A striking feature of contemporary Australian higher education governance is the strong emphasis on centralized, template style, metric-based, and consequential forms of performance measurement. Such emphasis is indicative of a low degree of political trust among the central authorities in Australia in the intrinsic capacity of universities and academics to do their work efficiently and effectively. At the same time, it is indicative of a deep-seated political trust in highly centralized and top-down forms of performance measurement, and their capacity to effectively control and coordinate the work of universities and academics. In this article, we argue with regard to performance measurement that these patterns of trust and mistrust embody contradictory assumptions regarding the agency and motivations of universities and academics and prevent adequately coming to terms with the unintended effects that the current performance measurement regime has on universities and the academics working in them.