“I feel very emotional,” Julie Bishop said, as she stared down a room of reporters on Thursday. She did not look it. Years after the former foreign minister last faced her Labor opponents across the dispatch box, Bishop retained the same detached stare, the same cool responses.

The chancellor of the Australian National University, who had announced that vice chancellor Genevieve Bell had resigned her role on Thursday to widespread delight on campus, was now determined to present herself as the woman to right the ship.

“We’re listening”, Bishop said, notwithstanding that complaints about her and Bell have been at fever pitch for months. The ANU was a “family”, albeit one where some staff say they have been left traumatised by management as it slashes costs. She and the university’s leader

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