Prologue
Academia has been a pillar of modern Australia, making substantial contributions to Australia’s economy, society, international relations, and national security. But academia, as it exists in Australia in 2026, has changed significantly compared to its historical importance and norms. Also, the geopolitical environment in which Australia’s academia operates in 2026 has changed, becoming significantly more threatening in recent years.
For the sake of clarity, readers should understand the term ‘academia’ encompasses the entire community of higher education, scholarly research, and teaching at colleges and universities, in Australia and globally.
History
The historical trajectory of university attendance in Australia from 1900 to 2026 reflects a dramatic transformation. University and higher learning have moved from being an elite privilege to a mass system. Over this period, the total number of higher education students has exploded from fewer than 4,000 students, in just six universities, at the outbreak of World War I to approximately 1.6 million domestic and international students in Australia in 2026.
This massive expansion in the student population and number of higher learning institutions, the count in 2026 is 42 universities and approximately 170 other higher education providers, has generated huge numbers of tertiary-qualified workers and professional academics. This growth has been enabled by Australia’s increasing national wealth and population, channelled by Commonwealth Government policy.
Growth in academia, and hence its influence on Australia, has been driven by post-World War II reconstruction, the introduction of free university tuition in 1974 by the Whitlam Labor Government, the Dawkins reforms of the late 1980s under the Hawke Labor Government, and a massive boom in international students attending Australian tertiary education campuses in the last three decades.
In these three decades, universities and other higher learning institutions have transcended their historical role of education and higher learning to transform into businesses. However, as businesses they still enjoy significant taxpayer support, assessed at about 40% to 56% of the average sector revenue.
Role in national security
Academia has been a fundamental input to Australian society in many disciplines which impact the everyday life of Australians, and people globally. Benefits have been won in public health, telecommunications, engineering, information technology, space, fine arts, humanities, medicine and much more.
Academia, historically, has been a place of higher learning, of debate, of intellectual rigour, of philosophy, and of exploration for more than two millennia. All of these higher educational and philosophical pursuits have informed and thus enabled the next generation of thinkers to advance the frontiers of humanity. Scientific and engineering research, in particular, has yielded astonishing progress in technology since 1900. And much of that technology has been used by people to make war.
Mass violence and war, and from the beginning of the 20th century industrialised war, are unique characteristics of the human species, and technology has enabled it. In World War I we saw machine guns, fused artillery, poison gas, submarines, tanks and aeroplanes created and deployed based on the science of the day. In World War II, we saw radar, the jet engine, rockets, and the invention of technology which yielded the atomic bomb and nuclear reactors. In the 1950s, as the world adjusted to the Cold War, we saw many of these technologies advanced significantly for military application, with non-military commercial use often a by-product.
Because of the dual uses of much technology, its potential use as a weapon or as a societal or commercial good, a special friction has developed between academia and society as to how a nation’s academics collaborate with academics of other nation states when it comes to dual use technology.
Harking back to the early days of academia, from the ancient Greeks to recent years, clearly evidenced amongst the professional academics who inhabit academia has been a tendency to be myopic, often choosing to focus on asserting their academic freedom to collaborate as they see fit rather than acknowledging the risks, especially the national security risks, which such collaboration may foist on the nation they call home. In Australia’s case perhaps underappreciating that the research they pursue is largely enabled and funded by the Commonwealth Government, that is by the taxpayer.
The apparent mindset of much of the international STEM community (STEM standing for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) is to collaborate and share information.
One such example is Klaus Fuchs, a German communist who supplied nuclear weapons information from the World War II American, British, and Canadian Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union during and after World War II. Fuchs justified his passing of military technology secrets on the basis of allied and academic information sharing. Clearly, Fuchs decided his personal political view on sharing information trumped the security education and prevailing laws that governed such information sharing which would have made clear he was not at liberty to pass such information.
