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

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

This bill comes at a time of crisis—a time where weapons manufacturers pocket billions as tens of thousands are slaughtered in Israel's genocide in Gaza, a time where climate-driven disasters continue to escalate while fossil fuel companies record mammoth profits, a time where gambling corporations prey upon the vulnerable to maximise profit, a time where our higher education institutions serve corporations rather than their staff and students.

This bill alone will not end the climate crisis. It will not end the genocide in Gaza or in Sudan. It will not free us from the scourge of gambling.

But it will dent the armour of companies who profit off the misery of humanity, by denying these dirty industries access to the research prowess and funds of our public universities.

And it will ensure that the 'corporate uni' is forced to become more ethical.

This bill prohibits monetary partnerships and investments between public universities and dirty industries like fossil fuels, weapons, gambling and tobacco.

It also requires universities to divest from current partnerships and prohibits universities from appointing individuals involved in these industries to their governing bodies.

Such partnerships fly in the face of the core purpose of universities. Universities advance the public good. They are there to create knowledge and research to progress humanity for the collective good of society. Partnerships with industries that inflict harm on people and the planet shatter this core purpose.

The bill requires all higher education providers who receive Commonwealth funding to disclose any existing partnerships with, or investments in, prohibited industries. It identifies the weapons industry, the gambling industry, the tobacco industry and the fossil fuel industry as prohibited industries that have no place in our universities.

Additionally, the bill requires higher education providers to divest from any existing prohibited partnerships within six months of this bill becoming law.

It prohibits higher education providers from appointing to their governing bodies any individual that has investments in a prohibited industry or sits on the board of a prohibited entity.

Crucially, as universities end these dirty partnerships, the government must commit to making up the funding shortfall. The bill acknowledges this by noting that, where compliance with these obligations result in a quantifiable loss for a higher education provider, the Commonwealth may provide reasonable compensation.

Beyond this, however, our public universities are in desperate need of increased and sustained public investment. If our universities are to be places of public good, they must be adequately and publicly funded.

For decades, successive Labor and Liberal governments have chipped away at public funding for universities, forcing universities to turn to other funding, and rely on industries that are harmful to our environment, our health, our communities and our planet.

Weapons

For two years now, the world has witnessed Israel's genocide in Gaza as affirmed by a UN special committee, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. The genocide has seen thousands upon thousands of Palestinians murdered and starved. The largest age demographic killed by Israeli forces in Gaza are children aged five to nine.

The scale of devastation is such that, according to the UN, it would take 350 years to rebuild Gaza to pre-genocide levels.

Additionally, Israel's invasion of Lebanon on 1 October 2024 killed more than 4,000 Lebanese people.

This genocide has been inflicted with modern weaponry built through an extensive global supply chain. That includes the F-35 fighter jet, parts of which are manufactured in right here in this country.

Companies involved in the production of F-35s, such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, enjoy partnerships with public universities in Australia.

Documents obtained under freedom of information laws revealed that, as of March 2024, the Australian National University held 8,517 shares in BAE Systems, worth over $200,000. Even worse, these documents also show that ANU's shares in BAE jumped from 6,758 in September 2023 to 8,517 in November 2023, the period after the bombing of Gaza had commenced.

This is no surprise, as the value of BAE shares have only grown over the past year and a half as their death machines have played a starring role in Israel's genocide.

BAE Systems's list of products includes white phosphorous bombs, the use of which potentially amounts to a war crime, and missile-launching kits used in many Israeli fighter jets.

The Hermes series of drones, manufactured by Elbit Systems, have also been crucial to Israel's ability to kill civilians in Gaza and Lebanon. It was this series of drones that was used in the Israeli strike on April 1 2024 that killed Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom

In February 2024, Elbit Systems was awarded a contract worth more than $900 million by the Albanese government.

When asked by the Greens in parliament in June 2024 about the contract, the defence industry minister Pat Conroy emphasised that the contract was ostensibly awarded 'to Hanwha Defence Australia to build infantry fighting vehicles in Australia' and it was Hanwha Defence Australia that had contracted Elbit 'to build the turrets of those vehicles in Australia'.

Well, Hanwha Defence Australia benefits from the research and development performed by Australian universities in order to produce the very weapons inflicting mass harm on civilians, having signed as recently as September 2024 a memorandum of understanding with Deakin University.

