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

I am in continuation. I was reflecting on what academic freedom means and, indeed, what freedom of speech means in the context of academic research, based on my years of experience working at universities in various capacities and in various research areas. Academic freedom means the freedom to pursue knowledge, and all knowledge is worthy of pursuit, whether in the sciences or the humanities. And, as I was reflecting the last time I spoke on this bill, the greatest threat to academic freedom comes from this government and this government's campaign against certain pursuits of knowledge—different types of pursuits of knowledge. There can be no greater example of that than when the previous minister for education vetoed more than $4 million worth of ARC grants, all in the humanities.

Here's what it takes to get an ARC grant. You have to have done a pilot project. You have to have a substantial body of research on which to build. You then have to write an application, and that application can run to 100 pages or so. You then have to have it assessed by a panel of experts. But the former minister for education put himself above that panel of experts in vetoing a number of ARC-approved research projects, all in the humanities.

Out there, being an expert is something you earn, and it's not based on having a staffer write you an op-ed or a staffer write your speeches for you or do your research for you. You actually have to be the one who's conducted the research. You actually have to be the one who's pursued that knowledge and accumulated that knowledge. To have a minister veto and go over and above decisions that were already made by an appointed panel of experts, people who are recognised in their field, is not just hubris; it is actually the very definition of an attack on academic freedom and indeed an attack on freedom of speech in higher education.

Researchers should be able to utilise their expertise to pursue pathways of knowledge that will add to the body of knowledge of expertise in this country. That is what academic freedom is all about. That is what we mean when we talk about the integrity of academic freedom. But that is not the only example of this government's attack on universities and on academic freedom.

Mr Tim Wilson interjecting—

The member opposite, the member for Goldstein, likes to interject. Unfortunately, Member for Goldstein, I have to speak out on this—10 years working in the university sector, and when I speak to my colleagues who are still in the university sector they are aghast at the level of interference in academic freedom and academic integrity that this government feels free to undertake. They are absolutely shocked by the decisions taken by the former minister for education in vetoing ARC grants and the current move around fee changes that is supposed to lead to more STEM places but has actually been completely counterproductive.

When we talk about academic freedom and freedom of speech, I think about a gentleman in my electorate of Cowan who called me the other day. He's a mature-age student wanting to go back to university to finish his first degree; he hasn't done a degree before. He's got three kids. He enrolled in a degree in history, because he's interested in history—interested in biblical history, interested in that body of knowledge that has a lot of relevance to how we conduct ourselves today. So he enrolled in a degree and studied his first semester. This semester he's been told that the cost of his degree has doubled, and he can no longer afford to continue studying in that degree. Who deemed that this man's pursuit of knowledge is not worthy? Who is it that deemed that there should be no academic freedom for this man to pursue a degree in history? Who is it that decides what young people get to choose to study? Who is it that decides what people who wish to return to university, or get a degree for the first time, in their 40s or 50s get to study?

The biggest threat to academic freedom is the actions of this government. They need to stop their protracted campaign against the universities, they need to stop the cuts to universities, they need to stop this ideological war against the humanities, and they need to demonstrate that they really are about freedom of speech and academic freedom. On this side of the House, we are about academic freedom. That's why we support this bill—because it makes sense. But I call on the government to do more than just this bill and to actually stand behind what they say about freedom of speech, academic freedom and the integrity of academic freedom.

Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I always like to follow the member for Cowan, because, if nothing else, her substance and sass always contribute to the debate, in both her physical manifestation and her words. I note she's laughing and enjoying everything I'm saying. I do have a strong affection for her, because, if nothing else, she contributes and makes a contribution with passion and commitment.

That the Higher Education Support Amendment (Freedom Of Speech) Bill 2020 needs to be introduced is, frankly, embarrassing. It's embarrassing because it has got to a situation where universities are not the home of free and intellectual inquiry to pursue the advancement of our nation and our collective knowledge, scientific inquiry and humanity. In fact, when I served as Australia's Human Rights Commissioner, before being elected to this place, I wrote an article specifically looking at higher education and some of the issues that were faced, particularly where universities refused to accept centres focused on free and intellectual inquiry, and it finished with a joke: 'What is the opposite of diversity? Sadly, it has become university.'

That's why I say it's embarrassing. Universities should be the pillars on which we build the intellectual foundations of our country. They should be the pillars on which young minds, thirsty and enthusiastic, are challenged and confront difficult realities, where we hold a window up to our society—economically, socially, politically, environmentally and scientifically—and where matters are debated on the basis of their merit, not on the basis of their conformity to rigid ideology. That we are now faced with a number of examples where universities have been bullied, silenced or intimidated into silence should embarrass them. Where are the university councils and university senates standing up for their core purpose? Why is it that legislation needs to be introduced to tell them to do their core job—because this is their core job?

Take the kerfuffle that surrounded the establishment of the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation to study the great works of our own culture and history. It is not the sole source or the font of all knowledge of our community and civilisation, and nobody is arguing that it is, but that some people seem to think that it's acceptable to exclude these works from academic inquiry because of the authors or the times, considering the incredible contribution they have made to the foundation of some of the most free and prosperous societies on earth, should embarrass universities. That universities in Western Australia rejected funding to support a centre that focused on how we can achieve consensus around issues like the science and policy of climate change should embarrass those universities. That we have activists that want to stand up against the bullying and intimidatory behaviour of Communist parties around the world and they find themselves in a position of sanction or censure should embarrass universities. Because that is not the basis in which free intellectual inquiry, research, activism and debate should be conducted in a free liberal democracy such as ours.

The legislation we have before us today should not be needed. But here we are. The Higher Education Support Amendment (Freedom of Speech) Bill 2020 will strengthen protections for freedom of speech and academic freedom on university campuses, and, by default, Australia. The legislation will bring the Higher Education Support Act 2003 into line with the French model code which all universities have agreed to adopt this year. The legislation is a culmination of a careful process, identifying what needs to be done to support free and open debate.

On 14 November 2018, the Minister for Education announced that the former Chief Justice of the High Court, Robert French, would review existing material regarding free speech on university campuses, which led to this process. The report concluded on 6 April 2019 that the protection of freedom of speech and academic freedom could be strengthened by the adoption of model codes embedded in higher education providers' institutional regulations or policies on a voluntary basis. There were minor amendments that were suggested and adopted. The amendments would align the language currently used around free intellectual inquiry with the proposed model code's identification of free speech and academic freedom, bringing greater clarity and consistency.

Since then, we've had universities considering and looking at different models that can be adopted. Of course, it's culminated in the situation where we have legislation which enables free intellectual inquiry in university campuses. But we should never lose sight of this moment and why it matters to pass this legislation—as reluctant, and frankly, as embarrassing as it may be—because, in the end, free and intellectual inquiry is critical to the foundations of our society. It's actually the wellspring where so much of our society succeeds, and we should never lose sight of that.

There are so many reasons for this—we can go through them and, if you wish to, you can read my speeches when I was Human Rights Commissioner—and we've got plenty of other great works, from John Stuart Mill's On Liberty through to discussions of the present day. But the principles remain consistent. The point of free speech is not just because it's the manifestation of people's freedom of conscience and the freedom to impart ideas—though it is that—it's also the opportunity to test, particularly in a university environment, bad ideas and have them exposed by the light of day. It's so that bigotry and prejudice within communities can be challenged and confronted, and we can see our common humanity. It's so bad ideas are tested against evidence so that our community and our society can progress.

As soon as you create a linear model of thinking, an ideological framework which constrains that debate, you set humanity and our country on a course against progress. You deny people the capacity to understand what is right and what is wrong on a path towards a made-perfect humanity. We want to ensure that future generations do not just carry the learned knowledge and history of our community and our civilisation and all of the bits that feed into it but can continue their journey in contributing to it to compound the success of future generations. When that's denied in an environment specifically to promote education, research and challenging people's thinking, as universities are, you don't just undermine education, although you do; you undermine the potential of future generations to succeed and to give their children the inheritance that we received and wish to give to them. There are plenty of societies in human history that have constrained free and open discussion because they thought they had the perfect solution, anchored on an ideological hubris that they somehow had reached a form of perfection for themselves. All that history showed, like democracy itself, is that it meant there were no safety valves to test that madness which undermined and corroded the very foundations of their society.

