Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026

Ms CHANEY (Curtin) (12:59): 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.