Why would a university have a deal with Lockheed Martin?

Concentration levels were high at Lockheed Martin's headquarters in Canberra. Fingertips were tapping away at keyboards and eyes glued to screens as fifteen teams from around the nation battled it out at code Quest.

It's pretty fascinating to see photos of children with their code Quest certificates standing in front of a Lockheed Martin banner.

More businesses urged to host events similar to this.

And these are companies like Lockheed Martin, bae, rafeon, Boeing. They're all in there basically providing stem curriculum. If you're making money off making weapons, you shouldn't be involved in delivering educational material. I think that's definitely a conversation that needs to be.

Had from Schwartz Media. I'm Ashlyn McGee. This is seven AM. For the past few months, there's been a lot of focus on university's relationships with the weapons manufacturers. Students set up camps and occupied buildings, arguing that the universities are complicit in the assault on Gaza and demanding more transparency. But as writer and contributor to The Saturday Paper, Anakrean started investigating defense money flowing into education. She was startled

That's after the break.

And are you were watching as students are universities across the country occupied the grounds in protest over the last couple of months. Tell me about what's been happening.

Yeah, right, So there's been about a dozen or so student encampments across the country basically part of the sort of nationwide Free Palestine protest movement.

Tensions ran high in Melbourne as protests unfold across the country. Pro Palestinian camps have now been set up at universities in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide and Perth. Inspired by the movement in the US.

They've been ongoing since about April, asking for their universities to disclose and divest from relationships with Israeli universities.

Young people are tired of being plicated and told to sit by while our government supports horrors unfold in Palestine.

But also so I think, probably most interestingly, to divest from research partnerships with weapons manufacturers.

Sen's of billions of dollars of partnerships with weapons manufacturers, including but not limited to Lucked, Martin, Bolling and DA Systems.

Not They were arguing that these relationships with these weapons manufacturers, I mean, and these are the big primes as they're known, these big weapons companies that were seeded in the Cold War era and have become you know, the major weapons manufacturers.

Wherever there's a war, wherever.

There's something going on, you know, you'll be sure to find their hardware. In the process, we demand that our university cut ties with the weapons company. They're saying, this is a degree of complicity that we need to take responsibility for.

Evening, we'll breaking news now pro Palestinian protesters have taken over a building at the University of Melbourne. They are vowing they will not move.

A few weeks ago in Melbourne, the protests groups they're really up the ante. When they went from the lawn, had had a whole bunch of tents set up. Then they actually moved into the Arts West building and occupied it.

University staff are warning the group leave now of face arrest. Victoria Police have told us they're monitoring the situation.

And it was quite a definitive move on their part.

That's when they really forced the administrators to the table to negotiate what their demands were, and the University of Melbourne agreed to disclose their relationships with weapons manufacturers and be more transparent about these relationships what transpires within them.

So and to tell me a little bit more about how Australian universities working with weapons companies. What do we know about those relationships and how strong the links are.

Yeah, so I think it's really interesting and I think a lot of people didn't know about it until these recent protests. The Coalition government under Malcolm Turnbull, they announced two hundred billion for defense over the following decade.

Decade long military build ups about to pump defense suppliers with more than two hundred billion dollars in orders.

This is a big game changing step.

Malcolm Turnbull basically announced that Australia now has an ambition to get into the top ten weapons exporters.

Today, the Prime Minister Maurice Paine and I launched the Defense export strategy for Australia. It's the first time any government has made such a dramatic commitment to growing our defense exports and ensuring that we overcome the peaks and troughs that have the devil the defense industry over many decades in Australia.

So eight years ago, Universe City of Melbourne announced a co joint research center with Lockheed Martin, which is the largest weapons exporter in the world.

The establishment of the lab here is advanced R and D by Australians, but for the globe. You know that we're doing this for the planet. That's really important to me.

And it was announced as quite enthusiastically as the first time Lockheed Martin has opened a research center outside of the United States. Less than two years later, there was another press release which announced an agreement between BAE Systems to have future collaborations between the university and that massive company.

Are you hunting for a career and life post UNI? That solid, flexible and gives you a real sense of purpose. Hi, I'm Cassie from BAE Systems, Australia's largest defense and security company.

University of Sydney formalized a relationship with tallis a French giant renowned for its guarded weapons.

So the list just keeps.

Going on and on and on, and in a way, it's an extension of the commercialization of the higher education sector, which has created tensions for a long time now between you know, what are the values of academic research and what are the values of the private sector, which are really the clash. Academic freedom has a clear stipulation that research needs to be transparent and findings are published basically so they can be replicated, whereas the private sector is

And so then after these kind of negotiations between students and the universities, you know, University of Melbourne, take that as an exam. The UNI has agreed to more transparency. Is that a big deal?

