Universities face escalating threats to students and to national security from hostile forces, a report into foreign interference has warned.
A parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security inquiry found examples of attempts to threaten and intimidate staff and students, espionage, and intellectual property theft through collaborations with foreign institutions.
Liberal senator James Paterson, committee chair, said there had been a “sustained campaign of intimidation, harassment, censorship and intelligence gathering” that has led to “the transfer of sensitive research to military regimes”.
The report, released on Friday, specifically singled out Chinese government-funded Confucius Institutes, a $10m deal between Monash University and a Chinese company linked to industrial espionage, and talent recruitment drives that see Australian researchers work with universities overseas.
The Morrison government launched the inquiry in 2020 amid broader concerns about foreign interference in Australia, and media reports about Australia-China collaborations potentially leading to sensitive defence technology being shared.
Universities raised concerns at the time about a range of new government powers and how they would balance with the need for global engagement on research and development.
On Friday Universities Australia, the peak body, said universities were “very alive” to the risks of foreign interference and were working with governments and security agencies to tackle the issues.
“We will continue to lead the way in ensuring that Australia is collaborating with world leading researchers and institutions as we strive for the big breakthroughs, whilst managing and mitigating risks,” chief executive Catriona Jackson said.
Asio told the inquiry the university and higher education sector was a target and that “hostile intelligence activity continues to pose a real threat to Australia, our sovereignty and the integrity of our national institutions”.
Hostile entities sought insights into Australia’s alliances, access to privileged information, and commercial advantage. Asio also said openness was “integral” to universities and that foreign intelligence services took advantage of that to “steal intellectual property and cutting-edge technologies”.
The inquiry heard there were more than 100 cyber-attacks on universities in 2019-20, including attempts to steal IP data related to Covid-19 vaccines. It was told researchers and their families were threatened by foreign actors wanting access to their sensitive research, and that students had been threatened by outsiders as well as fellow students.
In one case, a student on a Zoom meeting displaying a Hong Kong independence flag was told by another student they would be reported.
“Hostile foreign intelligence services have directly threatened and intimidated Australians in our country,” Asio said.
The home affairs department said other countries were cultivating and manipulating people, spreading propaganda, pressuring people and silencing dissent.
The inquiry heard that the Chinese-government backed Confucius Institutes within universities were a “Trojan horse” for the Chinese Communist party, and that the cultural and language programs were part of a propaganda strategy.
The report recommended that universities that host Confucius Institutes should reveal the details of their agreements, with the universities given a final say on staff, and curricula, and that agreements have clauses protecting academic freedom and freedom of speech.
Recruitment programs such as China’s Thousand Talents program could be used as “possible avenues of technology transfer and espionage”, the inquiry heard, and more transparency was needed.
The committee raised concerns about an ongoing partnership between Monash University and the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China. Comac has been linked to industrial espionage.
Monash and Comac are collaborating on commercial airline technology, but the committee warned such technology could be “dual use … where apparently innocent research has been used for military applications”. It should not go ahead as “a matter of principle”, it said, recommending that foreign minister, Marise Payne, decide what to do about it.
That was just one of several collaborations brought to the committee’s attention, and the report’s 27 recommendations focused on increased awareness of danger areas, monitoring and reporting of issues, transparency and training rather than legislation.
The unanimous recommendations included better reporting and documenting of intimidation and censorship as well as new penalties for foreign interference such as reporting on fellow students to foreign governments.
The committee also called for an audit of Australian Research Council grants that might be exposed to grant fraud and to risks from talent recruitment programs.
Up to 120 separate pieces of commonwealth and state legislation already exist to regulate potential foreign interference, and a university foreign interference taskforce has been set up to guide universities with the help of governments and agencies.
Sophie McNeill, from Human Rights Watch, welcomed the report and said HRW looked forward to working with universities to help students and staff feel “a new sense of protection and freedom”.
“These new efforts to ensure universities have clear policies in place to counter state-backed harassment and intimidation and the resulting self-censorship are long overdue and have the potential to make a real, positive difference on the lives of students and academics,” she said.
In its notes, the committee said the higher education sector “must move from a benign operating environment for our adversaries to a hardened environment”, without losing independence.
“The sector, with government assistance, should create an environment where hostile activity is unfeasible, too expensive, or too risky to undertake,” it said.