For many academics involved in research, especially in the engineering, communications and medical sciences, the imperative to publish research is strong. Publication wins grants and profile which will enable them and further their work – there is a high degree self-interest. You can see how conflict might arise between academic ‘freedom’ and the restrictions of national security considerations.
In Australia, we have decades of documented cases of inappropriate information sharing and collaboration by Australian academics with academics from hostile and adversary nations. Decades of academics asserting their academic ‘right’ to collaborate trumping national security concerns. Decades of academics accepting funding for research, accepting travel benefits and consulting funds from hostile states. And Australian universities have allowed this behaviour.
Certainly from World War II onwards the threat of hostile states engaging with Australian and allied academics has been clear. For example, the Soviet Union devoted significant effort to stealing the science and technology secrets from private sector and government-funded research, a significant portion of which was undertaken by academia. Russia continues this program. So, there is a long-standing and well-known threat from hostile states to academia in Australia.
In recognition of this threat, one action the Australian Government has taken is to publish Guidelines to Counter Foreign Interference in the Australian University Sector in 2019. The Guidelines were updated in 2021. The Guidelines are a collaboration between the Commonwealth and the university sector.
The prologue in the Guidelines is worth recounting here:
“Universities play a key role in developing new knowledge and technological innovation. This role is vital to Australia’s continued prosperity and economic growth. Deep international engagement, underpinned by university autonomy and academic freedom, fosters the sharing and developing of knowledge with the best and brightest minds around the world.
The Australian Government supports international collaborations through its programs and policy settings across a wide range of initiatives and portfolios.
This crucial global engagement is occurring in an ever more complex and evolving world. It is essential that universities, the community and government have confidence that proportionate strategies are in place to manage the risks to Australia’s university students, staff and research. This is also important for international partners seeking assurances when working together on sensitive topics.
Universities and government are working together to enhance current protections, while preserving the openness and collaboration that is crucial to the success of Australia’s world-class university system.
Universities conduct research within a wide array of fields: from the arts to social sciences, from health and medical sciences to engineering and information technology.
It is important to maintain a sensible approach that is proportionate to the risk.”
It strikes me, in reading the Guidelines, that academic freedom is paramount and the commercial success of Australia’s universities is much more important than acknowledging and mitigating the risks posed by the clear pre-eminence of academic freedom.
Further, the Guidelines state that:
- Security must safeguard academic freedom, values and research collaboration.
- Research, collaboration and education activities remain mindful of the national interest.
- Security is a collective responsibility with individual accountability.
- Security should be proportionate to organisational risk.
- The safety of our university community is paramount.
Note these are ‘guidelines’ and so carry no weight of obligation. They also address foreign interference but avoid the issue of threats and risks posed by academic collaboration with hostile states. Since the Guidelines were revised in 2021, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) has made clear the threat posed by academic collaboration with hostile states, including China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. Over recent years there have been clear national-level statements that academic collaboration should avoid these listed states, yet this collaboration has continued.
Examples
Over many decades working in Australia’s national security community, I dealt with academia many times in different contexts. Few academics I interacted with, with the exception of those employed within the departments of Defence and Foreign Affairs, were alert to or concerned by national security as it might be relevant to their work.
Often the priority for the academics, personally, and for the university was securing funds for research or creating intellectual property that could be monetised. Publishing research, in Australia and internationally, was the main game. Monetisation was a strong motivation. And given that universities have tended to grow ever more leftist and rapacious over the decades, coupled with the strong sense of entitlement to ‘academic freedom’, there seems to have evolved a natural aversion to any idea or authority or direction that might inhibit accessing money for research and the associated trappings, such as international travel paid for by someone else, that often accompanied it.
In one role, I was responsible for the delivery of Commonwealth-armed first response at many nationally significant sites across Australia. One of these sites was, and remains, a unique and high-profile scientific site which attracts many foreign academics who undertake research. The head of security sought my advice about foreign nationals, who had paid the entity to undertake research, refusing to behave in accordance with the mandated security regime. My advice was to warn the person formally, once, and if they continued to behave inappropriately, then revoke their access to the site.
