Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Freedom of Speech) Bill 2020. This bill amends the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to provide a new definition of academic freedom that enshrines in law principles of freedom of expression and substitutes the existing term 'free intellectual inquiry' in relevant provisions with the term 'freedom of speech and academic freedom' to align the language of provisions within the model proposed by Robert French.

Universities have been voluntarily adopting the model code or variations of the code since 2019, and this bill would have the effect of ensuring that the relevant academic freedom provisions of the Higher Education Support Act fairly closely reflect what is being adopted on campuses across the country. Academic freedom is essential in our universities. University staff must be free to conduct their teaching and research and feel comfortable testing and extending the boundaries of academic debate and academic inquiry. Simply, our universities should be places where the envelope can be pushed and where mainstream thinking can be challenged. Indeed, staff and students of our universities have been part and parcel of some of the great civil rights struggles in this country, from the feminist and LGBTQI movements to the First Nations justice movement in the 1960s, because they were unafraid to challenge dominant orthodoxies.