This text is a fully referenced version of our zine ‘How the University of Melbourne Profits from War’.

*In May 2025 the University of Melbourne’s Brand Management team told us to take down our hand-drawn, creative parody of their logo. It’s extremely ironic, and quite unsurprising, that Unimelb cares more about maintaining their brand identity than addressing the unspeakable realities in Palestine.

Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems—these are just some of the major weapons manufacturers the University of Melbourne has close ties with, all of whom have direct links to Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.¹

This year UniMelb wrapped up a research project with the Australian defence company Rosebank Engineering. The project developed technology for repairing military aircraft, including the F/A-18 Hornet attack bomber and Lockheed Martin’s notorious F-35 fighter jet, which has been used in Israel’s bombing of Gaza.²

As well as direct research funding from 13 different weapons manufacturers, the new Vice-Chancellor of the University, Emma Johnston, has a history of deals with weapons manufacturers. In 2022, she signed a landmark deal with Thales for the University of Sydney.³

UniMelb doesn’t want you to know any of this. When asked about it, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Michael Wesley said, “there are light years between the work that our research is doing and the manufacture of weapons”.⁴

So, why do universities partner with weapons companies?

Follow the Money

The first and most obvious reason is profit ($$$$$). After the Hawke government introduced student fees and started deregulating the tertiary education sector, universities partnered with corporations and focused their research on profitable industries, including one of the most profitable: war.

Research contracts usually involve a cost multiplier, where the uni receives a nice chunk of revenue for itself based on the cost of a project. Commercial university research projects like the ones with weapons manufacturers often have a 3x cost multiplier, meaning that a $200,000 research project requires an additional $400,000 that goes directly to university coffers. The university takes in over $200 million per year from commercial research contracts.⁵

The Uni-Industrial Complex

These are not random, one-off contracts either. UniMelb is structurally tied to the Australian military and the defence of Australia’s “national interests”. For example, UniMelb is heavily involved with AUKUS, the military partnership between Australia, the UK and the US.

You might have heard of the nuclear submarine deal in AUKUS Pillar 1, but did you know AUKUS Pillar 2 seeks to promote collaboration between universities, militaries and weapons companies? This is to “ensure that each nation has the capabilities needed to defend against rapidly evolving threats”.⁶ UniMelb is one of eight Australian universities that AUKUS is funding to conduct research into “cyber offence, naval combat, weapons systems, and electronic warfare”.⁷

In the words of UniMelb’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Mark Cassidy, a big part of this AUKUS deal is to “grow the STEM talent pipeline”.⁸ Or, in other words, to turn the STEM students of today into the war criminals of tomorrow.

Who’s the Enemy?

What are the “rapidly evolving threats” that require universities like UniMelb to play a leading role in the military industrial complex? The stated reason: China.

Think tanks like the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) openly argue the AUKUS partnership is necessary in order to “maintain a technical edge over China”.⁹ This kind of rhetoric is backed by UniMelb’s very own Michael Wesley, who has published articles arguing the Australian government should increase military spending in response to “the collapse of Australia’s defences in a contested Asia”.¹⁰ This is from the same guy who wrote a piece titled “Towards a Realist Ethics of Intervention,” where he advocated for “the just use of coercive force,” and who praised the invasions of Afghanistan and Haiti which killed over 250,000 people.¹¹

But think tanks like ASPI, far from being “independent,” are directly funded by the same weapons manufacturers that profit from these research deals.¹² This is a clear conflict of interest: weapons companies fund think tanks to publish articles about the China threat in order to manufacture consent for more military spending, which leads to research grants that are profitable to both universities and weapons companies. The picture becomes even more sinister when we consider the revolving door of personnel between the university, the government, and weapons manufacturers.¹³

But we have to ask an even bigger question. Everyday, we’re bombarded with media rhetoric like the above about the threat of China. But is China a threat? China doesn’t have military bases stationed around Australia, but the US does, such as Pine Gap— a global intelligence and surveillance network near Alice Springs which assists the Israeli genocide. China hasn’t invaded more than a dozen countries in the last 40 years, but the US has. So, who’s the real enemy?

