Dr Brendan Walker-Munro

Several weeks ago, Jason Clare took a step that every federal ­education minister for the past 20 years has been lambasted for doing: he used his ministerial veto to block funding to 13 grant applications made to the Australian Research Council. Unlike previous vetoes, this wasn’t about pork-barrelling or political pointscoring, it was for “reasons relevant to the security, defence or international relations of Australia”. Making decisions such as this to protect our universities and our academics is called “research security”, and it’s supposed to keep our campuses and research programs – most of them funded with your tax dollars – free from threats such as espionage, foreign interference, hackers and technology theft. Strangely, the higher education sector, usually championed by the Group of Eight or Universities Australia, has been deathly quiet about the minister’s decision. That’s despite claiming for years that foreign interference is overblown and just more red tape for a sector already drowning in it. In fact, if you look for the words “research security” in any government or university policy in this country, you won’t find it. Research security in Australia is a bit like Fight Club: the first rule seems to be that we don’t talk about it. So an Australian research security failure has been on the cards for years. We’ve just been missing the warning signs.