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

Maria Kovacic (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This isn't really a serious bill, and it's a bit disappointing that we're spending our time on it this morning. It's more of an exercise in virtue signalling divorced from reality and, perhaps, an opportunity for some media reels for the Greens. What does the Higher Education Support Amendment (End Dirty University Partnerships) Bill 2025 do? Essentially, it says that, if you are a university that receives funding under part 2-2 of the Higher Education Support Act, you need to disclose and divest if you operate in the industries that the Greens don't like. They term them under the bill as 'industries that are harmful or considered detrimental to the public good'. But I'm assuming that the Greens make a determination about what those actual industries are.

It is a bill that's actually designed to remove money from research, prevent innovation and give Australian universities a competitive disadvantage—not a competitive advantage, but a competitive disadvantage—when it comes to capitalising on the talents, skills and ideas, the brains trust, of our universities. What this bill does is list a series of bodies that are so-called prohibited entities. What is a prohibited entity? To put it bluntly, it's any corporation that is engaging in business undertaking or in relation to fossil fuels, gambling, tobacco, weapons or any other endeavour that the Greens do not like, which, in the legislative terms, means an entity prescribed by the minister for the purposes of the amendment clause 36-75(3) of the Higher Education Support Act. I'll come back to that and how vague and unworkable it is in a minute.

Essentially, what item 1 of the bill requires is that any university that receives a grant under the relevant part must provide a disclosure report if it enters into a partnership or makes an investment in one of those entities. It's not as simple as they'd like you to believe it is. This obligation is proposed in divisions 19 to 68 of the Higher Education Support Act. There's also an obligation to disclose current arrangements in that proposed section, which I'll leave for another time because it's a little bit too complicated.

Much of this bill actually makes no sense, is unworkable in practice or creates barriers in practice—like under item 2 of the bill, 'providers are prohibited from entering into a partnership with or making an investment', as I said. But it actually says that, when they disclose the fact that they've broken this law, nothing actually happens. There's no penalty and there are no consequences. You just have to declare that you've broken the law, and then nothing happens, which is a bit silly, if you ask me. But let's go on.

Clause 36-75(2) says a university must not appoint a person to its governing body if they have an investment in or are a member of a board of a prohibited entity. How would you know that? How would you actually know that? This bill doesn't actually, say, carve out superannuation, so you'd actually have to go through and have a look at the individual superannuation investments of every single proposed board member to ensure that one of the funds hadn't invested in one of these prohibited entities. It doesn't sound very sensible to me.

Then it says that a minister can make an instrument prescribing any business entity and say whether it's harmful, but then subsection 4 says that the instrument must be ratified by resolution of each house of parliament. On the one hand, it's saying the minister can do it, but then the House and the Senate have to agree, so what's the point of that? You may as well just pass a new bill. So that doesn't make a lot of sense either.

Let's just go through some of the unworkable elements of this bill. I want to start with some of the entities that under this bill would be prohibited and some of the unintended consequences or consequences that have not been considered. Let's go with the 'weapons industry' definition. By definition in this bill, the 'weapons industry' means:

(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 of a corporation referred to in paragraph (a).

So how does this work in practice? We have to define the weapon. There is no real definition. There is nothing in the legislation which explains what it means to be involved in the manufacture or sale of weapons, parts or armaments. It's hopelessly vague. Kitchen knives are weapons, and so are baseball bats. Radios are integral to modern armed conflicts. Are they weapons? They haven't been defined under this bill. We don't know. Cars are frequently used as a mobility platform on which weapons systems are mounted. Are they captured under this proposed bill? Chemicals can be weapons. Indeed, chemical warfare is one of the most horrific forms of modern warfare. Satellites and communications infrastructure are used across the modern battle space to direct and control the current of battle. Are they weapons? Are they captured under this proposed bill? Artificial intelligence, quantum computing and machine learning are all components that go into the way modern wars are fought in the electronic and cyberspace domains. Senator Faruqi herself spoke of drones. All of these rely on networks provided by internet service providers and others. Are they too weapons that are going to be captured under this bill? After all, anything can be weaponised.

Does this mean universities are prohibited from partnerships with Coles, Woolworths, and Big W because they sell kitchen knives and baseball bats? Does it mean universities cannot partner with or invest in organisations that make chemicals? Does it mean universities should stay out of quantum computing, space technology, artificial intelligence and computer science, all of which can be weaponised? We don't know. It's hopelessly broad and entirely unworkable. Presumably, under the Greens' vision of the world, universities must remain cloistered in splendid isolation, divorced from the realities of the real world, in which we must all operate.

