Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to strongly support our Greens private senators' bill the Higher Education Support Amendment (End Dirty University Partnerships) Bill 2025. I commend my excellent colleague Senator Faruqi, the Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens, for belling the cat on the corporatisation of unis and the insidious overreach of dirty corporations into university campuses.

Earlier this year the National Union of Students organised a referendum on universities taking funds from weapons companies. More than 5,000 students from universities across the country voted for universities to divest from all partnerships with weapons companies. A motion at the NUS conference passed with 98 per cent voting in favour. Movements led by students and staff have for years called for divestment from these dirty industries. The National Tertiary Education Union, NTEU, have longstanding opposition to university investment in the development and manufacture of weapons, and earlier this year they reaffirmed their call for universities to divest from military and weapons companies. I strongly support that position. I attended the encampment at the University of Queensland earlier this year, and the strength with which students and staff were speaking out against their university's relationship with weapons companies gave me hope then and continues to give me hope. But the university boards remain unmoved.

Just yesterday it was reported that ANU purchased shares in Elbit Systems, one of the key weapons companies profiting off Israel's genocide in Gaza; as recently as March this year they purchased those shares. And Western Sydney University has recently signed an agreement with weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin. I strongly endorse the comments of my colleagues on the appalling continuation of weapons investments by universities. They're meant to be places of learning, not killing factories. There can be no justification for universities investing in weapons companies who are profiting off Israel's genocide in Gaza.

I also want to speak about the way that fossil fuel funding is invading nearly every aspect of our lives. Sporting events, from big events to school sports; arts festivals; music festivals; galleries and other public buildings; and charity events—the grubby fingers of the fossil fuel corporations are all over these things as they attempt to launder their dirty image. Corporations greenwash their polluting activities and paint themselves as community minded. Their hope is that, by sponsoring the things that you love, you'll ignore the damage that they're doing to the places you love. Putting their dirty corporate brand on your favourite team is about making you forget that the climate crisis they are driving will make playing sport impossible in many places.

It's the same with universities. Putting their dirty, corporate members on the board of your favourite institution helps them muzzle criticism of their climate crimes. It has to stop. The links between universities and dirty industries are extensive, but often the details of these relationships and the strings that come with them are unclear. In its recent report Fossil-fuelled universities, the Australia Institute found that 26 of Australia's 37 public universities take money from fossil fuel companies—from Woodside, AGL, Santos and more. They sponsor scholarships, grants and graduate programs. They offer internships and academic positions. Fossil fuel giants have their names appear on university buildings, schools and research centres around the country.

Monash University has accepted millions in funding from Woodside since entering a partnership agreement in 2019. The Woodside Building for Technology and Design looms on campus. Monash hosted a secretive conference with Woodside at their campus in Italy, featuring speakers from the gas industry and the university and politicians. There can be no doubt that these funding arrangements influence decisions being made by universities. Whether it's overt or not, that influence is clear. Where research programs are funded by fossil fuel companies, it is likely that research proposals are skewed towards projects that the sponsoring fossil fuel giant will approve of. Where funding relies on support from fossil fuel companies, academics may be discouraged from speaking out against destructive coal and gas projects.

Students from Monash have waged a campaign calling on the university to end its Woodside partnership. I want to thank them for their bravery and commitment to making their university somewhere that they are proud to be. They've pointed out that Woodside's planet-destroying projects, including the Burrup Hub—that this government itself recognises threatens irreplaceable and ancient Aboriginal rock art—are wildly out of step with Monash's public commitments to sustainability. The university refused to end the partnership. But, earlier this month, the university did announce what it would end—its world-leading climate research facility, the Monash Sustainable Development Institute. It's a massive setback for climate research at a time when research into adaptation is more needed than ever. And yet the relationship with Woodside continues.

A few years ago, the University of Newcastle appointed Whitehaven Coal chairman Mark Vaile as chancellor, a decision that flew in the face of the university's public commitment to being carbon neutral by 2025. Thankfully, in that case, resignations from the university's board and rolling protests by staff and students forced them to rethink that terrible decision. The tireless efforts of students, staff and education unions to get dirty industries out of campuses have seen some progress, but it's not enough. Universities won't change on their own—and not when they're being underfunded by this government and successive governments before them.