That's why freedom of speech goes to the core of liberalism itself. It's because it's necessary to progress society itself, the economy itself—community, culture, history and tradition themselves. It's about the decentralisation of power from the select few to the empowerment of millions of people and for truth to be spoken to power, including in this place. And it doesn't matter what the context or the setting is; we must always stand up for it and by it—not the selective representations that so many people make when people stand up for ideas that they agree with. It was misattributed to him, but the Voltairian principle, nonetheless, stays the same.

Sadly, too many people in this place, and outside this place—particularly those in the modern, progressive Left—make bold claims and commitments to free speech so long as it confirms to their world view. We have seen this before and we will see it again: they bastardise language with concepts like fair speech, which means that people's thought and expression should be anchored to their identity or that the limits in which they can express themselves are simply based on the recipient of the expression.

We know the history of free speech and that when you empower censorship you empower a censor—centralised power to dictate what people can say, what they can express and the circumstances in which they can do that. That suppresses the advancement of our species. That's what free speech is about: it's not just about the expression of ideas; it is about power. Censorship is about the centralisation of power at the expense of the individual and in favour of the privileged few. Free speech is about the empowerment of the many—for diversity, for debate and for the individual. No society has ever succeeded where it has sought to empower the few to dictate over the many. The only sustainable societies that exist today which continue to compound, grow and contribute, not just for themselves but to those beyond their borders, are those which empower individuals, families and communities as the foundation of the success of their country and their civilisation.

This legislation may be targeted specifically at issues related to higher education, but the reverberation and ripples which it sets extend far wider for the advancement of our society. We should never lose sight of that. Today is one of those moments when we have legislation before us which cannot have just an immediate effect but which can continue to contribute to the advancement of us as a people through the empowerment of individuals in their contributions to the progress of humanity.

Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I, too, rise to speak on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Freedom of Speech) Bill 2020. Of course, Labor is supporting this bill—and why wouldn't we? We've always promulgated freedom of speech, which is one of the pillars of our democracy and something that we can pride ourselves on. Freedom of speech is one of the most fundamental things you can have in a free society. So, therefore, there is no reason that Labor Party would not support this bill. In fact, history shows that on this side of the House we have always supported the ability to speak freely. Regardless of who's in government and what the government lines are, people should have freedom of speech to express themselves, to ensure that they can get their ideas across et cetera.

As I said, we support academic freedom. University students and researchers should absolutely be free to follow their intellectual curiosity, to express their opinions and beliefs, and to contribute to public debate, especially in universities. When we look at the history of our nation and some of the movements that have made changes to this country, the incubator, the hotbed, is the universities. Whether it be Vietnam conscription or refugees in detention, where we saw an outcry from universities and students and academics, it is always universities that are usually at the forefront. It is so important.

Gough Whitlam told us:

Academic freedom is the first requirement, the essential property of a free society. More than trade, more than strategic interests, more even than common systems of law or social or political structures, free and flourishing universities provide the true foundation of our western kinship, and define the true commonality of the democratic order.

That is as true today as it was when former prime minister Gough Whitlam made that statement.

We need to ensure that freedom of speech is freedom of speech across the board, not when it suits us or governments or particular organisations. Look at this government and the history of the last seven years. I'll give you a great example: when Simon Birmingham was minister for education, he alone vetoed more than $4 million of Australian Research Council grants because he 'didn't like the sound of them'; that's what was quoted at the time. It was an act that universities called 'abhorrent' and 'reprehensible' at the time, and which undermined the impartiality of the entire grant process. So freedom of speech should be across the board, not what we like or dislike ideologically. Former Chief Justice French himself says in the report:

From the available evidence however, claims of a freedom of speech crisis on Australian campuses are not substantiated.

We also have to remember why this bill is being introduced at this point in time. As I said at the beginning of my speech, when I stood up a few minutes ago, freedom of speech is the pillar of our democracy and is embedded in our laws and legislation. People should have the freedom to express themselves, to ensure that they have religious freedom and a whole range of things. But, if you look at the timing of this, it's very unfortunate that the reason this debate is before the House today is to do with previous bills that went through the parliament in the previous few sessions—that is, the increase in higher education costs. The government knew they couldn't get that bill through, so a deal was done with Pauline Hanson's party and a few others in the Senate to get it through, to increase fees for students. It's very unfortunate that the only reason we're debating this bill here today and putting it through is some sort of dirty deal that was done to get something through that universities, students and most of the public did not agree with—a hike in tertiary fees and university fees.

When we talk about expression of freedom and when we talk about the ability to express and explore ideas, especially in our think tanks—which are our universities—people need to have that ability. When you put pressure, through economic costs, on students getting their higher education degrees and when you put pressure on faculties and all the higher education system, it has an effect on freedom of speech and an effect on the students' mindset. If they're struggling to pay those fees and thinking about the day-to-day economics of their lives, they're less likely to be able to express themselves and feed ideas through to us from our tertiary education sector, which has been a hotbed of ideas for centuries. The bill that went through this House was criticised by many people.

When we talk about freedom of speech, we also need to keep in mind that freedom of speech is not about hurting others, vilifying others and bringing racism into it. That still must be our highest thought—to ensure that hate speech et cetera is not dressed up as freedom of speech. That's very important to remember, because lately we have seen many dressing up the term 'freedom of speech' and using it for their own purposes.

As I said earlier, the fee hikes are going to have a tremendous effect on education in this nation and on students and people wanting higher education. But, again, we shouldn't be surprised. We know the current government has continually sought to increase fees for university degrees. I call it the Americanisation of our education system. In the US, if you don't have a spare $200,000, you do not get a degree. Our year 12s have done it so tough this year with COVID. They've had to knuckle down and study from home when we don't even have the NBN working properly. Families have taken it in shifts when mum and dad are working from home. The internet is so slow that only one person can use it at a time.

If you want to talk about freedom of speech, that's great. It is within the pillars of our democracy, and it should be at the highest point. You also have to put mechanisms in place that give people the ability to think outside the square and to have their views heard. They should not have to struggle with debts. At the moment it costs, on average, $60,000 to get a basic degree. No Australian should miss out on the job they want or the education they need because they can't afford it. This is what's happening.

I'm raising this because we know that this bill is only here in this House today because of a deal done in the Senate to get higher education costs up. We should be encouraging young people to promulgate their views to ensure that their ideas get out there. We should also be encouraging as many students as possible to study at TAFE or university in order to get the skills they need to help rebuild our wonderful nation. This government's inaction has paralysed universities and left students in a very uncertain position. The government's university fee hikes have been built on perverse incentives.

All sorts of experts, including former Liberal education minister Julie Bishop, have expressed their concerns that the legislation will achieve the opposite of what the government says it will. It's going to discourage universities from offering STEM degrees, for example. Overall, the government's funding model is going to cut total funding for these degrees. The experts in science and technology, who have crunched the numbers, agree. They found that funding for STEM courses, such as maths and engineering courses, will fall because of the legislation and the deal that was done in the Senate. Universities across the country have advised that there will be similar results. What's more, students who choose to study courses that the government has deemed undesirable under its job-ready scheme will face skyrocketing fees. I don't believe it is right to penalise students for their dreams. You may say that this is all about the other bit of legislation that went through the House, but it has an effect on freedom of speech. It has an effect on the way students view their years of tertiary education. It puts pressure on them, not being able to express themselves. It puts pressure on them, dealing with the day-to-day grind of the economics of universities. That leads to the dumbing down of freedom of speech. It shouldn't be happening.

This year I met many, many students who, under COVID, were having all sorts of issues. One of them, for example, was Fleur, who lost her job because of COVID and because the government excluded universities from JobKeeper. She was a successful lecturer in theatre, performance and presentation skills. Last year, she won the Monash Student Association Teaching Excellence Award in the arts faculty and was short-listed for the university-wide Above and Beyond Award for her care of students during lockdown. At the same time as winning those accolades, she lost her job. After five years of dedication, of teaching hundreds of students, she was told that the university could not renew her contract without JobKeeper. We wrote to the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, as did many of my colleagues and the shadow ministers, but it fell on deaf ears. Fleur contacted my office in absolute desperation. She stated, 'It feels like I am being punished just because the government did not pick my industry, didn't deem my career worthy of support in a pandemic.' She fears for her own future and much more—she fears that, without support, Australia will lose a generation of educators and researchers. Educators and researchers are the people who encourage our students to speak freely, to promulgate ideas, to get their views heard and to debate a whole range of things. These are the people we're losing. We're dumbing down our education system. I share my constituent Fleur's concerns. We want and need a well-educated society where people are encouraged and supported to follow their dreams. I don't think this government agrees.

