Defence industry minister Christopher Pyne enthusiastically promotes defence industry-university research partnerships in his home state of South Australia, providing opponents of them with a convenient list of hard targets.

Yesterday the National Union of Students hopped into one of them, attacking Flinders U management for partnering with British defence company BAE Systems , which Con Karavias from NUS says “sells arms to despotic war criminals,” citing Saudi Arabia. With the other two SA universities also engaging with defence providers there are ample more examples for the NUS “books not bombs campaigns.”