Basem Abdo (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the bills that are before the House: the Universities Accord (Australian Tertiary Education Commission) Bill 2025 and the Universities Accord (Australian Tertiary Education Commission) (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2025. The legislation before us gives effect to a central recommendation of the Australian Universities Accord—a serious, long-term blueprint for reforming Australia's tertiary education system—and reflects the government's commitment to education as a public good and a national priority. It was the determination of successive Labor governments to open the doors of education to working families—to make university and TAFE attainable for people without wealth, privilege or connections.

The Albanese Labor government's objective to expand access to higher education for the many, not just the privileged few—whether it be VET, TAFE or university—is not only core to our Labor values but critical for communities like mine, where participation in higher education, like in many outer suburban and regional areas, isn't a given. I want to acknowledge the Minister for Education, Jason Clare, and the leadership he has shown in this space. I know the minister works tirelessly to help open up opportunities for people in the outer suburbs right across this country. As the minister has said, this reform is about building foundations that will last for decades and ensuring that opportunity in this country continues to widen, not narrow.

In February 2024, the government released the final report of the Australian Universities Accord. The accord makes clear that, in the decades ahead, around 80 per cent of jobs in Australia will require a certificate, diploma or degree. That means more people at TAFE, more people at university and more people moving between the two across their working lives. But the accord is equally clear that this will not happen by accident. It will only happen if we break down two big barriers. The first is the artificial barrier we have built between vocational education and higher education. The second is the invisible barrier that stops too many young people from poorer families, from the outer suburbs and from the regions and the bush from getting to university at all.

The equity gap is stark: 69 per cent of young Australians from wealthy families have a university degree, but only 19 per cent of young Australians from those less fortunate do. This gap extends beyond university: 87 per cent of young people from wealthy families have either a TAFE qualification or a university degree, as opposed to only 59 per cent of young people from those less well off. That means more than 40 per cent of young Australians from families less well off do not have the qualifications they will need in the decades ahead. This is not a failure of aspiration; it is a failure of access.

That is why the accord recommended the creation of a strong, independent steward of the tertiary education system, and that is why this government committed to establishing the Australian Tertiary Education Commission. The minister has observed—and I think it captures the scale of this reform:

As someone said to me the other day, the ATEC is the accord.

The accord is big. It is a blueprint for the next decade and the one after that.

This legislation will establish the positions of Chief Commissioner, First Nations Commissioner and a third commissioner. These commissioners will have to report to the Minister for Education and the Minister for Skills and Training to ensure that the two most common streams for higher education are working together to strengthen our tertiary education system. It is about ensuring that decisions made today do not close doors tomorrow. It is about recognising that access alone is not enough—that participation, retention and success matter just as much. That is why the ATEC's role in monitoring equity outcomes, advising on funding settings and publishing an annual state of the tertiary education system report is so important, because, without transparency, inequity becomes invisible, and, when inequity is invisible, it is easily ignored. This reform puts equity at the centre of system design, not as an afterthought but as a core responsibility.

The ATEC will strengthen quality teaching and learning and internationally competitive research; it will ensure the system has the capacity and capability to meet Australia's current and future student, skills and workforce needs; it will increase equitable access, participation and success; it will promote coordination and collaboration between governments, providers, industry, employers, unions and the public; it will recognise and strengthen the role of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the tertiary education system; and it will improve coordination between higher education and the VET system. This is about planning, coherence and fairness. These reforms are practical.

An interim Australian Tertiary Education Commission commenced operations on 1 July 2025, laying the groundwork for the permanent commission established by this legislation. The work of the commission has been about lifting the accord off the page and into practice—testing systems, building capability and preparing the sector for the long-term stewardship role the ATEC is designed to play.

We also need to be honest about why this reform is necessary: because, over almost a decade of Liberal-National coalition governments, Australia's tertiary education system was not just neglected but actively undermined. In 2017, under a Liberal government, the Commonwealth moved to cut $2.2 billion from universities, predominantly through a two-year freeze on Commonwealth Grant Scheme funding for teaching and learning. This freeze did not require legislation. It was announced through the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook after the Senate blocked an earlier package of even deeper cuts and fee increases. While those opposite at the time claimed it was not directly capping student places, the reality was obvious to everyone in the sector. If funding does not grow when enrolment grows, universities are pushed to do one of two things: cap places or cut quality. As Universities Australia said at the time, the freeze amounted to a real cut in funding once inflation was taken into account and an even deeper cut for universities serving growing outer suburban and regional communities.

