Education Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2025

Mr LEESER (Berowra) (09:41): I want to record the fact that the coalition supports integrity in the tertiary education sector, and that's why we support the Education Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2025. We moved six amendments to this bill to address issues that have been raised with us by stakeholders from across the tertiary education and childcare sectors.

These amendments include safeguard mechanisms that will apply in relation to far-reaching new ministerial powers to automatically suspend and cancel specified courses; amendments to protect competition in the higher education sector, including a change in relation to TAFE, which was proposed by the government and which we're happy to accede to; additional guardrails around the information-gathering powers in the bill, including the removal of retrospectivity, additional requirements that the secretary must satisfy before he can exercise those powers and the sunsetting of powers when they're no longer needed; and a review mechanism after two years.

As the minister says, these amendments materially improve the bill, and I commend them to the House. Question agreed to.