David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to indicate my strong support for the Higher Education Support Amendment (End Dirty University Partnerships) Bill 2025, and I associate myself with the comments made by my colleague Senator Faruqi.

It is pretty remarkable in this debate that, first of all, the government hasn't put forward a speaker yet because the Labor Party can't quite work out how they could explain to their supporter base that they are perfectly comfortable with Australia's universities investing in weapons industries, fossil fuel industries and the gambling industry. Rather than try and create the specious arguments we just heard from the coalition, which is all about nitpicking with definitions and avoiding any moral question about investing in gambling, fossil fuels and weapons, they haven't even engaged in the debate. Rather, they're just sitting there, mutely, hoping that nobody will notice that the Labor Party supports universities investing public money in weapons, in fossil fuels and in gambling. I can tell you that the Labor Party's silence on this bill is screaming to the Australian public and to those who care that the Labor Party absolutely supports public money from public universities going to the global weapons industry, the fossil fuel industry and the gambling industry. They are reckless with and, indeed, indifferent to the harm that that causes to global peace, to our climate, to society and to millions of Australians through the harms of those industries.

The arguments we just heard from the coalition that this bill is unworkable because the definition of 'weapons industry business entity' will somehow pick up Coles and Woolies is bizarre. I'll read onto the record what the definition of a 'weapons industry business entity' is:

(a) a corporation engaged in a business undertaking that involves the manufacture or sale of weapons, weapon parts or armaments; or

(b) a related body corporate …

It may well be that, in the heated imagination of the coalition, they think that will include Coles and Woolies, but, from the Greens perspective, those words have their ordinary meaning—'undertaking that involves the manufacture or sale of weapons, weapon parts or armaments'. The reason we had that rather obscure discussion from the coalition about how that, somehow, would involve bleach is they don't want to confront the reality of what's happening in our universities.

Why are we, as Greens, bringing this bill to the parliament to say that universities should not invest in the gambling industry, universities should not invest in the fossil fuel industry and universities should not invest in the weapons industry? We're bringing this forward because we believe it and because we believe that public money should not be lavished through our universities on research that harms our society, harms our planet and drives us further away from peace and further into conflict. That's why we're bringing this bill, because we actually bring principles to our politics. We're not willing to sell them out, as the Labor Party is, for a donation from Australia's largest gun importer and gun manufacturer. We're not willing to sell them out, like the coalition and Labor both are, for millions of dollars from the fossil fuel industry to fund their election campaigns and to then come into this parliament and vote for the fossil fuel industry. We're not willing to sell our principles out for millions of dollars of donations or post-political careers in the gambling industry like the Labor and coalition parties are.

When it comes to the weapons industry, you couldn't point to a former Labor or coalition defence minister or defence industry minister that hasn't left this place and got a job with a global weapons manufacturer. They go straight from politics into the global harm industry—the likes of Kim Beazley, who headed up as a director of Lockheed Martin. He went from being a Labor defence minister to making millions of dollars as a director and a schmoozer for the defence industry that he was handing out billions of dollars in contracts to as defence minister. And Pyne, from the coalition, goes from spruiking inside the coalition for increased funding for weapons—Christopher Pyne now goes out and will sell his soul to any global weapons manufacturer for any country anywhere, selling blood money and blood weapons on behalf of and to pretty much any rogue regime on the planet. So is it any wonder that the coalition come in here and say, 'You can't possibly restrict universities from spending money on the weapons industry'? They'd be cutting off the funds for their old mates, like Christopher Pyne! And Labor would be cutting off funds for their old mates, like Kim Beazley and others!

That's how this place works. The war parties put billions of dollars into the weapons industry. They take political donations from the weapons industry and their mates. Then, when they leave politics, the war parties go and join the global harm industry, get directorships and set up their own consultancies. At the top of that would be Scott Morrison. Scott Morrison, who signed us up to AUKUS without any briefing and without any analysis of a $375 billion plan for AUKUS, spends 12 months in the wilderness as a backbencher and then sets up his own consultancy to suck money out of AUKUS. He wraps his arm around a bunch of Donald Trump's mates to try and squeeze millions of dollars from Australian taxpayers under the AUKUS project that he managed to persuade not just his party to join but all the warmongers in the Labor Party to join.

No doubt, the current crop of Labor ministers are all lining up their jobs while they're pretending to be acting for the public as ministers of the Crown. There's Defence Minister Marles, who only this week was describing weapons as 'extremely cool' and talking about a weapons fair as some kind of Disneyland. What goes on in that man's head? It's hard to comprehend, isn't it? No doubt, there's a raft of current Labor ministers who are thinking: 'We could just redirect billions of dollars of public money into weapons industries. We'll call weapons "cool". We'll make out that this is the manufacturing future for Australia, and we'll get our universities involved in it. Then, when we step out of politics, we'll have a pretty smooth ride. We'll get a job with Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Thales, Elbit or Rafael.' Labor are all lining up their jobs with their many mates who are global weapons manufacturers—the Israeli, British, French and US defence manufacturers. It's obscene what these two parties have been doing.

