Chinese student’s visa rejected over fears she could make ‘weapons of mass destruction’

A Chinese student hoping to study at an Australian university has had her visa rejected over fears that one professor called “absurd”.

A Chinese student at an Australian University developing medicines for chronic pain had her visa to undertake a PhD rejected over fears she might develop “weapons of mass destruction”.

University of Queensland Professor Glenn King has spoken out about the “absurd” decision made by the Department of Defence on a new podcast.

As principal research fellow at the university’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience, Prof King leads a team researching the use of venom to treat conditions such as chronic pain and the prevention of heart attacks and strokes.

He described the student as “brilliant” and said she had already done “extraordinary” work. After being rejected by Australia in 2021, she went on to do her PhD in Japan.

Professor Glenn King spoke about the visa rejection on a new podcast. Picture: Group of Eight

“She was coming here to work on developing therapeutics for chronic pain,” he explained on the Group of Eight podcast, which focuses on issues affecting Australia’s eight big research universities.

“Because she was going to be working on venoms, and you can call those things toxins if you like … she was actually declared unfit to study in Australia on that topic because she might be developing weapons of mass destruction.

“It was the most absurd decision I’ve ever heard and shows the complete lack of knowledge at the government level about what the research entailed.”

He said they wrote “many letters” to explain what the research was about but “it fell completely on deaf ears”.

The University of Queensland lost the student to Japan. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Sarah Marshall

Group of Eight chief executive Vicki Thomson, who also appeared on the podcast, said visa problems for researchers was a “perennial issue” in Australia.

“You’ve got people in bureaucracy reading research topics and making decisions – we’re quite concerned about it – on top of serious delays where we’re losing researchers who are sitting waiting for sometimes 12 to 18 months.

“And they’ve been funded by the Australian government. This is the irony: they may be funded by the Australian Research Council to come over and undertake some research as part of a partnership and then another agency of government is holding up their visa.

“So one arm of government funds them and one arm holds the visa up. Of course what that means is, those researchers, they’ll just go elsewhere and we lose that great capacity.”

Ms Thomson said the Chinese national in this case had already completed her honours degree at the University of Queensland and had received a PhD scholarship.

news.com.au has contacted the Department of Defence for comment.