A contentious partnership between Monash University and Woodside Energy will end after a campaign by staff and students over concerns about the relationship, but discussions are under way about future collaborations.
The Monash University vice-chancellor, Prof Sharon Pickering, appeared before a Senate committee hearing examining university governance on Wednesday, where she confirmed that the existing partnership is due to end “at the end of this year.”
“It has been abundantly clear through communications with our broader community [that] they expect us to work in alignment with our values and, indeed, to ensure that we are always partnering well,” Pickering said.
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Pickering said the institution was “committed to academic freedom” but also “working in alignment with the values of our university and of our community”, adding that faculty within the engineering school “continue to look at the kinds of partnership work […] whether that be with Woodside or indeed others.”
“In any future partnering arrangement, the expectation is it will be in alignment with our ESG [environmental and sustainability goals] statements and our responsible partnering framework,” she said.
The current partnership agreement, in place since 2019, meant Woodside paid Monash University $43m over seven years and gave the company naming rights to an award-winning, ultra-sustainable building on one of the university’s Melbourne campuses. It was due to expire at the end of this year.
The arrangement has proved controversial, with staff and students in June raising concerns about a Woodside-backed climate conference held at Monash’s Prato campus in Italy featuring the Coalition MP Tim Wilson.
The university’s academic board was advised that the partnership in its current form would not be renewed on Tuesday afternoon and the Woodside Building for Technology and Design would be renamed in 2026.
In separate statements, Monash and Woodside cast the decision as “mutual and respectful” and that the faculty of engineering was “well advanced in discussions about future areas of collaboration with Woodside”.
“The faculty of engineering will continue to be supported to pursue future research and industry collaborations in line with our ESG commitments, our Responsible Partnership Framework and academic freedom,” a Monash spokesperson said.
A Woodside spokesperson said they would “continue exploring ways to build on their decade-long research partnership, with a focus on shared priorities”.
“Woodside and Monash remain in discussions on opportunities for a future phase of the research partnership,” the company said.
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The National Tertiary Education Union’s Monash branch president, Ben Eltham, described the partnership as a “dirty deal” and welcomed its end.
“While Monash University ran glossy advertising campaigns about the ‘endangered generation’, the university was taking tens of millions from a fossil fuel corporation causing that danger,” he said.
Staff and students involved with the campaign to end the partnership described its winding up as both a relief and validation despite what they described as efforts by the university to frustrate attempts to obtain even basic information about what it involved.
They added Monash’s commitment to ESG policies would make it harder to justify future collaborations and said they would keep working to seek full dissociation between the university and fossil fuels.
Carina Griffin, a Monash University climate science student who started Stop Woodside Monash, a campaign group pushing for the institution to end its partnership with Woodside, said the decision showed Monash had “decided to finally listen to staff and students”.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
