Australia’s university sector has emphasised the need for further consultation on Australia’s proposed foreign relations bill, with a new parliamentary report reflecting some of the sector’s concerns on international agreement laws.
Yesterday, the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee’s report into the Australian Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) Bill was published.
Universities Australia (UA) CEO Catriona Jackson said the university sector continues to believe it should be excluded from the bill.
“If this is not possible significant amendment is required. Our primary concerns go to both the workability of these laws that will cover thousands and thousands of agreements and the deterrent effect this could have on international partnerships,” she said.
“These partnerships are the lifeblood of research.
“At a minimum, the Bill should include a list of exclusions to narrow its scope.”
Under the Bill, Australia’s foreign minister possesses the power to veto or alter an array of agreements between universities. In a minor win, Jackson said the committee “agreed with universities’ recommendations that the definitions be tightened”, and further consultation should be undertaken.
“Without clarification, the laws could include a huge number of ‘arrangements’. The retrospective nature of the Bill would mean that the agreements captured could go back decades,” Jackson noted.
“We are pleased to see the dissenting report calls for the Minister to list reasons for any changes and that decisions can be appealed.
“Universities are equal partners with Government agencies in the Universities Foreign Interference Taskforce (UFIT), which has devised robust guidelines that build on measures to keep our institutions and intellectual property secure.
“Australian universities have worked with Government for decades to protect our intellectual property and to rebuff attempts to breach national security. Universities have regularly sought advice from Government and its agencies on security matters to protect our people, research and systems,” UA’s CEO concluded.
Innovative Research Universities (IRU) also holds grave concerns about the foreign relations bill, arguing that “research and education partnerships between Australian universities and international institutions remain at risk" following the publication of the parliamentary inquiry report into the proposed bill.
In a similar vein to UA, IRU said the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee report “considers the major problems for universities” but does not go as far as to exclude universities from the legislation’s scope.
However, there are two proposed changes IRU welcomes in altering the bill, but the group says, “they do not go far enough to rectify the significant problems with the bill”. The proposed changes include adding a definition of “institutional autonomy into the Bill” and “exempting some minor administrative or purely logistical matters from the legislation”.
In its submission to the inquiry, IRU recommended that universities be exempted from the legislation, due to the “huge administrative burden of registering thousands of international arrangements including routine activity like student exchange visits and corporate licensing agreements”.
IRU also added that, if universities are to remain within the remit of the legislation, “a spectrum of risk should be applied to each arrangement”. The IRU group believes such an inclusion in the legislation would ensure DFAT uses its resources to focus on monitoring high-risk rather than low-risk activity.
After the publication of the inquiry report yesterday, IRU executive director Conor King said: “IRU is concerned that, without significant changes, this legislation will signal death by red tape for many international research and student education partnerships.”
“We have made a case that universities should be exempt from the new laws. If they continue to be included, the scope of the regulation needs to be considerably tightened to ensure the Government focuses its resources on high risk foreign agreements, not routine activity.”