Law academics trying to divide us along racial lines
To be blunt, what is ‘Indigenous law’? Australia is a sovereign nation with one set of laws and a large majority rejected racial separatism at the voice referendum.
The job advert says only Indigenous people may apply for the gig as director of Melbourne Law School’s Indigenous Law and Justice Hub. That’s not quite correct.
It seems only Indigenous people with a certain sort of politics – specifically someone wedded to politics of separatism – may apply. Lidia Thorpe, are you free after your gig in the Senate runs dry? It’s plain as day an Indigenous person who may share the political, social and cultural outlook of, say, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price need not apply.
Instead, universities are using special exemptions from the equal opportunity laws to get taxpayers to fund jobs in law schools that have more to do with politics than law. The move to indigenise law school curriculums is a carefully orchestrated campaign endorsed by the Council of Australian Law Deans, unwittingly funded by taxpayers, to spread separatist politics in our law schools, with no accountability by the former to the latter. Go figure.
That’s a shame. If special exemptions from the usual anti-discrimination provisions are to be used, the country could sure do with more Jacinta Prices in positions of influence.
This latest job description at Melbourne Law School, for example, calls for an Indigenous person who will “revolutionise Indigenous law and justice scholarship whilst championing curriculum development and decolonisation efforts. The director will play a pivotal role in effecting systemic legal and policy change.” We should be grateful that “an appropriate degree in law or a relevant field” is a prerequisite.
Mind you, the downward trajectory of some law degrees means a law degree soon won’t carry the same weight it once may have.
The bigger question is why are taxpayers paying for law schools to employ political activists who are intent on driving a political wedge into the country?
The previous director of the Indigenous Law and Justice Hub was Eddie Cubillo, who had a radical plan for the indigenising project at Melbourne Law School. His ambition was that “Indigenous law … should be a core subject taught to the new generation of lawyers”.
As this column explored at length a few weeks back, it is far from clear why “Indigenous law” should be a core subject for the simple reason that Australians, regardless of race, religion, gender and other traits, are governed equally by Australian laws, meaning the common law and legislation enacted by our state, territory and federal parliaments.
In fact, it seems we are paying for academics to advocate for two systems of law. Cubillo, for example, was not shy about ambitions to challenge “settler law”. But what is to be put in its place? To be blunt, what is “Indigenous law”?
We asked Melbourne Law School dean Michelle Foster whether she agreed that “Indigenous law” should be a core subject. We received no response.
Taxpayers, students and parents deserve far greater transparency from vice-chancellors who, as university administrators, are responsible for the indigenisation of curriculums that is under way at many universities. If we are funding the transformation of parts of our law schools into political lobby groups, it’s only proper to tell us. And how are activists to be held to account if they go too far? Indeed, how far is too far? Is academic freedom being reinterpreted to mean the freedom to dispense politics in the classroom, with no room for dissent?
As we reported last month, Macquarie University law school students studying a subject called Age and the Law were required by Associate Professor Dr Holly Doel-Mackaway to deliver an acknowledgment of country earlier this year. The marking rubric stated they could fail this part of the assessment if they didn’t deliver the acknowledgment with sufficient fervour.
We asked chancellor Martin Parkinson, vice-chancellor Bruce Dowton and members of the Macquarie University council three simple questions: do they approve of this practice at their law school? If so, what is the justification for this? If not, what steps are they taking to stop this practice?
Simple questions for people with dozens of degrees between them and a vice-chancellor sitting on a taxpayer-funded salary of more than $1m. No response.
Only after this newspaper exposed the compulsory acknowledgment of country did Dowton announce a review into the practice. This week, three weeks later, Macquarie announced that assessing an acknowledgment of country “was not appropriate”. Normal people knew that from the start. Has the academic been admonished for a little too much compulsory indigenising of the curriculum?
At the University of Queensland, where the vice-chancellor collects a salary of $1.154m, there was a similarly limp response after we exposed legal academic Dani Linder berating first-year law students who walked out of a class early for “protesting against my inclusion of Indigenous perspectives”. Linder warned students she remembered their faces and they should “watch out what you say and what you do” if they wanted to do well in their law degree.
We asked UQ chancellor Peter Varghese, vice-chancellor Deborah Terry and the other 19 members of the UQ senate whether they supported Linder’s conduct in that class of first-year students. Another very simple question. We also guided them to Linder’s lecture, readily available online, should they wish to view it before responding. They said, you guessed it, nothing to see here.
After the story broke, the same “leadership” team decided to do something. They told us “be assured the matter has been taken seriously, all available information considered, and appropriate action is under way”.
We asked the VC and chancellor this week what action was under way. The VC told Inquirer “a number of (Dr Linder’s) comments were not appropriate”. Again, regular folk knew this from the start.
The UQ VC also said: “Please be assured that after becoming aware of the issue through recent articles, the matter has been taken seriously. The university has raised its concerns with Dr Linder and taken appropriate action … I would encourage students to report any inappropriate behaviour to the university or anonymously through our established online complaints process.”
The project to indigenise the law school curriculum continues apace. When this project was under the radar, VCs and chancellors were able to turn a blind eye to obvious concerns. It’s now out in the open. Even job adverts are being read by a wider group than just Indigenous applicants wanting to decolonise the law school curriculum. The salaries of VCs are in the spotlight, too – did we mention that Melbourne University VC Emma Johnston is on a wicket of about $1.5m?
Just as 1+1=2, these two issues – politicisation of academia and abuse of taxpayer funds – demand serious accountability (and, dare we say, serious leadership) from the men and women running our taxpayer-funded universities.
Academics may like to think they live in another world. They don’t. The overwhelming majority of Australians who voted No in the voice referendum will think, based on sound evidence, that they sent a clear and unmistakeable message. Australia is one country with a single exclusive sovereign government. The separatism and separate governance Indigenous activists seek is not for us.
That was despite the best efforts of many academics. At the University of NSW, legal academic Megan Davis and her Indigenous Law Centre were front and centre during the voice debate. Her colleague Gabrielle Appleby was busy making the legal case for the voice as an instrument of co-governance. In a January 2023 article she co-wrote with Australian National University academics Ron Levy and Helen Whalan, these three academics claimed Australia was suffering from a “constitutional legitimacy crisis”.
“There may be no widely agreed source of ‘sociological legitimacy’: no common perception, among the people or peoples in a jurisdiction, as to which foundational laws and institutions are legitimate and authoritative, and why,” they wrote.
Though some activist academics may not like Australia’s constitutional arrangements, most Australians saw no legitimacy crisis. When the academics said the voice was “a structural mechanism through which First Nations can exercise their sovereignty and self-determination”, most Australians saw only an attempt to divide the country along racial lines.
It’s disappointing to learn that many Australian law schools, deeply infected with critical rights theories and obsessions with “settler colonialism”, are using taxpayer money to campaign for separatism, dual governance and indigenous self-determination. These academics and the VCs who embolden them are effectively giving the majority of Australians the middle finger. Some of the worst ones are the so-called biggest group of eight universities. Is this how we want tax dollars spent?
If academics want to campaign for Indigenous separatism, they are welcome to do it on their own dime. Many other Australians may want taxpayer-funded universities to focus on the non-partisan, apolitical pursuit of knowledge.
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There is a job going at the University of Melbourne law school paying upwards of $226,000 a year. The position comes with plenty of benefits, subsidies for health and wellbeing services, fitness and cultural clubs, public transport concessions and 25 per cent discounts off graduate courses for staff and their immediate families.