Leah Blyth (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Stronger Families and Stronger Communities) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak against the Higher Education Support Amendment (End Dirty University Partnerships) Bill 2025. After spending two decades working in higher education before coming into this place, I know a little bit about how universities operate. I agree with the Greens on one thing—that our higher education system needs significant reform. But this bill is probably one of the silliest I have seen in my very short time being in the Senate. The Greens sound like they have a first-year-undergraduate level view of the world. They are like children who haven't yet fully developed their cognitive capacity. This just goes to show that the Greens, if they were running Australia, would mandate everything that they liked and ban everything that they didn't. They are the party that wants to control exactly what Australians do, how they live, what they're allowed to say and what they're not allowed to say, and I think this bill absolutely speaks to the heart of what the Greens have now become. They are activists rather than looking at sensible policies that are in the best interests of our nation, and I question whether they truly, really like Australia.

This bill is characteristic of exactly what the Greens are like. It is an exercise in virtue signalling, completely divorced from reality. I worked in higher education, as I said, for two decades. Research and development that occurs in our higher education system is vital. There is research that goes into sciences, engineering, medicine and all of those different areas which are vital for Australia and vital for our future. We want to have the best thinkers and doers in our nation. Our universities are a great bed for that research and development to occur.

Under this bill, the Greens would essentially ban all innovation that would happen, because, as my colleague Senator Kovacic pointed out, everything can be weaponised. What exactly would this bill exclude, if we're going to go through and say that we're not going to do anything in terms of weapons development? I can tell you that a lot of medical devices actually come from research that happens in other areas. What happens when there's research in one area that can be applied to another discipline? Under this bill, the Greens would basically say: 'Nope. That's banned. We're banning everything we don't like.' The Greens want our universities. They're quite happy for taxpayer dollars to go into indoctrinating the next generation of Australians, but, when it actually comes to genuine research and development, they want it banned. It is quite hilarious to be sitting here in the chamber, being lectured about how good the spending of taxpayer dollars is by the Greens. On this, they seem to worry. But, if it comes to the indoctrination of young people, the universities can have all the money they would like in the world. It's a blank cheque from the Greens for that.

This bill is completely unworkable. It wants to list a whole group of bodies that it will say are prohibited. What does that mean? It means anyone who's engaged in business in relation to fossil fuels, and we all know the Greens are a huge enemy of fossil fuels. How did they all get to parliament? I'm guessing fossil fuels played a role in them actually being able to get here and come to this place. 'But, no, we'll ban anything to do with fossil fuels. We'll ban anything to do with gambling, tobacco, weapons,' or any other endeavour that they might say they're not interested in at that particular time. What this means is that this bill would be completely unworkable, and it is incredibly vague. But what it's trying to do is to say that universities will only research or be able to teach in areas that the Greens want to give a tick to.

On this side of the chamber, with my colleagues, we believe in freedom of choice, and we want to give Australians the opportunity to explore whatever they like. We don't necessarily have to agree with them, but we want Australians to have the freedom to choose. What the Greens are doing is saying: 'You don't get the freedom to choose. You are just going to be mandated to in terms of what we say you will do and what you will like.' On this side of the chamber, we just cannot agree with that position. We are about freedom of choice.

It's up to universities to have to disclose whether they would be doing research with these particular groups, so if we are going to say they are banned—and I take my home state of South Australia, for instance, where we are going to be hugely involved in Australia's defence capabilities—that would take an enormous amount of research and jobs out of my home state alone, let alone other states, like Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory. What this bill would seek to do is say: 'We're no longer going to train and educate young Australian people. We're no longer going to let them have the full choice of things they may want to engage with.'