The coalition also moved to lower the student loan repayment thresholds, increase repayment rates and introduce lifetime caps on student borrowing, measures that fell hardest on graduates from modest backgrounds, impacting their ability to establish themselves in the workforce. The Group of Eight described the sector being treated as a 'cash cow to be milked for budget cuts', rather than as a national asset critical to productivity and opportunity. It was students in the outer suburbs, in the regions and in working-class communities who paid the price—the very Australians who were already least likely to have a degree.

This is not ancient history. It's the recent past, and it is precisely why this government is rebuilding a system based on access, equity and long-term stewardship, not short-term savings and silent cuts. Since coming to office, the Albanese Labor government has already implemented 31 of the 47 recommendations of the Universities Accord report in full or in part. We have more than doubled the number of university study hubs, not only in the regions and the bush but, for the first time ever, in our outer suburbs. These hubs are about breaking down that invisible barrier.

In Broadmeadows in my electorate, I am immensely proud of the establishment of the Northern Study Hub, powered by La Trobe University. For years, capable students in my community faced a simple but powerful barrier: distance and access—long travel times, high transport costs, and work and care responsibilities. The university study hub in my community is changing that. It allows local students to study close to home, connected to academic support and wraparound services, without hours spent commuting. This is what access looks like when policy meets place.

We have expanded free university bridging courses, investing an extra $1 billion over 10 years. We have introduced paid prac for teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work students—targeted, means tested support for people who need it most. We have expanded medical places and opened new medical schools. We have scrapped the unfair 50 per cent pass rule. We have introduced a demand-driven system for Indigenous students wherever they live, and we are already seeing the impact. We have also delivered the biggest cut to student debt in Australian history. We capped indexation. We wiped billions off student debt. We moved to a marginal repayment system that is fairer and gentler. As Professor Bruce Chapman has said, this is 'the most important thing that's happened to the system in 35 years'. For my community, it has provided much needed debt relief to over 24,000 student loan holders in my electorate.

This government's commitment to breaking down barriers to accessing higher education goes beyond the university campus. Free TAFE is a model of what the Albanese Labor government stands for. It provides real cost-of-living relief whilst also advancing opportunities for Australians to get the skills they need to enter the workforce or to reskill and upskill, which is as important. Whether it's a young person leaving school and beginning their journey into higher education towards a career or someone being retrenched in middle age—which is a difficult experience but, when those opposite were in charge, regrettably not an uncommon one in my electorate. They dared our automotive makers to leave, which saw thousands of workers across Melbourne's north held back and left behind.

Free TAFE and our TAFE system in general has been the strong driver of economic participation in communities like mine. My electorate of Calwell has seen major changes to its industrial base with the fall of the automotive industry. We saw Ford and a raft of employers and small businesses across the manufacturing supply chain close down, which caused job losses for thousands. The Liberals smoked our industry and smoked to it. So, when workers need to reskill and find their feet again in the workforce to regain the dignity of work and provide for themselves and for their families, initiatives like this are a necessity.

We value education, we value TAFE and free TAFE, we value skills, we value jobs and industry, and we value opportunity—unlike the Liberals, who have a motto enshrined in policy from the top down, in education, health and right across the board, that if you don't pay for something you don't value it. It's important that we enact reform across both the TAFE and university sectors together. The ATEC will bring all this together. It will craft mission based compacts with universities; it will provide independent, expert advice; it will take responsibility for the Higher Education Standards Framework; and, every year, it will publish a state of the tertiary education system report—independent, transparent and accountable.

This bill represents the next chapter in the long story of Labor reforms. The first Universities Commission was established in 1943 by the Curtin Labor government. It was strengthened in later decades because leaders understood that education is central to our nation-building. We have a similar opportunity before us today. This debate is not just about universities as they exist today. It is about the Australia we are building for the next decade and the one after that: a country that wants to manufacture more of what it needs; a country that wants to train its own teachers, tradies, doctors, nurses, engineers and scientists; and a country that wants to compete globally while remaining fair at home. None of that is possible without a strong, accessible and well-planned tertiary education system, and none of it is possible if we allow short-term savings to undermine long-term capability.

This legislation rejects that short-termism. It chooses planning over drift, equity over exclusion and national interest over political convenience. It's an opportunity to build foundations for the next decade and the one after that, to open the doors of opportunity wider than they are today and to ensure that people in my community are not locked out of their potential. That is what this legislation does, and I'm proud to support it. I commend the bills to the House.

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