began his career in politics. He's been very single-minded. It's all he's ever wanted to do. And he was a part-time research assistant or something in the Minister's office at this time. And he was feeding in all the material, all the argument against compulsory membership. And the debate's still there. It comes up every year - every couple of years in the Parliament - not to do with the ANU necessarily but the Guild in Western Australia's been in strife from time to time. So young Michael had a great success with that.

          What about academics? Could you see their political views emerging in a debate like this? I should say their party political views.

It would only be an opinion, but I suppose the general temper of academics would be to be against the Liberal Government rather than for it, but certainly, as with this later issue, with amalgamation, it's just a resentment against what is seen as direct government intervention in the management of the university.

          When it was still a debate simply about student fees - 'simply' I say - it's a very large philosophical question. Did you have large philosophical contributions? Did you have people who would come along and put it in the context of natural rights and so on?

Yes, certainly.

          And then on the other hand the pragmatists. Who were those people in various categories?

I can't recall particular personalities, but it was an issue that came up at every meeting of Council. Now, I wasn't looking after Council at that time, but because I was in charge of student administration this was an enormously practical matter for me and so I used to come and sit on the side benches and listen to the debates. And I seem to remember that I just went to meeting after meeting after meeting. It was never off the agenda.

          Was there a resident philosopher, as it were?

If there was I can't recall, and that's a pity because it was very interesting.

          Who came up with the stratagem that provided a solution in effect?

I hate to say it but in effect it was imposed upon us by the Government. The Government said, 'You will not oblige students to be members of their student organisations'. It didn't take the further step in saying, 'And if they decide they don't want to be members, they don't have to pay' but it took a half-step in saying, 'You may not use the monies you collect for other than these purposes'. And so it was imposed upon us.

          Do you think Government knew what it was doing in imposing just the half-step rather than the whole?

Yes, I do, yes, very much so, because it was a matter of pretty constant debate in the Parliament.

          Do you think that would have been a result of Michael Yabsley having set things for Carrick to propose the particular solution?

I think Michael would have wanted voluntary membership and voluntary payment. He would have wanted to go the whole hog but I think the Government realised that if it did go this way the services that the student organisations provide would have to be paid for somehow and it would probably have meant just quite a steep increase in the direct grant. And I think a lot of people felt that it was quite good for students to make some kind of contribution to these services and amenities of a non-academic nature - that phrase was tossed about a lot (laughs).

          The university was obviously more vulnerable than other universities to government interference. Would you say that in the same way the Council was more jealous of its privileges, of its role, than comparable bodies in other universities?

No, I couldn't say that because I've got no direct experience of others. I mean, I can imagine Melbourne University Council being equally fierce if the Victorian Government tried to interfere - perhaps more so.

          And that was something that was there at the beginning, as it were, that jealousy of protecting the privileges of Council? Can you think of earlier instances, I mean before you were on Council, where that was a particular issue?

No, but you just need to go back and look at the work that Greg Pemberton's doing on his research into John Burton, when he had ASIO files that show that there was an attempt by the government of the day to prevent the appointment to the ANU - this is well before amalgamation - of people with particular political views. I mean, that is pretty hair raising now, isn't it? But evidently was absolutely real then.

          Let's move on to amalgamation - that other great issue. When was that first discussed in Council? How did it come up in the first place?

There was Dawkins' green paper first, wasn't there, which created enormous interest. Paul Bourke arranged a forum at the Academy of Science for big discussion of the issues. Were you at that? It was very good. The green paper spoke about ways in which the organisation of tertiary education could be changed. I don't think any of us thought - perhaps some of us thought - that they would seek to change arrangements in Canberra, but that was in the white paper. And it was set forth quite plainly as a government proposal: 'We propose to amalgamate'. I think it's important to remember that because a lot of people have said that the administration of the university went along in a feeble fashion, just agreeing with what Dawkins wanted. I think that there was a strong feeling that whether we like it or not, if the Government says it is going to do this, it has the authority to do it and we can't prevent it, and therefore we'd better make it work as best we can.