My advice was not well received. The head of security was concerned, you might even say alarmed, that such action would mean the person could not research and publish, and that would cause a problem for the head of security with his supervisor, and have international repercussions for Australia. It might even appear that Australia was stigmatising the person on the basis of their race. The head of security did not act on my advice.
All of the outcomes the head of security was concerned about may have come to pass if the access had been revoked, but the head of security missed the essential point. Australia has and creates science and technology of commercial value and military use. This knowledge needs to be protected for Australia’s national and commercial interests. If we do not act to protect our knowledge then we are inviting hostile states to bring their shopping trolley and grab what they want, enabled by our lax approach. Hostile states would not let Australia take such valuable knowledge from their country.
With the threats to Australia’s academia well-known, with the issue being discussed by government and ASIO publicly and privately for decades, in 2026 we still have academics in Australia who are either wilfully acting against government advice and ignorant of the high level of threat from China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, or are so self-absorbed that they believe such realities are not applicable to them. Their interests come first, even if that might endanger or weaken Australia.
Australian academia in 2026
To demonstrate my points, I note the following events from 2026 in Australia.
The Commonwealth Government has belatedly sought to manage risk associated with collaborative research with hostile states. In August 2026, Parliament passed the Australia’s Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) Amendment Act 2026 (the Act), which received Royal Assent on 26 August 2026.
Among a broader package of reforms, the Act inserts a new section 55A dealing specifically with foreign research projects. Once the relevant amendments commence, Australian universities covered by the Act will be required to:
- For the first time, all Australian universities will be required to identify research being undertaken with researchers employed or engaged by foreign entities.
- Universities must have policies and procedures to assess if research projects “adversely affect, or are likely to adversely affect, Australia’s national interest … or be inconsistent with Australia’s foreign policy”.
- Universities must manage any risks they identify.
- Individual researchers will now be subject to the Government’s intent to inhibit interactions which may be subject to foreign interference.
- Universities will be required to list foreign research or financial arrangements with other countries listed on the Commonwealth’s Foreign Arrangements Register.
The drivers for these new, more stringent regulations are not theoretical. Rather, they have been driven by years of behaviour by universities and researchers who have insisted on collaborating with academics from hostile nation states, some of the most recent reports and developments being:
- In March 2026, Australian media reported Australian university collaboration on drone research with Iran.
- In May 2026, the Federal Education Minister vetoed 13 Australian Research Council (ARC) grants on national security grounds.
- In August 2026 the Foreign Minister extinguished the Australian National University’s research collaboration with China’s Shandong University, which is linked with China’s nuclear weapons program.
- The Foreign Minister extinguished the University of Queensland’s taxpayer-funded research with the Chinese Academy of Sciences into Australian native plants yielding pain relief medicine.
But here is a more detailed case. In September 2026, Australian media reported that the ARC had funded an Australian engineering professor, employed by the University of New South Wales (UNSW), to collaborate with Chinese and Iranian scientists over recent years. The Chinese collaborators are from military-affiliated universities in China, including Southeast University which is assessed to have ties with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and cyber espionage programs, and the Army Engineering University of the PLA on securing wireless networks from eavesdroppers. The Australian professor also collaborated with the Iranian Islamic Azad University and Tehran Polytechnic universities.
The Australian professor has collaborated with universities that are blacklisted by the United States, including the Chinese Academy of Science Technology, Jiaotong University and the Harbin Institute of Technology. The U.S. Department of Defence has placed several of these institutions on a ‘black list’ due to their links with the PLA.
The Australian professor is on record as receiving over two million dollars in ARC grants in 2026. Australian media reports that the ARC has refused to comment on the Australian professor or UNSW having notified ARC that its funds were being used for collaboration with Chinese or Iranian academia.
The ARC did issue a new Research Security Framework in April 2026 which requires researchers to declare all “non-Australian affiliations, associations and funding” before they apply for ARC grants. However, it is not clear how enforceable this framework is and how ARC would detect any lies or deception.
