Canberra backs universities on foreign interference

Australia’s government has shrugged off calls to tighten controls on Confucius Institutes and publish annual accounts of national security threats, incidents and breaches in the higher education sector.

Canberra has endorsed the bulk of a parliamentary committee’s recommendations to boost safeguards against foreign meddling in teaching and research. But the government has also offered a vote of confidence in universities, lauding the “dramatic increase in their level of awareness” of the issue.

In a response to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, which outlined national security risks to the sector in a report tabled shortly before last year’s federal election, the government “broadly” supported most of the 27 recommendations.

But it highlighted the “substantial work” already under way to shield the sector from security threats, committing itself to “an overall positive partnership” to “deepen universities’ resilience” against foreign interference.

The committee, which draws its membership almost equally from the two major political parties, had acknowledged progress by the University Foreign Interference Taskforce (UFIT) in addressing national security concerns. But then chairman James Paterson said more was needed to tackle a “sustained campaign of intimidation, harassment, censorship and intelligence gathering” by foreign governments.

Universities, already dealing with escalating security-related workloads and threats to veto some of their overseas partnerships, braced for more regulation and a requirement to report annual tallies of “incidents of harassment, intimidation and censorship”.

But the government resisted this recommendation, saying it could be difficult to ascertain whether such incidents constituted foreign interference. And Canberra flatly rejected a call for security agency Asio to routinely report on threats to higher education and research.

“Asio does not consider it appropriate to highlight a single sector in its annual report when multiple sectors are being targeted by our adversaries,” the government said. “It could be misleading and, in some circumstances, give Australia’s adversaries actionable information about Asio investigations.”

The government also hosed down a recommendation to force universities to disclose funding agreements with Confucius Institutes. It said universities’ existing obligations to report deals with the institutes to the foreign affairs minister, and to publish them on a public register, were an “effective mechanism” for managing risk.

The government gave unqualified support to a dozen of the recommendations, particularly those involving guidance, training and information sharing. But it shrugged off calls for new policies on universities’ appointments of foreign diplomats and tougher penalties for breaches of research grant rules.

Meanwhile, in a speech at the Australian National University, home affairs minister Clare O’Neil praised universities’ “collaborative approach” to foreign interference.

She said that the government’s work with universities, with UFIT as its “centrepiece”, had attracted “global interest” from her overseas counterparts. “I have been genuinely struck by the commitment and enthusiasm for Australian universities – who I think were honestly a little bit suspicious about this problem to begin with – to try to tackle it.”

The Group of Eight universities said UFIT provided “an effective guardrail” against foreign meddling. But chief executive Vicki Thomson said shielding research from international interference was “never a case of ‘job done’”.

She said her organisation supported compliance, reporting and transparency measures “to ensure we protect that which must be protected”.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com