AUSTRALIAN Education Minister Alan Tudge has given universities until the end of the year to enforce a freedom of speech code, threatening to use legislation if they refuse or cannot implement it. “You cannot pursue truth without freedom of expression. You cannot create knowledge without freedom of academic inquiry,” Mr Tudge said in a speech to the Universities Australia conference in Canberra on Thursday.
THE High Court will soon have the opportunity of demonstrating that traditional academic freedom and freedom of expression are still alive in Australia. The decision they hand down in Peter Ridd v James Cook University will rank in importance with the Court’s unanimous decision concerning Cardinal Pell, reaffirming the presumption of innocence and that guilt be proved beyond reasonable doubt.
FORMER Melbourne University vice-chancellor Glyn Davis has called the government a “threat” to academic freedoms over its insistence on freedom of speech on campus. In a heated exchange with former education minister Dan Tehan, Prof Davis wrote “there is an irony in governments deciding to investigate academic freedoms as government frequently emerges as the largest threat to such freedoms”.
UNIVERSITY graduates fail to reflect mainstream Australian values with disproportionately high numbers leaning heavily towards socialism, according to a recent Newspoll survey. Although the poll reveals a Coalition government would cruise to victory in a general election – this result, however, would easily reverse to Labor if voting was limited to university graduates only.
UNIVERSITY leaders should be hiding their faces in shame having diverted stretched national intelligence resources to deal with subversive threats on campus. The chairman of Australia’s Federal Intelligence & Security Committee Andrew Hastie said ASIO’s job was to deal with the most pressing threats to the nation – not securitising universities.
PANDERING universities that have shut down freedom of speech and academic inquiry face tough new legislation if they continue to reject the basics of Western educational standards.
Under pressure to appease the Chinese Communist Party and high-value corporate sponsors, a number of Australian universities have systematically suspended students, removed staff and deleted social media posts over comments that they’ve judged to be offensive.