As I said, we will not oppose this legislation, because freedom of speech is the pillar of our democracy and the pillar of the freedoms that we take for granted in this country. Strengthening academic freedoms in our universities is important, but you need to put all the other markers in place as well, to give students the ability not just to crunch the numbers, if they're doing maths, science or chemistry, but also to think as global citizens. We encourage that through freedom of speech. Unfortunately, we're dumbing down our system.

I'd also ask the Prime Minister and his government to make legislation that is in the best interests of our nation. The bill that went through the Senate previously, which dealt with higher tertiary education costs, is not in the best interests of our nation, our students or our tertiary education. In fact, it just makes it harder for people to study, to dream of their careers and to get expertise in a particular field. As we know, this was only done to appease One Nation so that they would support the government's abhorrent bill and pass its university fee hikes, which make it harder and more expensive for Australians to get a university education. When fewer people go to university, when it's harder for people to go to university and when the ones that do go have to struggle with their day-to-day finances, we dumb down freedom of speech.

We support this bill. It's important. Freedom of speech should always be raised to the highest level. But we know that this is being done just to appease those in the Senate, the One Nation Party, because they supported the legislation to increase university fees.

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The implications of the bill before the House today, the Higher Education Support Amendment (Freedom of Speech) Bill 2020, are profound. Freedom of speech in our universities is critical, of course, not only to the integrity of our academics themselves but for our economic and our political success. Our universities are the nurseries of Australia's intellectual future. They are the training grounds for our next leaders and the incubators of the ideas that will preserve our nation's prosperity.

However, the implications go beyond these boundaries and they touch all Australians. When academics and experts refuse to, or are unable to, make the rational, evidenced and nuanced arguments which exist on both sides of almost any debate, then, unfortunately, others will pick up where that vacuum is created. The floor is left to those whose views are more extreme. Australians are not stupid. They know when debate is being silenced and alternative perspectives are being suppressed. When the only voices expressing those alternative perspectives are those with an extreme agenda or, indeed, unbalanced views, unfortunately those are the only voices which are heard and all of us are left poorer as a result.

Sadly, it is clear that freedom of speech and academic inquiry is not currently adequately protected in our universities. In a paper released at the end of 2020 for the Business Council by the University of Sydney's Business School, their international economic director, John Shields, summed up the issue well when he described:

… a form of classroom monoculturalism in which ­encouraging students to embrace the values of academic integrity and free debate, and facilitating the development of core capabilities in critical thinking, effective English communication and cross-cultural competence, have become increasingly difficult.

We will all, no doubt, remember the 2018 case of the proposed course in Western civilisation supported by millions in guaranteed funding from the Ramsay Centre which was rejected by the Australian National University amid uproar from its so-called progressive academic staff. What was particularly striking in that case was the simple fact that opponents of a degree course in Western civilisation clearly believed any such course must present an uncritically positive view of its subject matter. It says a lot about these same academics' approach in teaching their own courses. Clearly at ANU to study a humanities subject is to be indoctrinated in whatever predominant position is supported by the donors. This is not education. It is indoctrination, plain and simple.

The opposition of staff at ANU to such a course is, sadly, made more understandable when you compare it to the same university's equivalent Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies. This centre is funded by the governments of the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Iran. It changed its name from the Centre for Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies immediately following a particularly large Emirati donation. The centre's former director, Amin Saikal, has made the outlandish statement that Iran:

… provides degree of mass participation, political pluralism and assurance of certain human rights and freedoms which do not exist in most of the Middle East.

However, ANU is not alone. In my own state, the University of Queensland pursued one young man last year with secretive and expensive disciplinary processes following his leadership of a large-scale protest against China's actions towards Hong Kong, alongside other on-campus activism. UQ students report that they've been criticised in assignment feedback for using words like 'mankind', for describing ships with the conventional pronoun 'she' or, most recently, for rightly referring to James Madison as one of the United States's 'founding fathers'. A 2019 survey of 500 Australian students by the Institute of Public Affairs found that 41 per cent felt they were sometimes unable to express their opinions at university, while 31 per cent had been made to feel uncomfortable by a lecturer for expressing their views.

Australia's universities, in fact, have accepted for themselves that they need to do more to guarantee freedom of speech and academic inquiry. Following the Hon. Justice Robert French's independent review in 2019, all Australian universities signed up to put in place the code that he had devised in order to avoid the eroding of fundamental freedom of speech, which is an essential element of academic freedom. However, more than a year on, and despite 33 Australian universities claiming to have made progress in implementing the French model code, by December only nine were found by former Deakin University vice-chancellor Sally Walker to have enacted codes which are consistent with it. The government, I know, will continue to work closely with universities to ensure that more of them are adopting the code. The Minister for Education and Youth has made it clear that he wishes to see that work completed as soon as possible.

In the meantime, the government is acting to ensure that the legislative framework under which universities operate reinforces these principles and forms a constant reminder to universities of their obligations. The bill before the House delivers stronger protections for academic freedom and freedom of speech in Australia and, unlike so many of our universities to date, it gives effect to a key recommendation from the 2019 French review: it requires that universities have a policy which upholds freedom of speech and academic freedom. It requires universities to enshrine Justice French's new definitions of the principles which we all agree are an essential part of higher education for academic staff and students alike. It does this simply by amending the Higher Education Support Act 2003.

It also substitutes the terms 'freedom of speech' and 'academic freedom' for the existing term 'free intellectual inquiry' in the act. This not only aligns the language of those provisions with Justice French's proposed model; it also enshrines the principles of academic freedom espoused by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which states:

Academic freedom includes the liberty of individuals to express freely opinions about the institution or system in which they work, to fulfil their functions without discrimination or fear of repression by the State or any other actor …

Finally, by replacing the words 'free intellectual inquiry' in the act, the amendments draw an important distinction between the freedom of speech which we all have and the special aspects of freedom of speech most required to deliver true academic freedom. These include the freedom of academic staff to teach, to discuss, to research, and to disseminate and publish the results of their research. They include the freedom of academic staff and students to engage in intellectual inquiry, to express their opinions and beliefs and to contribute to public debate in relation to their subjects of study and research. In particular, as I mentioned, they include the freedom of academic staff and students to express their opinions in relation to the higher education provider in which they work or are enrolled, which can be critical in this era of universities as global business interests.

This debate is about one of the most fundamental principles that underlie our parliamentary democracy, but it is also about people—academics and ordinary students living in all of our electorates. In our privileged situation in this place, protected by the conventions that support the vigour of our own debates, we must always remember that our constituents do not enjoy those same privileged protections that we do whilst we sit in this place. Today in Australia, almost one-third of students have been discouraged from speaking their minds by those who are responsible for encouraging their intellectual curiosity. Some of our students have faced much worse. Our students and our academics are not extremists. They do not want to hurt anyone with their speech or their ideas. Around the country, we've seen in recent years that many of our people are feeling disenfranchised. Some of them are turning to so-called outsiders who seem to be able to say what they feel that they are prevented from saying themselves. For some, this feeling begins in our educational institutions, but, with the right guarantees, its solution can begin there, too.

Academics are, or should be, in a privileged position to overcome falsehood, prejudice and bias. They have the time, the resources, the skills, the evidence and the intellectual community at their fingertips to thoroughly examine new ideas and vigorously stress-test new claims and new ideas. They operate under an historical assumption of free academic inquiry. In some of our universities, politicisation, intellectual cowardice and ideological enforcement will result in nothing but a perpetuation of the fractures that exist in this country. However, academic freedom, open debate and a willingness to engage fearlessly with the evidence, however uncomfortable that may be, will help to ensure that all Australians feel heard and that the truth ultimately wins out. As we seek to recover from this COVID crisis, now more than ever we need inventive, cutting-edge thinkers—not drones for whom new ideas are a threat rather than an opportunity. We cannot afford to create even one generation of Australians who have been denied the chance to think for themselves. In a world where knowledge and innovation will be the economic drivers of our future, this has never been more important than it is right now.

Beyond economics, as Justice French observed in his review, even a limited number of incidents seen as affecting freedom of speech may have an adverse impact on public perception of the higher education sector, which can feed into the political sphere. Our political process and our economy can only deliver prosperity and opportunity for all Australians of every kind when our academics can express their views and contribute to the national conversation and when our students are encouraged to explore the answers to what are often uncomfortable questions. That's what this bill is about. That's what this bill will help to deliver, and I commend it to the House.

Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to follow the member for Fisher, and I acknowledge that his contribution was thoughtful and considered and, in many parts, set out very clearly why freedom of speech and freedom of thought are very important. There is a 'but', however—

Mr Wallace interjecting—

I agree with the member for Fisher: I was doing so well. My only 'however' to that speech is that it has to cut both ways. If we are to genuinely support freedom of speech in the way that the member for Fisher and the member for Goldstein put forward in their speeches, then everyone has to accept that people's views that are ideologically or politically different to theirs have the right to be put and to be debated, and accept the hypocrisy of advocating for freedom of speech for those you agree with but not for those you don't. The member for Goldstein talked about what he saw as the hypocrisy of the progressive Left. There is no doubt that there are some people, who may or may not fit the descriptor 'progressive Left', who go a very long way in their desire to stop speech that they see as hurtful or harmful to people in their world and who ask for words and phrases not to be used, in situations where others believe they have a right to use them. But to suggest that it's only people within the progressive Left who would like some limits on freedom of speech is in and of itself a hypocritical argument.

Freedom of speech does have limits, and I think everyone agrees with that. We teach children that from the day they're born. You might have the right to say things, but you shouldn't be using your freedom of speech in a way that is deliberately harmful, hurtful or offensive. There are limits. Even if you don't mean harm or offence or hurt, if what you are doing with your speech is causing those things then there are appropriate limits. I would say to those on the other side who rail against what they call 'cancel culture' and 'the progressive left' that I think what people are actually trying to say is: 'Can you listen to the way in which speech, even traditional forms of speaking, is actually hurting people? Can you put it into the current culture and lives of people and accept that your right to speak that way or use those words causes us hurt and harm, and can you perhaps not do it?' That was just a little tangent I thought I might go on after listening to the member for Fisher's speech.

What I want to do is agree, as everyone on my side and the other side of the chamber has, that it is uncontroversial that freedom of speech and intellectual experimentation and searching are absolutely fundamental to universities and to education. There is no doubt about that. But one of the issues we have in this country, which I think is quite well demonstrated by the different approaches to this legislation and the different speeches that people have given, is that we don't have an overarching human rights framework within which to debate and consider the rights and responsibilities of citizens and their relationship with their government. Since Federation, we have had a piecemeal and ad hoc legislative approach to rights and freedoms. Freedoms have had to be taken as implied in our Constitution, because they're not written there. That means that when the parliament comes to debate legislation such as this we don't have a framework, whether it's a charter or a bill of rights, within which to place this legislation. As a country and as a legislature, we've seen those problems in recent times. Marriage equality, the ongoing discussion of religious freedoms, and press and journalistic freedoms—the lack of which was highlighted last year when journalists Dan Oakes and Annika Smethurst were subject to AFP raids and very long investigations, with the threat of prosecution, for doing their job—are all dealt with as if they don't have any connection, as if rights and freedoms don't interact.

It's complicated—human rights law and the approach to rights and freedoms—and we are doing ourselves and the Australian public a disservice by continuing, as a parliament, to try to deal with these issues one by one. In 2001, in Papers on parliament No. 36, Professor George Williams wrote:

A gulf lies between Australians and their government. This stems in part from the longstanding failure to set out the rights and responsibilities of Australians within the political process. The lack of an Australian statement of rights undermines any claim Australia might have to a 'magnificent' human rights record. In any event, the record of human rights abuses, ranging from the Stolen Generation to Albert Langer to our treatment of refugees, shows clearly otherwise.

Professor Williams went on to write:

There is an obvious need for reform. Changes such as improved civics education are important, but we also need to reinvigorate our public life by beginning a process that will involve Australians more directly in the political system. We should draft an Australian statement of rights and freedoms. This should be in the form of a Bill of Rights enacted by parliament that would offer a coherent domestic means of addressing our many contemporary debates on individual liberty. This could start a long overdue dialogue between parliament, the courts and the people. We need to legislate for a Bill of Rights now.

Twenty years later, Professor Williams' words continue to ring true and to resonate.

We are one of the few jurisdictions in the Western world who haven't adopted a general bill of rights. For some time bills of rights were perhaps considered a European legislative initiative; however, we now look at Canada, New Zealand, the United States—they've had a bill of rights for a long time—and, domestically, Victoria, Queensland and the ACT. They have all developed bills of rights. Now, there are a lot of debates about what the exact form of a bill of rights might look like, what is effective and what is not, but we're not even having that debate in Australia's federal parliament or politics at the moment, and we should be.

The Australian Human Rights Commission said recently—2021—in Australia's third UPR that Australia does not have a federal human rights act, meaning that 'many fundamental human rights protections are not fully protected in Australia'. It said:

There are also minimal protections in place to ensure that the government considers our human rights as part of everyday law and policy making, and takes steps to prevent breaches before they occur. There are limited avenues to seek review of government decisions or actions that violate a person's human rights.

In the same paper, the Human Rights Commission also says: 'Australia's discrimination laws provide the main vehicle for implementing the human rights obligations. These laws are complex, do not provide comprehensive protection and are largely reactive, placing significant emphasis on individual complaints. There are limited regulatory mechanisms to ensure compliance and promote equality. The commission considers an effective anti-discrimination network should have more emphasis on prevention measures that will assist duty holders to comply with the law, and more effective enforcement mechanisms when they don't.' Governments in Australia have been reactive to issues of rights and freedom for too long, partly because we don't have that national framework of a bill or a charter of human rights.

Before I conclude, I want to return to where I started, which is: in order to stand up and talk about the importance of academic freedom of speech and be taken seriously, it's important that parliamentarians and governments practice what they preach. As some of my colleagues have already said in this debate, when Senator Birmingham was minister for education he vetoed about $4 million of Australian Research Council grants because he didn't like what they were doing. Universities called that 'reprehensible' and said that it undermined the impartiality of the entire grant process. And, listening to the speech that the previous speaker, the member for Fisher, gave, I can't imagine that he would approve of that either, given his commitment to freedom of inquiry at universities.

Former Chief Justice French said in the report:

From the available evidence however, claims of a freedom of speech crisis on Australian campuses are not substantiated.

But we know that this government has been doing deals with Pauline Hanson and One Nation in relation to higher education. However, I do accept that there are members on that side who have a deep interest in freedom of speech and in governments not dictating to civil society what they can and can't say. Nonetheless, this Liberal government has passed legislation which makes it an offence for a Eureka flag to be flown on a building site or for construction workers, plumbers and electricians to wear their union insignia on building sites—freedom of speech, freedom of association.

We regularly hear outcries about research that the government doesn't believe in. We all know, because we all have NGOs and charities in our electorates who are either explicitly or implicitly constrained in the advocacy they are able to undertake, because of the funding agreements and the grants from government—from environmental defenders' offices to health providers. These are the sorts of actions from government that don't support the basic rights and freedoms that most people in this chamber have said that they support. If we're going to talk about freedoms in institutions, we need to be consistent about it.

There is a growing tendency in our political world to label others who say things that one doesn't agree with as 'un-Australian'. One might not agree with changing the date of Australia Day, but surely those who believe in freedom of speech believe in the right of people to stand up and say that they do and why they do. One might not agree with views that people have expressed on Twitter and in other place, but the freedom-of-speech principle that's espoused by those people on the other side, who talk about the core values of libertarianism, surely says that those people have a right—as long as they're not advocating violence, the downthrow of government or criminal offences—to express views that they don't agree with and not be hounded out of the country, be called un-Australian or spark calls for the defunding of broadcasters.

So let's have this debate, but let's be honest about the positions that people are taking, and let's try to be consistent when we say that we believe in principles. One way that, as a parliament, we can bring the Australian people with us and bring about some of that consistency is to genuinely start the process of developing and implementing an Australian bill of rights.

Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Higher Education Support Amendment (Freedom of Speech) Bill 2020. In so doing, I just want to address comments made by the member for Dunkley about the need for an Australian bill of rights. I could not be more passionately opposed to an Australian bill of rights. A bill of rights does not protect individual citizens; it just transfers decisions from elected parliaments to unelected judges. Every tyrant in history has brought about a bill or rights that doesn't protect people, and it will surprise Australians that Victoria has a bill of rights. Despite all of the draconian laws that have been passed in Victoria over the last 12 months, they have done so with a bill of rights. A bill of rights provides an illusory protection to people.

