The Department of Education is to establish a taskforce to protect Australian universities from foreign interference.
Announcing the University Foreign Interference Taskforce, the Minister for Education, Dan Tehan said the taskforce would include representatives from universities, national security organisations and the Department.
He said its work will be to focus on four key strategic areas.
These will be firstly, cyber security, to ensure the universities ecosystem was resilient to unauthorised access, manipulation, disruption or damage and secondly, research and intellectual property, to deter and detect deception, undue influence, unauthorised disclosure or disruption to research, intellectual property and the research community.
Mr Tehan said the third area would coverforeign collaboration, to ensure collaboration with foreign entities was transparent, undertaken with full knowledge and consent, and in a manner that avoided harm to Australia’s interests and the final area, culture and communication to foster a positive security culture through engagement with Government and the broader community to educate, uplift awareness and improve research and cyber resiliency.
“The Government is working with the sector on the development of guidelines to protect against foreign interference, focusing on five overarching principles,” Mr Tehan said.
He said the principles were that security must safeguard academic freedom, values and research collaboration; that research, collaboration and education activities would support the national interest; that security was a collective responsibility with individual accountability; that it should be proportionate to organisational risk; and that the safety of the university community was paramount.
“Our Government is taking action to provide clarity at the intersection of national security, research, collaboration and a university’s autonomy,” Mr Tehan said.
“Universities also understand the risk to their operations and to the national interest from cyber attacks and foreign interference and we are working constructively to address it.”
He said the taskforce would complement work currently under way involving Defence, other relevant Agencies, universities and industry to develop practical, risk-based legislative proposals to address identified gaps in the Defence Trade Controls Act.
