Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister Assisting for Fisheries and Forestry) | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I wish to draw your attention to the state of the House.

(Quorum formed)

Matt Smith (Leichhardt, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026. This bill is a lot of things—a future for our universities, more opportunity for our uni students, better outcomes for Australia—but it's important to remember that these laws are part of a much larger body of work. In February 2024, the government released the final report of the Australian Universities Accord. It's a blueprint for higher education reform over the next decade and the decade after that. The universities accord says that, over these next few decades, we'll need to increase the number of people in the workforce with a certificate or a diploma or a degree to about 80 per cent. That means more people at TAFE. That means more people at university. We need to take action now to make sure our tertiary education system is set up to deliver the skills that the future of Australia requires.

The Albanese government has implemented more than 30 of the accord's 47 recommendations in full or in part. This includes things like making HECS fairer with a 20 per cent reduction and changes to the way the marginal threshold repayment is made, introducing paid prac for the first time, and doubling the number of university and study hubs. All these things are great, but they're all very abstract when they're read out.

I grew up in a town where the options were basically 'you go work on the rigs' or 'you go away for university', and that was kind of it. A lot of guys did the rigs. A few guys did university. One of my mates became the first person from his family to go to university, and now he's the CEO of a company in Perth. That's a long way from Sale. When we were in year 12, back in the late nineties—I've just aged myself—his mother was having a conversation with my mother. My family are all tertiary educated. What his mother didn't know was: How was he going to get to school? What was it going to be like? What were his opportunities going to be? What did this mean for her and her family? And she didn't care, because, whatever it was going to take, she was going to get her eldest son to university. He got there and he excelled. His children will go and so on and so forth.

This is about providing opportunity. Sometimes, in the regions, we don't always see the opportunity that is available in the cities, because we're further away, because of geography, because of a whole bunch of reasons. That's why, in the last few weeks, there have been a lot of really exciting announcements up in the Far North. There was the opening of the Yeinie Building by JCU. Cairns is lucky; we have not one but two world-class universities. Now, at JCU in Cairns, you can become a doctor from go to whoa—right the way through. And we know this for sure: if you train in the regions, you stay in the regions. This is a great outcome.

On top of that, just last week, the sod was turned for the new CQU campus in Cairns. This will be offering a plethora of allied health opportunities: medical imaging, OT, speechies, pharmacies—all of the things that we're told every day are needed in the bush. People will come from Cairns. They'll fall in love with the Far North. They will stay and they'll deliver health outcomes for the region. It's also doing engineering. The great thing about that, though, is that no-one has to leave. Everyone gets to stay. That is an important part of the education process. I want my daughters in Cairns to believe that their future belongs in Cairns, that they can go to university in Cairns and that they'll stay and make the Far North a better place.

Speaking of openings in the Far North, I was on Thursday Island very recently with Minister Giles. We visited the Thursday Island TAFE, which opened just a couple of years ago. It was really exciting because it had been doing a bit of health work and stuff, a bit of nursing stuff but now you can complete your diploma of nursing on Thursday Island right the way through. You can stay there and go straight into the hospital or one of the many health clinics that are on the 17 islands right across the Torres Strait and the Cape, and that's really important. For people in regional areas, particularly remote regional areas, travelling away is difficult. If you live in a place where there are no traffic lights and you move to Sydney for higher education, that's a bit of whiplash.

I was in the Daintree a few weeks back and I had to go to Sydney for a committee hearing. It gave me whiplash—a lot of big shiny buildings, a lot of noise, a lot of traffic. For a young kid who is 17 or 18 years old, to have to try to cope with that is really hard. It leads to dropping out and leads to people not completing what they've started. A bit of homesickness makes it harder. This investment in trying to get regional kids to be able to study near home, be it through the study centres, be it through TAFE, be it through university, is so important to give those opportunities where people are and to make sure that the people who get those opportunities stay in those areas, the places they belong. I'll give you a tip about country kids, and I know you know this, Deputy Speaker Boyce: country kids want to be in the country. We don't like cities. It's not who we are. It's not what we're used to. You want wide open spaces. You navigate by the tree or the hill or the creek; you don't go by 'big silver building third on the left'—they all look the same.

I'm excited to commend this bill. I'm excited about the future of regional education. I'm excited about fee-free TAFE and what that means. I'm excited about all those new nurses who've taken the opportunity with the paid prac and fee-free TAFE, who've taken mid-career breaks. I met a woman named Terri at the Cairns TAFE, who, for a variety of reasons, had fallen into admin work. Life had taken her away from her dream as a child. Then with fee-free TAFE, she put her hand up in her 50s. She's an enrolled nurse now. She's walking the halls at Cairns Base Hospital as we speak, doing the things she wanted to do as a little girl.

I have a litmus test for jobs—that is, if you can go to Kmart and you can buy a kid's outfit for that job then that's a job that people are going to want to do going forwards, like carpentry, police, fire, nursing. These kids get to be who they want to be, what they wanted to be as a four-year old because of fee-free TAFE, because of university in the regions. I think that a lot of people would love to go back to their four-year-old selves, five-year-old selves, and take them by the hand and go, 'Look, we've done this. It might have been a circular route. It might have had a few speed bumps along the way but, because the government is investing in the education of regional people, now we are doing what we wanted to do as a young'un,' and their parents will be proud.

To see it in Terri's face is to understand what that meant to her, what it meant to her family. Because of paid prac, she had that safety net. She didn't have to sleep in her car—as we sometimes hear—or live on those two-minute noodles. She was able to get sustenance. She was still able to get her kids to school. With all of the things involved in her day-to-day life, TAFE supported her to live out her best version of herself. In her being the best version of herself, she improved the lives of countless Far North Queenslanders because she is going to work every single day excited. She's not going to burn out. She's not ever going to be, 'Oh, I don't want to do this,' because she waited 50 years to do it—a half century, a lifetime. But she got there in the end, and I couldn't be prouder to be part of a government that has provided that to her. It goes beyond the story of Terri.

Minister Giles related the story of Ash, one of the first people who will be graduating from the Thursday Island TAFE as an enrolled nurse. He can go back to Darnley and work in the health clinic there and be a part of his community and be a part of the change to make sure that those comorbidities that we're seeing so often in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are got on top of, because we know that community wants to listen to community first and foremost. They don't want locums. They don't want people flying in, flying out. They do a great job; don't get me wrong. But you want to have your own telling you, helping you through, showing you and guiding you in a way that you understand, that works with your culture and that works where you live. That's not unique to Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander communities. That's right across the gamut. People want to know from people like them. Country people want to hear from country people about what's right for them.

That's what this bill does. It provides the regions with the workforce moving forwards that will allow us to thrive. We are the beating heart of Australia. We generate the food. We generate the energy. We generate the heart. The more workers that we have, the more education that we have, the better off Australia will be because of this. This bill opens so many doors. Your education and your health are everything. This is such a big part of this, and I commend this bill to the House.

Alison Penfold (Lyne, National Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I thank the government for enabling me to continue the speech that I started here several weeks ago. For a young person growing up in Taree, Wingham, Gloucester, Dungog, Harrington, Tea Gardens, Bulahdelah, Forster-Tuncurry, the Manning Valley or one of the many hamlets spread across the Lyne electorate, pursuing a university degree has traditionally meant moving away from home, leaving family support networks behind and taking on significant additional costs before they even begin their studies. This is my story too. I grew up in Hannam Vale, attended school in Taree and then had to move to Canberra to attend the Australian National University. That opportunity changed my life, but it came at a cost, and for too many regional families those costs remain a barrier today.

Research undertaken before the establishment of the Taree Universities Campus found that fewer than 18 per cent of people in the Mid North Coast region completed a university qualification. Many young people who left to study built careers elsewhere and never returned, contributing to workforce shortages in health care, education and other critical sectors. That challenge inspired local leaders to think differently, and that is where the story of the Taree Universities Campus begins. I want to acknowledge the work of the former member for Lyne, the Hon. Dr David Gillespie, who was instrumental in supporting the establishment of the Taree Universities Campus through the regional university centres program. Together with local community leaders, he recognised that, if we wanted more regional Australians, more local people from the Manning Valley and Great Lakes area, to participate in higher education, we needed to bring opportunity closer to home.

Today, the Taree Universities Campus stands as one of the great regional education success stories in Australia. Its mission is simple: go further, closer to home. It provides local students with study spaces, technology, academic support and a community that helps them succeed while remaining connected to their families, workplaces and communities. The campus serves a region of around 94,500 people. It's not simply a study hub; it's a workplace development hub. Its model focuses on encouraging participation in higher education, supporting students through their studies and helping graduates move into local employment and careers. The success of TUC is also reflected in its broader community impact. TUC has a strong connection to local high schools in the area and holds a CareerQuip careers expo every year, which attracts over 1,800 students from across the mid coast and features more than 70 exhibitors, including universities, TAFEs, government agencies and employers. That is exactly the kind of aspiration-building initiative that regional Australia needs.

