Senator Matt O’Sullivan – Estimates questions to the ANU regarding Jewish student safety

June 6, 2024

I have met with a number of Jewish Israeli students that came to see me and expressed to me their deep concern about what is going on. The thing that really stuck to me was the fact that these are residential students. I’m old enough to be their parents, and I could not imagine having one of my children away from home living on their own—although they have met new friends—and encountering what they have had to put up with essentially in their home.

Senator O’SULLIVAN: Thank you for highlighting for me on the map where we are talking about, for a visual. I like to situate myself. For my colleagues, I understand the encampment was originally basically the building No. 154, which is in group reference F3, and it has been moved down to adjacent to building No. 13, which is in grid reference F2. Can you just describe to me the encampment in that first location? What are the facilities around that area? What services are offered to students in that area?

Prof. Bell : If you are looking at the map from on top—I can’t do left and right effectively, Senator—and if we were going to F heading towards E, building 155 there is a teaching building, so it has multiple classrooms on the floors above, and on the bottom floor it has a place that sells coffee, bathrooms and vending machines. Building 156 is something called Badgers, a bistro-bar kind of thing, not quite a Union Bar of my youth but we would recognise it.

Prof. Venville : And a health and wellbeing centre.

Prof. Bell : That is in 156, right? So next over to that we have another building that has a gym, and a swimming pool. Underneath it has a bank, a pharmacy and a small grocery store, and the alleyway there, called Joplin Lane, runs between building 155 and building 15; it is kind of a faux laneway. I insult all of my colleagues from Victoria by suggesting that, but we are attempting to have a little laneway there. Building 15 is, of course, a library—again, open most of the time during the study period. Building 154 is partly student support and services and also the best coffee on campus, if I’m allowed to say that, is right there. On the other side, building 152, Fenner Hall, is a residential hall, and 153 is, for those of us that are old—I look at Senator Chisholm and he makes angry faces at me—where the ANU student union used to be. So if you had been on campus in the day, that is where that was. But it is now a theatre and series of teaching buildings. Part of the reason I unfold all of that, Senator O’Sullivan, is to say that it is actually a quite dense area with a range of very different services. In there, there are a couple of public restrooms tucked inside 154 as well as some benches and other things, and an ATM.

Senator O’SULLIVAN: Thank you. It very much sounds like the hub of the campus that you have described like that.

Prof. Bell : It is one of the social hubs of campus. There are others. If you will notice, the map is quite large and, depending on which part of the university’s college system you are in, you would take disagreement that is the hub of everything.

Senator O’SULLIVAN: I have had it described to me that one of the distinguishing features of the ANU is the number of residential students that you have. What is the current number or percentage of the total student population that actually lives on campus?

Prof. Bell : We have 6,480 beds, which, if you look at your map, run your grid reference from A through G on the 5 line, so all at the top of campus, with the exception of building 152, which is also a hall of residence.

Senator O’SULLIVAN: As a percentage of the total student population, what does that work out to be roughly?

Prof. Bell : You know, 6,800 over 21,000. What is that—slightly less than one third?

Senator O’SULLIVAN: And that would be much larger than other universities. Is that right? You have had a focus on attracting residential students, haven’t you?

Prof. Bell : The Australian National University, Senator, certainly has the largest percentage of students that live on campus of an Australian university. And it is a mix in terms of those residential halls as to whether they are undergraduate or postgraduate.

Senator O’SULLIVAN: I have met with a number of Jewish Israeli students that came to see me and expressed to me their deep concern about what is going on. The thing that really stuck to me was the fact that these are residential students. I’m old enough to be their parents, and I could not imagine having one of my children away from home living on their own—although they have met new friends—and encountering what they have had to put up with essentially in their home. I like the fact that in the beginning you said that you really value highly how your students are feeling—I am probably paraphrasing a little there. But these are students essentially in their homes confronting this every day. It is not just in their contact hours that they are having to engage in this. That would be more than anyone should ever have to put up with, but the fact that they are dealing with it at their home is beyond the pale. The other thing that concerns me about your testimony this evening—and thank you for coming—is the fact that this group was moved on because of the fire risk. That is a very legitimate reason to move them down to a more suitable area, but it doesn’t seem to adequately consider the safety of the students that need to go in and out of this hub, where you have major social and service facilities. In Fenner Hall, there could actually be students right there having to put up with and listen to those obscene calls within cooee of where they are trying to lie down, go to sleep and rest. How come the emotional safety of the students was not considered, other than the fire safety?

Prof. Venville : On the emotional safety, we acknowledge the challenge for the students who live on campus and that the encampment, in the middle of Kambri, caused people challenges with going to class and to participate in the life of the university. That is why we are actually managing the encampment. We have asked people in the encampment and the protesters not to use certain terms. We have asked them to take down signs and stickers and to be respectful. And where we have been able to see that they haven’t done that, we have taken action, as we said before, through our disciplinary processes. We are actively managing the situation, the encampment protest, to keep it as respectful as we can. It is challenging, but we feel we have made great progress in being able to keep the encampment respectful. On the other hand, we are also providing support, particularly to our Jewish students but to all our students who live on campus or who don’t live on campus. And I went through the things we are doing for those particular students previously. For example, we have made sure that they have had space where they do feel safe and they can withdraw from the protest when it is happening. Residential staff are also paying particular attention to the students who live on campus and have been very mindful of the challenges they have had and made sure that, when examples of hurtful things have happened in the campus, within the residences, they have asked students to stop doing what they were doing.

Senator O’SULLIVAN: I will finish with this. Can you appreciate, when students hear you say you are having conversations, how that would irritate or concern them when they are walking past, even where they are now? I understand that where they have been moved to it is still a thoroughfare and an area that they have to frequently walk past, particularly if you are going into the CBD. The conversations they are hearing are the taunts from people.

Prof. Venville : Yes, I absolutely appreciate that. They’re happening in many places in Australia, as well as on our campus.

Link to Parliamentary Hansard