Claire Clutterham (Sturt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in support of the Universities Accord (Australian Tertiary Education Commission) Bill 2025. In establishing the Australian Tertiary Education Commission as a steward of the higher education system, the bill implements a key recommendation from the Australian Universities Accord final report of 2024. The review that resulted in that final report was asked to examine Australia's higher education system and create a long-term plan for reform. The overarching theme can be simply stated. If Australia is to prosper in the years ahead, Australian participation, performance and investment in tertiary education needs to improve in order to generate the knowledge, skills and research our nation needs to meet our current and emerging social, economic and environmental challenges. It noted that there were chronic shortages of skilled professionals, including early childhood educators, teachers, aged-care workers, nurses and doctors. Increasingly, Australia is going to need greater numbers of engineers and others to transform our energy grid, advance our manufacturing sector, drive new discoveries and innovations, make our agriculture more sustainable and build new public infrastructure for our growing cities and regions.

The recommendations proposed in the final review were broad, and they were ambitious. In order to successfully implement them, stronger leadership, planning and collaboration than is possible under the current system arrangements will be required, with a far greater emphasis on understanding policy and reform priorities and understanding evidence about the state of the system. So, to implement this broad and ambitious change, the review recommended that the Australian government establish the Australian Tertiary Education Commission, which would be tasked with providing the leadership and stewardship necessary to transform the system. The breadth of the challenge and the breadth of the reform needed to meet the challenge must be coordinated, streamlined and efficient. Without this, reforms will run the risk of being fragmented, out of sync and not fit for purpose. The review delivered 46 other recommendations, but the key one relates to ATEC in that the Australian tertiary education sector needs a dynamic, collaborative and responsive system that serves the national interest. The ATEC, which this bill proposes as a statutory national body to plan and oversee the creation of a high-quality and cohesive tertiary education system to meet Australia's future needs, is what is required.

The recommendation is that ATEC be established under legislation to work collaboratively with tertiary education institutions supporting the tertiary system to meet the needs of students, the community, research users and employers. The review identified that the functions of the ATEC should centre on policy coordination and development, system planning, pricing authority, funding allocation and the negotiation of mission based compacts for universities. It will achieve this by doing a number of things, including delivering on this overarching objective; focusing the system on current and future skills needs; promoting access and opportunity; developing an improved understanding of the cost of delivery for providers and appropriate and fair levels of student contributions; promoting a diverse choice of institutional and study options by fostering a cohesive tertiary education system through the development of sound and sustainable policy; encouraging continuous improvement in tertiary education, research and research training; support for increasing the quality of the tertiary education workforce; and providing expert advice to the government and tertiary education system.

The review also recommended that the commission should be an independent statutory authority answering to the education and skills ministers to enable it to provide robust advice and support evidence-based decision-making and planning. As a system steward, it will work in close collaboration with a broad cross-section of stakeholders within the tertiary education system, including universities but also non-university higher education providers, private VET providers, TAFEs, students, academic and professional staff, employers, industry, unions, bodies representing the various professions, research end users, alumni and all levels of government. The commission will be guided by the national tertiary education objective and charged with responsibility to build and maintain a coalition of stakeholders in order to drive these sector reforms, to identify effective ways to leverage the collective resources of the tertiary education system so it delivers better outcomes and, finally, to ensure that the system itself is responding and agile to meet the needs of a changing society.

In my home state of South Australia, we have recently witnessed the product of the changing needs of higher education with the merger of the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia to become Adelaide University, which will welcome its first students this year. Adelaide University's vision is to be a leading contemporary comprehensive university of global standing that is dedicated to ensuring the prosperity, wellbeing and cohesion of society by addressing educational inequality through both the actions of the university and the success and impact of its students, staff and alumni. By partnering with the community and partnering with industry, Adelaide University is well placed to realise its vision of conducting outstanding future-making research that has focus and scalability. In South Australia, this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity. The new Adelaide University, under the leadership of Vice-Chancellor Professor Nicola Phillips, will be the largest educator of domestic students in Australia and will have the scale and resources to be sustainably positioned in the top 50 universities in the world.

Two significant investments by the South Australian Malinauskas Labor government mean that this new university will be accessible to everyone with the capacity to succeed, regardless of their background. Firstly, there is the state government's $100 million student support fund, and then its foundation as a pre-eminent and world-leading research institution will be cemented thanks to the $200 million research fund. By 2034, the university is forecast to contribute an estimated additional $500 million a year to the South Australian economy. It is forecasted to educate more than 70,000 students, about 13,000 more than both pre-existing universities do today, and it's also forecast to create an additional 1,200 jobs. A globally competitive university that is sustainably positioned to be in the top 50 universities in the world will not only be able to provide high-quality teaching to students of all economic backgrounds but, critically, will be able to secure a greater share of funding for high-quality, targeted research and to work actively and meaningfully with local businesses and industry.

Funding for targeted and meaningful research and development has never been so important. High-quality and targeted research and development, or R&D, that delivers for industry by providing outcomes that are measurable, practical and capable of meaningful execution and implementation are critical to Australia remaining productive and competitive. We know that productivity growth drives economic growth and gains in living standards. We also know that a widely accepted key driver of productivity is innovation and that R&D is a major contributor to innovation activity. R&D is indispensable in today's innovation-driven economy. It acts as the engine that propels technological breakthroughs, spurring the development of new products, services and processes. So when we prioritise R&D, we are better positioned to adapt to market changes, capitalise on emerging trends and drive long-term growth.

R&D is the catalyst for innovation. Investing in research means that new ideas can be explored and novel concepts can be worked on before they are introduced to the market. An exploration of this nature can lead to the discovery of new processes, technologies and materials that can improve and reshape industry. R&D is also a catalyst for economic growth because of the opportunities for new industries and job creation, increasing overall productivity and global competitiveness. It's a catalyst to address global challenges such as health, energy security and climate, with the ability to rapidly innovate and deploy new solutions so we can tackle these complex issues and then scale up commercial implementation and production. This is more important than ever but it's rarely a solitary endeavour.

As the new Adelaide University's vision has articulated so clearly, collaborative efforts between academia, industry and government are crucial for pushing the boundaries of research and development. Collaborative R&D initiatives enable the sharing of knowledge, resources and expertise, leading to more robust and innovative outcomes. Well funded and targeted R&D can lead to improvements in social welfare, quality of life, environmental sustainability, economic growth and job creation and, importantly, national security.

R&D must be a central pillar of national economic and innovation strategies, and these strategies must be prosecuted not only with vigour but with patience because R&D inherently involves risk. Not every research project leads to a breakthrough and many innovations may fail to reach commercialisation. We must be prepared to manage these risks and invest in diverse R&D portfolios to balance the potential for high returns with the likelihood of setbacks. When setbacks are experienced, we must learn from them and continue to invest. Because risk is not only about what could go wrong; it is about what could go right.

In order for these strategies to produce measurable and effective output, access to a skilled workforce is critical. Adelaide University recognises this and this bill, through the establishment of the ATEC, also recognises that. The ATEC will steward the tertiary education sector towards these strategic priorities to meet Australia's skills, knowledge and workforce demands. This can only be achieved with an educated workforce, which is why equity is at the core of the ATEC's work. This bill requires the ATEC to have regard to the objective of improving outcomes for persons facing systematic barriers to education, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, persons with a disability, persons from a low-socioeconomic background and persons living in regional Australia.

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