I also want to acknowledge the broader higher education ecosystem serving our region. The University of New England has maintained a presence in Taree and has been educating regional Australians for generations. The University of Newcastle has a long and proud history in our region. Charles Sturt University's Port Macquarie campus is helping train the nurses our community needs. Central Queensland University is creating pathways into teaching, engineering, business and accounting, and UNSW continues to expand opportunities for students on the Mid North Coast, including providing medical degrees in our region. These institutions understand the simple truth: talent is evenly distributed across Australia; opportunity is not.

The coalition recognises the success of the Taree Universities Campus model. That is why we committed $5.5 million towards the TUC expansion project. This funding did what few imagined, providing a permanent home for TUC in the old Greater Taree City Council chambers on Pulteney Street. That investment supports expanded teaching and learning facilities, has strengthened workforce development pathways and created additional opportunities for local students to study close to home. It's an investment in education. It's an investment in our local health care. It's an investment in regional skills and an investment in closing the gap for local Biripi and Worimi peoples. It was an investment in the future prosperity of the Manning Valley.

There is another issue that goes directly to the heart of educational opportunity in regional Australia. There is little point in creating a university place if a student cannot afford to stay the course, and there is little point in talking about widening participation if we ignore the financial realities facing students undertaking mandatory professional placements. In fact, this issue is one of the clearest examples of why regional voices matter in policy development.

Several years ago, while I was attending O-week at Charles Sturt University in Port Macquarie, I spent time speaking directly with students about the challenges they faced. Again and again, allied health students raised a simple issue. It wasn't HECS. It wasn't about course fees or academic workload. It was about mandatory professional placements. Students told me they were expected to leave paid employment for weeks or months at a time in order to complete placement requirements.

Many were travelling long distances. Many were paying for temporary accommodation but were still paying for rent at home. Many were losing income at precisely the point they needed it most. They described the impossible choice between earning a living and completing the practical training required to graduate, and those conversations stayed with me. They weren't complaints; they were just practical observations from students trying to build careers in professions that regional Australia desperately needs.

Those discussions helped shape what is now Nationals policy. We took those conversations. I worked with the Young Nationals. We developed a motion that is now part of our Nationals policy platform, and that is to support extending Commonwealth prac payments to allied health and veterinary students. We welcome the introduction of the Commonwealth prac payments for nursing, teaching, midwifery and social work students, but we have been clear that the job is not finished, because placement poverty does not stop at nursing or teaching.

A physiotherapy student faces the same loss of income. An occupational therapy student faces the same accommodation costs. A speech pathology student faces the same financial pressures. A psychology student faces the same challenge. A veterinary student travelling to complete rural placements faces the same reality, and we sure need those big animal vets in regional Australia. If we're serious about increasing participation in higher education and addressing workforce shortages, then Commonwealth prac payments should be extended to allied health and veterinary students.

I wrote that part of the speech before the government made the announcement, and I thank the government for the commitment it made in July to extend to an additional 10 allied health disciplines. I've certainly been vocal in this chamber when there have been questions to the minister in question time. I hope you've heard me on the other side. I'm not going to claim that that's the result. You certainly heard me about the Taree urgent care clinic! I'm waiting for that one! I'm waiting for that result! We're getting something for allied health.

There is still further to go on this, but I acknowledge the government's response on this issue. I know that it will be welcomely received by students at campuses in the Lyne electorate. Opportunity is not simply about getting into university; opportunity is about being able to finish, and that's why those prac payments are very important.

This brings me to the legislation before the House, the Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026. The coalition has not yet finalised its position on this bill and will refer it to a Senate committee for detailed examination. Our final position will be informed by the evidence received through that process.

This bill makes significant structural changes to Australia's higher education system. At its core, it does four things. It allows the minister to determine the total pool of Commonwealth supported places to be allocated through ATEC. It allows the minister to determine the total pool of international student places. It gives the minister powers to allocate places directly, impose conditions on providers and issue directions to ATEC. It also establishes a needs based funding system, with many of the key details ultimately determined through ministerial guidelines.

The common thread running through each of these reforms is the expansion of ministerial control. This bill represents a significant transfer of authority from universities and higher education providers to the executive government. Now, some of these powers could be used constructively. They could be used to address regional workforce shortages. They could be used to increase opportunities for regional students. They could be used to support private higher education providers and improve access in areas that have historically been underserved. But parliament should not simply assume that, because they might be used wisely, powers should be granted without scrutiny.

The bill gives the minister substantial influence over domestic student places, international student places, needs based funding and the conditions imposed on higher education providers. Many of these decisions will not be subject to parliamentary disallowance, many will not be subject to merits review and many will depend heavily on ministerial discretion. That raises legitimate questions about accountability, transparency and oversight. It also raises questions about competition and institutional autonomy.

Competition between universities is not something to fear. Competition encourages institutions to improve quality, student experience, course offerings, academic reputation and graduate outcomes. Universities should remain accountable for public funding, but they should also retain the flexibility to respond to student demand, local workforce needs and emerging opportunities. That is particularly important for regional Australia, and that is why one of the first tests of these new powers should be whether the government is prepared to use them to support communities like mine.

If the minister is to have greater control over Commonwealth supported places, then I would suggest his first task should be straightforward: allocate additional places to support regional education models that are already delivering results, like TUC; support more nursing places, more teaching places, more allied health places; support more opportunities through regional campuses and regional university hubs; and support places linked directly to workforce shortages that communities like mine experience every day. If these powers simply centralise decision-making in Canberra, then regional Australia gains little, but if they are used to direct opportunity towards communities that have historically been overlooked, then perhaps some good can come from this legislation.

The success of the Taree Universities Campus demonstrates what can happen when communities are empowered to solve local problems. At the end of the day, the test for this legislation is simple. Will it create more opportunities for regional Australians? Will it strengthen pathways into nursing, teaching, allied health and other professions our community desperately needs? Will it help more students study closer to home? Will it help communities—like Taree, Gloucester, Wingham and Forster—build the workforce they need for the future? If it does, then it will be a worthwhile reform, but if it simply creates more bureaucracy and more centralised control, then it will have missed the point. Regional Australians do not need more bureaucracy. They need more opportunity. They need governments to believe in their capability. The Taree Universities Campus has shown what is possible when local communities are trusted, supported and empowered. That should be the lesson that guides this parliament as we consider this legislation.

Trish Cook (Bullwinkel, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in strong support of the Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026. The title of this bill is not just a piece of legislative phrasing. It is a profound statement of intent. It is a promise to the young people in our outer suburbs, to the families in our regional towns and to every single Australian who has ever looked at a university campus or a TAFE facility and wondered, 'Is that a place for me?' For too long, for too many Australians, the answer to that question has been determined not by their talent, not by their drive and not by their work ethic, but by their postcode, by how much their parents earn and by how far they live from a capital city. With this bill, the Albanese Labor government is drawing a line in the sand. We are opening those doors wide. We are reshaping the landscape of Australian higher education—not just for the next parliamentary term or for the next decade, but for the decade after that.

This landmark legislation did not appear out of thin air. It is a culmination of rigorous, systemic and deeply consultative work.

In February 2024, our government released the final report of the Australian Universities Accord. It was, and remains, a generational blueprint. The accord laid bare a stark reality about the future of our national economy. It told us that, over the next few decades, the nature of work in this country would be shifting rapidly. The jobs of tomorrow—in clean energy, in advanced manufacturing, in health care, in education and in tech—will require higher skills.

To meet that challenge, the accord set a clear, ambitious national target: we need to increase the total number of people in our workforce with a tertiary qualification—whether that is a certificate, a diploma or a university degree—to approximately 80 per cent. That's quite a number. Eighty per cent of our workforce will need to be skilled and tertiary trained. This means that we'll need more people at TAFE and at university, and we cannot possibly hit the target if we continue to leave brilliant minds on the sidelines just because of structural inequities in our current funding model. We need to take action right now to set our tertiary education system up to deliver on Australia's future skill needs. And this is exactly what this bill does.

Under the Albanese Labor government, we don't just commission reports and let them sit on the shelf; we're delivering on them. I'm incredibly proud to stand here today and note that our government has already implemented more than 30 of the accord's 47 recommendations, either in full or in part. We are transforming higher education right now, block by block.

Let's look at what we've already achieved. We've made HECS fairer and better. We didn't just tweak the system; we cut 20 per cent off HECS debt for millions of Australians. We capped indexation to the lower level, which is the CPI and the wage price index. We shifted to a fairer marginal repayment system, and we raised the minimum payment threshold. We are wiping away the anxiety of compounding debt for young workers.

We introduced paid prac for the very first time. For decades, student teachers, nurses, midwives—like me—and social workers were expected to work full time for weeks on placement for free, whilst studying, whilst managing kids and whilst maintaining their part-time jobs. Basically, they were forced into placement poverty. We've stepped in to provide financial support so they can complete their degrees, with support, and get into the workforce.

We've doubled the number of university study hubs. We've established 20 new regional university study hubs and 14 suburban university study hubs, bringing higher education directly into the communities—including the ones in Northam and York in my electorate of Bullwinkel—that need them the most.