Now, perhaps more politically wise people can say, 'Oh, but that's silly. You've only got to think that because a government says it's going to do something doesn't necessarily mean it's going to get its proposal through both Houses' and as it happens that's where it floundered. But it was a very divisive issue throughout the university and very divisive on Council. On the day of the final debate I think people had been counting numbers furiously, I had no idea which way it would go. The debate must have gone on for about four hours and was of high quality and there were people who changed their minds in the course of the debate.

          People who said they were changing their minds?

I think Paul Bourke might have been one of those. I might be wrong but I think Paul, having listened .... And I can remember when Ros [Dubs] and I stood up to count - it was very much a hands up thing that day - I found I was shaking. There were some people who couldn't come to that meeting - some lay members of Council who for various reasons couldn't come - and I think if they had come, unless they had been swayed in the course of the debate, they would have voted for amalgamation and that would have tipped the scales. It was terribly close.

          So on this occasion that larger issue of government intervention didn't take over? It was genuinely an argument about the benefits or disadvantages of amalgamation.

There's so many strands in it, but it wasn't simply how dare the Government think it can do this to us - of course not. But there was for a number of the people who spoke saying they would vote for amalgamation, their reasons for doing it were fear of what the Government would do if we thwarted it. You know this argument about size, of having five thousand but needing eight thousand students before you could have a full range of research activities and so on. That they would cut us off at the knees and the Institute wouldn't be able to get on with its work and so on.

I think many people thought that the Minister would be vindictive, that he had allegedly made statements that he couldn't force amalgamations throughout the country unless he could do it in his own patch. Well, ironically, of course, most of the proposed amalgamations throughout the country went through without too much fuss. I think a lot of places are beginning to regret it now. So the Minister didn't really need to use the A.C.T. as an example, but there was a feeling that he thought he did.

          In the course of discussion on Council was there much reference to the earlier amalgamation? Did people tend to see this prospective amalgamation as analogous to the amalgamation with CUC, what, thirty years previously?

In some ways, and it was an obvious one. Long standing members like Dick Klugman would say, 'You haven't swallowed the first amalgamation yet' (laughs).

          Did he say that?

Not in so many words but he always felt that the two parts of the university were more separate than we claimed. It wasn't directly analogous to the earlier amalgamation because what people in the Faculties feared was a dilution of standards in the Faculties. I think it's fair to say that that was the major worry.

The Dean of Science at the time, Chris Bryant, who was on Council was very much in favour of amalgamation. There were quite a number of links from the Faculty of Science to the Faculty of Applied Science at the College, and I think Chris felt very genuinely that good things could come out of this: that some of the applied science courses that were offered at the College could be of great benefit to students. He spoke very strongly from a strictly academic point of view in favour of the amalgamation.

People from the Institute were not nearly so concerned because they didn't see it making very much of a change to the way they went about things, but people in the Faculties were very much concerned - Faculty of Economics, Faculty of Law just almost said they would refuse to cooperate.

          Now, the person who guided the debate presumably was Laurie Nichol. Was the manner of his guiding comparable or analogous to that of, for example, Karmel on the EEO question?

They have very different styles. I can't imagine anyone going into a meeting better prepared than Laurie Nichol. His preparation - I saw it when he was Chairman of the Board of the Institute before he left to go to New England - to chair each Board meeting was quite amazing. He would ponder every problem. He would try and think of whatever facet could be raised so that he would have an answer for it or he would have information to give, and he does this with every Council meeting. He prepares himself very well.

          And as for the way in which he was able to lead the debate in various directions, was he able to sway people one way or the other? Or was it, in a sort of a way, a free-for-all? This is where one thinks of the Council being perhaps rather unwieldy.

No it wasn't a free-for-all. I think on each occasion the Council had well prepared papers before it. We need to remember it was getting advice from all faculties, from faculty boards, from both the academic boards. Laurie addressed general meetings of staff where questions were raised there. There was material coming in from every direction so it was quite impossible to have a view put. I think that the papers that Laurie put before Council were carefully prepared and well balanced.

          Now, presumably you had responsibility for getting those papers together.

Mm.

