December 18, 2024
Publicly-funded national security think tanks could have their budgets slashed if they critique Government policy under controversial proposals in a financing review due this week.
The review into public funding for strategic policy work will also recommend a budget cut for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), which is known for its hawkish analysis of the operations of the Chinese Communist Party.
Report author and former DFAT Secretary, Peter Varghese, briefed think tanks on Wednesday after months of Canberra rumours that the Labor-ordered review intended to cast a shot across ASPI’s bow.
Critics warn the proposals, which would also grant bureaucrats greater control over research priorities, significantly raise the risk of interference in think tanks’ independent recommendations and could lead to self-censorship to avoid budget shortfalls.
Sources say one proposal calls for the Secretaries Committee on National Security, which includes the heads of DFAT, Home Affairs and national security departments, to set the agenda for federally funded research, increasing the possibility of politicisation by the government of the day.
The plan would also impose a government “observer” on think tank councils.
Think tanks that currently receive Government funding for operating costs will still be financed for the next two years but must then compete for the following five-year funding round.
Justin Bassi, executive director of ASPI, said he could not go into detail about the confidential briefing but that his “early impressions” indicated that “this review was an effort to clamp down on ASPI and the contestability that it provides on national security policy have been confirmed.”
Mr Bassi stressed it “sends a clear signal to all Australian national security think tanks that the government will exercise greater command and control over their work.”
Every think tank would have to stop and ask themselves whether criticising the government or seriously challenging its national security agenda would affect their chances of receiving future funding, he said.
“And that goes against the whole purpose of thinks tanks and contestability, which is to improve policy-making by challenging orthodoxies and the status quo.”
ASPI, which receives about one third of its total $15m revenue in government funding, is set to be among the worst impacted by the review, which has called for the discontinuation of financing for its Washington DC office.
For months, rumours about reductions ASPI’s budget have fuelled speculation of discreet attempts to curb its criticism of Beijing at a time when the Government is trying to rebalance relations with China.
The outspoken think tank is widely believed to have prompted one of China’s 14 “grievances” against to Canberra during a trough in diplomatic ties in 2020 when it slammed funding for “anti-China” think tanks that were “peddling lies” to manipulate public opinion.
Senator James Paterson, the opposition’s home affairs spokesman, cautioned if the Government clipped ASPI’s wings it would be “capitulating to one of the 14 demands of the Chinese embassy and silencing a critical voice in the national security debate.”
This would have a chilling effect on researchers working on the Chinese Communist Party, he told the Nightly.
“Closing the ASPI D.C. office is particularly badly timed given the incoming Trump administration,” he said, adding that the organisation had significant access and influence on the first Trump administration and broad networks to assist visiting Australian ministers, politicians and officials.
Closing it would leave Australia as one of the few countries in the world without a voice in the DC policy community.
“While opening ASPI’s core funding to competitive tender might sound intuitively appealing, in reality this will shatter their financial security and put their viability on the line every five years,” he said.
“In turn this will undermine their independence as they will be anxious not to displease the government of the day or the defence department to ensure they keep their funding.”