In September 2026, media reported that Australian academics were “rebelling” against the Albanese Labor Government’s plan to regulate risky research collaborations with foreign scientists, objecting on the basis of regulatory overheads and impingement of academic freedom. The Federal Education Minister reportedly directed the Australian Tertiary Education Commission (ATEC) to draw up new “threshold standards’’ covering national security and foreign interference in research, which would give the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) new powers to impose conditions, or even revoke a university’s approval to operate, for breaching national security laws.
ATEC advised universities in formal correspondence that “ASIO has identified universities, academia and research centres as potential targets of cyber espionage, particularly where they hold research data, methods, concepts or dual-use technologies with both civilian and military applications’’. ATEC’s advice also says that ASIO has identified universities as high-risk for espionage. ATEC warns that individual researchers can be targeted for coercion or espionage when they attend conferences or network with foreign academics.
In response, Universities Australia reportedly told ATEC that Universities Australia objects to the government granting TEQSA a “new research security role’’ because TEQSA is not a national security agency. Universities Australia also stated that “Relevant intelligence and assessments sit with agencies including ASIO, Home Affairs, Defence and DFAT (the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade). TEQSA cannot independently determine whether particular collaborations, entities or technologies present national security risks without developing substantial new capability and relying on those agencies for information.’’
The Australian Council of Graduate Research also pushed back against the government’s plan for new threshold standards covering universities’ management of foreign interference and national security.
Given that academia is briefed, publicly and privately, by the Commonwealth Government through ASIO, Home Affairs, Australian Federal Police and other agencies about the threats posed by hostile states today, it leaves us taxpayers wondering why academia in general is so unwilling to modify its behaviour in ways that would mitigate rather than perpetuate the risks posed by collaborating with academic institutions and researchers from countries that are openly hostile to Australia’s national interests and security.
To be clear, it is well established in public discourse that China, Russia and Iran engage is espionage and theft of intellectual property and information, especially technology which can provide commercial and military benefit for these hostile states.
Asymmetric warfare
It is clear that China, Russia, and Iran (and there are others) are conducting asymmetric warfare against Australia, with China recently going further by demonstrating military threats through having a naval taskforce circumnavigate Australia, during which it undertook missile live-firing, and China’s launching of an ICBM into the South Pacific. Yet we allow academic cooperation of dual-use and military-aligned projects. This has to stop. Australia has many friendly and like-minded countries it can more safely and securely have academic collaboration with.
Oztopia – what do I want from Australia’s academia?
Academia has existed in Australia since federation in 1901, largely created and sustained by taxpayer funding through government. Up to the 1970s, academia had a largely symbiotic relationship with Australian society, but from that time has tended to become more self-serving and truculent in line with its evolution to become businesses rather than being institutions of learning. In 2026, it is legitimate to ask if academia is predominantly serving Australia’s national interests or is focused on its own interests and those of the professional academics that it employs, often at world-leading salaries.
Academia has a privileged place in Australia’s history. However, in 2026 academia displays behaviour that shows it has become yet another national institution which fails to comprehend the threats Australia faces, and so resists any direction to change behaviour in ways that would support national security. Rather, it appears that academia is set to continue to operate aligned with self-righteous self-interest.
What do I want from Australia’s academia?
Stop collaborating with the academic institutions and researchers from hostile nation states. You are collaborating with the enemy.
Oztopia – how do we get there?
What I want for Australia seem utopian, or as I put it Oztopian, but my wants are based on a sound appreciation of Australia’s history, capabilities and vulnerabilities as we face the most dynamic and threatening geopolitical circumstances of Australia’s modern history. I am a realist.
Domestic and geopolitical circumstances mean that Australia, as a nation, needs to take a different course to improve our ability to withstand that risks that confront us. There is no time to waste. Action needs to be taken today.
We are a long way from Oztopia and so it will be a long journey to get near it.
Each journey starts with a first step: what will yours be to get to Oztopia?