          Were you always convinced that members of Council had done their homework, had read through the papers?

On this issue or in general?

          In general.

In general sometimes they're too much and yet very often when you try to reduce the amount of paper that Council members have to read, they get upset and say 'but why didn't we get this' and 'why didn't we get that'. I suppose what one should aim for is to have masses of material there for those people who really want to read but to have well prepared and well balanced summaries for people who haven't got the time.

          On this issue, however, everyone read everything, you think?

Yes, (laughs) they got bombarded in the mail every day by petitions and papers expressing a particular point of view from all over the place.

          Let's leave amalgamation and indeed your period on Council and reflect more generally on administrators in the university and the role of the administrator in the university. I wonder if we could start by just looking at a few individuals, most of whom we've touched on during the course of discussion, but if we could focus more precisely on them, starting perhaps with Ross Hohnen.

Yes. I met Ross on my first day at the university. The School of General Studies administration was in Childers Street and the administration of the ANU (laughs) was in the old hospital buildings where the Faculty of Law and Asian Studies is now. And Colin took me up there to morning tea and I met Ross and I met David Hodgkin. I can remember meeting Helen Cumpston. I can remember meeting Helen Lindsay. And one of my referees was an old friend of Ross's so he was very welcoming and very kind right from the first day I met him.

He remained a good friend. I had tremendous admiration for Ross. He's an absolute buccaneer but there is nothing he couldn't do. He had a great vision and a great self-confidence. I think he was a very good thing for the ANU, I really do. I know a lot of people criticised the way he went about things, and I have to say that I had no really close dealings with him on particular issues. I didn't work with him in any way.

          What were the criticisms of his administrative style? - that he was something of a 'wheeler-dealer'.

Yes, I suppose so. He didn't always go through the proper channels (laughs) but, gosh, he could get things done. I can remember years and years ago when somehow or other Ross heard that Sidney Nolan's 'The River Bend' could be available. Now, how many panels are there? Five or six? I forget. Five or six anyway. And they were to go for quite a - the price was known and it was very high, and I think Nolan wanted to spread the receipt of the money out over tax years so he would be quite happy to take a little bit - like in instalments. And Ross thought it would be nice for the ANU to have this. And, of course, we didn't have the money to buy it but it was a Council meeting in a few days' time and they were able to announce that the university had purchased 'The River Bend', and it was anonymous.

But what had happened was that Ross had got on the phone to John Darling who was on Council and said can you raise this. And Darling, of course, was a director of so many of Australia's big firms, he just made a few phone calls and got the pledges and so the university has 'The River Bend' - wonderful. I don't think we can do that now (laughs).

END TAPE 3, SIDE B

BEGIN TAPE 4, SIDE A

          Identification: tape 4, side A, of the interview with Pat White.

          Pat, we were talking about Ross Hohnen and the interesting steps that he sometimes took to get what he wanted for the university. Did he encourage other members of staff to adopt the same sort of strategies?

I don't know. I think that Ross liked things to be done properly and they were. He was a careful and good administrator but he did like people not to be tied up in red tape, and to be able to look a little adventurously at going about things.

His close colleague at the time that I knew him was, of course, David Hodgkin, and David had been at the ANU since its early days. And he was the epitome of a very, very careful administrator. I don't know that David ever really came to terms with the amalgamation 'cause I think he saw the ANU as a very special place, as indeed it was - unique. And I think perhaps he didn't really see the appropriateness of grafting on - a what was a little state university - onto this great national institution. If you look through the files as you've done you'll see the care with which David did everything, and he looked after the staff very, very well indeed. But he was an entirely proper English gentleman and I suppose, though he admired Ross very much I don't think his personality was such that he could have gone about his job in the adventurous way that Ross did. Maybe he was a good anchor.

          How did Ross Hohnen relate to the various vice-chancellors under whom he served?

So far as I know, very well but I don't have any direct knowledge of that.

          There wasn't any suspicion of a senior administrator going out and doing things which would normally be the problems, presumably, of the senior academic administrator?

I don't know. I could imagine that there could well have been but I don't know.