We've increased free university bridging courses, ensuring that students who didn't get the traditional ATAR score still have a clear, fully supported pathway into higher education. We've established the National Student Ombudsman and a national code to prevent and respond to gender based violence, ensuring safety, accountability and respect on our campuses. We've also made demand driven, Commonwealth supported places available to all First Nations students who qualify for the course, removing arbitrary caps on Indigenous opportunity.

Every one of these actions is about equity. And today, with this bill, we take the next monumental step. We're tackling the core funding architecture of the university sector itself.

The Australian Universities Accord explicitly recommended adopting an entirely new funding model for higher education, one that is carefully planned, transparently managed and intensely focused on student success. This bill enacts that exact commitment, injecting an additional $3.6 billion into Australia's higher education system over the next 10 years.

At the heart of this reform is the formal establishment and empowerment of the a ATEC, the Australian Tertiary Education Commission. ATEC will serve as an independent expert steward of our tertiary education system. Rather than universities operating in silos, ATEC will manage funding through mission based compacts, ensuring that federal funding is perfectly aligned with actual student enrolments and real-world national skills shortages.

This bill establishes two revolutionary funding mechanisms: a managed growth funding system and a needs based funding. The new managed growth funding system will effectively uncap the number of places for students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds and regional areas, and, as a member of a seat with a regional area, I'm particularly happy with that. It sweeps away the old rigid caps that starved universities of the resources that they needed to expand. Our changes are expected to result in an extra 230,000 commencing domestic students at university over the next decade. Think of the family, the lives and the communities that will be permanently transformed by these 230,000 opportunities. Getting a student through the door of a university is only half the battle, and the accord was very clear that an increase in underrepresented students must be matched by an absolute focus on their success. It's not enough to enrol them. We have to support them to graduate. That is where demand driven, needs based funding comes into it.

Members in this chamber will be very familiar with the concept of the Gonski funding for our high schools and schools. The idea of that is that funding should follow equity, providing extra resources to schools that take on students with greater needs. This bill brings the Gonski philosophy to higher education. The more students a university has who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds or from First Nations communities or who study at regional campuses, the more funding that university will receive to help those students participate and succeed. Direct financial assistance, like emergency grants and equity scholarships, are provided as well so that a broken laptop or an unexpected bill doesn't force a student to drop out. By offsetting the significantly higher operational costs of running regional and remote campuses, it will ensure that students in the regions get the same quality of infrastructure that those in the major cities get. This is a structural shift from a system that simply funds places to a system that funds people.

Alongside these monumental funding reforms, this bill also introduces critical measures to ensure the integrity, safety and long-term sustainability of the sector. The bill sets out a clear, robust framework for ATEC to exercise its existing function to allow international student places, specifically in scenarios where the Minister for Education makes an international allocation pool determination. This ensures our international education sector remains world class, sustainably managed and aligned with our national infrastructure and housing capacities.

Furthermore, the bill makes small but vital technical amendments to modernise information sharing between the Commonwealth Ombudsman, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency and ATEC. By cutting the red tape and allowing these regulatory bodies to securely share data, we ensure that student complaints, safety issues and systemic risks are identified and acted upon swiftly. It creates a seamless net of safety and quality assurance across the entire tertiary landscape.

As I conclude, I want to bring this back to what the bill really represents at its core. When we look back at the history of this country, the great leaps forward have always occurred under a Labor government opening up the doors of education. It was true when Whitlam abolished fees, it was true when Hawke and Keating expanded the system and it's true today under the Albanese Labor government. This bill recognises that our greatest national resource isn't what's buried in the ground; it's in the minds and the potential of our people.

When we give a young person from a regional town or an outer suburban community like Bullwinkel the opportunity to go to university, we aren't just helping them. We are training the nurse who will look after us baby boomers in hospital in the very near future. We're educating the teacher who will inspire the next generation in the classrooms of the schools that come to visit us in this place. We are equipping the engineer who will design a new renewable energy grid.

The Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026 is a visionary, fully funded, structurally sound package that sets Australia up for a prosperous, fair future. It says to every single Australian: no matter who you are or where you come from, your potential is our nation's potential. As a recent graduate of university, I'm particularly thrilled that our universities are going to get the support they need to expand and continue to deliver on the great education that they provide their students. I commend this bill to the House.

Dai Le (Fowler, Independent) | Link to this | Hansard source

When I was in a refugee camp, as our family was being processed, my mum—my late mother—applied to be resettled. She came up to me, a young girl, and she said, 'I have applied to be resettled in a country called uc dai loi—Australia. It is an island.' She said, 'The reason why I'm picking it is because I heard it has the best education system in the world.' This was late in '79. My sisters and I arrived here with very little English—hardly any English. Of course, I had my primary education cut short because of being in refugee camps, so I started primary school in year 5 and that's where I started to learn English.

This bill is called 'opening the doors of opportunity', and I think if there's any community in this country that knows what it feels like to have doors closed on them it is the community of Fowler. In my electorate, seven in 10 people speak a language other than English at home. The median personal income—I often share this in the House—is around $520 a week. Our families work hard. Many run small family businesses, and they hold onto one belief above almost everything else: they believe that education will open doors for their children that were closed to them. When the government puts the words 'opening the doors of opportunity' on the front of the bill, of course I will pay attention, and I have no doubt my community will also. This is because we've heard amazing headlines before in this House—my job is to ask whether the substance matches the slogan.

Before I do that, I want to acknowledge the Minister for Education. The minister and I do not agree on everything; however, I have never doubted his passion for education and I have never doubted where that passion comes from. We hear it every time he stands in this House. How proud he is that he grew up in Cabramatta, in the heart of my electorate. He went to Cabramatta Public School and Canley Vale High School, where he was dux. He was the first in the family to finish school and the first to go to university. His mum and his dad still live in Cabramatta, and they are my constituents.

The minister knows exactly what a closed door looks like for a young person from south-west Sydney, because I'm sure he's sat in classrooms full of many kids who probably came from similar backgrounds to mine—coming into primary education halfway through, not getting the full education that he probably would have had. I will hold this bill to the standard of the minister's own story. If a boy from Canley Vale High School can become the Minister for Education, then the test of this bill is simple: will it make the journey more likely for the next generation in Cabramatta, Fairfield, Liverpool or Bonnyrigg, or will his story remain the exception that proves the rule?

Let me explain why this matters so much in Fowler. Our young people are often left behind not because they lack talent or ambition but because of distance, language and socioeconomic disadvantage. Opportunity in this country still depends far too much on your postcode. For our students, a train fare, a textbook or simply knowing which subjects to study and which careers to do is the difference between a door opening and a door staying shut. That is why, last month, I held the Fowler Future Fest at the Fairfield showground. More than a thousand year 12 students came through the showground. They met employers, trades, small businesses and universities. I thank the Fairfield City Council—they helped host that amazing day for thousands of high-school students who have never had exposure to a career day being held in their backyard and having council being part of that—as well as all the many small businesses and not-for-profits who took part in the day. I also thank Western Sydney University for being part of the day. Student after student came to me and said how great it was to have a careers expo there. For the first time, many of them could see what subjects they needed to study and what degrees they could take up. They did not need a marketing campaign; they needed a door and someone willing to open it. That is the lens I bring to this bill.

I acknowledge what the bill does. It establishes a managed growth funding system designed to provide demand-driven, Commonwealth supported places for students from disadvantaged backgrounds and from regional and remote Australia. It introduces needs based funding for higher education similar in concept to the Gonski funding in schools, so that universities enrolling more students from low-income families, regional communities and Indigenous backgrounds receive additional resources to support them. For a community like mine, that matters. It should mean that a young person from Fowler who gets the marks for nursing, engineering or teaching does not miss out on a funded place because of where they live or how much their parents earn.

I will claim this modestly but clearly as a small win for the young people of Fowler. Over two terms, I have stood in this chamber and argued that students from south-west Sydney cannot just be an afterthought. I fought for addressing the inequities within our secondary education system. I've spoken on HECS indexation, the Job-ready Graduates Package and the accord reforms. Some of what the crossbench and I have been fighting for is reflected in this bill; I acknowledge that. But a door is not open just because the sign on it says so. I must ask the government: honestly, is this bill real reform or mere media signage? 'Opening the doors of opportunity' is a wonderful headline; it will look very good on a pamphlet when election time comes. My community deserves to know whether the substance behind it is just as good.

Here is where my doubts lie. First, ministerial discretion. The minister will set the total allocation pool and will have significant influence over how funding envelopes are set and adjusted. Students in Fowler cannot plan their futures on shifting political winds. If this funding is real, then legislate clear principles and reporting requirements so that no future governments can quietly tighten the pool or steer funding away from the communities that need it most.

Second, the risk that needs based funding becomes a label rather than real change. The indicators of disadvantage must be robust enough to capture students in south-western and Western Sydney, not just regional and remote Australia. Universities must be held to account for spending this money on tutoring, mentoring and support for disadvantaged students, not on filling general budget holes. There must be ongoing evaluation of whether completion rates for these students improve. We have seen in other sectors that needs based funding on paper does not always mean equitable in practice.

