University of Canberra launches new Centre of Public Ideas to champion free speech

Top uni chief reveals how Australia’s ability to solve long-term problems has been damaged.

University of Canberra vice-chancellor Bill Shorten.

The director of a new Centre for Public Ideas has warned that “cancel culture’’ and historical ignorance is impeding long-term policy development for the good of Australia.

Public servants and politicians will be encouraged to take history lessons and engage in intellectual debates at a new Centre for Public Ideas at the University of Canberra.

The brainchild of vice-chancellor Bill Shorten – a former union official, Labor Party leader and government minister – the centre will provide a “safe space’’ for debates over long-time public policy dilemmas in health, immigration, taxation, housing and Australia’s relationship with China.

Mr Shorten said the centre would aim to influence policymaking and debate, in a way “informed by history’’.

The university has poached history professor Frank Bongiorno from the rival Australian National University to take up the Donald Horne Professorship as inaugural director of the centre.

“There is a lack of civility in contemporary debate – an incapacity to agree, or to disagree well,’’ Professor Bongiorno said before the centre’s launch in Canberra on Friday.

“In democracies, we have to be able to disagree.

“I see universities as having a deep responsibility to provide spaces where safe disagreement is possible, where people can discuss quite difficult and controversial topics in an environment where they feel they’re not going to be cancelled.’’

Professor Bongiorno warned that identity politics was fuelling intolerance.

“There is obviously polarisation going on in public discourse,’’ he said.

“It’s sometimes blamed on social media, but in fact I think there are broader reasons for the growth of intolerance.

“The conflicts and tension and differences that came out of the 1960s have really become worse over the decades.’’

Professor Bongiorno criticised the trend to pull down or deface statues of public figures such as Captain James Cook, instead of erecting plaques explaining the historical significance and contemporary attitudes.

“I think there is a danger, if you simply get rid of particular monuments or statues, that it can actually induce a kind of forgetting about the past and indeed a kind of historical ignorance,’’ he said.

“I would certainly prefer dialogue, where you’re encouraging conversation and better understanding, rather than elimination.’’

Professor Bongiorno said too much debate about public policy lacks historical context, “as if every problem is being contemplated for the first time’’.

“It’s very rare that a particular problem is cropping up without some kind of precedence,’’ he said.

“What we’re really trying to do in the new centre is to bring some long-term perspective to current decision-making.

“We’ve often forgotten experiments of the past – both successes and failures – so I would like to bring more of that perspective to contemporary debates.’’

Professor Bongiorno said public servants, as well as politicians, will be encouraged to attend the centre for seminars or debates, or to undertake short “microcredential’’ courses designed for decision-makers.

He said the loss of “institutional memory’’ in the public service and among politicians was weakening strategic decision-making.

“I think the busyness of professional life, of politics and the bureaucracy means there probably is a tendency towards situation management – you basically deal with the problem in front of you as best you can with the tools at hand,’’ he said.

“There has also been a longer-term trend against institutional memory and historical perspective, and sometimes perhaps an assumption that the past is a poor guide to the present.

“In fact a lot of the problems we are dealing with are echoing problems of the past – history can provide a useful guidance to dealing with the present.’’

The professorship is named in honour of the late Professor Donald Horne, a former University of Canberra chancellor and leading Australian journalist, editor, academic, historian and public intellectual.

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