Senator ‘selective in criticism’ of uni rules

Australia’s top university official has hit back at a Liberal senator who said unis restricted free speech.

Monash University’s Margaret Gardner. Picture: Stuart McEvoy.

Australia’s top university official has hit back at a Liberal senator who told an estimates committee hearing that many universities had policies that “actively restrict freedom of speech and stifle intellectual freedom”.

Vice-chancellor of Monash University Margaret Gardner, who also chairs the peak body Universities Australia, rejected Queensland senator Amanda Stoker’s statement that Monash’s social media policy “says that students must not make any comment that offends”.

“It’s a completely inaccurate representation,” Professor Gardner said.

She pointed to the full wording of the policy referred to by Senator Stoker, which says that students must not “make any comment or post material that is, or might be construed to be, racial or sexual harassment, offensive, obscene (including pornography), defamatory, discriminatory towards any person, or inciting hate”.

Professor Gardner said Senator Stoker’s description was a “very selective reading”. She said the policy was about the “sort of respect, courtesy and professionalism you would hope we are ­inspiring in students who are educated here”.

Professor Gardner said it was wrong to suggest the university did not officially endorse freedom of speech.

“We have enshrined in our act (of parliament) an objective which is critical and free inquiry, informed intellectual discourse and public debate within the university and in the wider society. It’s one of the objectives of the university,” she said.

She said that Monash University was not alone in having such principles in its act of parliament.

In the estimates committee hearing Senator Stoker also named other universities with policies that restricted freedom of speech. She said CQUniversity’s student behaviour misconduct policy required students to avoid any behaviour that offended, and applied penalties including compensating another person.

In response, CQUniversity vice-chancellor Scott Bowman said Senator Stoker appeared to have taken the policy out of context and that restrictions were in the context of misbehaviour, not freedom of speech.