James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would have thought, given his long experience in this chamber, Senator Patrick would know that any senator has a right to stand up to contribute to debate in committee.

There is bipartisan consensus across the chamber that universities should be included in this bill. That is an important thing, which I think is in recognition of the fact that universities have not always prudently managed their international relations. Indeed, there is bipartisan agreement that the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security should be conducting an inquiry right now into foreign interference at our universities, which stems from widespread concerns held by senators from across the chamber about incidents at a number of our universities. To take one example, the University of Queensland have themselves acknowledged that the agreement they struck with Hanban over their Confucius Institute initially did not have sufficient safeguards for academic freedom and autonomy of the university, and they have set about renegotiating that agreement to include better protections. That is one of many examples we could go into that demonstrate why universities do indeed need to be included in this bill.

The disagreement that appears to exist across the chamber is about the extent of consultation on this issue. In my short time in this place I've observed that there's a lot of disagreement about what constitutes consultation. Sometimes, when people say a group was not adequately consulted what they really mean is that a group has not consented to its involvement in a bill, has not been given a veto power, has not been given the right to dictate whether or not it should be involved in a bill, whereas in this case—

Opposition senators interjecting—