Group of Eight universities concede to ASIO, restrict vital research engagement with China

The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, aided and abetted by the nation’s universities, is attacking core scholarly values that stress the importance of sharing research without government censorship.

The “Group of Eight”, the body that represents the leading research universities, made a contradictory submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) last December.

The submission begins by boasting that the Go8 has a beneficial working relationship with Australia’s security agencies and that it was instrumental in implementing the University Foreign Interference Taskforce guidelines. These are seen as an “exemplar by the Five Eyes Plus group of nations and their leading…