campusreview . com . au policy & reform know that the way research works around the world is that we have an entirely unbiased excellence based system for working out who gets the money for their projects . I like to use a sporting analogy . You wouldn ’ t want the Australian netball coach choosing the football team . You wouldn ’ t want a person who ’ s an expert in nuclear power telling you who should be on your AFLW team .
The experts in the space make very careful judgements about who deserves scarce taxpayers ’ money for those grants . That ’ s an ongoing conversation and something about which the sector has rightly very serious concerns .
Has part of your representations to the minister been focusing on the distinction and the connection between interference in the grants process and academic freedom ? Free speech and academic freedom are in the DNA of the nation ’ s universities . We all know that university campuses are the places where the big debates happen : always have been , always will be . It ’ s where you have no fear that you will find people really grounded in expertise being absolutely frank and fearless about how we discuss the really complex issues , and there are a lot of complex issues right now to be discussing .
If we just look at these seismic shifts in geopolitics , they ’ re really massive differences . The rise of China , the rise of the area in which we live , the Asia Pacific region , the fact that two-thirds of the world ’ s middle class by 2030 will live here . That ’ s just an enormous shift . That raises all sorts of issues , difficulties and opportunities .
They ’ re the things that we are so proud and so resolute to see debated backwards , forwards , always grounded in expertise in our campuses . All through that process of discussion of free speech with the code written by Robert French , that ’ s now been adopted or adapted into every university ’ s governance processes and policies . That process , as far as we are concerned , is at an end but this discussion never ends . There is always a tension . There is always debate . We know there has been interference inside our universities . We know there is pressure from government of many colours , many sorts on students inside our campuses . It ’ s our job to make sure that those students and researchers are absolutely supported in their absolute right to express their very carefully honed views , their views grown out of , in some cases , decades of study .
It ’ s our job to make sure that they can express those views . That does butt up against the ARC decision , but we just keep on making the point that a robust democracy like Australia is founded on the frank exchange of really well-founded views . In a broad sense , right now we need to make sure that we are absolutely solidly behind that because the future of democracy , frankly , is on the line . We see what happened in some parts of the US during the Trump period , we ’ ve all been really distressed by the strange relationship with the truth in some of the demonstrations we ’ ve seen around the country regarding vaccination .
It ’ s our job to make sure that day in day out , we don ’ t just defend the right to clear free speech , but we as universities see our job as improving the standard of public debate , engaging with the communities that we serve and making sure that we are assisting the community in navigating what is an incredibly complex period , not just in Australia , but around the world with clear , factually strong and robust information so they can feed that into their thinking process and we can maintain our place as a trusted source of information .
As a sector how well do you feel we ’ re all walking that tight rope between managing the control of foreign interference and continuing to grow international research partnerships ? What steps is UA taking to keep us all balanced on that rope ? It really is a tight rope walk . It ’ s incredibly important that we manage that very fine balance between protecting our staff and students from undue interference and maintaining the very thing that makes our research so good .
Let ’ s remember that Australia is a very strong research country . We have 0.3 per cent of the world ’ s population and we produce more than 4 per cent of research output . We do very well . It ’ s really important we maintain that .
At the same time , we ’ ve got to , as you say , maintain that balance . How does research get done these days ? It gets done in great big international collaborative groups . That ’ s how the big research breakthroughs get made . If we don ’ t collaborate as a relatively small population , we are out of the game , and that ’ s not where we want to be .
We all know that transparency is absolutely the best medicine .
We are a smart country with lots of fantastically smart people doing really good work . We ’ re going to make the most of that . What have we done in this space ? A couple of years ago we had a meeting with some gentleman from ASIO , and I ’ ll be completely honest with you , we were speaking fairly different languages . I think I understood about half of what they said and they might have understood a bit more than half of what I said .
We have since set up the University Foreign Interference Taskforce . The security agencies are involved , along with the department of education and a number of other departments , including home affairs . Universities are also involved , including vice chancellors and us as the peak body and the Group of Eight . We sit down and have very frank conversations about what the dangers are for Australia ’ s universities , for our ability to continue doing that research and what we can do to make sure we ’ re putting the best protections in place .
We have now developed two sets of guidelines for universities . This is the first time we ’ ve seen such a close partnership between the sector and government to make sure that we are putting the best defences in place to make sure we can be as free as possible .
That ’ s a partnership that our colleagues and other countries , other peak bodies , other sectors in comparable countries like the UK the US and Canada , are looking at really closely as a best practice model for how you do this . You can ’ t deal with this by yourself . You really do need to be working closely with government , in a very frank , very genuine partnership to be able to deal with interference from foreign powers .
We ’ ve had our first HEDx live event in Queensland around gender equity , inclusion and culture change in our sector . Where do these issues fit within your personal priorities and those of UA ? We need to hold our head up and work harder and do better at this . I find the contention that you are not as smart or not as good at something because you ’ re a
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