Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Freedom of Speech) Bill 2020. I understand I have limited time, so I'll try to get through as much as I can, although I doubt that I will. First of all, I say that Labor will not oppose this bill. What the bill does is insert a new definition of 'academic freedom' into the Higher Education Support Act, replacing the existing term, 'free intellectual inquiry', with allied concepts of 'freedom of speech' and 'academic freedom' in relevant provisions. To date, my understanding is that all universities have agreed to voluntarily adopt the French model code and that agreement is now included in their mission based compacts. So it really shouldn't be a controversial bill, which is why Labor won't oppose it.

But I do want to speak to the substantive issue here. In the first instance, I'm not quite sure why the government has called this a freedom of speech bill. To my mind, it is about the freedom and rigour of academic inquiry and the freedom of thought. I say this as somebody who has worked at universities in various capacities for a number of years. I've been a lecturer, a tutor, a researcher and a professor. I've worked on four ARC grants and I was the lead investigator on two. I led a research program and established a research centre looking at global issues. I've supervised PhDs, I've taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses, I've written courses in counterterrorism and I've taught postgraduate units, all in the humanities. As somebody with that background and that experience, I have to say that the biggest and greatest threat to academic freedom in this country is this government and its protracted and sustained attacks on the humanities and on universities. That is the biggest threat to academic freedom.

As I said, while we support this bill and it should be uncontroversial to insert a new definition of 'academic freedom', if you want to talk about freedom of speech at universities you cannot go past some of the actions that this government has taken that go against the very principles of freedom of speech, academic inquiry and academic freedom. I'm really quite aware of the limited time that I have in which to list all of those but I'm quite happy to take up this discussion again and list those, and I will take that opportunity. Suffice it to say that, in my extensive experience over a decade working at universities, as I said, in various capacities, my greatest fear about academic and intellectual freedom has come from the Liberal-National government and their attacks on universities and on the freedom of academics in the humanities—it's not right across the board; it's only in the humanities—to pursue academic knowledge.

Debate interrupted.

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