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

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to table an explanatory memorandum relating to this bill.

Leave granted.

I table an explanatory memorandum, and I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

I am pleased to introduce the Higher Education Support Amendment (End Dirty University Partnerships) Bill 2024 to the Senate.

I introduce this Bill 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 companies prey upon the vulnerable to maximise profit. A time where our higher education institutions serve corporations rather than their academic staff and students.

This bill will not end the climate crisis. It will not end the Gaza genocide nor war in Ukraine. 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 university' is forced to become more ethical.

This bill prohibits monetary partnerships and investments between public universities and dirty industries like fossil fuels, weapons, tobacco and gambling. 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 in our societies. Universities are essential institutions to advance the public good, to create knowledge and research to progress humanity for the collective good of society. Partnerships with industries that inflict harm upon people and 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. The Bill provides that a Minister may, through a legislative instrument approved in both Houses of Parliament, prescribe other prohibited entities that are harmful to students or to the broader public.

Additionally, the Bill requires higher education providers to divest from any existing prohibited partnerships within six months of this ill 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 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 16 months 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 at least 47,000 Palestinians murdered—with an estimate published by The Lancet putting the number at over 186,000 killed. According to the UN, nearly 70% of those killed in Gaza were women and children, and 44% specifically were children. 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 October 1, 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 Australia.

Companies involved in the production of the F-35, 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's 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' list of products include 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 Systems "to build the turrets of those vehicles in Australia".

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.

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

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

Since October 2023, more than 6,000 students across 15 universities have voted in favour of universities divesting from the weapons industry.

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.

Fossil Fuels

For 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.

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, and successive Australian governments have taken actions that are entirely incompatible with the Paris Agreement's goal of 1.5 degrees.

Similarly, the fossil fuel industry's stranglehold on the Labor and Liberal parties shows no sign of abating. In just this parliamentary term, the Albanese Labor government has approved 32 coal and gas mine projects and expansions.

A study released in September 2024, led by Sofia Hiltner from the University of Michigan, considered Australia, along with the US, UK and Canada, "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, a 2017 report by 350 Australia found a range of existing links between fossil fuel companies and Australian universities, including council members of universities having ties to fossil fuel companies and universities receiving funding for projects from fossil fuel or related companies.

According to its 2022 annual report, the Australian Coal Industry's Research Program was then overseeing more than $91 million invested across 277 research projects—171 of them in partnership with 15 different Australian universities.

Universities should not be in relationships with an industry that is directly responsible for global boiling 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.

According to the Australian Gambling Statistics, Australians spent a record $244.3 billion on gambling in 2022-23, which amounts to $11,859 per person.

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 thousands of animals killed, injured and drugged each year.

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 significant harm impacting communities nationwide.

Conclusion

Universities should be places that advance the public good, not help dirty industries profit from human misery. Having these links to dirty industries betrays this core purpose and the mission of academia.

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

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 harmful corporate industries.

This Bill will ensure they do that.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.