Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Choice in Childcare and Early Learning) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Universities Accord (Australian Tertiary Education Commission) Bill 2025 and the Universities Accord (Australian Tertiary Education Commission) (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2025. These are the bills which establish the Australian Tertiary Education Commission, known as ATEC. That's how I'll refer to it. Let me say this from the very outset. These bills are not in a state fit to pass this parliament. They are replete with problems at every level, from design flaws to major technical operational errors. The bills have been criticised right across the board. To put it bluntly, these bills are not what Australians need right now. This bill has very few friends. Maybe it will have some friends here in this place tonight and pass this parliament, but out there, in the real world, among providers and universities in the higher ed sector, it does not have the kind of support that would justify this bill probably being rushed through tonight. I've only got 3½ more minutes to speak because this bill is subject to the guillotine that we're dealing with tonight.

There is not enough time under the standing orders to do justice to all of the problems with this legislation. There is an attempt to set down in law a national tertiary education objective for Australia, which fails to even mention the words 'teaching', 'learning' or 'research'. There is a fundamental problem that it adds to the already overly regulated sector. There is a decision to spend at least $54 million on a new bureaucracy, not a cent of which will create a single new student place, improve student experience on campus, enhance teaching or deliver new research. There is a decision to bring universities far more tightly under ministerial control than has previously been the case, all while removing parliamentary oversight.

I could go on. The list does go on. But this bill, as I said, is not fit to pass. It's got very few friends. The National Tertiary Education Union has slammed it as a ham-fisted attempt to ram more ideology into our universities and tertiary providers. The NTEU said:

The NTEU believes that this objective does not adequately address the character, nature and purpose of higher education; it makes no reference, for example, to the importance of critical inquiry, academic discovery and discourse, institutional independence or even to academic freedom. Instead, the objectives seek to define tertiary education as part of broader Government policy and could apply to virtually any sector.

When a member of the Liberal Party is quoting from the National Tertiary Education Union in its criticism of the bill, you know that it's got a problem! You know that this bill has some very real problems.

The criticism doesn't stop there. Even the institutions who champion ATEC—and there were some championing the idea, concept and model of ATEC—have slammed the bill. Universities Australia said:

As currently drafted, the Bill does not deliver on the Australian Universities Accord's … aspirations for an independent body to design and drive the longer-term reform agenda for Australia's tertiary system.

Deakin University, ATEC supporter, said this:

… though supportive of an ATEC, and already engaged with the interim body in a productive and meaningful manner, Deakin holds several concerns regarding the proposed legislation. We posit that addressing these concerns, which range from a lack of clarity to missed opportunities to truly achieve the ambitions of establishing such a function, should be a priority.

And then professor of higher education policy at Monash University, Andrew Norton, stated in his submission:

… the ATEC bills should be rejected. They would narrow higher education's purposes. As they stand, they offer universities nothing but additional government control and bureaucracy. Due to ATEC's design flaws, we can have little confidence that it will improve on the current policy framework.

And what are we going to do here tonight? We're probably going to pass it.

So I call on the government to reconsider that position. This is a serious issue. There are serious critics of it. This bill is not fit for purpose. It needs to be amended. We'll be moving some amendments in the committee stage, and I hope that we can get support for those.