Public universities have 11,800 international agreements registered with DFAT, but they believe that the feds didn’t need to know about most.
Under the Foreign Arrangements Scheme that aims to keeps the government in the loop on everything they are up to offshore, universities have to file a copious number of reports.
Universities told Rosemary Huxtable, who has just reviewed the scheme, that over-regulation is common.
“Some universities observed that the multiple layers of scrutiny from government is counterproductive, reduces the ability of responsible officers to address the substance of issues and drives up underlying risk” she states in her report, filed in February, but only now released.
As for evidence, universities point to scrutiny from the Attorney General’s Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme, the Defence Trade Controls Act and the Universities Foreign Interference Taskforce.
Ms Huxtable also includes examples from individual institutions on arrangements they felt they must revive, such as:
- ANU: checked 3,605 international connections for relevance to DFAT
- UNSW: examined 1,600 and advised government of 800
- Monash U: looked at 26,000 and submitted 3,000
Only one of Ms Huxtable’s 23 recommendations proposes university-specific changes, creating a list of foreign universities impacted.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong has accepted all proposals.
Overall, this appears a good outcome for universities, demonstrating how they have won government confidence, probably due to the success of sector oversight and advice from the HE community’s own Universities Foreign Interference Taskforce.
Times have certainly changed from 2022 when the parliamentary committee that recommended UFIT concluded: “the sector’s awareness, responsiveness and effectiveness in relation to national security risks can best be described as reactionary but developing rapidly. … 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.”