Director's Message

Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue6 1–31 July 2020

We have been spending a lot of time the last few weeks on re-planning
the RSAA budget in line with the ANU Expenditure Control Framework. With
a great deal of help from the School Manager, the Directors of the AITC
and SSO and other senior staff, together with some generous assistance from
individual grant-holders, the RSAA Executive was able to agree a savings
plan that meets the goals set by the University while having relatively
little impact on the long-term goals of the School. This was possible
for 2020 largely by deferring significant amounts of spending into 2021
and making one-off savings where possible. Provided we can manage our
ongoing expenditure for the rest of this year according to this plan and
are disciplined in our spending decisions, I believe RSAA will be able to
do its part in alleviating the ANU's financial problems in 2020. This
will buy us some time and room to make more careful plans for the School
budget in 2021, which will be our next point of focus.

We are also looking forward to gradually opening up our sites more fully
as we aim towards having students back on-campus for the start of second
term at the end of July. Among other changes, we are hoping that we
will be able to open SSO up to visitors (in a limited, controllable
fashion) in time for the start of the NSW school holidays. SSO is a
significant tourist attraction for the Coonabarabran region and we would
like to be able to contribute to restarting the region's economy.

Finally, I hope we will be able to take some time this month to review
our School culture. As recent events, both local and global, have shown,
2020 is presenting us with an opportunity to re-think who we are going
to be and how that shows through in what we do. I look forward to having
those discussions with all RSAA staff and HDR students, and to finding
ways to make the School a better, more diverse, more inclusive, and more
supportive environment for everyone here.