I support this bill because the bill is designed to help universities be the best they can be and not be captured by ideologies and other distractions that threaten their reason for existence. I think undergraduates' impression of universities before they get there is often one that's very exciting. They imagine that they'll meet people who are deep experts in their field who'll engage in Socratic debate with their students. Students imagine that they have the chance to explore and test ideas with people, that they'll be able to freely inquire—I think of the great Edward Albee play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, where academics try to outwit each other. Students imagine a culture of learning and inquiry where they'll have a chance to develop their views and to properly explore and test their ideas.

I think what parents are hoping for is that their children will mature in their thinking but also develop a set of skills to make them ready for the workplace—a ticket for the future, and hopefully an opportunity to explore a better economic future than those parents themselves had. We regularly hear stories of the enormous pride that members of a family feel when the first generation attends university. The ceiling is lifted and new horizons open.

I believe in the idea of a university. I believe in the idea of a place of free and open discussion and debate. I believe in a university system that prepares people for the jobs of today and provides them with a set of skills that are adaptable for the jobs of tomorrow. I believe in a university system that can change people's lives and expose them to opportunities that their parents only dreamed of.

I want to give a couple of vignettes from my own education as an undergraduate arts and law student at UNSW. I was very lucky to undertake public law with Professor Rob Shelly. That class included a discussion of the 1975 constitutional crisis. Professor Shelly and I had very different views on it, but I didn't get marked down for having a politically incorrect view. He let me air my view, and although he disagreed with my stance he always tested my ideas and helped me put my best argument forward. I also remember the late, great Professor George Winterton. We were on opposite sides of the republic debate. We were both delegates at the Constitutional Convention and we became good friends. George was so widely read that he'd always give you the best proposition against his own argument.

In my school days I had some excellent teachers. I had a schoolteacher called Stu Johnston, who'd organised the Vietnam moratoriums and taught me history. Again, he completely disagreed with my politics, but he took the time to invest in me, to expose me to other ideas and to help me with my essay writing, because he saw that I'd need it over the course of my life. That's what truly great educators do.

In the three examples I've given, my education would have been poorer if I'd had to conform to some sort of politically correct idea or wasn't able to debate and have my own ideas challenged. Coming in with a preconception, hearing another view and refining, changing or solidifying one's own perspective is what a great education in the humanities should be all about. Unfortunately, too often the university system isn't allowing for that free inquiry and free debate and isn't properly equipping undergraduates for the jobs they're going on to. Unfortunately, I think a culture has increasingly developed in our universities—particularly, sadly, in our sandstone universities—where debate is not encouraged and where, in effect, the universities are not preparing graduates properly for a workforce where things are rapidly changing.

In our modern world, students need more traditional knowledge and hard skills than ever before. There's no point learning French history through how people collected firewood in the 18th century if you don't learn what French history says about the perception of France's place in the world today. There's no point learning a Marxist view of India's history which laments the British Empire but teaches nothing of Hindu culture, the rule of the Moguls or the glories of India's ancient civilisations. There's no point critiquing texts and ideas without first properly engaging in that text or idea itself. Too often we see great texts and ideas being talked about through the critique of today instead of being read on their own merits and then having rational debate applied to the ideas contained in them.

One of the hallmarks of Dan Tehan's period as Minister for Education was to focus on the question of free speech at universities. It's been nearly two years since former High Court Chief Justice Robert French recommended a national code to strengthen protections around academic freedom of expression. That code would ensure that freedom of lawful speech is treated as a paramount value and would affirm academic freedom. It would also make clear that there's no duty to protect staff and students from hurt by the lawful speech of another. Universities have been generally supportive of the idea. Universities committed to aligning their policies with the French model code. But unfortunately as of December last year only nine of Australia's 42 universities had adopted policies that align with the French model. Many have made a half-hearted effort; some have failed completely.

At the request of Minister Tehan, Professor Sally Walker last year reviewed the implementation of the model code. Unfortunately, what Professor Walker found doesn't come as too much of a surprise. Nine universities had taken these matters seriously, but the vast majority had not, with six universities continuing to have policies that are simply not aligned with the model code. This is not just a failure to do the paperwork. There are deeper problems with how some universities are handling matters relating to freedom of speech and academic freedom, and those problems can't go unchecked. This legislation is therefore necessary to ensure that universities actually do what they're supposed to do and adopt the code. This legislation is not an impermissible interference with university freedom. In fact, it is the very stuff of protecting their freedom.

In recent years we've seen the slow but very real erosion of public confidence in universities. Some have sought to monopolise the ideas expressed and to use universities as platforms for progressing particular agendas. Some of those agendas are ideological; others are actually threatening to Australia's security. Regardless of what form these agendas take, to allow universities to be overtaken by politics instead of learning would be a terrible mistake.

Over the past couple of years since the French review was announced, Labor and too many higher education providers have been trying to say to us, 'There's nothing to see here.' I find this argument staggering, especially after the real nature of the Confucius institutes have come to light. This is just one example of several that should make us wake up and ensure we are doing all we can to ensure universities can retain the character and freedom essential to their flourishing.

The failure of some universities to recognise that we have a problem is what concerns me most. Let me remind the House of some disturbing examples that have occurred in university campuses in recent years. In 2015 Colonel Richard Kemp was shouted down by students and a professor at the University of Sydney when he tried to speak about the ethical dilemmas of military tactics and dealing with non-state armed troops. He previously publicly defended the actions of the Israel Defense Forces, and yet for 20 minutes he was unable to speak. The protesters fought with security, who tried to have them removed. One of the protesters was a director of the University of Sydney's own Department of Peace and Conflict Studies.

In 2020 a student at the University of Queensland, Mr Drew Pavlou, was suspended from the university for two years after he was involved in protests against the Chinese Communist Party. Shockingly, last year the then Dean of Law at the University of Queensland, Professor Patrick Parkinson, an outstanding academic and thought leader in the field of family law, had a paper rejected by the University of Tasmania Law Review. Reasons given for the rejection of the paper included his use of 'offensive' terminology such as 'biological female' and 'opposite sex'. Parkinson had been asking important questions, based on years of experience in family law, about decisions that are currently being taken to define gender identity in new ways. His viewpoint deserves a hearing in an academic journal. If people like Professor Parkinson are being silenced, we're in a worse situation than I thought. Parkinson's referees seem to have objected to his politics, not his argument.

My own experience as a board member of the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation also reflects why I have reason to be alert to this issue. The Ramsay Centre is a philanthropic gift from the late Paul Ramsay offering universities the opportunity to run fully funded courses and provide scholarships for great book study of the sort that prestigious universities around the world like Chicago and Columbia offer. Instead, the universities haven't clamoured to partner with Ramsay, and many have bowed to extraordinary pressure from academics and activists who've got no problem with similar centres being funded by the Chinese government.

One of the key opponents of the great books course is Dr Nick Riemer, an academic who encouraged the shouting down of Colonel Kemp. Another opponent is Professor Simon During, from the University of Queensland. He said that the Ramsay Centre's efforts are causing anxiety. He said one problem with the Ramsay Centre is that 'well-known cultural crusaders in defence of "Western civilization" have leaped to their defence so that there is a quite intense left resistance to the whole thing.' During also challenges the idea that books should be allowed to be read by students without 'mediation'—that is, a student would read books without having lecturers tell them they have to be read through the lens of 'biologisms, materialisms, politicizations of various kinds, cultural relativism'. For him the fact that books might be studied on their own merit is a threat to the university. One is left to assume that he would rather be able to tell students what to think as they read.

How can a university that caves into the pressure of Left resistance be seen to be fostering a culture of academic freedom and the exchange of ideas? Perhaps most alarming of all, without ensuring academic freedom, our universities will become vulnerable to foreign interests exploiting them. While the ANU was rejecting a course on Western civilisation, it was very happy to run a Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies with an advisory board that includes a member of a foreign government. The ANU was also happy to take donations from Dubai, Iran and Turkey. These are real problems that must be addressed. As a member of the PJCIS, I look forward to looking into these matters further through the inquiry into national security risks affecting the higher education and research sector.

