February 15, 2023
The Albanese government has revealed that a secret review of the Australian Research Council’s performance in dealing with national security risks is underway separately to the broad review of the research funding body announced by Education Minister Jason Clare last year.
The government response on Tuesday to a parliamentary committee report on national security risks affecting the Australian higher education and research sector said “a review of the ARC’s performance in assessing foreign interference and national security risks in the context of grant decisions” had gone ahead in line with a recommendation from the committee.
Any security review of the ARC is a hot-button issue, with the body under political pressure – particularly from the Coalition – over its handling of grant applications for projects with Chinese links in past years.
The secret review, which is complete in draft form, was commissioned by the ARC in August last year.
“The ARC is now considering the draft report. Once that process is finalised, the ARC will provide a copy of the report to the Minister for Education and the PJCIS (the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security),” a spokesperson for Mr Clare said.
Vicki Thomson, chief executive officer of the Group of Eight universities which receive the majority of ARC grants, said protecting research from foreign interference was “a shared responsibility and never a case of job done”.
“We support various compliance, reporting and transparency measures to ensure we protect that which must be protected,” she said. “In this context we look forward to details around a review underway of the ARC’s performance.”
Separate to the revelation of the secret ARC review, the Albanese government’s response to the PJCIS report rejected the committee’s call for “a risk-based audit which samples Australian Research Council grants over the past decade to determine exposure associated with participation in talent recruitment programs”.
The committee recommendation, which referenced China’s “thousand talents” program that recruited Australian university researchers, was turned down, with the government saying it would review “active” and “current” ARC grants rather than those over previous years.
The government yesterday added to its foreign arrangements scheme database thousands of agreements between Australian public bodies (including universities) and foreign entities (including Chinese bodies) which are required to be reported under legislation passed in 2020.
In its response to the PJCIS report, the government said 56 arrangements had been reported that relate to Confucius Institutes at Australian universities.
It said it would keep arrangements regarding Confucius Institutes “under review”.
James Paterson, the federal opposition spokesman for countering foreign interference, said Australia had made great progress in recent years hardening its systems and society against foreign interference.
Mr Clare said in a statement that the higher education sector faced “significant foreign interference risks”.
“That’s why initiatives such as the University Foreign Interference Taskforce (UFIT) are so important,” he said.
Luke Sheehy, executive director of the ATN Universities, said his group was pleased that Mr Clare has “acknowledged the substantial work already underway by our universities to protect against foreign interference and the important role played by UFIT”.