In October this year, Western Sydney University announced it 'has joined forces' with Lockheed Martin under a three-year memorandum of understanding aimed at building defence and aerospace capabilities, creating career paths, and driving innovation through research and development. The world's largest weapons manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, supplies Israel F-35 fighter jets, amongst many other weapons used to bomb Gaza.

Just yesterday, it was reported that ANU invested in Elbit Systems—a weapons manufacturer whose profits are steeped in the blood of Palestinians. The investment was as recently as March this year.

These are examples of just some of the relationships existing between Australia's higher education institutions and weapons manufacturers whose weapons are causing such catastrophic levels of death, destruction and suffering.

University management is beginning to be held to account by the tireless activism of staff and students who are demanding disclosure and divestment.

In August, more than 5,000 students across the country came together to condemn the Australian government's complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza and to call on universities to end their ties with Israel.

The national council of the National Tertiary Education Union this year supported a motion that states the NTEU will "demand university management cut ties with the weapons industry and militaries in general and commit to a long-term strategy of demilitarisation of the higher education sector".

Despite mounting calls for divestment, university boards have largely dismissed these demands or made surface level changes to investment policies that require no genuine action—so they do have to be dragged to make this change.

Fossil Fuels

For too many years university students have been campaigning and pushing for their university to divest from fossil fuels to become fossil free because they know coal and gas are driving the climate crisis. They are killing the planet.

Once emissions from fossil fuel exports are included, Australia is the world's second largest climate polluter. For years, Australian governments have disrupted progress in international climate negotiations. The fossil fuel industry's stranglehold on the Labor and coalition parties shows no sign of abating. In the last parliamentary term, the Albanese Labor government approved over thirty coal and gas mine projects and expansions. Now they want to fast track coal and gas under the guise of environmental reform.

A study released in September 2024, led by Sofia Hiltner from the University of Michigan, considered Australia, along with the US, UK and Canada, the "four countries [that] lead the world in fossil fuel production and per capita carbon dioxide emissions". The study pointed to "fossil fuel involvement in higher education" within each of these four countries.

Despite some universities making announcements of significant divestment from fossil fuel companies, an August 2025 report by the Australia Institute found that, of Australia's 37 public universities, 26 take money from fossil fuel companies. Scholarships funded by fossil fuel companies total at least $423,000 per year.

Tens of millions in grant funding is provided via Australian Research Council Linkage grants and industry organisations like the Australian Coal Association Research Program.

Universities should not be in relationships with an industry that is directly responsible for wrecking the climate and the devastating consequences already being felt across the world, including in this country.

Gambling

Gambling is also identified as a prohibited industry under the bill.

Each year, people living here lose billions of dollars to gambling, with significant harm inflicted on individuals and families.

In 2022-23, the total gambling expenditure in Australia was $31.5 billion, the highest it has been in the last two decades.

The harms caused by gambling are well documented. A 2022 federal parliamentary inquiry found that four out of five gamblers were at risk of harm, and heard stories of deep suffering including financial ruin, substance abuse, homelessness, domestic violence, and mental illness.

Animal cruelty is baked into their business model of the gambling fuelled greyhound and horse racing industries, with hundreds of animals killed each year and many more harmed, injured and drugged.

Public scrutiny of the gambling industry has intensified in recent years, prompting a response from the industry to protect its interests. One such avenue the industry has pursued is in higher education.

In August 2023, the University of Sydney launched the Centre of Excellence in Gambling Research, which included a $600,000 funding commitment from the gambling industry.

The university was roundly criticised for accepting the funding, with one criticism accusing the university of "turning a blind eye to funding from the gaming industry, using its institutional credibility to legitimise compromised research".

It is a particularly egregious breach of public trust for universities to be receiving funds from and conducting research on behalf of a sector that is responsible for so much harm impacting so many communities across the nation.

Conclusion

Universities should be places that advance the public good, not help these dirty industries profit from human misery. Having these links to dirty industries betrays this core purpose and the mission of academia, and it greenwashes the devastation and the destruction that these industries cause across societies across the globe.

There is no place for weapons manufacturers, fossil fuel, gambling or tobacco industries in our universities.

I say that again: there is no place for dirty industries in our universities and campuses.

Universities must rediscover and redeliver on their core purpose—to truly act as the essential hubs in society that advance only public good, not contribute to these corporate industries that kill people.

This bill will ensure that they do that. I commend this bill to the Senate.