          What about some of the other people from reasonably early years? - David Dexter; George Dicker - a little bit more recently.

Yes, I can remember being surprised when David Dexter came to look after what was essentially building and grounds because it seemed to be so different from his earlier career in university administration. But it just shows, I think, that a good, highly intelligent administrator, as David was, can turn his hand to any job really. And I think he did very well in that job. Because it was at the time of great expansion - physical expansion - at the university, when there were buildings going up all over the place and you needed someone really good to be in control of that.

George Dicker, of course, I was very close to. He came to us from - he was hired by Colin [Plowman] - the New South Wales Premier's Department where he was close to the top. I can't remember his exact position, but very highly regarded. He was a superbly well trained civil servant and a highly intelligent person, and someone who held education in the highest esteem. So the combination was pretty close to perfect, I think. He came as assistant registrar. That was the only one at the time so he was very much Colin's deputy.

In the first few years he was at the ANU he had a thorough grounding in the whole range of academic administration so that when the time came for him to take over the job, when Colin left, he was just extraordinarily well equipped because he knew how to do it. He knew the difficulties and the pitfalls. His academic training had been in psychology but his use of whatever skills he'd learnt in that was very cleverly disguised. He was just extraordinarily good with people. Wonderful with his staff. And just exceptionally good with academic staff. Any member of the academic staff who had a problem would think straight away, George Dicker. Now, this meant that he worked the most incredibly long hours 'cause quite often during the day when other people would have the door shut and be charging through their in tray and writing papers and so on, George would very often be talking to people or listening to people - helping people in that way - and then the hours after five until quite late at night would be devoted to getting the work done. And he did. Things didn't languish. Things got done.

There are two important sides to the registrar's job, as I see it, one is getting the work done, being totally sympathetic with your staff and understanding what they're doing and encouraging them in all kinds of ways - really caring for your staff 'cause they're your asset - and the other side of it is that you are at the beck and call of the vice-chancellor; you're the vice-chancellor's right-hand person. If you know the physical set up there, the rooms are together and there's an interconnecting door, so the vice-chancellor is in and out of the registrar's room all day. And so a registrar can make a tremendous mark with a vice-chancellor and be really their top personal assistant.

But somehow or other that role, crucial role as it is, has to be weighed up against the other one of keeping the division working well. And George did that. Crawford had a lot of time for George, 'cause Crawford was a man that - I think we said that last time - he was a very superior public servant and so was George, and they did things properly. And so they worked together very, very well indeed. And this was apparent later on when Sir John came back as Chancellor. He had a very special affection for George Dicker and would seek his views on anything. I think Tony Low certainly used George very much as his top personal assistant˙- very, very demanding, at times I think not really realising how demanding he was on George. And it was just very, very sad for all of us when he had no notice at all, that he just had to give up work because his heart was in such a bad way. And it was a great loss to us all. We felt quite rudderless.

          Was there an explicit recognition that the registrar's position should be, to an extent, a policy-making one?

Yes, indeed. See, when George had to stop I had a phone call that night, Friday night, from Dick Johnson, who was Chairman of the Board, to say that they'd just heard this - George is not coming back to work and that the vice-chancellor wanted me to act, and I was horrified. But anyway .... That was for about twenty months.

          You had acted before in that position.

Only when George was on leave, just for two or three weeks at a time. But it was very difficult because it was terribly busy, we were without George, we were without that top post and so when I had to act we had to make all kinds of arrangements to cover bases underneath. And I felt totally inadequate, particularly from the side of assisting with policy.

I found it just all I could do to keep the division going from day to day and coping with staff losses and shortage of money. I mean, I knew the jobs that people had to do and I knew what was involved and I knew that if we weren't able to maintain our staff at a good level our contribution would be less good, and that's hard to accept. I know it has to be accepted but it was hard to accept. So I had the opportunity to really understand what a difficult job it is, and what a very good person you need.

          Has there ever been a time when there was a clear division between the policy role, the advising role of the registrar, and the administrative role in the sense of looking after the registrar's division? For example, with Ross Hohnen and David Hodgkin, was there a division of responsibilities there?

