Maria Kovacic (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Universities Accord (National Higher Education Code to Prevent and Respond to Gender-based Violence) Bill 2025 and the Universities Accord (National Higher Education Code to Prevent and Respond to Gender-based Violence) (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2025. As has been articulated by my colleague Senator Duniam, the opposition supports these bills and the intent of these bills. Fundamentally, these bills are about protecting the rights and dignity of university students, particularly the right to attend university and pursue higher education free from gender based violence.

In her speech to the National Press Club, the Leader of the Opposition, Sussan Ley, made it clear that she considers the current situation of gender based violence and domestic violence to be our nation's greatest shame, and I agree with her. It is a shame. It is a shame on our nation and it requires concerted action, not just in terms of crisis support and management, but also in terms of early intervention and prevention.

These bills establish a new standalone regulatory framework to reduce the incidence of sexual assault and sexual harassment on our campuses and to hold higher education providers to account to ensure that they provide a safe place for their students to study.

The incidence of sexual assault and harassment on university campuses was highlighted in University Australia's National Student Safety Survey in 2021. This survey found that one in 20 students had been sexually assaulted since they started university and one in six had been sexually harassed. Let me repeat that so we actually understand how many people that is—how many young people who had embarked on the beginning of what should have been an exciting tertiary education journey and what they had been faced with instead. One in 20 students had been sexually assaulted since they started university and one in six had been sexually harassed. Around one in two students who experienced sexual assault and sexual harassment knew nothing or very little about the avenues available to them for support or about any formal reporting process. That is unacceptable.

The coalition strongly supports the Universities Accord (National Higher Education Code to Prevent and Respond to Gender-based Violence) Bill and its purpose, as I have outlined, in establishing a national code to prevent and respond to gender based violence in our universities and in higher education. We affirm that everyone on a university campus—students, staff and residents—have the right to be safe as they work and as they learn.

This bill is necessary because the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, TEQSA, has failed to hold universities accountable in relation to this massive problem. TEQSA has existing powers to highlight university failures, but it did not act, putting at risk students and staff at universities. And the minister did not strengthen TEQSA's powers or hold that regulator to account.

This bill will establish a specialist unit within the Department of Education to act as the new regulator. We have concerns about placing regulatory responsibility within the Department of Education rather than strengthening the independent regulator, and we note that embedding this function within the department risks politicising regulation and potentially undermining confidence in impartial enforcement. However, we are absolutely committed to supporting new initiatives in the higher education sector that aim to prevent and respond more effectively to the pervasive issue of gender based violence on our campuses.

We acknowledge the work of advocates, like Fair Agenda, End Rape on Campus and the STOP Campaign, to improve the safety of students and staff on campuses. However, more action needs to be taken by this government to respond to the proliferation of antisemitism on university campuses, which is why we have moved a second reading amendment to the bill. The coalition's amendment seeks to establish an additional national higher education code to prevent and respond to antisemitism. It responds to the real and urgent circumstances that Jewish students, particularly young female Jewish students, are facing at universities.

Universities should be life-transforming places. Young people and mature-age students do extraordinary work to become eligible to go to university, and there is also a great cost in attending university. Students should be safe when they are there, and we should ensure that mechanisms and frameworks are in place to ensure that they can be safe. Students should be able to go there and freely debate their ideas. They shouldn't be afraid of identifying, in respectful debate, who they are, where they come from or what they believe. We have a growing problem in this country with a culture that says, 'If you don't agree with me, I'll come out and destroy you.' That needs to end, and the first place that we need to try and stop that is on our campuses. We should be able to debate freely and respectfully without targeting each other based on our gender or our faith. There have recently been many attempts to silence and intimidate Jewish academics, Jewish students and Jewish staff, and that needs to end.

In addition to creating a code to prevent and respond to antisemitism, this amendment would make it clear that all higher education students, staff and providers—everyone on a higher education campus—have the right to be safe, and it would impose on universities a range of obligations concerning student and staff safety, which is very important given the alarming increase in antisemitic incidents on campuses—over the last 18 months in particular.

I think what we need to fundamentally accept here is that our universities have changed and that behaviour on campuses has been allowed to spiral outside of what we would consider to be okay. Young women should not feel unsafe on a university campus. They shouldn't have this conflict: 'I'm so excited I got here; I'm so excited that I did so well that I was able to achieve my goal, but, now that I'm here, I have to be afraid,' or, 'I have to be careful,' or, 'I have to be worried about whether somebody is going to attack me or target me.' As people in this place who can make a difference, we have to accept that this can never happen again, and that is why this legislation is so important. We in this place all have an obligation to address this national shame wherever it presents itself, whether it is on our campuses or elsewhere. I commend the Senate for the way in which it has engaged in the debate on this bill and I commend the bill to the Senate.