Drew Pavlou has turned the table on the University of Queensland (UQ), suing the top brass for $3.5 million for defamation and breach of contract:
Drew Pavlou says he is suing the university, its chancellor and vice-chancellor for $3.5 million.
Mr Pavlou filed the claim in the Supreme Court of Queensland today for damages relating to a breach of contract and defamation…
Mr Pavlou told his Twitter followers he was “seeking damages for breach of contract, negligence, defamation, deceit and conspiracy”.
“It’s not about money, it’s about sending a message — a message they understand,” he wrote…
In an earlier tweet, Mr Pavlou said “we are trying to protect the right to free speech on Australian campuses”.
It’s amazing that Australians have had to rely on a 21-year old kid to expose the corruption and Chinese influence at our universities, as well as to protect freedom of speech.
Pavlou has a strong case against UQ, if the observations of Paul Frijters – co-author of the book Game of Mates – are anything to go by:
UQ management is not holding back, or at least, the PR firms and spokespersons they have hired are not holding back.
Aaron Patrick in an The afr article on the case mentions that “A university spokeswoman mocked the student for allegedly being a “virgin” ”
Drew Pavlou claims to have heard from 4 journalists that the PR firms tried to dissuade them from running articles on him by describing him as a “violent racist”.
If true, this would seem both sexual harassment and a clear violation of the rules under which PR firms operate.
I have myself noted that on twitter, there are an awful lot of bot-type responses now oriented towards Drew Pavlou. You know the type: regular western names following 80 generic news cites and with 30 followers, making all sorts of wild accusations and random noise directed towards Drew. This wasn’t there a month ago. It’s very recent.
So there is a no-holds barred professional campaign directed at Drew Pavlou now. Paid for with public money. Openly cheered on by a foreign power, perhaps coordinated with it…
Despite the strange protestations to the contrary by the chancellor and a UQ spokesperson, there is no way the case against Drew was not organised and orchestrated by the two Peters. They have official organisational roles in the disciplinary process, have set up some of those very processes, and of course are involved in executive decisions, such as around hiring law firms to represent the “University’s position” in the Drew case. What other position is that ‘official position’ but that of the chancellor and the vice-chancellor? Has someone stolen their university from underneath them for a year and been running an unwanted campaign against one of their own students without their knowledge? Its a ludicrous lie.
Instead of spending time on that obvious lie though, there are again questions of organisation. Who briefed the hired legal hands and how? Who else in UQ management was involved? Are there minutes of various meetings? Was information shared with the Chinese Consulate? Was action against Drew coordinated with the Chinese Consulate at particular points (and not just merely in those demonstrations: we’d also want to know about some of those complainants)?
There are deeper questions, particularly if one truly thinks of this as treason, as to whom else was in the loop. As my post makes clear, the two Peters are not an island. They operate in a political network that appointed them, profited from them, and backed them up in the many previous scandals of the last 10 years. How were they involved in the Drew Pavlou affair: who in the Brisbane political setting tacitly or explicitly approved of the approach taken towards Drew Pavlou and the operation of the Chinese consulate on the UQ campus?…
If one thinks through what has really happened here, there are a lot threads to pull that are important for many issues around free speech, sovereignty, and academic administration. The Drew Pavlou case in that sense could be used to clean up a lot of problem in Australian academia.
These things have obvious lines of inquiry since these universities and networks have all kinds of middle-men doing the bidding of various people. They normally talk if put under enough pressure. So the people doing the liaising with those PR firms will probably talk about who told them to do what. The HR involved in the investigation around Drew and the complaints university get will also probably squeal if put under enough pressure: they don’t make millions like their bosses and they won’t want to lie in a court of law when the pressure is on…
This evidence of fabrication is a bombshell that will have large consequences, and not just for UQ management. It opens many lines of criminal inquiry that will now almost surely be taken up, I think…
I think it now likely that Hoj and Varghese and others in UQ management are going to have to testify about their roles in these disciplinary matters. Did they put undue pressure on UQ administrators to find or fabricate incriminating stories on Drew and others they wanted pursued? That would seem to me to constitute criminal behaviour…
The whole scandal is worthy of its own Royal Commission.