The Free Palestine movement saw it as a big deal. They saw it as a victory, and they packed up their encampment and left the campus. They released a statement saying that they would commit to additional disclosure of research.

Grant arrangements, but they added, you.

Know, a disclaimer saying disclosure is subject to confidentiality obligations, national security regulations and law, and the safety and security of our researchers. It's yet to be seen as to how much Melbourne University is actually going to disclose, you know, I mean a lot can be hidden underneath disclaimers like that.

After the break how the orcsteal could turbocharge these partnerships. So and these relationships between the weapons industry and universities are pretty controversial. But just flip that for a moment and talk to me about why a country like Australia would want top researchers at universities involved in this.

You know, having this really tight integration between the military and industry and academia, universities have a real tightrope to walk here.

In terms of what it is that universities do.

We've got the government creating a one hundred and twenty eight million dollar fund for four thousand places at sixteen universities which are connected to the August submarine program. So here why the emerate professor at ANU, he's basically probably one of the most foremost critics of AUCUST, and he says that if you know these previous defense strategies, if they've permeated university life, then he says that AUCUST is going to turbocharge it. So says that two things are

I mean, that's a whole other story in itself.

But if AUGUST is to succeed, we basically don't have an industry or a skill set to make it succeed. If AUCUST is going to be successful, the integration of military industry, government and academia to create this entirely new sector. Who White points to comments from the South Australian Premier Peter Melanaskis, who told attendees at a news corps defending Australia's summit that if August was going to succeed, it needed to fundamentally transform every aspect of national policy, from

On the other.

So it's going to be a bigger part of the way they operate, a bigger source of money, and it's also controversially going to be a bigger constraint on what they do do.

And so what's the government's role in deepening those relationships center.

So in March this year, Parliament passed a Defense Trade Controls Amendment Act, which really alarmed the academic and scientific community basically because it creates this export license free environment between the Orcist partners which removes barriers to defense trade, research, collaboration and codevelopment.

Now, the overriding purpose of this bill is, as the bill states, to strengthen Australia's national security and protect sensitive defense goods and technology by enhancing australis difference.

So you have across the university sector research with individual foreigners and other nations have now become fraught. There are jail terms you know that are on the table now if researchers share expertise.

And knowledge in a way which might threaten that arrangement.

My view and that of the committees that the bill will support and strengthen the objectives of ORCIST partnership with the United States and the United Kingdom allow on for great opportunities for both industry and individuals engaging in regulated defense articles and services, as well as building a much more robust industrial base.

And last year, a president of the Australian Academy of Science, Chenapatu Jagadish, expressed real serious reservations about the leisureslation's impact on scientific research in Australia especially.

We're more than a third of the.

Postgrade research students are from overseas, so basically many universities are sort of at their idealistic heart, a global enterprise where researchers and academics create bonds with utter nations and it's kind of like a soft diplomacy. So when you have this sort of military complex drawing in academia along with industry, I mean, basically what a lot of people are talking about is how it's binding us to certain countries and not to others.

And there's a real worry about what that might do in.

All sorts of sectors throughout Australian society.

And it's fairly logical that weapons companies would want to be making the most of cutting air je academic reas, but are they involved in other parts of our education system too?

So, I mean I've had these conversations with multiple people, like I spoke to Isaac Boval who is a member of Teachers and Students for Palestine, and he talks about it as been a real whitewashing campaign to have weapons companies in universities and to try and normalize the business that they do. And Isaac Bovo obviously agrees. He says, if you're making money off making weapons, you shouldn't be

To be honest, that's not good enough.

We should already have had a really large degree of transparency around them.

And I thanks so much for your time today.

That's all right, thank you for having me.

Also in the news today. That's whether that Julian Ossange will ever publish confidential documents again. At a press conference yesterday, his wife Stella refused to give a definitive answer, saying that for now, Assange wants to taste real food and enjoy his freedom, but added she believed he would always defend human rights. Stella Assange held the press conference yesterday alongside MP's from the cross Bench and longtime supporters of

Our editor for the.

Last time Scott Mitchell. Sarah mcvee is our head of audio. Eric Jensen is our editor in chief. Mixing by Travis Evans and Atticus Bastow. Our theme music is by Ned Beckley and Josh Hogan of Envelope Portio. This is seven Am. I'm Ashlin McGhee. Thanks for listening.

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