Yes, I think there probably was. Ross would be free of the day to day line responsibilities in order to look at policy and development and so on.

          Was George Dicker the one who assumed the dual roles? How did it happen, do you know? I realise its before the time when you were directly involved in chancelry matters, but was there a time at which there was sort of a coming together of those roles?

Yes. It was at the time when it was decided - after Ross left, David had left - that there would be a registrar of the university, instead of having registrars of the Institute and the School of General Studies. And that registrarial role would essentially be looking after the academic administration of the university. And that the rest of the management would come in under what is now the secretary's post, occupied by Warwick Williams, and you'd have separate financial and fabric administration.

But the registrar became, as David Hodgkin would put it, primus inter pares. I think Tony Low would express it that way, too. And the registrar, essentially the academic registrar, would be seen as the main administrative policy adviser to the vice-chancellor. And George Dicker was the first in that particular role. But, of course, unlike Ross he didn't have the luxury, nor would I think he'd have wanted it, of being free of line responsibilities, because in that way you are able to keep very close touch with what is really happening.

          Now, when you were in that position, did you see a clear definition of roles there?

I saw myself as inadequate for the job. A lot of people think that's silly to say that but I was, because there are clearly these two sides to it. And I could look after one side of it quite well but that would take up all my energy and time, and there really wasn't time for me to be of great personal help on policy advice to Peter Karmel. And, of course, he's such a strong vice-chancellor that in many ways that didn't matter too much because he was always full of good ideas.

But that leads me on to think of the appointment of Ros Dubs as the next registrar. That, I think, was probably very much an appointment influenced by Peter Karmel and his strong support for bright young women. Now, Ros had had an excellent academic career, of course, culminating in a post-doctoral fellowship - no, Queen Elizabeth II, a similar sort of thing - in the Research School of Chemistry. And then, I think, had made a decision that she didn't want to be a research chemist and had gone to work in an administrative job at CSIRO where she had obviously done very, very well indeed and was well supported for her application as registrar.

Now, I think, that in her five and a bit years at the ANU, she's probably done marvellously well supporting the vice-chancellor and working with the vice-chancellor. And, of course, it's been in enormously difficult and challenging and exciting times. And I think she's responded to that very well and found it most interesting. But where I think she's probably not been able to make the full contribution is on running the Division because unlike George Dicker, who worked in the Division before he became registrar, she doesn't really know what people do. And I think when there's not that clear understanding you're not at your best on staffing matters. So it is a tough job, I think.

          Is it possible to have a head of the Registrar's Division and not have that sort of direct interest in the day to day activities of the Division?

Yes, it's possible, but I don't think the outcome is ideal. For example, I think it's of great help to have worked in a faculty or in a research school to become closely involved with academic issues, so that by the time something comes to Council you really know the sense of it because you've worked on similar problems.

          The appointment of Ros Dubs owed something, you said, to Peter Karmel's view about supporting young women. Presumably his intention would have been that, to use the appropriate expression or jargon, that Ros Dubs should be something of a role model throughout the administrative side of the university. Do you think that's what happened? Do you think that her appointment and her subsequent tenure of the position, did have the intended impact on young women through the Division?

It might have had some but I think there's been in the last five or six years very little opportunity for staff in the Registrar's Division to progress. I think that we've always had a lot of very good young women. I tend to think they've not been encouraged. I mean, everybody's been asked to do more and more work. Sometimes there's not a great deal of thanks that seems to be given, not a great deal of understanding of what the extra burden is. I can't think of any of our young women in the last few years who've been given the opportunity to go into more senior posts.

          Can we move back to some general issues over a longer period? You had something to say, when we were talking off tape earlier, about the tendency in the university over the past decade or so, I guess, to proliferate courses. Can you explain how that came about?

I suppose what I'm thinking about is not over the last ten years but over the last two or three years, and I think it's been very much an attempt to capture the market. For example, the Arts Faculty is moving towards - they hoped to introduce it this year but maybe it will be next year now - named BA degrees. For example, a Bachelor of Arts in Australian Studies. And that will be a separate degree with its own set of rules and its own course structure and so on. Now, the idea behind this seems to be that people no longer read a faculty handbook and think I can do a BA and I can concentrate it on Australian Studies - that sounds interesting - you've got to have something with a name on it.

