Monash University is under fire for an event at its Italian campus jointly organised with Woodside Energy, as staff criticise the institution for hosting “shadowy conferences paid for by fossil fuel corporations” and a lack of transparency around the relationship.
Monash co-hosted a “climate change and energy transition” conference with the gas giant at the university’s Prato campus in June 2024. The conference website, no longer directly available but accessible via the Wayback Machine, shows speakers were invited to submit papers on “the role of climate activism/nimbyism” in “thwarting emissions reductions” and how “activism”, “lawfare” and “cancel culture” were harmful to the energy transition.
Woodside and Monash’s partnership, in place since 2019, gives the company naming rights to a building at one of the university’s Melbourne campuses. The university is one of a number of leading Australian institutions criticised by climate activists for accepting sponsorship from Australia’s biggest oil and gas company.
Lincoln Turner, a senior lecturer in the school of physics and astronomy and part of Stop Woodside Monash, a group of staff and students campaigning to end the partnership, said Woodside was “not even pretending” to transition to clean energy and was instead “doubling down on oil and gas”. “The university should not be continuing this relationship,” he said.
Woodside acted as partner and co-host for the Italian conference, and provided travel grants to some staff and students to attend. Three Woodside employees, including its head of partnerships, were on the conference organising committee, and two attended. Tim Wilson – then a former Coalition MP, who went on to defeat the independent Zoe Daniel and reclaim the seat of Goldstein at last month’s federal election, was a keynote speaker.
According to Monash students and staff, the principal site page for the conference was removed soon after the event.
Turner said it was “highly unusual for a conference to apparently be ‘covered up’, with the website deleted and no trace of papers presented to be found, a matter of weeks after the conference concluded”. He said Stop Woodside Monash had struggled to get answers from university management about the details of its arrangement with Woodside.
An astrophysicist, Simon Campbell, also involved with the group, agreed it appeared the conference had been “deliberately hidden or covered up, since to take a website offline requires someone to actively do that”.
The Stop Woodside Monash campaign is backed by the university’s student association and the National Tertiary Education Union. Its Monash branch president, Ben Eltham, said the union had “deep concerns about the erosion of academic freedom in shadowy conferences paid for by fossil fuel corporations”, particularly at a university he credited with a strong track record on climate and environmental issues.
“Once industry dictates the topics and framing of academic discourse, it’s no longer engagement – it’s simply PR,” Eltham said.
A Woodside spokesperson said its contribution to the conference was funded through its partnership agreement with Monash and that the speaker program had been collectively decided by the organising committee.
“Central to the conference was discussion on how climate change policies interact with economics, energy security, social policy and governance,” the spokesperson said.
“The conference underscored the need for a holistic approach that embraces diverse perspectives and solutions.
“It also highlighted the need for collaboration among academia, industry and government to overcome political polarisation and ensure inclusive decision-making processes.
“By fostering dialogue and knowledge exchange, the conference aimed to pave the way for more effective and sustainable solutions to the climate crisis.”
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Monash did not respond to detailed questions from Guardian Australia about the conference or the university’s relationship to Woodside but a spokesperson said the partnership was up for review this year.
The university said that it supports “Woodside’s transition to net zero by 2050” and was “working to support Woodside to lead in producing, transporting and utilising hydrogen, ammonia and other fossil fuel substitutes at the scales required to transition to a net zero carbon future”.
Woodside is also pursuing new and extended fossil fuel developments. In late May the federal government said it planned to approve an extension to the working life of the North West Shelf gas processing facility on the Burrup peninsula in northern Western Australia until 2070. The company plans to develop the $16bn Scarborough gas field and the $30bn Browse basin development to feed the facility for decades.
Guardian Australia spoke to several staff, including some not involved with Stop Woodside Monash, who did not wish to be named for fear of professional retaliation or because they know researchers involved in the partnership. They said they were concerned about a lack of transparency from university leadership, risks to academic independence, the politicisation of the academy, and harm to Monash’s reputation for work in areas including climate, environment and ecology.
“They [the university] are treating us like idiots, basically,” one said.
John Cook, a senior research fellow at the University of Melbourne who studies greenwashing, and a former academic at Monash, described such partnership arrangements as a “much more insidious form of misinformation”.
“One way companies greenwash themselves is through association with universities like Monash,” Cook said.
“That’s why [Woodside are] doing it, for the halo effect they’re getting for being part of Monash.”