Third, this bill leaves untouched the very policies that are closing doors right now. It does not reverse the distortions of the Job-ready Graduates Package, which I have called on the government to do. It does not fix the unfairness of HECS indexation, including the sensible change to the time of indexation proposed by the member for Kooyong. Debts are still jumping faster than graduates can pay. You cannot open the front door with one hand while holding the back door shut with the other.

Let me also remind the government that, if you truly want to open doors of opportunity for young people in Fowler and across south-west Sydney, then please also invest in apprenticeships and invest in alternative pathways for those whose future is not a university degree. Together, with a change of the dates on indexation, reverse the job-ready graduates scheme. That is what opening opportunity actually looks like.

I will support this bill, but I will do so with caution. It is a small win for my community and a meaningful one, but I put to the government that there are things that still need to be done. This cannot be where we stop. It cannot become an election brochure while the hard work is left undone. I will keep standing in this place for the young people of Fowler—the students studying at the kitchen table after a long shift and the first-in-the-family kid who walked through Fowler Future Fest and saw, for the first time, that a degree could be for them. The Minister for Education was once one of those kids. He knows better than anyone in this House what is at stake. I ask him to make sure that this bill lives up to its name. Our young people do not need another slogan. They need the door open.

Jo Briskey (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

In a first-year uni lecture in February, every seat is taken, and there are people sitting on the steps. Go back to the same subject at the end of the year, and there are some gaps. Some of those gaps are because people have changed their minds, and that's okay, but some of them are people who could not make it work. The gaps are not spread evenly. If you grew up in a house where money was tight or a long way from campus, you're up to twice as likely to be one of those gaps. Nobody has ever left university because they stopped being clever. They leave because the textbooks came to $400 in March and then rent went up in April. They leave because the unpaid prac placement is three months. They leave because they picked up an extra shift and then another one, and, by week 9, they were far too behind to catch up and too embarrassed to say so. Governments of all persuasions have spent a great deal of time in this place talking about who gets through the front door of our universities, but very few have spent the time on what happens in week 4. With the Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026, our government is doing both.

Close to half of all of Australians in their 30s now hold a university degree. That is genuinely a remarkable number. Inside one lifetime, it has gone from something a few families did to something a whole generation grew up expecting, but it is about half that if you grew up in a poor family or in the regions and less again in the bush. A young person from a family without much money is less likely to get a crack at university in the first place, and then, if they do get there, they are less likely to finish. That is about not ability but opportunity. It is about who gets the chance to use what they've got. Every one of them is something this country loses, and we never find out what we've lost.

My community is about a maximum of 20 minutes away from some of our country's top universities. If you get on the 59 tram at Airport West on a weekday morning, you are sitting among people who are going to work and people who are going to lectures—and a fair few of them doing both. Distance is not the problem; the money is. There are families in Tullamarine and Avondale Heights where the question at the kitchen table is not whether a kid could get to university; it is whether the family can carry three years of textbooks, transport and rent while that kid earns less than what they could do in a full-time job. That conversation happens every summer between the ATAR results coming out and preferences closing. More often, it is the kid who calls it off, because they can see what it is costing the home and their family, and they decide not to be an additional burden.

Last year, Victoria's first suburban university study hub opened at Broadmeadows, which is just up the road from my electorate. This study hub is part of our government's network of study hubs. There are 20 new regional ones and 14 in the outer suburbs. The evidence is clear that, where you put one up, participation goes up. That tells us something quite plain about what has been holding people back. It was never the talent; it was the practicalities.

Since coming to office, our government have been working on the principle that the doors of opportunity should be open to all, and it is worth going through how we have sought to achieve this, because this bill is an element and a continuation of it. Starting in the early years, our three-day guarantee helps open that first door of educational opportunity. We changed the law to the access of three days a week of early education to ensure that it is guaranteed for everyone, because the old activity test locked out precisely the children who benefit the most. Before I came to this place, I worked with early childhood educators. I can tell the House what they had been saying for over a decade to the coalition government, but they just simply refused to listen.

Then we have the extra $20 billion into our public schools over the next decade—the schools that do the heavy lifting and who teach the children most likely to start behind. Every dollar of it is tied to reform—phonics checks, numeracy checks, small-group tutoring, catching kids up, keeping them up and getting them to the end of year 12. Then a young person who walks out of public school in Ascot Vale at 18 with the marks and the motivation to walk through the next door of higher education—until now, we have left that door with a latch. This bill is what seeks to lift that latch, to address a gap that did not open on its own but was widened deliberately by those opposite.

In the middle of the pandemic, when nearly every other major employer in the country was thrown a line, those opposite wrote the rules so universities were locked out of JobKeeper, and tens of thousands of people lost their jobs. They capped the funding. They let equity programs wither. They churned through minister after minister with no plan for any of it, and they made an arts degree cost more than a medical one. There is only one reason a government does this, and it is to talk young people out of aspiring to higher education. They had the better part of a decade to build the skill base this country was always going to need, and they spent it treating one of our greatest national assets as a cost to cut and a culture war to fight. We are not tinkering with a system that's not working; we are rebuilding one that was run down by those opposite. That is why this is the seventh accord bill not the second.

The accord itself is the biggest look at our higher education since Bradley nearly 20 years ago, with 47 recommendations. This government has now implemented more than 30 of them either in full or in part. We cut student debt for 3.2 million Australians by 20 per cent, and more than $16 billion has been wiped off. In my electorate, that was over 27,000 people who woke up one morning owing less on their student debt than they did the night before. We capped indexation at the lower of CPI and wages so the debt can never again grow faster than what people earn. We moved to a marginal repayment system and lifted the minimum threshold so somebody repays what they can actually afford instead of a number set in another decade. We brought in paid prac for the first time for teaching nursing and midwifery and social work students, and we're expanding that—another clear example where the talent was never the reason preventing people studying these essential degrees. It was the unpaid work they couldn't afford while rent was due at the end of a degree, where walking away costs the most. We made university-ready bridging courses free. We set up the National Student Ombudsman and the national code to prevent and respond to gender based violence so the young a young woman's degree does not end because of what somebody did to her on campus. We made Commonwealth supported places demand driven for every First Nations student who gets the marks, and we established the Australian Tertiary Education Commission so somebody is finally stewarding the whole system rather than each piece of it in isolation. That was the first six bills. This one changes who gets in and who gets to stay.

The first half of this bill is the managed growth funding system. The minister sets a total allocation pool—the number of fully funded places available each year. The commission allocates them, and each university allocation is built from two parts: a core student load so nobody goes backwards and a growth allocation on top of it. The growth allocation is where the commission can direct places to students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds, from the regions and from the bush. If the commission judges that the pool is not big enough to meet demand from those students, it can go back to the minister and ask for it to be lifted.

I know there are people in this place who have decided to call this 'capping'. I would say to them: look at the mechanism. This isn't a cap; it's a floor, with the ceiling taken off for the students who have been missing. We have already done exactly this for First Nations students. We legislated in 2023 and we have the results that show it works. There will be 16,000 additional places next year and the year after that and the year after that. From 2030, it rises to 19,000 a year. Over the decade, we expect to fund an additional 230,000 commencing students, backed by $3.6 billion.

The bill also cleans up the mess underneath. Right now, in the scramble of enrolment, some universities are taking on students that receive no Commonwealth funding at all. The accord was blunt about what that is doing to the system. Around 20,000 additional places are expected to go to those over-enrolled universities next year. Under-enrolled universities get a temporary funding floor to the end of 2031 so the transition does not cost anybody their staff.

The second half is needs based funding, and it is the same idea that we've already accepted in our schools—a student who starts further back needs more support to get to the same place. A campus in the regions costs more to run. Nobody in this chamber argues about that when it comes to a primary school. The money goes to the unglamorous things that actually keep a struggling student enrolled—the tutoring, the mentoring, the academic support, the scholarship or emergency grant that covers the textbooks or the transport fare. There are programs that have tried to do this before but they were capped. Last year, that came out to be as little as $600 a student. This bill sets a base equity amount of $1,535 and a base regional amount of $1,398, both indexed every year so they do not go backwards—more than double—and it is demand-driven. The more students a university enrols who need the help, the more help they get, which means a university can no longer be rewarded for recruiting a cohort and then losing them.

This bill does one more thing. It puts the allocation of international student places for individual providers in the hands of an independent commission, where the minister sets an overall pool. There is no statutory cap on international students today, and this bill does not create one. What it does is take a decision that currently sits with the government and hands it to an independent body, which is what the universities themselves have asked for.

About 60 per cent of students in Commonwealth-supported places across this country are women. Of the students this needs based funding is built to reach, two in three are women. We talk a great deal in this place about the gender pay gap and too often we talk about it as though it's a question of confidence or negotiation or a choice an individual woman makes. It's not. Our government knows it is structural and it is set early in the years before a woman ever gets a chance to sit down to have a conversation about salary. The most reliable thing we can do about what a woman earns across the whole of her working life is to open the door to a qualification and make sure she can afford to stay until she has it.

There is a hard-headed argument here too. The court said that by 2050 we'll need about 80 per cent of the workforce holding a certificate, diploma or degree. That is what it will take to staff our hospitals, to build more houses, to run the clean energy economy we're building right now and to do the jobs that don't even exist yet. Every one of those workers is a person who has to get a qualification first. Every student we lose in second year is a nurse we're short of in 2040, and we pay for that shortage one way or another. But we do not get to this 80 per cent by sticking to the status quo and simply hoping.

