On October 30, 2014, the then minister for education and training Joy Burch introduced a bill to establish an independent governing board for the Canberra Institute of Technology.
The consequences over the past 12 years have been disastrous.
Prior to this change, CIT was led by a director who was answerable to the minister with support from an advisory council.
Now, the minister appoints board members, and the board appoints a chief executive officer to run the organisation.
The minister can issue broad policy directives, but can't require CIT to take specific actions.
Fundamentally, that means the minister is not in control of the organisation; the board is.
The cabinet submission recommending this arrangement said it would "reduce red tape and provide greater transparency".
When tabling the bill in the Assembly, Ms Burch promised "a more agile CIT" and "the full application of fiduciary responsibility to the conduct of CIT affairs."
But in the decade after the independent board was established, CIT's expenses grew by 38 per cent while course enrolments dropped 40 per cent.
The teaching workforce was reduced by 68 positions while the senior and executive management workforce more than doubled. Hardly "more agile".
In 2024, CIT's then CEO Leanne Cover was found to have engaged in serious corrupt conduct by misleading the minister and concealing information from her board in relation to $8.5 million worth of contracts for a "complexity thinker".
While under investigation by the ACT Integrity Commission, she spent two years on paid leave which, combined with her final payout, cost taxpayers more than $1.2 million.
The complexity thinker ended up getting $2.4 million in compensation, too.
In 2025, Ms Cover's replacement as CEO, Margot McNeill, was recruited while under investigation for misconduct at TAFE NSW.
After that investigation made findings against Dr McNeill a few months later, she failed to tell the CIT board and didn't mention it on a fit and proper person declaration.
Under parliamentary privilege in May, I tabled a whistleblower's disclosure claiming that Dr McNeill had failed to act on serious public safety concerns that had been raised directly with her relating to students allegedly being trained on electric vehicles from hire car companies.
She "categorically rejected" those allegations as "factually incorrect" the very next day.
CIT has since admitted hire cars were used for interstate training, and the matter's now being investigated by the Public Sector Standards Commissioner.
Two Assembly committees have raised concerns about Dr McNeill's conduct, one of which had to compel her to participate in their inquiry after she refused - the first time that's happened with a public sector employee in the history of the Assembly.
Following a period of extended leave, Dr McNeill resigned last week. She spent just 13 months in the job and was awarded a $445,000 payout. The board hasn't explained why. What was that about "greater transparency"?
This year, CIT has cut a popular seniors fitness program from 20 classes per week to 12.
It almost doubled the cost of its remedial massage course after pausing it for 18 months despite remedial massage being on the ACT Skills Need List. And it's scrapping a critical ATAR-level languages program that only costs $124,000 per year to deliver.
The $4.1 million spent on leave, payouts and compensation for Ms Cover, Dr McNeill and the complexity thinker in the last two years is more than the total cost of retaining CIT's full seniors fitness class schedule, continuing the languages program, and delivering its diploma of remedial massage fee-free for the next three years.
Did someone say "fiduciary responsibility"?
I've been inundated by messages from CIT staff over recent weeks and months. They're appalled, heartbroken, and exhausted.
They're committed to delivering the best possible student experience, and they're sick of being ignored and disgraced by highly paid executives.
They all say the same thing - the issues are not isolated to one or two individuals; there's an endemic cultural problem of executives acting like they're accountable to nobody.
The problem is, because CIT is governed by an independent board, the minister for skills and training can't really be held directly responsible for any of this.
This lack of ministerial responsibility is seriously problematic. It limits parliamentary scrutiny, stymies accountability for the more than $160 million in public funds going to CIT each year, and ultimately restricts the ability of Canberrans to have a say in what happens at our public vocational education and training institution.
A new CEO will not fix CIT's systemic problems, nor can a new board.
Tinkering around the edges with small governance tweaks won't cut it either.
All the evidence indicates the independent CIT board experiment has been an abject failure, however well intentioned it may have been at the outset.
The minister announced a governance review months ago, which I welcomed, but it would be remiss of him to assume the rest of the Assembly will happily wait for a slow and seemingly directionless process to unfold.
I see two potential pathways forward.
Bring CIT more in house. This option's relatively simple. Abolish the board. Head the institute up with a director reporting to the minister. Make it part of the Chief Minister, Treasury and Economic Development Directorate. Clear ministerial accountability. Strong parliamentary scrutiny.
No more throwing our hands up in the air and deferring to an independent board that Canberrans never elected.
Or, establish a dual-sector institution through a merger with the University of Canberra. This option's trickier. UC can't just eat CIT - and that'll no doubt be the fear held by CIT staff.
Over $160 million in taxpayer funds can't just be diverted to UC every year without strict ministerial and parliamentary oversight. That doesn't mean the idea should be dismissed prima facie.
It's up to vice-chancellor Bill Shorten to make a case for why this isn't just an exciting idea for UC, but to demonstrate how it'll also resolve the systemic issues at CIT.
A merger should only be on the table if it can do that, and if the proposal has the support of CIT staff and students.
Whatever comes next, tinkering with the status quo is not an option.
