Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Ayres has waxed widely on matters of education policy. But, to be very specific about this bill, I want to be clear and repeat that the bill is not intended to impede the beneficial business of universities with their foreign counterparts, which is strongly valued by this government—as indicated by a number of examples that the Senator has referred to, particularly in relation to vaccine development. Indeed, it's expected that much of the routine business of universities will proceed as normal. Not all university-to-university arrangements will be within scope. The bill addresses only certain arrangements between Australian public universities and foreign universities that are an agency or department of a foreign government—for example, a military university that does not have institutional autonomy. In addition to that, the foreign minister will make rules that exempt arrangements that deal solely with minor administrative or logistical matters and variations to arrangements that don't alter the substance of the arrangement.

What the bill does is to categorise arrangements that are in scope into two tiers to ensure the less burdensome notification process applies to arrangements that have less potential to impact Australia's foreign policy. For that reason, the universities are subject to the notification scheme and may proceed with foreign arrangements without specifically awaiting the minister's approval, enabling them to get on with the sort of business that, in his wide-ranging comments, Senator Ayres in part referred to.