This bill does not reach back. It does nothing for the people who left after the first year and never went back, or the ones who looked at the whole thing at age 17 and decided it was not for them. There are a lot of them. Some of them are my constituents. They do not get those years back. Here is what this bill does: it means a kid from my community whose single mum is working two jobs just to stay afloat gets a funded place because her ATAR is great and not because there happened to be room left after everyone else had been sorted. It means the first person in a family to go to uni has somebody to ring in week 4 of the first semester when it has all gotten away from them and they are one decision away from not coming back. It means the hundreds of dollars for textbooks in March is not the reason somebody quits in April.

This is not the last bill our government will seek to deliver on education. There is a great deal more work to do to make sure that our country's system is as fair as it should be, from the earliest years all the way through. But it is a next step, and it is a big one. Nobody has ever left university because they stopped being clever. They leave because we let them. This bill is us making it easier for them to stay. This bill is our government opening another door of opportunity for working families in Maribyrnong and right across the country. I commend the bill to the House.

Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I was elected, I was fortunate to spend part of my career in the university sector, where I saw firsthand the public good that universities deliver not only through educating the next generation of Australians but through research, innovation and engagement with the communities that they serve. A former MP for Kooyong, Sir Robert Menzies, when he was almost quadrupling university funding in 1957, said:

… universities are to be regarded not as a home of privilege for a few, but as something essential to the lives of millions of people who may never enter their doors.

He believed education improved Australia's wellbeing and its living standards and that universities were a nation-building project.

The people of Kooyong still believe passionately in the importance of universities. In the last four years I've spoken with many university leaders, researchers, lecturers, students and parents about the state of our education system. It is clear to them and to me that our higher education sector is under significant pressure. In fact, it's under threat. Students are graduating with unprecedented debt. Some face lifelong debt resulting from their tertiary studies. Many tell me that they didn't understand what they were signing up for when they took on HECS. Researchers face chronic underfunding and increasing career uncertainty with unreliable grant schedules and dwindling success rates. Academic staff are expected to teach larger and larger classes with fewer and fewer resources. Universities are increasingly reliant on international student revenue to cross-subsidise teaching and research. But, at the same time, employers are reporting shortages of doctors, nurses, engineers, teachers and other skilled professionals. At the same time, politicians are dog whistling about the impact of international students on our society, ignoring the fact that they have been responsible for as much as half of our economic growth in recent years.

The universities accord final report recognised that Australia's prosperity depends on a stronger, more accessible, better supported higher education sector. The accord carried an ambitious vision, recommending that by 2050 Australia should increase tertiary attainment to at least 80 per cent of the working age population. It recommended growing the number of Australians aged 25 to 34 with a university qualification from 45 per cent to 55 per cent, and it recommended doubling Australian Commonwealth supported students to 1.8 million. While they are very ambitious, these targets reflect the scale of the workforce challenges facing Australia, challenges in key sectors in a rapidly changing global economy.

The Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026 represents a significant legislative response to the accord's final report. The government claims that this legislation will enable the creation of up to 230 additional student places over the next decade, with a particular focus on expanding opportunities for students from disadvantaged backgrounds and regional and rural communities. Widening Australia's higher education participation is absolutely crucial, but, if this government is serious about opening the doors of opportunity, it must ensure that this bill genuinely expands opportunity rather than imposing unintentional restrictions.

One of the central reforms in this bill is the move to a managed growth funding model. Currently, Commonwealth funding for student places is allocated through the maximum basic grant amount. In 2026, $7.75 billion was allocated for student places. Under this model, the total number of Commonwealth supported places, or CSPs, across Australia has not always been clear, and this bill does change that approach. Instead of allocating a dollar amount, the minister will determine a total allocation pool of Commonwealth supported places. In 2027, it's supported that the total allocation pool will deliver about 625,000 CSPs.

There are benefits to providing greater visibility about the size of our education system. Universities need certainty on the number of places available so they can plan workforce infrastructure and course delivery. The minister has announced that the government will grow the total allocation pool by an additional 16,000 places in each of the next three years. All of this sounds fine. However, there is no obligation for the Minister for Education to grow the size of the system. In fact, under this bill, the pool could actually shrink below the existing core student load. It's an unintended consequence of the legislation. It leaves the door open for future ministers who are less well disposed to the sector to unilaterally cut student numbers. Given the well and often stated hostility to the university sector by the Liberal Party, the National Party and One Nation, this issue needs to be fixed. At this point, the total allocated pool is a ceiling with no floor. The bill should establish that the minimum total allocation pool must equal the existing core student load of table A universities. Without this, universities will have no guarantee that the system will in fact grow under this and future governments. This issue is to be addressed by the member for Curtin in her amendments later in this debate, and I support her proposal.

Once the minister has set the total allocation pool, the Australian Tertiary Education Commission, or ATEC, will then allocate places between universities. This means that, from 2027, universities will receive an allocation of student places rather than a funding amount. The change will improve transparency, but, at the same time, it will reduce the flexibilities that universities have traditionally had to adapt to changes in student demand. For years, universities have operated under a soft cap with the ability to overenroll students. This has given them the ability to create additional places when demand has exceeded supply of CSPs. In many cases, those additional students did not pose a financial impost, because universities could retain the student contributions for those over-enrolees. Under this bill, however, universities will have limited capacity to exceed their allocation. Overenrolments will be capped at either five per cent above the original allocation or 750 places, whichever is lower. If the universities exceed this threshold, they will lose student contribution revenue for those additional students.

Documents released under FOI showed that, in 2024, nine Australian universities delivered student places worth five per cent or more above their maximum funding. There is no clarity or transparency on how many universities are in that position now. The minister has argued that this change will end a Hunger Games system in which popular universities attract more students than others, but there's a definite risk that the opposite occurs—that students lose opportunities because universities become overly cautious about making offers, wary of the potential financial penalties, even where those universities do have the potential capacity to support those students. At the very minimum, this legislation should ensure that a student who has already begun a Commonwealth supported place can't lose that status. The government has to provide this express guarantee. For example, it could do that in section 30-30 of the bill. The government should also provide in section 30-20 that the ATEC must allocate each tertiary provider a domestic student profile that is not less than the provider's core student load. These safeguards are the bare minimum, and I again commend the member for Curtin's amendments, which will deliver some of these changes.

There is a trade-off inherent to these reforms. This bill will facilitate increased CSP participation through the minister growing the total pool allocation, but, at the same time, the bill introduces new restrictions on the ability of individual universities to respond to increased demand through the imposition of hard caps on the domestic student profile. In that sense, the reforms in this bill are internally contradictory. Total allocation pool enrolments will increase overall by 230,000 over the next 10 years and will increase in a managed way—but possibly by less than the growth that would have occurred in a system with more flexible arrangements, like our current system.

University growth has occurred in unmanaged and unintended ways, which is why the accord recommended, and the government is introducing, a system of managed growth. But the bill fails to address one of the key reasons that universities have experienced unintended growth across certain disciplines: the Job-ready Graduates, or JRG, Package. The JRG Package was introduced in 2021 to steer students towards particular fields by restructuring student contribution amounts. Under JRG, by next year, students in the highest contribution band will pay more than $54,000 for a standard three-year bachelor's degree and over $90,000 for double degrees. At the same time, though, universities will continue to have to absorb an annual funding shortfall of $800 million, because JRG reduced Commonwealth contributions for degrees by more than it increased student contributions. Just remember: it's $54,000 for an undergraduate bachelor's degree.

Innovative Research Universities found that, in 2024 alone, the students in the highest-charging fields paid up to $1.3 billion more than they would have if JRG hadn't existed. Recommendation 16a of the Australian Universities Accord final report called for student contribution rates in the highest-charging fields under JRG to be urgently remediated. In February this year, the minister recognised that JRG has failed, and yet section 33-7 of this bill entrenches existing Job-ready Graduates funding clusters.

Managed growth is an important reform to meet Australia's educational attainment goals, but we can't promote those while imposing punitive debts on students and while undermining the sustainability of university teaching. Those aspects of growing the universities sector are at odds with each other. Managed growth might widen and might even open the door to opportunity, but this bill leaves in place a very nasty surprise waiting on the other side of that door. I ask the minister to explain to the House why, having redesigned almost every other part of the higher education landscape, the government has chosen to leave its most widely criticised—even internally criticised—element in place.

On current advice, the ATEC is developing a new higher education costing and pricing framework, with advice expected in the second half of 2027. The summary of progress to date on that work revealed that the forum was not intended to revisit the Job-ready Graduates Package, but rather to focus on understanding costs. So, three years after the accord called for urgent remediation of Job-ready Graduates, we'll receive a report that doesn't even consider the fact that arts and law and finance students are paying more than $18,000 a year, and that they've been doing that for far longer under the Albanese government than they did under Scott Morrison.

