Ever since ditching the execrable Malcolm Turnbull, the Coalition under Scott Morrison has steadily been turning a paler shade of the deep teal it had become. Although reviled by the left-media as a deep-blue conservative, Morrison is steadily flushing greener as he endlessly panders to the shrill left on issues like climate change.
Perhaps the sole issue on which – thankfully – Morrison has shown some conservative steel is China. Despite endless importuning by a Fifth Column of left ideologues and greedy businessmen, the Morrison government has refused to bow to China’s bullying. More importantly, it is finally starting to flex the foreign interference laws it passed in order to curb China’s silent invasion.
The Morrison government is moving now to curtail one of the biggest risks to Australia’s economy and security: troughing academics lining up to stuff their pockets with taxpayer’s money, just so China can loot their research.
Top scientists at Australian universities have been denied lucrative taxpayer-funded research grants on national security grounds, as the federal government cracks down on projects that could hand military or economic advantage to foreign adversaries.
The Australian can reveal that, in the first decision of its kind, five applicants for Australian Research Council grants were blocked from receiving funding of up to $500,000 a year on the orders of former education minister Dan Tehan.
Expect plenty of squealing from the ivory towers as their river of taxpayer money shows even the slightest sign of abating. But a quick scan of the rejected applications shows just how deeply these academic Quislings were prepared to sell out their country by handing sensitive new technologies to the communist regime. And make no mistake, that’s what would have happened: many of the rejected applicants are believed to be members of Xi Xinping’s “Thousand Talents” program – the industrial-scale theft of intellectual property from the West. Especially military secrets.
One of the rejected grant applications would have funded advanced wireless communications research with applications in “internet of things” devices, radar and satellite systems, and wireless power transmission. Another would have focused on nanotechnology advances with applications in miniaturised optical systems, including wearables, autonomous vehicles, and robots.
Proposed research projects on hi-tech lasers, next-generation electricity networks, and cutting-edge fuel cell technology were also rejected[…]
His successor in the education portfolio, Alan Tudge, said international scientific collaboration was vital for Australia, “but we won’t compromise on our national security under any circumstances”. Mr Tudge and the ARC declined to identify the scientists whose applications had been rejected, but they are believed to include members of the CCP’s Thousand Talents Program, and at least one with links to a top Chinese military university.
The decision follows reports in The Australian last August that revealed dozens of leading scientists at major universities across the country had been recruited to the Thousand Talents Plan, prompting an inquiry by the parliament’s powerful intelligence and security committee[…]
Alex Joske, a former analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told the inquiry that his research suggested CCP talent recruitment activity could be associated with as much as $280m in grant fraud over the past two decades.
Of course, our taxpayer-funded universities have supported the government in its efforts to shore up Australia’s national security against a genocidal communist regime.
And pigs have grown wings in a laboratory in Wuhan.
Universities have resisted new constraints on their ability to work with foreign counterparts. Universities Australia told the inquiry that new regulatory measures should be proportionate to the risk, and not constrain the ability of institutions “to engage, and to collaborate with our international partners”.
The Australian
By which they mean, sell their souls and our country to the Nazi Germany of the 21st century.
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