We need to ensure that universities have in place policies that demonstrate their commitment to academic freedom, and that's what this bill will do. Over 1.6 million Australians are university students. Thousands of them are young people in my electorate. They put enormous trust in universities to teach them and to assist them in preparing for their career, and so do their families. Families encourage their children to attend universities not so they can learn to watch activists shout down lecturers but so they can learn to think and prepare themselves for the work ahead of them. Parents and students in my electorate are rightly alarmed when they hear news about campuses stifling free speech and meanwhile failing at their essential tasks. It's because of my deep commitment to higher education in this country that I believe this legislation is needed. As someone who worked in the higher education sector before becoming an MP, I have a great and deep commitment to the idea of what a university should do.

I'd like to take a moment to comment on one matter that has been raised with me by faith based providers in recent weeks, and that is the impact that this bill could have on the accreditation of faith based tertiary education providers such as theological colleges. They've identified that, while freedom of speech and academic freedom are something that should be protected, they also have a reasonable concern that the requirement that they have a code upholding free speech and academic freedom will risk giving broad protection to staff and students who may seek to undermine the faith basis and religious ethos of the institution—for example, claiming that a sacred text of that institution is actually a work of fiction. As the former Victorian Crown counsel Mark Sneddon wrote to me recently, 'The current Western secular notion of academic freedom used in the French report implicitly values knowledge derived through empirical, scientific and closed-universe knowledge rather than knowledge which is in part derived through faith traditions and revelation. That sets the scene for an academic staff member or a student to claim an academic freedom to deny the faith tradition and revelation on the basis of the empirical data and secular logic.'

As someone who has worked for faith based institution, including a Catholic university, I believe it is reasonable for faith based higher education providers to expect that academic staff will continue to work within the belief system of those institutions. This bill does not intend to make that more difficult for such institutions, but I believe, given the concerns expressed, that this may be an issue that needs to be looked at more closely in the Senate to ensure there are no unintended consequences in the bill, and that there may be merit in including a statement in the explanatory memorandum to clarify the point.

This bill is not an attack on higher education providers, but it is focused on making standards that are important to our democracy, to our education system, to our economic future, to the future of our children and to the future of our economy. All Australian universities are subject to enormous pressures, both domestically and internationally and both internally and externally, and that makes it easy for them to forget their central purpose and their primary commitments. But the primary commitment of a university is the preparation of the next generation of Australians for the jobs that are in the economy today and the jobs that will be there in the future. Their primary responsibility is the pushing out of new areas of knowledge and understanding, and one can only do that if one can have free and open debate and if ideas can be tested, refined and tested again. That's why this legislation, which is based on the work of two of our most eminent lawyers—the former Chief Justice of Australia, Bob French, and Professor Sally Walker, who was herself a great expert in defamation law before she became a vice-chancellor and who is also a former CEO of the Law Council of Australia—is so important, because this legislation is designed to protect the freedom of universities as institutions, the freedom of our children and the future students of the universities, and the reputation of an incredibly vibrant and important sector in the broader Australian economy. I commend the bill to the House.

Dave Sharma (Wentworth, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Freedom of Speech) Bill 2020. This bill provides stronger protections for academic freedom and freedom of speech in Australia and, in doing so, it strengthens a core pillar of our liberal democracy. In my view, it should shore up public confidence in the freedoms that exist on our university campuses today to hold robust intellectual inquiry and to host lively debates, as they should.

The history here, of course, is that in November 2018, following a number of troubling incidents across university campuses where the right to free speech was called into some question, an independent review into freedom of speech on university campuses was commissioned by the member for Wannon, the then Minister for Education, and undertaken by the former High Court Chief Justice Robert French. At the time, the member for Wannon said:

Universities are important institutions where ideas are debated and challenged. We must ensure our universities are places that protect all free speech, even where what is being said may be unpopular or challenging.

I think that is very much the sentiment that is sought to be expressed in this legislation. It brings to mind the well-known quote which I think is usually attributed to Voltaire: 'I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.' This is the debate about the appropriate limits on free speech that has taken on a new life in the modern era, with the boundaries and limitations on free speech on digital platforms and in the virtual, as opposed to the physical, world—a topic of lively current debate. It's my view and, I expect, the view of many others here that, in the least case, the presumption of such instances should always be in favour of free speech and that the best antidote to speech that is disagreeable is usually more, rather than less, free speech.

That said, I accept that limits can and should be placed on free speech in societies where there is a compelling public policy justification, but such limits as societies choose to impose must be formulated, agreed and understood by those societies through a transparent and a democratic process. I think this is behind what has characterised some of the debate over the role of digital platforms in seeking to curate content on their sites or control the speech of people. No-one is necessarily disagreeing with the principle that some speech needs to be limited, but I think the standards and the methods by which you do that must have a measure of democratic accountability and legitimacy that comes from that. The French report, which was released in April 2019, found:

Reported incidents in Australia in recent times do not establish a systemic pattern of action by higher education providers or student representative bodies, adverse to freedom of speech or intellectual inquiry in the higher education sector.

I accept the finding that there is not evidence of a systemic pattern of action to suppress or otherwise interfere with freedom of speech, but the report goes on, and Justice French finds:

Nevertheless, even a limited number of incidents seen as affecting freedom of speech may have an adverse impact on public perception of the higher education sector which can feed into the political sphere,

And I think that's really the point of this legislation. Even if there have been only a small number of incidents and even if there is no evidence of a systemic attack or erosion of rights of free speech, the multiplying effect that that can have on discussions and conversation in other forums is particularly pronounced, given the privileged position that universities play in our society as the hosts of, usually, the most free speech and the most rigorous of debates.

The French report recommended the adoption of a model code embedded in higher education providers' institutional regulations or policies on a voluntary basis, and it also recommended amendments to the Higher Education Support Act—which is what we're discussing and debating here today—to align the language currently used around the concepts of free intellectual inquiry with the proposed model code's identification of free speech and with the language around academic freedom, to bring greater clarity and greater consistency. All Australian universities agreed to implement and adopt the model code, and, in August 2020, the Minister for Education announced the appointment of Professor Sally Walker AM to support the efforts of universities and to help ensure alignment of university policies with the model code. The bill before us today is addressing one element of the recommendations in the French report and that is to amend the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to provide a new definition of 'academic freedom'. It's worth quoting that new definition in the bill before us, which stipulates:

academic freedom means the following:

(a) the freedom of academic staff to teach, discuss, and research and to disseminate and publish the results of their research;

(b) the freedom of academic staff and students to engage in intellectual inquiry, to express their opinions and beliefs, and to contribute to public debate, in relation to their subjects of study and research;

(c) the freedom of academic staff and students to express their opinions in relation to the higher education provider in which they work or are enrolled;

(d) the freedom of academic staff to participate in professional or representative academic bodies;

(e) the freedom of students to participate in student societies and associations;

(f) the autonomy of the higher education provider in relation to the choice of academic courses and offerings, the ways in which they are taught and the choices of research activities and the ways in which they are conducted.

This definition in the bill before us aligns very closely with the definition recommended by the French review, with a minor technical modification recommended by the University Chancellors Council which was developed in consultation with former Chief Justice French. This modification excludes one element originally proposed by Mr French, which was the freedom of academic staff without constraint imposed by reason of their employment by the university to make lawful comment on any issue in their personal capacities, as this is more about broader freedom of speech than about academic freedom of such. This broader freedom of speech element for academics acting and speaking in a private capacity has been retained in the model code, which universities are now adopting.

I recently had a communication from the University of Sydney, which has enrolled many students who reside in my own electorate of Wentworth. In that letter from the vice-chancellor, Professor Stephen Garton AM, he confirmed the University of Sydney's support for the passage of the Higher Education Support Amendment (Freedom of Speech) Bill, and he also described to me Sydney university's own steps in this regard. In December 2019 the university senate adopted a new charter of freedom of speech and academic freedom, which took effect on 1 January 2020. That charter drew upon Mr French's recommendations to clarify the university's expectations as a place where all people are free to express themselves and, also, free to protest and disagree, so long as they do so respectfully and in accordance with the law.

In their response to the French review and the model code, the University of Sydney's own charter emphasises that as an institutional community they greatly value courage, civility and respect and strive to promote a culture where people disagree well. I think this is really at the heart of this. There are elements we can legislate and seek to codify, but at the heart of any debate about free speech should be an expectation that people can disagree well—that is, they can disagree on the merits of issues but do so respectfully, and they can have heated arguments and debate but not descend into the personal or use other tactics in a debate that are considered beyond the pale. At its heart, the free contest of ideas and the free debate that accompanies that is to the betterment of our society, our country and our people. The University of Sydney charter also explicitly recognises the right to protest and the rights of all their staff, not just academic staff, to criticise the university within the limits imposed by their enterprise bargaining agreement and employment contracts.

