image: Grace Gay for Research Professional News
Committee says some institutions are not taking foreign interference seriously and urges tighter Confucius controls
Australian universities have been “reactionary” in their approach to national security risks and need to “harden” their security measures, a parliamentary inquiry has found.
Appeals from the sector to minimise additional regulation were dismissed by the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security in its report on national security risks in Australian higher education, released on 25 March.
“The sector’s awareness, responsiveness and effectiveness in relation to national security risks can best be described as reactionary but developing rapidly,” the report says.
Confucius Institutes
The committee calls for significant government interventions in universities’ operations, including the operation of the Confucius Institutes, which have strong links to China. Confucius Institutes, which are hosted by 13 Australian universities, should be more tightly regulated, the report says, but it does not call for them to be closed.
“The committee supports the foreign minister using her existing veto powers under the Foreign Relations Act to make determinations in the national interest, including in relation to Confucius Institutes,” the report says. The committee also wants host universities to disclose their Confucius agreements and funding arrangements and to have “robust” free speech clauses in the agreements.
University taskforce
The existing University Foreign Interference Taskforce should take a lead role in improving security, the report says, and it should run a campaign of “active transparency” around security risk. The committee recommends that every university should have “an accountable authority” responsible for managing interference risks.
It wants an annual briefing from the UFIT on how well universities are adhering to security guidelines. In addition, penalties for engaging in foreign interference in universities—including the student cohort—should be “clearly defined in university codes of conduct and communicated to students”.
The report says that while some universities are showing awareness of security risks, “there are still those within the sector that say these risks either do not exist or are a low risk”.
The problem of foreign governments putting pressure on their national students in Australia does “not require secret government intelligence to identify and resolve”, the report says. One of its main recommendations is that the UFIT should create a working group to deal with “on-campus intimidation” and reporting on students and staff to foreign governments.
Other recommendations from the committee include an annual public report on “harassment, intimidation and censorship that occur as a result of foreign interference activities on Australian university campuses”.
The vice-chancellors’ group Universities Australia issued a statement saying it “notes” the recommendations and the central role of the UFIT. Chief executive Catriona Jackson said that “universities are very alive to the risks of foreign interference. We have proactively partnered with government and the security agencies to tackle the issues”.
ARC review
The committee also examined the issue of foreign links to Australian Research Council grants. It heard evidence from the Australian National University and the University of Technology Sydney that they believed some vetoed grants did not pose security risks.
The ARC’s past grants should be audited “to determine exposure associated with participation in [foreign] talent recruitment programmes”, the report says, and there should be a separate review of the “ARC’s performance in assessing foreign interference and national security risks in the context of grant decisions”.