Trent Zimmerman (North Sydney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Education. Will the minister update the House on how the Morrison government is protecting freedom of speech and academic freedom in our universities?

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can I thank the member for North Sydney for his question. It's an incredibly important question. The Morrison government is committed to ensuring that freedom of speech and academic inquiry are bedrocks of our universities. They actually go to the essence of who we are as a nation and we want to make sure that we're doing everything we can to protect them. That's why we asked Robert French to conduct an independent review on freedom of speech and academic inquiry in Australian higher education providers. He concluded that protection of academic freedom and freedom of speech could be strengthened by the adoption of a model code by our higher education providers. He also proposed amendments to the Higher Education Support Act threshold standards to align the language around concepts of free intellectual inquiry with the model code's identification of free speech and academic inquiry.

We've been working cooperatively with the education sector to make sure that they adopt the model code and they understand the importance that the Morrison government is attaching to these two issues. Twenty-two out of 42 universities have already advised me that they have completed implementation of the code. All the other universities have said that they will have completed adopting the code by the end of 2020. To make sure that the code has been adopted properly, we have asked law professor and former vice-chancellor Sally Walker to lead a review to make sure that the implementation of the code by our universities will be done according to the model set out by Justice French, because we think that this is incredibly important. We want to validate alignment of universities' policies with the model code, consider strengths or weaknesses in responses, offer any suggestions to institutions where alignment could be improved, identify exemplars of good practice that could be shared, and provide advice to me on overall alignment of university policies and any suggestions on how alignment could be improved and whether the code needs further refinement or change.

We want to make sure, when it comes to these two issues, that our universities are implementing the French model code in the way it was designed. We want to make sure, when it comes to freedom of speech and freedom of academic inquiry, that they are absolute bedrocks and pillars of our higher education system. We want the young people who go through our institutions to know that freedom of speech and freedom of academic inquiry is something people fought for in this country and something that we will continue to protect. (Time expired)