In December 2020 the review undertaken by Professor Sally Walker, commissioned by the government to evaluate the universities' adoption of the model code, praised the University of Sydney, La Trobe University and RMIT as three exemplar institutions for their responses to the model code. I know the University of New South Wales is also undertaking work in this area, and I commend it for doing so. I want to mention in passing the vice-chancellor of the University of New South Wales, Professor Ian Jacobs, who is returning to the United Kingdom shortly. I commend him for his stewardship of that institution over the last several years. I know running a university, being the vice-chancellor of a university, is not an easy role. It's a difficult business enterprise to run, and one that attracts a high degree of public scrutiny—as it should. I'm conscious that the business model of universities, particularly the universities of New South Wales and Sydney, that have historically attracted a large number of foreign students is under pressure this year. I want to acknowledge Ian Jacobs's service to the University of New South Wales and to Australia more broadly and wish him well for his future and his return to the United Kingdom.

Returning to the bill, and to conclude, the amendments that we are discussing here today to the Higher Education Support Act proposed in the bill will help align the legislation and definitions with those contained in the model code developed by former Chief Justice French, along with adoption and implementation of the model code by universities, such as the University of Sydney, and supporting the work of institutions and the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency to monitor compliance with the relevant quality standards. These amendments form one of the three key elements of the government's commitment to strengthen protections for academic freedom and freedom of speech in Australian higher education.

Academic freedom and freedom of speech are not only foundation stones for Australian universities, they are also foundation stones for Australia itself and our way of life. This bill will take a small but important step towards ensuring that our universities remain robust places of intellectual debate and inquiry. I commend this bill to the House.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I've played a prominent role in the matter of Drew Pavlou. This very heroic young man who has suffered for his beliefs and been punished for his beliefs stands as an outstanding example of martyrdom. I use that word with forethought. He's had three years of his life taken from him and destroyed. Why did he have three years of his life taken off him? He spent three years doing a university degree, and they abolished all his rights to those three years. They took three years off him. You could be imprisoned for three years for assault and battery, which brings me to the actual incident that brought him to national attention. I knew nothing about this whatsoever until my staff forced me to watch 60 Minutes, which showed a bunch of Chinese thugs bashing this fellow because he had a little forum of about 20 people in which they were talking about the Hong Kong students and what was going on in China. It's not the Chinese people. It is an imperialist dictatorial totalitarian regime. Don't have any illusions about what we're talking about here. I'm old enough to remember Communism, and there's not the slightest whiff of Communism in here, I can tell you. This is not the Communist class or the downtrodden workers and peasants rising up; this is the Mandarin class reasserting themselves. We're back to the days of brutal monarchy in China.

The last thing in the world you do with dictatorial, expansionist, imperialist people is appease them. Have we learnt nothing from the Second World War and the murder of six million Jews, amongst many other atrocities? For those of you who don't read history books—and it seems to me a lot of people in this place don't read history books—let me just refresh your memory. Hitler was given half of Czechoslovakia to appease him. That lightweight imbecile with the moustache and the upper-class English accent said: 'Peace in our time. I have brought peace in our time, by giving away half of Czechoslovakia—the Sudetenland.' He didn't say that. He said: 'I've got peace in our time. I've achieved it for you.' You only have to have the most cursory reading of history to know that the last thing you do with an aggressor is appease him. You make him stronger. You make him a hero in his homeland. You make them all xenophobic, beating their chests and saying, 'We are the greatest race on earth.' That's what you do.

These people who are ruling China and suppressing the Chinese people have picked a fight, and I want my nation to know we're not fighting alone here. The oppression of the Islamic people—a million people are missing in the Western Turkestan province. Have they gone to heaven? They probably have gone to heaven. A million people are missing. We have the aerial photographs of the concentration camps. How much evidence do you need before you wake up to yourself? How much evidence did they need in Germany?

I'm holding up a book called The Happiest Man on Earth by Eddie Jaku. He's 100 years old. He survived the concentration camps of Adolf Hitler. Those people who appeased him are condemned for all of history.

Are we appeasing China? China has cut off our coal. Have we done anything in retaliation? Nope. We've rolled over like mongrel dingoes. That's what we've done. We haven't taken one single action in retaliation. We're just going to accept it. They know they can come in and do what they like and get away with it.

Let me return to the specific case of the university, the cradle of thinking and the creation of thought. Socrates, Aristotle and Plato were the foundations of university. They would talk to young men and try to impart their wisdom. The getting of wisdom was what universities were about. When I went there they argued politics and religion around the clock. You'd finish at five o'clock in the morning sometimes.

What happened to the University of Queensland? Twenty of them had a little meeting, demonstration or forum—whatever you want to call it. When they were talking about the suppression of their fellow students in Hong Kong a bunch of thugs bashed them up. It's on television. You can watch it. This person was clearly Chinese. He had a furious look on his face. It was really scary. He came straight at Pavlou and smashed him and smashed the gear. The other thugs were pushing, bashing and shoving. They closed down the meeting with brute force. It was clearly assault and battery. There's not the slightest question about that.

Were they punished? No. There was no action taken by the police for 13 months. I'll tell you why the police acted. Because there were enough people on the government side with the guts to say they were going to second the motion for an inquiry into what had occurred at the University of Queensland. There was going to be a proper inquiry at the throat of the University of Queensland Senate and at the throat of the vice-chancellor and his supporters, who sold their souls for a few thousand students from China. I might sell my soul, but I would sell it for a lot more than that. Obviously they're prostitutes—no, they're not prostitutes, because prostitutes sell only their body. These people sold their bodies, souls and minds to China.

Not only are they getting away with it but in Adelaide Simon Birmingham greeted Vice-Chancellor Hoj like he was a conquering hero. I was reading Mark Latham's book. Mark Latham, of all people, expressed in his book what he thought about Simon Birmingham. I enjoyed that section of his book immensely. But Simon Birmingham, a minister in this government, is out there touting for the infiltration of this nation

The Prime Minister himself when Treasurer said Global Switch was to be cut out from information access of the Australian Defence Force. As my colleague Andrew Wilkie said in the parliament, you couldn't make this up. That body holds the information that is to protect this nation, with key information as to where every soldier is at this moment, where every submarine is at this moment and where every fighter aircraft is at this moment. That information is in that computer system. The secretary of defence wrote us all a letter saying that we don't have to worry because they've got really tight security around the building, so no Australians can get into the building. But China owns the building! They are the information system! My honourable colleague Andrew Wilkie said, 'You couldn't make this up! No-one would believe it.'

They're still there. The government has taken no action on it. They have left the one nation on earth which is a rogue nation—well, its government is a rogue nation, not the people: a rogue government—in charge of the access to all our defence systems. They haven't even claimed to have firewalls in there. When the defence secretary wrote to all of us he didn't even claim that there were firewalls in there. But, if there were firewalls, they're just a joke. The most sophisticated secret services on earth are in China. Do we think a firewall is going to stop them or even slow them down? Of course not. But he didn't even claim that there was a firewall in there.

In Theophanous versus The Herald and Weekly Times, the High Court held unanimously that the free flow of information between citizens is the most basic precept of democracy. If you can cut off the flow of information then you're halfway to a totalitarian dictatorship. Those aren't my words, they're the words of the chief judicial people of high standing in this nation. Now, the person who most represents the suppression of freedom of speech in this country is Vice-Chancellor Hoj of The University of Queensland.

I want to make another point in passing here: when I was on campus I was president of the law faculty, president of my college and president of the combined colleges council, and I was vice president of the student's union for three years. If there was one thing that was alive and well at The University of Queensland then, it was freedom of speech. We were proud of that and we were proud of the fact that the emblem of The University of Queensland is actually the Maltese cross. That's where 740 knights of St John said: 'It's all over red rover for you Ottoman Turks. You've taken 50,000 Christian slaves a year and you've taken 10,000 little children, when they're 10 years of age, to become your Janissaries. Your harems speak Serb-Croat; they don't speak Turkish, because all of the women in there aren't Turks.'