This bill would stop the tentacles of the big, dirty corporations reaching into universities. It amends the Higher Education Support Act to make universities disclose their partnerships and their investments in weapons, fossil fuels, gambling and the tobacco industry, and to divest from those arrangements. It also prohibits unis from appointing board members from dirty industries. Too often, when the community calls to end fossil fuel sponsorship, we're told that we can't have nice things without them—that we need gas companies to pay for kids' sport or that we need coal barons to enjoy art. It is simply nonsense.

This bill puts responsibility where it should be. The government should provide universities with the additional funding needed to compensate for divestments. Universities must be fully funded so that they don't rely on these dirty partnerships. Our universities should be fully funded places of democracy, equity and public good. Their survival must not depend on the largesse of fossil fuel companies, weapons manufacturers, predatory gambling organisations or tobacco companies. These harmful industries are not in the public interest, and they should not greenwash their harms through public universities. This bill is about protecting academic integrity and restoring public trust in the independence of universities. It's about ensuring that our universities live up to their core mission of advancing public good and are not beholden to fossil fuel corporations that are actively making students' futures worse.

We had some, frankly, unhinged contributions from Liberal senators that funding universities with taxpayer dollars was 'indoctrination'. I kid you not; it was those actual words. Education is not indoctrination. There was also a bizarre conflation of innovation with weapons manufacturing. Well, I'm afraid that, while innovation is great and universities should be places of innovation, weapons companies should have nothing to do with that funding.

There was also an assertion that universities shouldn't be investigating gambling harm, that somehow this bill would stop research being undertaken by our chief research institutions, public universities. Of course, universities should be doing gambling research. They do that already. That research should not be funded by gambling companies. That is not a crazy assertion. Universities need to be places of education and innovation. They should not be puppets of weapons manufacturers, gambling companies or fossil fuel companies. Our universities must be fully funded, and they should be places of democracy, equity and public good. Weapons companies and fossil fuel companies in our universities betray the core purpose of public universities.

Staff and student movements have been tirelessly campaigning for decades to get these dirty industries out of our university campuses. But the universities have made it clear they won't change on their own accord because they're being starved of funding by this government and were by those before. They should not have to go, cap in hand, to industry to be able to deliver public education, which is a public good that benefits us all. Governments should be fully funding universities, and these universities should divest from those partnerships and those dodgy relationships with dirty industries. There can be no justification for unis investing in weapons companies that are profiting off Israel's genocide in Gaza. Universities shouldn't be providing cover for climate-destroying fossil fuel companies or getting into bed with gambling companies that prey on vulnerable communities for profit.

This bill is about protecting academic integrity, restoring public trust and ensuring that our universities live up to their core mission of advancing the public good and funding them from the taxpayer purse to do so. Students and staff shouldn't have to see their research sponsored by the same corporations that are driving the climate collapse and furthering genocide. This is about public education for public good. Governments should be funding universities so they're not going cap in hand to industry to stay functional.

While we're at it, governments should make university free again so that students can get further education that benefits not just them and not just our economy but the entire country. It is a public good, it should be publicly funded and it should be free again for students, like it used to be. The government could cancel just one nuclear submarine and fully fund universities and make it free for students. They could cancel some of those property developer perks and fully fund universities and make it free for students. They could make big corporations pay their fair share of tax and use that revenue to fund universities and make it free for students. Free university and TAFE and fully funded universities that are not in hock to dirty industries—all of this is possible. We used to have that, and we could have it again. We could have nice things. We just need a government that is on the side of the community and the planet and not in bed with the one per cent—the big corporations, the fossil fuel companies, the gambling companies and the weapons manufacturers. That is not too much to ask, and that is what Australians demand of their government. I am proud that the Greens will always back them in that call. I commend this excellent bill to the chamber.