Australia's Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) Amendment Bill 2026

Mr TED O'BRIEN (Fairfax) (16:38): I wish to respond to the Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade's comments. Australia does indeed have an espionage law, but the problem is that it's not working with respect to the problem we're talking about today. It is completely unacceptable that the Australian people, the Australian government, and certainly the opposition find out through the Australian reports that university researchers are engaging with foreign powers that have not been assessed by the Australian government.

That is completely unacceptable, and to suggest for a moment that the existing regime is therefore doing its job effectively is patently wrong. It was only a few months ago that we learnt that we had academics from the University of New South Wales, the University of Sydney and the University of Adelaide collaborating with an Iranian university on unmanned drones.

We've got to remember there is often a dual use when it comes to technology. An academic need not believe he or she is partaking in some nefarious activity. They could be doing it very honestly, albeit naively.

This is the risk we have. Unfortunately, these things are not coming to light because of government assessment; they're coming to light because of the media. What sort of confidence does that give the Australian people that our national security is being well looked after when we're relying on newspaper articles?

In the morning you wake up and you find out that there have been researchers in Australia dealing with foreign universities that have not been assessed under the right regime. Now, I'm not going to make specific allegations with respect to that particular case. I don't prejudge it.

But what that case tells us, along with other cases that have come to light even in recent weeks—again through the media—is there's a gaping hole here, and it is not satisfactory for the response from the government to be: 'No, that's okay. We've got another law over here.' Clearly that law has not been working. The ones who have been working, to their credit, have been the media.

I give them credit for that. But our security as a nation should not rely on media. It should rely on government—its agencies, its laws.

Here we have a law in place which governs a foreign arrangements scheme—a scheme that is meant to investigate research collaborations between Australian public universities and foreign entities that have been selected and identified by government. And yet we have such collaborations able to take place and not fall within the scheme for one reason: instead of the research agreement having a university logo at the top of the paper, it's just got the name of the professor or the academic.

Every other risk can be the same—same university, same research, same topic, same academics, the whole lot. This is why it's a gap, and it's not good enough. At the very time when we are trying to amend the legislation that can close this gap, the government is effectively saying, 'It's alright.

We've got other laws that look after that,' when barely a week goes by that we don't hear about another story. For the sake of the country, I again ask the government to reconsider what appears to be a position—that I hear from the assistant minister—of pushing back on the amendment that I'm genuinely putting in good faith. Question unresolved.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Dr Haines ): As it is necessary to resolve the question to enable further questions to be considered in relation to this bill, in accordance with standing order 195 the bill will be returned to the House for further consideration.