Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

This is the re-introduction of a bill that I was privileged to introduce towards the end of the last parliament, and I'm proud to present it here to the House today on behalf of the re-elected Albanese Labor government.

It's an important bill.

It is a reminder of the work that the government did in the last term to help keep students and staff safe on campus.

Last term, we established the National Student Ombudsman—a national first.

With powers similar to a royal commission, its job is to investigate complaints made against a university.

Advocates called for this over many years to address a situation where one in 20 university students reported being sexually assaulted on campus, one in six reported being sexually harassed and one in two reported that they felt they weren't being heard when they made a complaint.

The National Student Ombudsman is just the first step. This bill and its companion bill are the next steps.

They provide for the establishment and enforcement of a National Higher Education Code to Prevent and Respond to Gender-based Violence.

The code will be made by the minister as a legislative instrument and it will set out best-practice standards and requirements that all higher education providers will be required to meet.

It will hold all higher education providers to consistently high standards to proactively prevent and respond to gender based violence.

These standards will be backed by monitoring and enforcement to ensure that we build a culture of compliance in this critical area.

Under the code, all higher education providers will be required to take evidence based steps to prevent gender based violence on their campuses.

This includes requiring that vice-chancellors and CEOs make a whole-of-organisation plan, and report to their governing bodies every six months on the actions that they're taking to implement it.

They'll be required to provide evidence-based prevention education and training to staff and students and consider any history of gender based violence in the recruitment and promotion of staff.

They'll be required to consult with students, staff and people with lived experience, and their approach must be informed by evidence of what works.

The code will also ensure that when the worst happens, students and staff have access to the best response possible, a response that is trauma informed and puts people first—a response that ensures people are heard, have agency in what happens next, have access to the support they need and are supported by their institution to achieve their educational outcomes.

Providers will be required to train staff and student leaders on how best to respond to disclosures.

And non-disclosure agreements will be prohibited, unless requested by a victim-survivor.

Providers will also be required to report de-identified data and measure the changes that their policies are securing, informing compliance, ensuring accountability and contributing to the national evidence base to help us build an understanding of what works best.

The code will also include an enforceable requirement that providers implement the relevant recommendations of the National Student Ombudsman.

This gives the findings and recommendations of the ombudsman real teeth and will make sure that they are put in place to improve our universities and other providers.

University is not just a place where people learn. For many students, it's where they live.

That's why the code will also have specific requirements to help ensure that student accommodation is safe for students.

The code will require that following a disclosure or formal report, measures are immediately put in place to prioritise residents' safety and arrange urgent support services.

And for accommodation which is affiliated with a university but not controlled by it, the university will be required to seek that accommodation provider's agreement to meet the requirements of the code or lose the benefits of their affiliation with the university.

And universities will have an obligation to investigate formal reports of gender based violence even where they occur at student accommodation which is operated by a third party.

If you want to know why that's important, you just have to look at the accounts of sexual assault and mistreatment at university colleges and other on-campus accommodation.

Universities will not have the option of saying a disclosure of gender based violence is a matter for a private college. Where the discloser or respondent is a student or a staff member of the university, the code will require that the university take action, including to provide trauma informed support and to investigate where necessary.

The code was the subject of broad consultation between May 2024 and January 2025, including with victim-survivor advocates, students, the higher education sector, gender-based-violence experts, states and territories and relevant Australian government agencies.

Detailed consultation has taken place through an expert reference group comprising 19 leaders from higher education, gender-based-violence services and the student accommodation sectors and victim-survivor advocates.

The code contains critically important standards and requirements which all higher education providers must follow.

That's why these bills also establish a new regulatory framework with robust compliance monitoring backed by strong enforcement powers.

To monitor and enforce the code, a new specialist gender-based-violence branch is being established within the Department of Education.

The branch will provide guidance, education and advice to support universities and other providers in understanding their legal obligations under the code.

The branch will also be able to exercise a significant range of powers to monitor, investigate and respond to noncompliance with the code and the measures in this bill.

These powers will include issuing requests for information, compliance notices, infringement notices, and powers to require enforceable undertakings and to seek civil penalties and injunctions through a court.

As I mentioned earlier, vice-chancellors and CEOs will be directly accountable for the compliance of their university with the code, including requirements that they report every six months to their governing body.

The bills provide for significant civil penalties where a provider fails to comply with the national code or a compliance notice from the secretary, or fails to keep records or meet their reporting obligations.

Compliance with the national code will also become a quality and accountability requirement for providers under the Higher Education Support Act 2003.

Transparency is important here too.

That's why the bill provides for annual reporting on the gender-based violence branch's operations and performance, which will be tabled in both houses of parliament.

The introduction of the code is part of the Action Plan Addressing Gender-based Violence in Higher Education agreed to by all education ministers in February last year.

That action plan was recommended by a working group of Commonwealth, state and territory governments which my department convened as part of our response to the Australian Universities Accord interim report.

The universities accord underlined the importance of moving immediately to address sexual assault and sexual harassment in our universities, and that's what I have done.

The National Student Ombudsman is now up and running, and these bills are the next steps.

They are concrete examples of this government's commitment to taking on this difficult issue, to listening to the experts and the advocates, and to our students, and to designing, introducing and implementing reform which will make a real difference to the lives of people on our university campuses.

When I introduced this bill for the first time in the last parliament, I thanked the people who were involved in bringing it to the parliament.

It's important to acknowledge them again here today: the universities accord panel; the working group; the expert reference group and education ministers across the country; my colleagues and our respective departments and officers, who worked well together to prepare this reform for the parliament; and most importantly then, and again now, the advocates and the victims-survivors who have fought for this for so long—people and organisations who worked so hard, who devoted their time and their passion to making a change for their fellow students, to make their lives safer.

This work is not finished, but this is another big step forward.

I commend this bill to the House.

Debate adjourned.

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