The chancellor had an important message for staff. It only took two goes to get all of it out

On Thursday CMM reported a letter from Macquarie U Chancellor Martin Parkinson to campus union leader Nikki Balnave. In it Dr Parkinson set out his support for university management’s handling of COVID-19 caused financial shortfalls and the lobbying strategy against the federal government’s new funding legislation.

On Friday afternoon Dr Parkinson’s letter to the university community was released, but with one crucial sentence deleted. The chancellor stated, the university Council will consider executive group remuneration at its November meeting but without the next sentence, “for the avoidance of doubt, I do not expect the Executive Group to be treated more favourably (with respect to yearly salary adjustments” than the rest of the university community.”

This is clearly a message the chancellor wanted heard. The university reissued Dr Parkinson’s letter, with the crucial sentence included, in an all-staff in an email sent around 9pm Friday night.

“An unfortunate production error occurred in the Chancellor’s message today resulting in a sentence being omitted. It is important that the correct complete version is distributed to the university community,” the 9pm email begins.