Senior staff facing serious allegations are still working for ANU

That's the message from the ANU's vice-chancellor Genevieve Bell and her deputy, the university's provost Rebekah Brown, who will be in charge of implementing the recommendations of the devastating Nixon Review.

"An independent investigator is in the process of being appointed," Professor Brown, who moved to the ANU from Monash University a year ago, told The Canberra Times.

She had no estimate of how long the investigations would take because each alleged offence was different. "Each allegation around individuals will have its own time frame because there are different degrees of intensity.

"Each one needs to be corroborated because they are allegations. Everyone is entitled to the presumption of innocence - and will be treated as so.

"We have to respect people's privacy, but there is absolutely no doubt this investigation is happening. But the time frame really depends on the nature of the allegation and what evidence there needs to be."

ANU vice-chancellor Genevieve Bell said on the ABC that some of those under investigation for "wildly inappropriate behaviour" were still employed by the ANU and some had left.

The allegations are serious, including of sexual impropriety between senior staff and students.

As the report put it: "It was certainly striking to realise that some supervisors do not yet understand that it is inappropriate to form personal or sexual relationships with students under their supervisory authority."

Report author Christine Nixon, a former chief commissioner of the Victoria Police, drew attention to the John Curtin School of Medical Research: "Several participants mentioned the place of alcohol in JCSMR culture, one calling it 'an incredibly toxic relationship with alcohol'."

"At JCSMR, basic professional civility is not enforced because there is a cultural acceptance of having strong views and shouting them at your colleagues in professional settings."

The ANU's Professor Brown recognised that the toxic culture was "entrenched" - there was a history of complaints going back four decades. It would take some time to bring change.

"I don't think this is going to change overnight but my expectation is that this should improve with dedicated focus," she said.

"It's through dedicated work, razor-sharp focus, being very clear about expectations, very clear about consequences and accountability."

A "Nixon implementation steering group" made up of leaders of the ANU would be set up. This, Professor Brown estimated, would "exist for the next two to three years".

The Nixon Review was into the ANU's College of Health and Medicine which included the John Curtin School of Medical Research, the School of Medicine and Psychology, and the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health which have since been reorganised into the College of Science and Medicine.

Professor Brown said that the findings were relevant to the whole of the ANU, though some places were worse than others.

She accepted that there seemed to be a particularly bad culture in medical institutions in general. They often contained men with egos and a lot of power.

The Nixon Review described the structure of the John Curtin School: "There are 18 academic staff at JCSMR with continuing positions, three of whom are women."

Of the 16 professors there, three were women. None of the women had secure "tenured" jobs. Twelve of the 13 men did.

On top of that, women were expected to do the work on outside committees so these bureaucratic demands "are borne by individual mid- and senior career women at the expense of their research time".

The report said that at the John Curtin School "some supervisors expect students will routinely work 14 hours a day".

On top of that, it found that some academics deliberately held their students back to keep getting their cheap labour: "Some don't progress their students appropriately, delaying timely completion while maintaining access to their labour.

"There are widely known toxic pockets where poor supervisor behaviour and consequent very bad student experience has continued for years."

Professor Brown was adamant that a culture would change. Professor Nixon would return in 2026 to assess progress.

"These are very real issues at ANU that we will be - we are - addressing," Professor Brown said.