Tuesday, 10 September 2019

 Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (18:06): My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Education and concerns the erosion of freedom of speech on Victorian university campuses. Freedom of speech is an essential value in our political system and must be defended to ensure democracy and liberty are upheld. Surely the purpose of universities is to pursue truth, learning and investigation, which are only attainable with open and free discourse. The principle of freedom of speech is under threat now more than ever before on our university campuses.

This was recently demonstrated at Deakin University where social media posts by the Deakin University Liberal Club were requested to be removed by staff of the Deakin University Student Association. One post suggesting the Premier’s recent birth certificate reform failed to ‘stack up with scientific fact’ was apparently in breach of the university’s rather vague social media policy. The irony of this censorship bid is that one post requiring removal included a quote from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, a book about the consequences of censorship. Is George Orwell now politically incorrect too?

Free speech is being stifled at the Deakin campuses in Burwood and Geelong and at countless universities across Australia. The Institute of Public Affairs surveyed 500 domestic Australian university students, and the research data shows 41 per cent of students feel they are sometimes unable to express their opinion at university and 31 per cent of students, in expressing their opinions, have been made to feel uncomfortable by university academics. The data also shows that Australian students want free speech on their campuses, with 82 per cent of students agreeing that students should be exposed to different views even if those views are challenging to some. Clearly this censorship is not being supported by the students themselves but instead emanates from the faculty offices and administrations that fail to stand up for the principle that underpins the very institutions they claim to serve.

The action I seek from the Minister for Education is that he follow his federal counterpart, the Honourable Dan Tehan, MP, in encouraging all Victorian universities to implement former High Court Justice Robert French’s model code for the protection of freedom of speech and academic freedom in Australian higher education providers.

The PRESIDENT: That one is for the Minister for Higher Education.