The Faculty of Arts has even introduced this year an associate diploma, a sub-degree course. This is specially for the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Foreign Affairs will pay for it. So we introduce these new courses with specific titles in the hope of attracting students and in the hope of attracting overseas students who will pay money. So these are new factors that have really been forced upon universities.

If you look at the faculty handbook for the University of Canberra and you look at the degrees which are offered, or the courses which are offered - the awards - it goes on for pages and pages and pages. It is unbelievable. And this is one of the things that Don Aitken is targeting just now, that they've got to cut a lot of these back because they might attract minute enrolments. But they were put there in the hope of getting people in - a BA in Communications, that's what you need if you want to be a journalist. You don't do a BA at the ANU, you try and get into a course that's got the word 'communications' in it. I think it smacks of gimmickry. I think, in a way, it means you have a very low opinion of intending students - that they can't read a description of the Bachelor of Science course at the ANU and realise what they can do within it. It has to be called a course in 'resource and environmental management' or some such. And we're introducing combined courses of incredible complexity. The new Bachelor of Engineering course, which is still in Science, is now combined with everything except Arts. And I made that remark fairly flippantly the other day and was told, 'Oh well, we're thinking of introducing a BA/B Engineering'.

          And did this happen? Is it just simply a response to what's happening in other universities or is ANU at the forefront of these sorts of activities?

No, we're not at the forefront. I think that the Colleges of Advanced Education were in the forefront of offering very, very specialised degree and diploma courses - both associate diploma and graduate diploma courses - but all universities are doing it. I think it's a response to increasing competition amongst the universities, dwindling resources or˙.... No, that's not fair to say the Government's not putting as much money in, they're putting an enormous amount of money in, but expecting universities to take more and more students and your funding depending on meeting your student target.

So universities are doing almost anything to meet their targets. And I think there'll be a revulsion against this before too long, where people will want to go back to a much simpler arrangement. Not that the academic course of instruction will not be there - it'll be there but you don't necessarily have to put a fancy tag on it. I remember when Macquarie University started, it offered one degree and that was a Bachelor of Arts and within that you could do what we do in Arts, Economics, Commerce and Science. But after about twenty years the pressure to have a BSc was successful.

          Were these issues discussed on Council?

No, they're not discussed on Council and it worries me. I don't know that Council is really the place for it but I think the academic board - Board of the Faculties - should give it a bit more care and attention. But it's a positive policy and we're told that you've got to be in it or you lose out on students. It's just a particular worry of mine. It's a nightmare for the administrator because on the one hand we're told our rules are too complex and on the other hand we have this proliferation of courses for which you must provide proper rules. And I feel very sorry for faculty secretaries who are bound up in all this complexity.

          Do you think the university is over regulated?

In what sense, Stephen?

          Well, just so many rules and regulations that it becomes almost unmanageable? Do you think the university could survive with fewer - I'm not talking about degree structures necessarily but just right across the board - with fewer by-laws and then specific regulations and so on?

There are two sides to this. It must be clear to staff and students what the rules are, what the structures of various courses are - that must be clear. Students must know what is required of them and what they get when they have met their requirements. It can be over complex. Attorney General's Department now is doing a great deal to simplify legislation and write it in common English. Now, the people who draft the university's legislation are members of the Office of Parliamentary Council, so they're very highly skilled. So I think it's not that we have inadequate legal drafters, we have superb legal drafters, but if you're going to have a Bachelor of Commerce, combined with Bachelor of Engineering, the description of what goes in that is not simple.

And on the other hand there's so much legislation now that gives people the right to question what happens within the university that you must have your legislation plain and clear and watertight. People go off to the administrative appeals tribunal, to the ombudsman, and so on at the drop of a hat. And if your legislation's sloppy you'll be in trouble. I don't know what the answer is.