Conclusion

The recent Palestinian solidarity movements around the world have revealed the dark deals universities are signing with weapons manufacturers, including right here at the University of Melbourne. But while student and faculty protesters have been steadfast in holding the uni to account, UniMelb still has not cut its ties with weapons companies. Instead, at the start of this semester Vice Chancellor Emma Johnston banned indoor protests, in clear response to the pro-Palestinian protests at Mahmoud’s Hall (formerly arts west) last year.¹⁴

We must gear up for another year of rallying against the University of Melbourne’s profiteering off war and genocide. We demand that UniMelb divest not only from weapons companies, but also from conducting R&D for the military, from turning science students into war criminals, and from pumping out “research” that’s really just anti-China propaganda paid for by foreign governments.

The Australian government, along with the US and UK, are using universities to aggressively expand our military capacity in the cold war with China. This doesn’t serve anyone but billionaires, arms manufacturers and the political elite.

It’s time to demilitarise our universities.

Click here for a downloadable A5 pamphlet version of the Zine

Notes

1. Unimelb for Palestine (UM4P) Expose Report, “Unimelb’s Complicity in Genocide: Ties to Weapons Manufacturers”, 2024: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15EQ6I3hMLCH40UdjdIbh7DyBSyH7YD1n ↩︎
2. The University of Melbourne’s research project with Rosebank Engineering: https://dataportal.arc.gov.au/NCGP/Web/Grant/Grant/LP200301355. Rosebank’s work with F-35 jets: https://www.defence.gov.au/news-events/releases/2023-10-30/australia-begins-providing-f-35-wheels-and-brakes-repair-work. The use of F-35s in Gaza: https://www.amnesty.org.au/over-230-global-organisations-demand-governments-producing-f-35-jets-stop-arming-israel/ ↩︎
3. https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/countries-asia/australia/press-release/thales-australia-extends-partnership-university-sydney ↩︎
4. https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/police-given-green-light-to-evict-melbourne-uni-protesters-20240516-p5je9w.html ↩︎
5. https://about.unimelb.edu.au/strategy/annual-reports ↩︎
6. https://www.minister.defence.gov.au/statements/2023-12-02/aukus-defense-ministers-meeting-joint-statement ↩︎
7. https://go8.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/GO8-AUKUS-Capability-Statement.pdf ↩︎
8. https://go8.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/GO8-AUKUS-Capability-Statement.pdf ↩︎
9. https://www.australianforeignaffairs.com/articles/extract/2018/10/dangerous-proximity ↩︎
10. https://www.australianforeignaffairs.com/articles/extract/2018/10/dangerous-proximity ↩︎
11. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ethics-and-international-affairs/article/abs/toward-a-realist-ethics-of-intervention/1B0A2E28F8F68A73FDB2FF5F9BFCD454 ↩︎
12. https://www.aspi.org.au/about-aspi/funding ↩︎
13. Wesley, for example, used to work at the Office of National Assessments (predecessor to the Office of National Intelligence, Australia’s spy agency), and was formerly the Executive Director of the Lowy Institute: https://about.unimelb.edu.au/leadership/senior-leadership/prof-michael-wesley. The Lowy Institute is funded by weapons manufacturers like Boeing and SAAB, huge multinationals like Meta and BHP, as well as by various departments of the Australian government: https://www.lowyinstitute.org/about/funding-support. Consider another Lowy Institute fellow at the University of Melbourne: co-chair of political science Timothy Lynch, who argued in a piece on the Afghanistan withdrawal that “America has been insufficiently war-like”: https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/the-afghanistan-withdrawal-this-is-what-decolonisation-looks-like ↩︎
14. https://about.unimelb.edu.au/strategy/governance/regulatory-framework/legislative-framework/vice-chancellor-rules ↩︎