On the current trajectory, it will take at least eight years and two parliamentary terms to begin to reverse JRG. It will take at least eight years after Labor first labelled this scheme 'highly inequitable' and 'dubious' for them to even approach it. Without an explicit direction to bring that work forward, students will commence and continue to study in 2027 and 2028 under a contribution schedule that every review to date, including the government's own, has found to be broken.

The government legislated the universities accord act earlier this year. It drafted that act with ministerial powers. I want the minister to use the powers that he gave himself, and so I call on him to, firstly, immediately advise the ATEC that reviewing the funding arrangements introduced under the Job-ready Graduates Package is a short-term, urgent and strategic priority under section 15 of the act; and, secondly, immediately issue written directions by legislative instrument under section 71 of the act requiring the ATEC commissioners, in carrying out the commission's functions, to prioritise providing advice and recommendations to the minister on options for reforming the funding arrangements introduced under the Job-ready Graduates Package.

This bill does do important things to open the doors of opportunity. It legislates needs based funding for disadvantaged First Nations and regional students. It's a meaningful acknowledgement that a university place in this country means something very different depending on where you grew up and your family's financial circumstances, and this bill sets Australia on a path towards the attainment targets that the accord identified as essential to our national prosperity. But the doors that prospective students walk through will not be defined by opportunity while the Job-ready Graduates scheme remains in place. In recognising that, I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1) notes that:

(a) next year, university students will be paying over $54,000 for standard bachelor's degrees; and

(b) this bill fails to address the unfair and punitive funding arrangements introduced under the Job-ready Graduates Package;

(2) calls on the Government to exercise powers under the Universities Accord (Australian Tertiary Education Commission) Act 2026 (Cth) to:

(a) immediately advise the Australian Tertiary Education Commission (ATEC) that reviewing the funding arrangements introduced under the Job-ready Graduates Package is a short-term, urgent strategic priority; and

(b) immediately issue written directions, by legislative instrument, requiring the ATEC Commissioners, in carrying out the Commission's functions, to prioritise providing advice and recommendations to the Minister on options for reforming the funding arrangements introduced under the Job-ready Graduates Package".

Carina Garland (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Are the amendments seconded?

Kate Chaney (Curtin, Independent) | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes. I second the amendments and reserve my right to speak.

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

I rise today to speak in support of the Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026. There can be no argument that giving more Australians the chance to go to university and succeed is essential to meeting the nation's future skills and economic needs. Backgrounds, postcodes and bank balances cannot stand in the way of more Australians going to university to attain a higher education degree, to allow them to participate in the critical nation building endeavours our country needs to embark on, to ensure a secure, sustainable and prosperous future, to allow us to compete in an increasingly competitive global marketplace, to enable us to innovate and enjoy the benefits of targeted research and development and to ensure that our national security is properly prosecuted.

Australia needs more university educated workers, not fewer. More opportunity is good for students, good for their families, good for communities, good for the economy and good for our country. The Australian Universities Accord made it clear that, if Australia is to prosper in the years ahead, we must grow Australia's participation, performance and investment in tertiary education so we can generate the knowledge, skills and research our nation needs. The final report recommended that the tertiary attainment rate of all working age people with at least one certificate III qualification or higher be lifted from 60 per cent currently to at least 80 per cent by 2050. It also recommended increasing the proportion of university educated Australians aged 25 to 34 from 45 per cent currently to 55 per cent by 2050. In making these recommendations, the final report noted that the tertiary system will need to more than double the number of Commonwealth supported students in universities from 860,000 currently to 1.8 million by 2050.

As well as increasing the number of skilled workers in our country ready to contribute to our economy and our communities, higher education provides many other essential benefits to Australian society. By encouraging intellectual endeavour, creativity and personal accomplishment, universities also promote democracy, critical thinking, debate, the embrace of different perspectives and the fostering of civic values. A university degree can also lead to expanded professional and personal networks, more defined career goals and, of course, employment. Further, the world faces a host of challenges ranging from economic inequality to climate change and geopolitical conflict to ongoing wars, and universities and graduates play a key role in helping to address some of these challenges. Given these benefits, creating accessible educational opportunities for students of all postcodes, backgrounds and bank balances to develop responsive skills is critical for a vibrant future workforce, for responding to challenges through innovation and for ensuring our communities are resilient.

Universities also encourage critical thinking and the consideration of different perspectives. You might not agree with a particular perspective that is being put, but you must consider it. You may dismiss it, but you've heard it and you've thought about why you might be dismissing it. You don't just accept it. You evaluate it, check it, challenge it and develop your own independent view on it. And you're actively encouraged to do this. You know that, if you don't, you might have missed something or you might be misinformed or disinformed. And we know that misinformation and disinformation, either deliberate or by virtue of laziness, are one of the biggest dangers facing our country, because they draw on inaccurate or incomplete information, depriving the information consumer of the facts and distorting the decisions that the consumer of the information might then make.

People who have been taught to think critically, to assess and challenge information, to not simply agree with the first thing that is said to them and to not simply accept the contentions of those who shout the loudest are better placed. The overarching negative effect of misinformation is that, without an accurately informed public, democracy cannot function. Again, you might not agree with the information, but if it is accurate—based on facts, data and evidence—you can at least make your next decision and make your choice with the comfort of knowing that you had the relevant information you needed.

We know that misinformation and disinformation create division. They create polarisation. And sometimes misinformation or disinformation based on rumour, gossip or a malicious agenda can have devastating consequences: disengagement with democratic processes, hostility to political figures, and violence. Disinformation has a competitive advantage over accurate information in the attention economy, because it is not constrained by the truth. The effort required is minimal, and the digitisation of media and the explosion of social media has also enabled producers of misinformation and disinformation to access sophisticated and extremely convincing tools of digital forgery, such as deepfakes, the digital alteration of an image or video that convincingly replaces the voice, face or body of one individual with that of another. That's not just a tech problem or a communications issue. It's a crisis of trust.

Tackling this means protecting communities from harm while upholding freedom of expression and other human rights. Freedom of expression and other human rights need to be protected at the same time as countering disinformation because of its capacity to unravel the threads that hold societies together. In settings with increased instability it can tip societies into violence. It can also corrode the norms of debate and science-backed evidence that societies have typically taken for granted. Countering this is difficult, because the monumental challenge facing us is structural. The information ecosystem simply was not designed with truth or safety as its key features. It was designed for engagement, which comes in many forms, including hate.

Well-developed critical thinking skills by virtue of a university degree can play a key role in countering these challenges, because these skills allow one to assess the strength and appropriateness of the information being presented through questioning, examining and evaluating different positions. These skills are not just useful with respect to misinformation and disinformation. Questioning, challenging and evaluating have a place in every profession. It was my full-time job, in my pre-politics career as a lawyer. Doctors, nurses and engineers do it all day. Goodness knows, teachers do it all day, as well as mechanics, plumbers, electricians and business owners. The ability to challenge, evaluate, question and go beyond the algorithm is fundamental to the success of our economy, our community and our liberal democracy.

Universities that produce graduates with a thirst for knowledge, a thirst for facts, a love of learning, a determination or arm themselves with the evidence they need to justify a decision they are working towards reduces the impact misinformation has on our democracy. I'm not saying that it is only those with a university degree who can counter misinformation because, with effort, we all can, but we know that universities arm students with the tools to do this, and the more people who are armed with a desire for facts and accuracy, the better.

This bill will see additional funding to the tune of $3.6 billion invested into the tertiary sector over the next decade to increase the number of students at university and to meet Australia's future skills needs. It does this through a new managed growth funding system and demand driven needs based funding to support students from underrepresented backgrounds to access and succeed at university. The estimated impact of these changes is that there will be an extra 230,000 domestic students commencing study over the next decade, getting those crucial critical thinking skills, developing the capacity to examine different perspectives and to reach an informed and evidence based view. This can only be a good thing for our democracy and our communities.

Labor is the party of education. We know that education lifts people out of poverty and gives people an opportunity: an opportunity to contribute to their communities, to do something for their families and to do something for themselves. We know that opportunities like this should not be limited to those with means or those who live in metropolitan areas. Everyone should have this opportunity. To be pro-education is to be pro-business, pro-private-sector, pro-public-sector, pro-productivity and pro-economic-prosperity because, without an educated population, you don't have any of those things.

This bill, which opens the doors of educational opportunity to a more diverse range of people, is not the only step that the Albanese Labor government has taken to ensure education is accessible and affordable. I will never forget 3 November 2024 and being in the Norwood International High School in my electorate of Sturt when the Prime Minister announced that a re-elected Albanese Labor government would make HECS better and fairer by cutting 20 per cent off of HECS debts. We have delivered that.

That is in addition to the indexation of HECS debts, moving to a marginal repayment system and raising the minimum repayment threshold. People should not be put in a position where they decide they will not go to university because it will be too hard to pay off the corresponding debt.