END TAPE 4, SIDE A

BEGIN TAPE 4, SIDE B

          Identification: tape 4, side B, of the interview with Pat White.

          Pat, you were going to say something about the loan fund.

Yes, simply because I think it is important. All universities have loan funds. Most of them have a sum of money which is scrounged out of university funds or from donations from outside, and they lend that to students and students pay it back with or without interest or interest of various levels. But it is a finite system because it's limited by the amount of cash they have.

When I first became involved with the loan fund in about in 1964 it was run by the Students Association and it worked with the Bank of New South Wales. The Students Association would provide some money that would be matched by the university and the Bank of New South Wales provided double, and they administered the loans. The idea was that students granted loans would become eternally grateful and bonded to the Bank of New South Wales. But it became obvious after a while that that didn't really work and a lot of our students were seeing it as a moral good to rip off the Bank of New South Wales if they possibly could and not pay the money back.

The scheme we have now was invented by Ross Hohnen and it's another one of his good lateral thoughts. And it was after the university's credit union was well established, and that was established with a lot of encouragement from Ross, and he talked to Dorothy Sales, the manager there, and they came up with this scheme: that the university would deposit a capital sum, it was about fifty thousand, maybe twenty-five at first and later doubled - in the credit union and it would sit there earning interest, and the interest it earned would be put in a separate account.

Now, the loan fund committee, which comprised two members of staff and a student, would make loans to students, not for their full expenses but helping loans, and the money would be lent to them by the credit union which would administer the loan. The interest charged on the student loan would be the same as charged to any member of the credit union because they had to do that but it would be subsidised by this little interest fund. So we had this interest fund to play with and it meant that the amount of money you had to lend to students was limited only by the healthiness of that interest account.

And the other great bonus was that the loans were looked after by the credit union and, as you probably know, they're marvellous with their clients and great at giving financial advice, budgeting help and so on. And this has thrived over the years and there now is a similar scheme set up for graduate students, and as far as I know it is unique in the Australian system. And it's another small monument to Ross.

But I've been on this committee since about '64 and that's been a great opportunity to see one side of student life. The credit union is very good. Most of the loans we make would be a supplement to their weekly income. We might say, 'well, there'll be twenty-five dollars for you every week in the credit union'. Well, that's a very expensive thing to administer but students pop in and draw out their twenty, twenty-five dollars a week and it makes the difference between surviving without terrible worry and succumbing, occasionally.

          I never knew about the loan fund, I must say.

The ANU, I think, has a very good record of looking after its staff and looking after its students, and that's just one aspect of it. I know it saved many students from throwing up their hands in horror and giving it all away. And, of course, they're much less inclined to rip off your friendly neighbourhood credit union than they are to rip off the Bank of New South Wales.

          Pat, you've had a lot to do with colleges, and we talked a little bit about this earlier, but that brings you, of course, into very close contact with students and, of course, you were in contact with students in various administrative capacities. Student cohorts change a lot in terms of their attitudes and manner and so on. Have you tended to see various cycles? Do you have, looking back from the perspective of thirty years on, a sort of a cyclical view of students?

I think the Left has had a long run, a very long run. In the last few years we are seeing a change, I think, and I don't know how much it is a disillusion with the politics of idealism, and it would be very understandable with what's happened in the world, or whether it's simply part of the fact that jobs are hard to get and you need to study hard, not waste time having demonstrations and looking after lost causes. But from the moment I came to the ANU until about the last five or six years, I suppose, the student body has been dominated by people who were great idealists.

Now, the last few years, where we have 'back on track' parties and 'better business management' parties and so on running things I find them - their leaders anyway - pretty attractive. They're pragmatic but they're thoughtful. They're not greedy and 'me me'. I'll be interested to see how long that lasts because traditionally your time at the university is the time when you're your most radical, isn't it? It would be funny to think that it was changing.

I was on the council of Burgmann College from when it started for about ten years and I did see a change there. It was named after Bishop Burgmann, of course, and six Protestant churches were responsible for running it. But it began just at the time of a great financial downturn and they never made enough money so they had a huge debt. Prices were going up so that living in a fully catered hall of residence became awfully expensive for ordinary people. And the people I saw in Burgmann tended to be well off young people from Melbourne Grammar School or King's School or whatever - not really the sorts of students whom Bishop Burgmann would have expected.