Worse still, universities cannot appoint anyone to their board if that person has an investment in one of those entities. The word 'investment' is defined as 'any mode of application of money or financial assets for the purpose of gaining a return'. As I noted previously, this would, of course, include superannuation. By extension, if any individual has a superannuation account and that superannuation account owns shares in some corporation which falls within the scope of the provision, which is very broad, they cannot serve on a university board. To be frank, this is a little bit sloppy, and it's replicated in respect of other industries that are also prohibited. This would, again, capture Woolworths, Coles, most chemists and countless other outlets that sell tobacco, like a petrol station, a local tobacconist—you name it. Under the Greens' vision of the world, a university can't work with Woolworths, Coles or a chemist, and a person who owns shares in any one of those entities, even unknowingly—perhaps through their super fund—can never sit on a university board.

Who else could be captured under this bill? Well, a gambling industry entity means any corporation that involves 'wagering, betting or other gambling', so that rules out a small business, a newsagent who sells scratchies, every school fete that runs a chocolate wheel, any pub or club that maybe has a Friday night meat tray raffle. They're all captured under the broad scope of this bill. A prohibited fossil fuel business entity means a corporation that involves 'the exploration, prospecting, discovery, development, extraction or exportation of fossil fuels'. That rules out any logistics company that transports fuel, any shipping company, any mining company and really just about anyone else who has a link to the fossil fuel supply chain. Again, if your super fund has an investment in BHP, you are not a fit and proper person to sit on a university board.

Imagine if these categories were extended more broadly and it was determined that any business undertaking or engaged in undertaking habitat destruction could be proscribed because it is harmful to the Australian community. Presumably, any entity that, say, bulldozed koala habitats to build investment properties, like Senator Faruqi famously did, would be a prohibited entity, and any owner could not sit on a university board. I'm using that to just explain the scope of this. It is not narrow. It is so completely broad that it is entirely impractical and unworkable.

I could go on, but I'm not going to. This bill is not fit for purpose. It's basically an attempt to prevent universities from doing anything with anyone that the Greens do not like. There is no trust placed in the institutions themselves, who might be acting with the highest standards of ethics and integrity, and who hold the actual purpose of research at the heart of what they are trying to do. At worst, this is probably a really weird moral smear that essentially says that anyone that has any kind of financial relationships with one of these incredibly broad arrangements is unfit to serve on a university board. I think that this is something that probably shouldn't have seen the light of day. This bill serves no purpose other than to allow a little bit of virtue signalling. It's the beat of a drum for the rank-and-file members of the Greens to make some social media videos. It genuinely does not warrant the consideration or the approval of this chamber.

David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to 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)

Leah Blyth (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Stronger Families and Stronger Communities) Share this | Link to 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.

Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to 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.

Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia's universities need to understand something very, very clearly. What they need to understand is that, if they take money from fossil fuel corporations—and plenty of them do—they are complicit in the breakdown of this planet's climate and they are complicit in the slow march towards this planet being incapable of sustaining human life. They need to understand very clearly that it is not just about taking money from fossil fuel corporations. If they make money from fossil fuel corporations through buying shares, as many of them do, then they are complicit in the breakdown of our climate. They also need to understand that if they're involved in any way with weapons companies who are engaged in the genocide in Gaza as we speak—and I use those words advisedly, because the so-called ceasefire was of course a complete con by the Israeli government, and the slaughter is continuing apace in Gaza as we speak—as we understand the ANU is, through its recent purchase of shares in Elbit Systems, then they are complicit in that genocide. Our universities should always act and behave in the public interest. They have a moral obligation as cornerstone institutions in our society.

Universities have played a critical role in the evolution of humanity, and overwhelmingly that has been for the public good through human history. But it is now the case that far too many universities in this country have forgotten themselves; they've forgotten their purpose. They've abandoned their core mission of acting in the public interest. And I have to say that the actions of the political duopoly in this place, over many decades now, in slashing funding to universities have been something that has contributed to the situation that universities find themselves in. I do understand how universities are feeling, but it is no excuse whatsoever for becoming complicit in climate breakdown and genocide and, worse, in enabling climate breakdown and genocide. (Time expired)