Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Labor won't oppose the legislation that's before the Senate, the Australian Research Council Amendment Bill 2019, but I do have to say we have deep concern about the position of the government in relation to the higher education sector and what, amongst some sections of the government and of the Liberal Party in particular, is an antipathy to higher education and to academic inquiry that mobilises sections of their base—driven perhaps in the wake of the Abbott period—and that I think has created a crisis of confidence in Australian universities. There has been a concerted campaign by figures within the government to belittle our higher education sector institutions and to diminish the regard for academic inquiry and deep research, and it has done enormous damage to the capability and national fabric of the country.

This deep loathing, this sort of nativist anti-intellectualism that is at the heart of Liberal Party branches, is often reflected in the kind of characters who come to this place representing the Liberal Party. It is often represented in what they say late at night on Sky television, but it does an enormous amount of damage to the institutions of higher education. Consistent with the government's approach to a range of national institutions that matter, playing to the base is so much more important for these characters than actually delivering for, and supporting, the kind of national institutions that make our country a great place to live and make our country prosperous and safer in the long run. To be fair, I don't see that language often used by those in the National Party—usually they recognise the role that universities, particularly those in country towns, play. But, of course, as with many other issues, the National Party is a tail that struggles to wag the Liberal dog on some of these questions, and it is missing in action. So we've got the party of Menzies at war with the higher education sector. We should be better than that

It does mean that Australia is slipping backwards. If we want to be a self-reliant, confident nation, academic inquiry and deep research matter—whether it's in the social sciences, science, engineering, architecture or any of the other fields where Australian universities have developed deep capability. It is a national act of self-harm to belittle higher education institutions and to diminish our universities.

When Minister Tehan took over from Senator Birmingham, he defended his predecessor's interventions into the ARC grants system and announced that grants would be subject to a new national interest test. This culture war proposition from Senator Birmingham, and now the current minister, ignores the rigorous process that the ARC grants system has employed, with thousands upon thousands of applications that have been approved, free from ministerial intervention, over many years. They have created enormous social benefit. They have sometimes created arguments that perhaps the Liberal Party would prefer weren't happening in the community or in our academic institutions. But that is the nature of independent inquiry. And ministerial intervention to pick and choose academics and projects diminishes the capacity for independence, diminishes the value of research and undermines the quality of Australia's research community.

The Australian Research Council has been the subject of political interference before, when the then Minister Brendan Nelson vetoed 10 projects. Vetoing projects in the humanities area for a cheap headline in The Daily Telegraph, vetoing research proposals that were approved by the ARC in climate change areas, might play well at Liberal Party branch meetings but it does enormous damage to our national capability in this area.

Senator Birmingham should explain his decision-making in this area. He should publicly explain. He should explain to the Senate, and not with glib words, the basis on which he intervened in this process. The then Minister Birmingham vetoed 11 research projects. There wasn't a public announcement about that decision; it had to be dragged out of the government at Senate estimates—just like so many efforts by this government to obscure its decision-making processes and to hide from the Australian public and the institutions that matter in this area. Senate estimates is the only tool that is available to the Australian people to get some truth about the government's activities.

When asked to justify the proposition that he had intervened to delete 11 of these applications—just like Senator McKenzie knocking off sports club grants because the government didn't like them—he did not offer a real explanation. Some of these projects were of enormous potential value. They included research into the social impact of shutting down the Australian car industry. We hear a lot of hot air from senators opposite about manufacturing and energy policy. I don't hear too many defences of the social and economic cost of 40,000 jobs in the Australian car industry being wilfully thrown overseas. A bit of publicly funded research in that area might have done the country so good. But we're not going to see that project, because the government claimed it was not in the national interest. In truth, it was not in the Liberal Party's interest that that research be done.

Another of those projects that were knocked off was research into responses to climate change. That was probably knocked off for the same reason—for narrow, venal self-interest. And a project on comparative studies of Indigenous politics was knocked off. The truth is that the minister has intervened in this process for narrow, political self-interest. These people are not capable of acting in the public interest. The idea that it is not in the national interest is a furphy that is really there for performances to the Liberal Party base.

The role of academic research is to speak truth based upon evidence—I know that is an anathema to many people on the other side of the Senate. The role of academic research is to speak truth based upon evidence, academic inquiry and independent analysis—to speak that truth to power. That doesn't work if what the government does, if what the executive does, is defund proposals that are potentially critical of government policy. Of course, the biggest expression of this is in the Liberal Party's hostility to academic inquiry in the field of Australian history. Former Prime Minister John Howard popularised the term 'the black-armband version of history' for historians—in particular, Henry Reynolds—who challenged the settler myth and the terra nullius myth of Australian history. It was a vicious, sustained attack, usually coming from Liberal Party supported circles in minor think tanks with scant academic qualifications, who made hot-take points in the Quadrant and whatever the other low-rent conservative publications are. Howard's nativist heirs in this area are launching the same attacks on academics like Bruce Pascoe, who is the author of Dark Emu. These publications should be judged on their academic merits. They should be the subject of robust academic and public inquiry and debate and criticism. I'm not here to say that they shouldn't be—I think they should be—but what shouldn't happen is direct political interference. What shouldn't happen is government diminishing the academy, diminishing universities and attacking educational institutions.

The value of research for the Australian community is immense. There is our scientific research capability in climate change and a whole range of areas. There is our research in agriculture, making sure that Australian farmers have got increasing productivity in an era of increasing drought, lower water availability and increasing evaporation. We need to reinvest in that capability where state governments have been pulling resources out of agricultural research. There's a role for the Commonwealth to be stepping in, because that underinvestment threatens the viability of Australian farms and Australian businesses over the coming decades: investment in health research, research into the future of our cities, research into the future of work and building collaboration and co-operation at work, research into the contribution of women in society and equal rights for women at work, research into the kinds of architecture and building processes that are going to make better low-carbon cities and research into foreign affairs and defence capability that's going to make Australia safer and build on our independence in our region. These are the things that build a confident, well-informed Australia.

I think what we're witnessing on the conservative side of politics is some confusion. On the one hand there's a strain of conservative politics that has always supported academic research, that has always been a part of these things; on the other hand there is the appeal to populism, the appeal to the Trump-era 'war on facts'. We can do much better than that. If we want an economy with increasing productivity, if we want jobs where work becomes better—better jobs, better relations at work—if we want Australia to enter a period of climate change resilience where we've got the technology and the capability to build Australian jobs, to lower Australian emissions and, indeed, reduce energy costs, if we want to have capability in terms of national security and big new ideas about the future of Australia's role in the world then we should be investing in Australian research. We should be building capability; we shouldn't be penny-pinching and, at the very least, there should not be political interference in the process of the ARC research grants.

Australia's economic growth has been the slowest since the GFC. That's got a little bit to do with our diminishing higher education capability. Wages are stagnant, household debt has skyrocketed, almost two million Australians are looking for work or for more work and the unemployment and underemployment rates are much higher than they should be. Business investment is at its lowest level since the 1990s recession. Productivity and living standards are going backwards.

A decline in educational standards and in our research capability has got just a little bit to do with that. We're seeing falling investment in research and development across the private and public shares of the economy. The total GDP expenditure in research and development has fallen from 1.8 per cent down to 1.79 per cent. That's public and private. We shouldn't rely upon corporate Australia to fund the bulk of our research. That actually is the government's role, to direct national priorities in research. Business investment in research and development has fallen to 0.9 per cent, 21st in the OECD, and bottom in the OECD on collaboration. And it's fallen to 107th in total expenditure. We could do much better than that, and we should. (Time expired)