People should not be put in a position where they decide not to study for teaching, nursing and midwifery degrees because they cannot afford to take time off to complete the practical component of their degree. Paid prac is a delivered Albanese Labor government policy of which I am particularly proud. I completed a Master of Teaching and Secondary Education about a decade ago as a mature-age student who was able to take a combination of unpaid and paid leave from my employment to complete the prac. The unpaid portion hit even though I was in my late 30s. Imagine being a young student in your early 20s living out of home and being asked to give up your income for weeks at a time so you can complete a degree in a critical industry. Paid prac is meaningful change and meaningful action to ensure that students who want to can enrol to study to become teachers, nurses and midwives—and now, significantly, additional allied health professions.

This bill represents the seventh accord bill that the Minister for Education has introduced. There were 47 recommendations in the Australian universities accord, and, with the passage of this bill, the Albanese Labor government will have implemented 36 in full or in part. Prompt yet careful progress is being made as the Albanese Labor government seeks to shore up our tertiary education sector so that it's primed to deliver the skilled workforce Australia needs to advance its national security and economic prosperity and contribute to a Future Made in Australia. I commend the bill to the House.

Kate Chaney (Curtin, Independent) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill. Higher education changes lives. Every Australian should have the opportunity to experience the life-transforming benefits of higher education. We'll only meet our future skills needs by expanding access for people who are currently underrepresented, including people from low-SES backgrounds, First Nations people and regional, rural and remote students. I support the intent of the Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026, which is to drive managed growth of our higher education system and expand the opportunities of higher education for all Australians. But I do hold some concerns about its implications for student choice and the autonomy and flexibility of the higher education system.

This bill does three things: it replaces our current funding model with a managed growth system; it legislates a new needs-based funding stream for equity and regional students; and it creates rules governing how international student places are allocated. On the first point, university funding currently runs through the Commonwealth Grants Scheme on what's called the maximum basic grant amount, a dollar ceiling that each university gets for domestic teaching. It's a soft cap. If a university enrols more students than the ceiling technically covers, it gets no extra Commonwealth funding for those students, but it keeps the student contribution anyway.

The accord found that this funding system was leading to unplanned, unmanaged and underfunded growth, with consequences for students and higher education providers alike. This bill responds to that by moving from a dollar ceiling to a hard headcount of student places set by the minister and distributed between universities by the new and independent Australian Tertiary Education Commission, or ATEC.

The bill also legislates needs-based funding, an ongoing top-up paid by the Commonwealth for every eligible equity student and regional student, reflecting the greater costs of delivering quality higher education for these students. The bill also gives the minister the power to determine the total number of international student places, with ATEC holding the job of allocating those places to providers.

I support the objective of this bill, which is to expand opportunity and access to higher education. The principle of managed growth is right. We want a better-educated workforce, more Australians at university and at TAFE, and a system that plans for that growth instead of stumbling into it. The Universities Accord tells us that by 2050 we'll need four in five working age Australians to hold a university degree or TAFE qualification. Today we sit at around half of that, and the gap won't close on its own.

I strongly support the introduction of the needs-based funding system to reach people who might not otherwise have the chance, but good intentions in the bill's name don't guarantee good outcomes in its operation, and I hold some concerns about this bill. These concerns are shared by a range of stakeholders who've provided submissions to the Senate inquiry.

My most significant concern is that this bill could constrain student choice. Right now, universities that enrol beyond their funding ceilings still keep the student contribution for those extra places, but this bill moves to a hard cap. If a university enrols more than five per cent above its allocation, it will get nothing for those students at all. The issue is that it's not that hard to exceed the cap. A stronger acceptance rate or better second-year retention could mean a university will be over the cap. Suddenly a university can't accept any more students because there's a hard cap on enrolments.

There are some safeguards for this. A university can ask ATEC for more places and ATEC can ask the minister. But if that takes too long, students will wear the consequences. This doesn't even need to occur for it to have an implication for student choice. The rational response for a university facing just the risk of overshoot is to restrict offers because it's easier to top up an allocation later than to wear the consequences of breaching that cap. Several universities have told the committee that they've already begun withdrawing guaranteed ATAR pathways ahead of this bill, so students will pay the price for that caution by missing out on a place. I support a managed system stewarded by ATEC, but universities should offer a place to every student capable of succeeding where they have the capacity to teach them. Otherwise, this bill will have the perverse effect of restricting opportunity and access for students around the country. I look to the Senate committee and the government to ensure that there is enough flexibility in this system so that this doesn't happen.

There's also a question hanging over this bill as to whether a student could ever lose their Commonwealth supported place through the operation of this bill's new powers. There is some protection for a student's place in the Higher Education Support Act, but this bill could give the minister powers that could lead to students being kicked off Commonwealth supported places through no fault of their own. So I'll be moving an amendment to make it really clear that, once a student holds a Commonwealth supported place, that place cannot be taken away from the student through any power that this bill introduces. It would be unworkable and unfair for a student in their second year of university to be told that they will no longer receive Commonwealth funding for the rest of their course because of some bureaucratic decision about numbers made in Canberra.

The second area of concern I have relates to excess ministerial power and centralisation. This bill takes a significant amount of flexibility and autonomy away from universities. A great deal of decision-making power moves to ATEC, which is at least meant to be independent, but a great deal also moves to the minister. This government says it's committed to a thriving, growing higher education sector, but a command-and-control approach is not the way to secure that future. We should be encouraging universities to grow, to specialise and to compete with each other in ways that improve outcomes for students rather than centralising every lever in Canberra.

This bill would, for example, allow the minister to put specific conditions on individual universities before providing them with funding, with no clear guidelines or safeguards for what these conditions could entail. I've drafted an amendment to remove this excessive and overbearing power. It's the role of the independent ATEC to work with individual universities and higher education providers through mission based compacts. It's not for the minister to be able to make directions of their choosing, which could be politically motivated to specific universities as a funding condition.

I acknowledge that I've had constructive conversations with the minister's office on this issue. The government is aware of this problem, and based on the discussions that have been had to date I'm optimistic that improvements will be made in the Senate. I'll also move an amendment requiring the minister to publish a statement of reasons for a series of important decisions: the total number of Commonwealth supported places, or the total allocation pool, and the total number of international students, which the minister decides each year and which has enormous consequences for the higher education sector and the economy.

My concern about the minister's powers is most significant when it comes to international students, where politics can so quickly override good policy. I've made this argument to this House before. When the government tried to give the minister the power to cap international enrolments by course and by university last term, I opposed those provisions. I've never doubted the need for better regulation of quality and integrity in the sector, but course-by-course, university-by-university ministerial control over an export industry worth tens of billions of dollars a year is overreach. I said then that if the government wanted sustainable growth in this sector it should go back to the accord and determine settings through the mission based compact process, not through a unilateral ministerial power.

This bill is an improvement in a number of ways. While the minister is given the power to determine the overall number of international students, it's up to the independent ATEC to allocate them between providers. This is better, but there's a catch. The minister also has a broad power to make provider-specific directions to ATEC with regard to international students. So, as far as I understand it, the minister of the day could tell ATEC that UWA must receive no international students. This is clearly not appropriate.

I acknowledge again that I've had productive conversations with the minister's office on this issue. There may be some important instances where this power is necessary, but there is a risk that it could be used in a way that's overpoliticised. So I look to the committee and the government to ensure that this power has appropriate limitations and safeguards. I'll be moving amendments to prevent the minister from issuing provider-specific directions to ATEC with regard to international students to align the framework with the system for domestic students.

Finally, I'd like to reflect some concerns from the university sector that the legislation contains some holes that undermine its ambition to grow the higher education sector. The minister told this House in his second reading speech that 230,000 additional Commonwealth supported places will be funded over the next decade. I don't doubt that that's this government's intent, but intent isn't legislation. Actually, this bill doesn't guarantee growth. It legislates ceilings but no floors. The total allocation pool sets a maximum number of Commonwealth supported places. It doesn't guarantee a minimum. That being said, from conversations with the minister's office, I am satisfied that the government is aware of and planning to act on this issue.

To conclude, this bill gets the direction right. Managed planned growth based on the country's needs is better than the unplanned unmanaged drift the accord report described. Needs based funding is an overdue step towards the equity this system was always supposed to deliver, and bringing proper stewardship to international student places through an independent commission rather than unilateral ministerial decision-making is also an important step.

A bill titled 'opening the doors of opportunity' has to be judged against that standard. Does it open doors, or does it relocate the bottleneck? On the evidence now before this House, the hard caps risk closing doors on students through no fault of their own, and the ministerial powers aren't yet matched by appropriate safeguards. I'll be moving amendments in the consideration in detail stage to fix these problems. I want this bill to succeed, and succeeding means it has to work for the students trying to get into university to build a life for themselves not just for the bureaucrats in Canberra.

Julie-Ann Campbell (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

What if Australia's next groundbreaking scientist, next innovative engineer or next inspiring teacher never even considers going to university because no-one encouraged them to or there seemed to be too many barriers? That question becomes even more poignant when we think about people from disadvantaged backgrounds, lower socioeconomic backgrounds and First Nations communities and those living in regional areas. For many of these young people, there is no clear pathway to university. For some, it seems out of reach because of financial pressure, and, for others, it's distance, or it can simply be a case of not having any role models from your community who have gone to uni, bringing to life that evocative phrase 'you can't be what you can't see'. It's not a lack of ability or talent holding people back; it's a lack of opportunity and it's a lack of support. It is why the Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026 is so very important. Labor has always been the party of education. It is part of our origin story, it is our legacy, and it is our future.