In the first few years there for some strange reason it was incredibly lively. They had a lot of talented people. People who could at college dinners run a cabaret in a most professional and witty way. There was a great deal of style - interesting. After a while that changed. I mean, college dinners at Burgmann were highly civilised whereas if you went to dinners in some of the other places you had to duck for flying bread rolls occasionally and put up with an awful lot of noise and carry on. But after a while Burgmann did become rather more like the others.

I can remember it was a continuing problem to try and reduce the debt and to try and make it easier for people without much money to come and stay there. And one of the things they proposed was this two-hour a week work scheme which worked pretty well in Ursula and Bruce Hall where every member of the hall had to do two hours of sort of labouring around the place each week, and that kept costs down a bit. At that time Burgmann sent round a questionnaire to all its residents asking what were the main reasons that they'd chosen to come there and one reason which almost all of them chose, amongst others, was that they didn't have a work scheme. So they became rather typical of young people who quite liked to be waited on.

My last few years have been on Ursula College which I've found a delightful experience. It's very small, just about the right size. And I think the Ursulines are incredibly clever people. They know how to run things. I mean, it's been their trade for many years, running schools and doing it beautifully and showing a great concern and sympathy for young people and they somehow or other by some kind of magic are able to impose a very pleasant atmosphere in a college. I think it's probably a great place to stay - here again, if people can afford it. I can remember Sister Madeleine [Ryan] in the last few years before she retired occasionally would get a bit depressed where she had a few spoilt young people in the college. And she'd say, 'This is not what we became Ursulines for - to look after spoilt rich kids'.

It is a problem and I don't think it's going to ease at all. If you're going to run a college or a hall of residence and give people twenty-one meals a week and keep the place in good nick, it just costs a lot of money. But certainly the move to self-catering accommodation at the ANU was timely. We've been quick in a lot of ways. Bruce Hall was the very first co-educational college in the Australian system and was seen as the slippery slope - immorality everywhere. And Toad Hall was the first self-catering institution in the Australian scene.

I think Toad has worked. I've had quite a lot to do with that. There were problems because in order to keep costs down the residents would keep the place clean and, of course, it was filthy. I think that if you do have a self-catering college you've got to bring in professional cleaners - that's what they have at Burton and Garran Hall. That was a sad time, the changing over of Burton Hall to a self-catering arrangement. That decision was made before Professor Burton died and he was very sad about it - very sad.

          Because it signalled the end to the community, as it were?

Mm. He couldn't see that it was necessary. It was a hard decision to make. The Dean of Students at the time was Eric Fry and he chaired a committee looking at this problem, and I think they made a very brave decision and it's been proved to be a right one. I don't know what Geoffrey Rossiter would say. He was sad, too, having been Warden of Burton Hall for so many years.

But you just look at the figures now and Toad Hall and Burton and Garran Hall are really much in demand. And it's specially important now that we're trying to attract full fee paying overseas students. There's no doubt that they really prefer to eat their own food and that some of the kids could get quite upset and depressed by living in John XXIII and eating three meals a day of basic Australian sort of stodgy food. So I think it's the way of the future, too. I doubt that we will ever be able to afford to build another fully catered hall of residence or college.

          As you look back over your career with the university, Pat, do you have any major regrets? You spoke very highly of the university as an employer. Did you sometimes think that you would have been happier out in the Public Service or (laughs) teaching or some alternative career?

No, I think I've been very lucky - very, very lucky indeed. I have thanks, not regrets.

          On that happy note, can I thank you on behalf of the university for a very enlightening and helpful interview.

Stephen, thank you.

END OF INTERVIEW

1. Towards equal opportunity: women and employment at the Australian National University: a report submitted for the consideration of the Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University (March 1984).
2. The role of women in the Australian National University: a report to be submitted for the consideration of the Council at the Australian National University on 14˙May˙1976.