Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026
Ms LE (Fowler) (12:06): 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.