New Federal Legislation Supports Academic Freedom. (September 16, 2011)

The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) has noted that the federal parliament has passed the Higher Education Support Amendment (Demand Driven Funding System and Other Measures). It includes provisions which acknowledge the responsibility of Australian universities to protect and promote "free intellectual inquiry for students, researchers and teachers".

NTEU President Jeannie Rea said:

This provides a legislative foothold for the widely-held view that it is in the public interest for the principle of free intellectual inquiry to apply to all learning, teaching and research activities at Australian universities. It is the NTEU's view that the introduction of these requirements will also enhance integrity, transparency and autonomy in the creation and dissemination of new knowledge.

NTEU would also point out to universities in receipt of public funding that Section 19-115 of the Higher Education Support Act (2008) will now require them to have a policy that upholds free intellectual inquiry in relation to learning, teaching and research. Policies that restrict researchers' decisions as to where or how to publish, or not publish, would therefore not be in the spirit of free intellectual inquiry. In this sense these changes are very timely, as it has come to NTEU's attention that a number of universities have policies that continue to use the now abandoned and discredited ERA journal rankings for the purposes of recruitment, probation, performance management, workload management and promotion.