Nous Group Consultancy for the Universities Accord

Question

Senator FARUQI: The Department of Education paid private consultants Nous Group nearly $700,000 for work on the universities accord; is that correct? Mr Cook: That would have been 24 months ago. We may not have that with us. Senator FARUQI: It was during 2023, mostly. Mr Cook: Yes. I know Nous was engaged. I'm sorry; I just don't have the data available to me at the moment. But we can take it on notice to confirm. ............... Senator FARUQI: I know all of that; I was in the committee that did that. That's not my question. It's alluding to the conflict of interest here. None of you were involved in that in 2023, so you have absolutely no view on whether or not this was an appropriate thing to do. My question is alluding to the conflict of interest here. None of you were involved in that in 2023, so you have absolutely no view on whether this was an appropriate thing to do or not. What happened here was that Nous was informing and supporting the accord process on uni governance and management and then started sucking millions of dollars from universities to help them navigate those reforms. Maybe you could take on notice questions about whether the department implemented any concrete measures for managing conflicts of interests, if the Nous group advised the Department of Education of any measures they were taking to manage conflicts of interest, and what steps the Department of Education took to ensure such measures were actually implemented.

Answer

Please see the attached PDF.

Documents

• Question with answer (PDF) (opens in a new tab)
• SQ26-000718.pdf (opens in a new tab)