The legislation basically says that, if you're involved in the manufacture or sale of weapons, you would be prohibited in this. Under this bill, would kitchen knives be weapons? What about baseball bats? What about radios? Radios are a huge part of armed conflicts, so would that be banned? We're not going to allow engineering students to look at that? We won't develop the best technology that we possibly can? Even things like cars are things you've got to use in combat; weapons systems are mounted on them. Of course, chemicals can be weapons, and chemical warfare is one of the most horrific forms of modern warfare that we could possibly see. We're no longer going to be able to do any kind of research and development in these areas. There are satellites; communications infrastructure is used across the modern battle space, and certainly controls modern battle. You could even go into shipping. What about trade and transport? They're also things which will be used in modern warfare. Will they be banned as well? Artificial intelligence and quantum computing—it is hugely important for Australians to be at the forefront of that development of machine learning. Are all of these going to be banned under the Greens' proposed bill? Because they certainly can be weaponised. All of these things can be weaponised, as, you could argue, anything in the world can be weaponised.

Does that mean that universities will be prohibited from partnerships with places like Coles, Woolworths and Target because they sell kitchen knives and baseball bats? Will universities no longer be able to go into partnerships with them? Does that mean that universities won't be able to go into a partnership with any kind of organisation that makes chemicals, including for cleaning or for medical purposes? Certainly, for our mathematics and engineering departments, quantum computing will be completely off the table under this proposal from the Greens. We wouldn't be able to look at artificial intelligence or computer science. All of those jobs of tomorrow, all of those industries of tomorrow, will be completely off the table.

This bill is so hopelessly broad that it will basically look to ban everything. I am struggling to think of anything other than the very woke that the universities are teaching now that will be exempt from this, which is probably exactly what the Greens want. That's of course going to be their agenda in this.

Looking at board appointments to universities, anyone who has any kind of investment in any of these businesses, which would include superannuation, would be exempt from being able to serve on a university board, which is just completely absurd. This is not well thought through. The Greens are just looking to come through and ban the things that they don't like but haven't thought of what the real-world consequences are.

So a vision of the world under the Greens is one where universities can't work with anyone—certainly, I can't think of any business; not Woolworths, not Coles, not a chemist, not hospitals; nobody—and no-one who has a superannuation fund will ever be able to sit on a university board.

We can look at things like the gambling industry. I would argue that research into gambling is actually really important. How do we know what the harms of things like the gambling industry are if you can't even talk about it or research it because that's banned? This is just completely ridiculous. 'The Greens don't like it, so we're going to ban it.' Even a newsagent who sells scratchies, every school fete that runs a chocolate wheel, or any club or pub that has pokies—banned by the Greens.

The whole fossil fuel industry will be prohibited, which means any corporation that involves the exploration, prospecting, discovery, development, extraction or exportation of fossil fuels. Last I checked, Australia was a pretty resource-rich nation, and the very economy that we live in is driven by our resources. Under this, the Greens will ban that. I'm not sure what they expect Australians to do when all of these things are banned, but I think we'll all be living in caves, having a little camp fire to cook our dinner on.

Any logistics company which transports fuels, any shipping company, any mining company—it's really anyone who has any kind of link to the fossil fuel supply chain. They're are all going to be banned as well. If you have, say, an investment fund that has BHP shares, you're not even going to be a fit and proper person to sit on a university board. Imagine if these categories were extended even more broadly and it was determined that any business or undertaking engaged in habitat destruction should be proscribed because it's harmful to the Australian community—there go all of the renewables because renewables are harming our natural environment. We're putting solar panels and transmission lines and wind turbines in our pristine natural environment. Under the Greens proposal—and I'm sure they haven't thought this through—that would all be banned as well. That's going to be problematic, and maybe they should have thought this through and not had their undergraduate, year 1 of university, understanding of how the world works.

Having said all of that, this is really about the Greens pushing their agenda on Australians, telling Australians what they should and shouldn't like and what they can and can't say and basically sending our economy backwards. This is probably one of the silliest bills I've seen in my very short time in the Senate, and I can only imagine that the Greens are doing this so they can make social media videos and get some spin out of this for the wider people they think they are here to serve. But this hasn't been thought through. It's a shameless attempt at social media, and this Senate should be focused on the things that matter to everyday Australians, who are in a cost-of-living crisis and need houses. Unfortunately the Greens are wasting the Senate's time with silly ideas like this. Obviously I won't be supporting this bill.