If you doubt what I'm saying, the two great leaders of medieval history were the Peter the Great and Suleiman the Magnificent. You don't get called Suleiman the Magnificent unless you're pretty outstanding and you don't get called 'the Great' unless you're pretty outstanding. Both of them had very romantic love affairs with a wife. In Suleiman the Magnificent's case it was Roxanne. Both their wives were Christian slaves who had been freed—who they freed. That gives some idea of the extent of what was taking place.

So those 740 knights stood up against an invading army of 46,000 of the greatest troops on earth; they had defeated every single army in Europe at one time or another. But they said: 'We will stand up and show the courage. We believe in freedom and Malta will stay free from the suppression of the Islamic Ottoman Turks.' There were 245,000 people in Suleiman's armies. They had been besieging the capital of Europe, and guess who won? It was the 740 knights! When St Elmo went down there were 6½ thousand dead on the walls of St Elmo. When the commander looked up at the fortress of St Michael, he said, 'If the child cost us so much, what is the parent going to cost us?' And he cost them plenty!

But that is the symbol of The University of Queensland—a symbol for people of incredible bravery. When you see the Maltese cross, believe me—and I know who the person was who put that Maltese cross there—and you read that story, you will have never heard such a story of heroism as in the battle of Malta and the Maltese cross and the crusaders and the knights of St John.

Ironically, it is a symbol for a university in Australia that suppressed freedom, that punished a person who was there as an Australian talking and was bashed up by China. There was no action taken until— (Time expired)

David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Freedom of Speech) Bill 2020. This bill will provide stronger protections for academic freedom and freedom of speech in our universities. The amendments are a reflection of the recommendations made by Justice French in his 2019 inquiry into freedom of speech in higher education providers and the so-called model French code.

Freedom of speech in universities is what this bill is referring to, but there is an issue in broader society about freedom of speech as a whole. In Australian society and the Western world, freedom of speech is very topical. We live in a time of digital platforms which deliver the modern-day equivalent of the public square. When I was growing up, if you wanted to raise a big issue or topic, you wrote a letter to a newspaper or you turned up in the Domain in Sydney, hopped up a ladder and started ranting and raving about your issue of choice. But, now, digital platforms are a vehicle for public discourse. Unfortunately, these platforms that are meant to be neutral and just a platform for people to discuss things have become more like publishers, deplatforming people and taking them off their platforms. You've only got to look at what's happened recently with Facebook to see that in our negotiations over payment for intellectual property of news items. But I am digressing.

In the broader current maelstrom of Australian society, the phenomenon of deplatforming is alive and well. People get cancelled if they say anything outside of the accepted orthodoxy of various sides of political discourse in Australia. Particularly the Left tries to cancel or deplatform people. You see media pile-ons. You see people shouted down. You see the Twitterati attack people. You see trolls and real people attacking individuals who speak out about issues on either Facebook or other similar platforms.

These amendments go to the heart of ensuring that there is freedom of speech and also academic freedom in universities, which has been critical to the functioning of modern democracies in Australia and elsewhere. This bill will define 'academic freedom', enshrining in law, principles of expression which are essential for academic study and to allow hypotheses to be constructed and inquiries and discussion about those hypotheses.

Universities in Australia were essentially established by state and territory founding legislation. Generally already the terms of these founding pieces of legislation promote scholarship, research, free inquiry, interaction of research and teaching, and the search and striving for academic excellence. There is federal legislation apart from this bill. The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act 2011 mandates that, to be registered as a university, a university must develop and maintain an institutional environment in which freedom of intellectual inquiry is upheld and protected. The higher education standards framework within that and in the HESA bill also insists that, in course design and in assessments, teachers and researchers must be committed to free inquiry and systematic advancement of knowledge.

Why, then, do we have this bill before the House? That's what I was just alluding to. Those thoughts and actions in public social media that I mentioned have infected university processes. The former speaker mentioned the experience of Drew Pavlou, a very brave and active university student at the University of Queensland who got shouted down and had charges brought against him. He was taken off the senate and suspended from the university, all because he was using his right of free speech to defend people demonstrating in Hong Kong and also the Uighurs in China. But a whole lot of trumped-up charges were brought against him and his life was made really unpleasant, as the member for Kennedy outlined. He had three years of his life pretty much destroyed. You've also got to look at what happened to Professor Peter Ridd at James Cook University. He went against the orthodoxy. He was a professor of physics and head of marine studies, but he crossed the line and criticised his university. That should be a right, and it will now be enshrined in these amendments. This bill is really important.

Throughout the rise of Western civilisation, during the Enlightenment, free speech was the vehicle that allowed the Age of Reason to come into being. If we hobble that right, we're cutting away one of the pillars and foundations of democracy. The Age of Reason led to the flourishing of human endeavour, the acquisition of knowledge and the building of science and all the other organs of pluralist, liberal, free democracies, and we have been taking it for granted for too long. Open discussion, critical debate, the free flow of information, the exchange of ideas, challenging accepted positions, putting a hypothesis forward and then proving it with evidence and experiments—all of this is fundamental to what happens in universities, and it should continue. Article 13 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights allows for the expression of opinions about educational institutions.

In these amendments to the Higher Education Support Act 2003, the phrase 'free intellectual inquiry in learning, teaching and research' will be substituted with 'freedom of speech and academic freedom'. In his review of freedom of speech in higher education in Australia, Justice French noted that freedom of speech and freedom of intellectual inquiry would be subsets of and adjuncts to academic freedom. The amendments will therefore align with the terms of the so-called French model code. The first of these will establish the freedom of academic staff to teach, discuss and research and to disseminate and publish the results of their research. It sounds pretty straightforward, but to have to put this in as a specific definition is a reflection of how far things have strayed from what has been accepted practice for centuries. The second is freedom of academic staff to engage in intellectual inquiry, express their opinions and beliefs and contribute to public debate in relation to their subjects of study and research. Similarly, the third ensures the freedom of academic staff and students, most importantly, to express their opinions in relation to the higher education provider that they are enrolled in or employed by. There's also the freedom of students to participate in student societies and associations and the freedom of academic staff to participate in professional or representative academic bodies. That is a sine qua non of being involved in a university. But we are having to legislate these things because these principles, which fed the Enlightenment and developed the modern, democratic Free World, are being eaten away both in our society and in our premier research and teaching and training institutions. It's a sad reflection on where society has got to that we have to do this, but this is a really important bill.

Finally, the bill ensures the autonomy of the education provider to choose courses, offerings and research activities, as well as the ways in which they are taught. I want to register some of my concern about this. Educational bias is another sinister thing that can creep in. If you don't apply the rigours of true academic pursuit and judge it on hypotheses, proof, argument and debate, you can, in the way you structure a course, bias the teachings and learnings that the students have delivered to them, and students have to be smart and principled to try and rebut that. If you have a course director who is giving a skewed opinion, in a practical sense, you can get marked down if there is obvious educational bias.

These concerns reflect problems that were occurring in our universities. Now they're addressed in this bill, and I support the changes coming in. It's sad that we've had to reach this stage, as I've said, but it is a really important principle that our universities, which are internationally renowned, maintain that intellectual rigour, aren't afraid to allow debate within their halls, by both students and academics, and let thought, argument and the pursuit of true knowledge flourish. I commend this bill to the House.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank all members for their contributions to this debate. The Higher Education Support Amendment (Freedom of Speech) Bill 2020 will amend the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to give effect to the recommendations of the Independent Review of Freedom of Speech in Australian Higher Education Providers conducted in 2019 by the Hon. Robert French AC, former Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia.

The amendments will provide a new legislative definition of 'academic freedom' that encompasses aspects of freedom of expression that are characteristic of the relationship of higher education institutions, academic staff and students. They will also enshrine the need for public universities to have a policy that upholds freedom of speech and academic freedom. These are fundamental tenets of Australian higher education, and this bill will provide stronger protections for both academic freedom and freedom of speech in Australian higher education.

The central recommendation of Mr French's review was the adoption of a model code on freedom of speech and academic freedom. As outlined in the Walker review of progress towards this goal, which was released on 9 December 2020, 23 out of 42 institutions have either fully implemented the code or are mostly aligned, but there is more to be done by the remaining institutions.

The government encourages all universities to consider Professor Walker's evaluations and to take steps to respond to her recommendations. I acknowledge that the bill's definitions of 'freedom of speech' and 'academic freedom' do not seek to impinge on the beliefs and the religious ethos of an institution. I commend the bill to the House.

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Moreton has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. So the immediate question is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question.