This bill is in direct response to the recommendations of the universities accord, which was released in February 2024. Since that time, the Albanese Labor government has been swift to implement its recommendations. So far, we've actioned more than 30 of the report's 47 recommendations. A major focus of this reform was improving the operation of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme, or HECS. This included reducing existing student debt by 20 per cent, which we delivered as promised at the start of this term. We also ensured that indexation on HECS debts was capped to the lower of either the consumer price index or the wage price index. We introduced a marginal repayment system and increased the minimum income threshold at which repayments begin.

When you think about that 20 per cent off student debt, as students—thousands of them from my local electorate on Brisbane's south side—logged on and looked online, it came off immediately. Not only does this go to the cost-of-living relief that so many Australians and, particularly, young people need right now; it also goes to reducing the barriers to get a higher education degree. These measures ease the financial pressure on current students and graduates as they enter the workforce, at a critical and pivotal moment in their lives.

Labor also introduced the Commonwealth Prac Payment—direct and practical support for students undertaking essential degrees, such as teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work, as they complete their mandatory practical placements. Just last month, this was extended to students in ten allied health disciplines—students like those undertaking pharmacy that I met just last month. What they described was something very interesting. They described the fact that not only would it take the pressure off and not only would it mean that people would not have to scrimp and save in secondary jobs to go through, but it would make their lives easier and that it would make that pathway to getting into the workforce just that little bit simpler. I note that the assistant minister is a pharmacist herself and indeed, I believe, would be celebrating the paid prac placements of those students.

The Albanese Labor government has also increased the number of free university bridging courses, removing barriers to tertiary education access. This has given students from diverse backgrounds increased opportunities to prepare for and begin higher education. This was matched by doubling the number of university study hubs, with the establishment of 20 new hubs in regional locations and 14 in suburban communities. These hubs are designed to provide local access to resources and support for students who may not be able to relocate to major cities.

Equity measures form another very important part of Labor's reform package. All First Nations students who meet entry requirements are guaranteed Commonwealth supported university places, ensuring financial barriers do not prevent access to higher education opportunities. We also established the new National Student Ombudsman in response to student safety and wellbeing challenges. This provides an independent avenue for complaints and for support and operates alongside the national code to prevent and respond to gender based violence.

Finally, we created the Australian Tertiary Education Commission to guide the broader higher education system. This body acts as a central steward, overseeing and coordinating the tertiary education system to ensure it operates effectively and, critically, meets the needs of students, institutions and the wider community.

The universities accord told us that we need action now in order for Australia to meet our future skills needs. That means that we need to get more people to TAFE and that we need to get more people into university now. We know that people talk about university as the great equaliser, because it is. Education is that great equaliser, but it's important to remember that it is also the engine room for who we want to be as a nation and what our economy looks like, as a country. This is critical to meet the universities accord recommendation to increase the number of people in the workforce who have a certificate, diploma or degree to 80 per cent, because, if we want Australia to be a place where we build homes, we need more young people doing trades in plumbing and carpentry and electrical. If we want young people to be supporting the care economy, we need more people at universities studying pharmacy and nursing. It is those things that will make us stronger.

The accord also told us that we need more higher education students from underrepresented backgrounds, like those I mentioned earlier, and more support for them when studying. That is the crux of this bill. It implements a new funding model for higher education that will be managed by the Australian Tertiary Education Commission. It comes with a significant investment of $3.6 billion to boost the number of students at university to help us achieve that important 80 per cent figure.

The two pillars of this new funding model are managed growth funding and needs based funding. Managed growth funding will be the powerhouse behind building a bigger, better and fairer education system—a system that will give more Australians more opportunity to attend university. And needs based funding will focus on young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, providing them with the support they need to succeed once they are at university. The reforms will also clarify and strengthen the role of the Australian Tertiary Education Commission, particularly in how Commonwealth supported places at university are distributed.

After the passage of this bill, the government will set the total number of Commonwealth supported places while the Australian Tertiary Education Commission will allocate those places to specific universities. The commission will also be enabled to allocate additional places where there is demand from students from regional and remote communities and disadvantaged backgrounds. In practice, this means the managed growth funding system will remove the cap on the number of university places for people from low socioeconomic backgrounds or regional areas, remove it for the people who need barriers removed the most. Instead, the system is designed to expand access, ensuring that more students from these groups have the opportunity to enrol in the higher education if that is the path that they want to pursue.

These changes are expected to significantly increase participation in higher education. In the next three years, an additional 16,000 places per year will be made available for students. From 2030, this will grow to 19,000 additional places per year. And, ultimately, projections indicate that an additional 230,000 domestic students will begin university studies over the next decade. This anticipated growth reflects the broader goal of making higher education more accessible and making it more inclusive. To ensure the success of these reforms, universities and other higher education providers will receive support as they transition to those new funding arrangements. This assistance will help institutions adapt to the updated system while maintaining quality education and student outcomes through the changeover period.

As I mentioned, needs based funding will be directed towards students who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, First Nations students and those studying at regional institutions. Frankly, your bank balance should never be a barrier to a good education. This is similar, in principle, to the Gonski model used in school education, where schools receive funding according to their location and the needs of their students. Applying this system to higher education means that institutions which enrol a higher number of students who meet certain equity and regional criteria will receive additional funding so that the support goes to where it is needed most. This ensures that universities are better resourced to support students who may face greater barriers to accessing and succeeding in their higher education journey.

As part of this shift, the level of funding provided per eligible student will increase substantially. The bill sets the base equity contribution at $1,535 per student and the base regional amount at $1,398. This is a significant increase compared to previous arrangements, where university sometimes received as little as $600 per student. The updated funding levels are designed to more accurately reflect the real costs of supporting students who are in need. In some cases, the amount allocated for each student is expected to more than double from the previous year.

Universities will now have flexibility in how they use this additional funding to improve student participation and to improve their success. This may include providing enhanced academic support services, such as tutoring and mentoring, as well as offering direct financial assistance through scholarships and through grants. Institutions will also be able to use the funding to help offset the higher operational costs associated with maintaining campuses in regional and remote communities—ultimately strengthening access and educational outcomes across the sector.

Labor is proud to support improving outcomes for students from underrepresented backgrounds. Labor's reforms in the tertiary education sector have been widely welcomed by stakeholders—both universities and students alike. The President of the National Union of Students, Felix Hughes, said, 'These reforms recognise that equity must be built into the higher education funding system,' and 'supporting students from underrepresented backgrounds is essential to creating a more accessible higher education system.' The CEO of Universities Australia, Luke Sheehy, agreed. He said:

Australia needs more university-educated workers, not fewer.

That means opening the door to university for more Australians, no matter their postcode, background or bank balance.

More opportunity is good for students, good for communities and good for the economy.

This bill speaks directly to the word that's been thrown around this place so often of late. It speaks to ambition. The reforms in this bill are aimed squarely at people from disadvantaged backgrounds, people whose lives are often shaped by challenges that many of us will simply never face. For many of them, ambition is not centred solely on personal achievement but encompasses uplifting their families and their communities. These people are not lacking in talent, nor are they lacking in motivation. Instead, they are navigating systems that make their pathways to university harder at every step. That is where this bill comes in, because it reflects core Labor values that every person deserves a fair go regardless of their background, their personal circumstances or their bank balance.

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026. At the outset, I want to make the coalition's position very clear. We've not finalised our position on this bill. It makes substantial structural changes to Australia's higher education system. It should therefore be tested thoroughly, properly, carefully and transparently through the Senate committee process. The Senate has now referred the bill to the Education and Employment Legislation Committee, which is due to report on 3 September 2026. That inquiry should examine the practical effect of this legislation; its fiscal consequences; the protection for students and providers; and the safeguards, if there are any, against the misuse of executive power. If the bill comes to a vote in this House before that committee has reported, the coalition will not oppose it, but our final position will be determined after the evidence has been heard and the committee has completed its work.

That is the responsible approach, because this is not simply a bill about funding more student places. It's a bill about who holds power over Australia's universities. It's about how many students they can enrol, which courses they can offer, where growth occurs, the extent to which institutions can respond to student demand and how international students are allocated, and the conditions under which providers can continue to receive Commonwealth support.

At its heart, this bill shifts Australia away from a system in which institutions retain meaningful flexibility towards a system in which the minister, directly or indirectly, holds extraordinary power over the sector. The minister sets the domestic Commonwealth supported place pool. The minister sets the international student allocation pool. The minister may determine demand driven courses. The minister can directly allocate places in specified circumstances. The minister can impose conditions on specified providers. The minister determines many of the operational details of needs based funding through guidelines. Those powers are not merely exercised by this minister; they are powers that would be inherited by every future Minister for Education.

That is the proper test that we in this place have to examine. We shouldn't legislate on the assumption that this minister nor every future minister will exercise broad discretionary power cautiously, transparently and wisely. Parliament must assess the machinery it creates, not simply the intentions of the government currently occupying the Treasury benches.

Carina Garland (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour, and the member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.