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What I have in front of me is that you sent an email in December to all staff members informing them that a court resilience group would be set up with lay members, staff members, students and the executive group on it. Separate to that is the executive group’s incident group. What has been suggested to me is that the group that was set up under the auspices of the court was never intended to function and that the executive group had every intention of dealing with the situation through its own incident group. Reflecting on it now, do you think that there was ever an intention from the executive group to allow this court-appointed group—the resilience group—to do the job that you had said in the email to all the staff that it would do?

In that case, I pass the question to Dr McGeorge. I am going on information that has been passed to me, and I am perhaps not using the right term for the group. My understanding is that the executive group set up the incident group in order to respond to the situation and come up with a recovery plan. Can you clarify what that group was and how it came into being? From your understanding, was the court ever asked to approve the group?

I start by asking Amanda Millar to reflect in particular on some of the evidence that we have heard this morning, which I could perhaps characterise as individuals saying, “I was working in my lane and the issue here was that information just was not being shared with me by others.” Dr McGeorge, that seems to be the line of evidence that you in particular are trying to push.

Amanda, do you feel, on reflection, that your ability to discharge your duties as chair of court was being hindered by the executive group? If so, was that deliberate?

On exactly that point, you talk about creating an environment of challenge. I am interested in hearing your reflections on whether you could have done more to create such an environment, but I am particularly interested in the role of the executive management team. Were efforts made on the management team’s part, in one way or another, to ensure that it was not challenged—for example, by omitting information that would almost certainly have resulted in robust challenge from court if that had been provided to it?

I am ultimately trying to get to the bottom of the difference between full and frank information not being provided to court as a misstep or incompetence versus a deliberate attempt to withhold the information from court by those in senior management positions, who knew that if they were challenged on that, it would reflect badly on them.

Thank you very much—that was useful in how candid it was.

I am interested in delving into one decision in particular, and that is the appointment of Shane O’Neill as the interim principal. How did you satisfy yourself on that? I presume that, at the point at which he was appointed, you felt that that was appropriate. The obvious litmus test for whether it was appropriate is that you believed at the time that he was not seriously implicated in the matter. As it turns out, he was. Mr O’Neill is not here to speak for himself, but he clearly was implicated, and that is what resulted in his departure. Could you outline how you came to the conclusion at the time that his appointment was appropriate? Were you given any reassurances, either formally or informally, that he was not sufficiently implicated in the crisis?

Knowing what we know now from the Gillies report, do you feel that information was withheld with regard to Shane O’Neill’s role? What I am struggling to believe is that it did not come up or occur that he might have been seriously implicated. Of course he might have been, and Gillies confirmed his role in the situation. I am trying to understand how you and others were able to feel a sufficient degree of confidence that he was not implicated and that he was therefore an appropriate appointment.

Who did you get your information from? At that point, Professor Gillespie had gone. Who provided you with information on who could be appointed as the interim principal and whether they would be a suitable person for the role?

I am keen to come back to this point if there is time—I recognise that there are time constraints on us. I have one other question, which is about the relationship between the court resilience group and the team that I think is called the incident group, which the executive set up.

Regional colleagues will certainly be able to say more about this but, reflecting on the conversations that I have had and the email that was sent to staff in December, I think that there was an expectation that the resilience group—this court sub-committee—would be taking a leading role.

As it turns out, there were mismatched expectations because, from what Amanda Millar has outlined, it sounds like the group was to be used only in a situation in which the full court was unable to convene to make a decision. There was a sub-group that could make such decisions more quickly, and the expectation was that it would take a leading role in the recovery plan’s development. The recovery plan was developed by the executive group.

This is my final question, which is for Amanda. Should the court have taken more ownership of the development of the recovery plan, given that the executive group had largely been the group of individuals who had led the organisation to crisis point? Was it appropriate to allow them to come up with a recovery plan for a crisis for which they need to take the lion’s share of responsibility?

It is a candid answer, which I appreciate.