Then, when the Greens bring in a bill to say, 'Let's cut off some of the feed going into defence, fossil fuels and the gambling industry', Labor sit there in mute silence waiting for their post-politics jobs, and the coalition come up and say they've got 'definitional problems'. You couldn't make this stuff up, could you? It's the toxic war parties coming together to say they want our universities to spend money on weapons, fossil fuels and gambling. It sums up the moral cesspit that the war parties are trying to take Australia towards.

What are universities doing when it comes to weapons? ANU, after saying that they were having some sort of change to ethical investment strategies, bought $138,000 worth of shares in March this year, in the middle of a genocide, in Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems. Maybe it was a good investment financially because Elbit Systems is making record profits at the moment because it's feeding weapons into an Israeli driven genocide in Gaza. Maybe some bean counter at the ANU said: 'Do you know what? There's a genocide going on on the other side of the planet, and, to feed that genocide, Israeli weapons manufacturers like Elbit Systems and Rafael are making record profits by feeding their weapons into a genocide. So why don't we get a bit of the record profits made on the blood of the Palestinian people and the genocide caused by Israel?' And they did! They invested $138,000 of ANU's money in Elbit Systems, knowing that the profits they were likely to get would be based on a genocide and the blood of the Palestinian people. That's obscene! Of course there should be a law against that.

It's not just ANU who has decided to make blood money from investments in the weapons industry. My alma mater, the University of Sydney, to its eternal shame, has more than $4 million of its public funds invested in so-called top weapons manufacturers around the world: Honeywell International, Lockheed Martin and Thales. All of those companies are feeding weapons and weapons parts to the Israeli military and are part of the genocide in Gaza, and Sydney university is profiting from its investment in those weapons manufacturers.

Of course, Lockheed Martin is the world's biggest defence manufacturer. There's not a single part of the global weapons supply chain that Lockheed Martin doesn't have a finger in. It is part of the nuclear weapons industry, building nuclear weapons parts. Of course, each nuclear weapon is a gross human rights crime, a crime against humanity. Lockheed Martin is one of the key players in the US nuclear arsenal, literally building the weapons that could destroy everything we find precious on this planet. Sydney university wants a bit of that; it's trying to get some profits from that.

Lockheed Martin produces missiles and weapons parts, sometimes directly in collaboration with Israeli weapons industries; it is a significant supplier to the Israeli defence force. Some bean counter inside the University of Sydney said that they want a bit of that—they want the blood drenched profits from Lockheed Martin to come back to Sydney university. It is obscene.

It's not just their investments that are obscene. Sydney university also has a longstanding MOU and partnership with a French weapons manufacturer called Thales. In a corrupt industry—the global weapons industry is one of the most corrupt industries on the planet—Thales really stands out as a global bottom feeder when it comes to corruption. They're involved in a longstanding corruption criminal case in South Africa because they corrupted the South African government. They're involved in scandalous procurement abuses in Australia that have been called out by the Auditor-General. You could go to pretty much any continent on the planet apart from Antarctica—no doubt they're trying—and you can find examples of where Thales has been corrupting public officials to sell their weapons. What does Sydney university do? They enter into an MOU with them, and they extend the MOU with them even though university students on campus have been campaigning against this.

I pay tribute to every one of those university students, whether they're at Sydney university, UTS, ANU or fighting the fight in Adelaide University and Monash University—those students around the country who are saying: 'We reject our university having partnerships with the defence industry. We reject our university investing in the global harm industry.' I want to pay tribute to the bravery and the moral compass that those students around the country have shown to reject this.

If you want to look a little deeper at why Labor is silent on universities investing in weapons manufacturers, it's because the Albanese government itself is throwing billions and billions of dollars at some of the worst offenders on the planet. Just to give you some small insight into the kind of money that the Albanese Labor government—directly from Treasury and money from the Australian public—is sending to Israeli weapons manufacturers, we could talk about the $900 million that the Albanese Labor government thought should be given to Elbit Systems in February of last year or the $100 million they're giving to Israeli weapons manufacturers Elbit and Rafael for weapons that are being tested on Palestinians. Just this week Minister for Defence Industry Conroy came out and said he would make no apologies for the Albanese government investing in Israeli weapons manufacturers, because he admired the weapons being produced by Israeli weapons manufacturers. That statement shows the moral lows that the Labor Party has come to.

I support this bill, and I commend Senator Faruqi for bringing it to the Senate. (Time expired)