The sector must create a ‘hardened environment for foreign powers, where, “hostile activity is unfeasible, too expensive or too risky to undertake”

Where this comes from

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security’s long-awaited report makes  27 recommendations, focused on protecting national security and the rights of campus communities from foreign interference.

And the committee, chaired by Senator James Paterson (Lib-Victoria), makes it politely plain that they are necessary due to universities performance.

“The committee believes that the sector’s awareness, responsiveness and effectiveness in relation to national security risks can best be described as reactionary but developing rapidly. The sector has not, and did not, respond to these risks in a vacuum or of their own proactive volition. Because of this reactionary approach, the committee took a dim view of arguments of legislative overlay and increasing regulatory burdens when the committee considers that the sector was being reactionary to the national security risks. It is possible perhaps that should the sector have been more proactive on issues like talent recruitment and foreign interference on campuses that additional government intervention would not have occurred.”

The committee makes four top-level recommendations

* University Foreign Interference Taskforce oversight of a university/research institution campaign of, “active transparency in relation to the national security risks”

* adherence to UFIT guidelines reported annually to the PJCIS, accompanied by a classified briefing

* UFIT assist universities with “training on national security issues for staff and students” Plus, “universities should employ an accountable authority who is responsible for managing foreign interference risks at their institution”

And then there is the one that should not be needed, but as committee hearings made plain, manifestly is;

* UFIT, “ should provide clear guidance to universities on implementing penalties for foreign interference activities on campus, including reporting on fellow students to foreign governments. These should be clearly defined in university codes of conduct and communicated to students.”

Among the other 23 recommendations the PJIS calls for,

* an audit of sampled Australian Research Council grants “to determine exposure” to foreign “talent recruitment programmes”

* the foreign minister to use existing veto powers under the Foreign Relations Act “to make determinations in the national interest, including in relation to Confucius Institutes”

* the committee also cited an agreement between Monash U and the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) suggesting that commercial technologies could have dual use.  The US Government lists COMAC as having close ties to China’s military. “As a matter of principle an Australian university funded by Australian taxpayers and student fees should not be entering into an agreement with a company owned or controlled by a foreign authoritarian government’s army,” the PJCIS states.

Universities are in Dan Tehan’s debt

In August 2019 the then education minister announced UFIT, which has a steering group that “acts as the primary conduit for all university and Government counter foreign interference related activities.”

While the PJCIS certainly does not consider UFIT as a complete solution if it did not exist universities would now face less government oversight than intervention. For a sense of what this could have meant consider the first critical infrastructure cyber security bill from Home Affairs under Peter Dutton (CMM February 15 2011).