Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026
Dr HAINES (Indi) (12:39): Higher education should open doors of opportunity for every Australian, no matter their postcode, background or bank balance. For people in regional Australia, access to education matters deeply and has long-lasting consequences. The landmark universities accord review, released in early 2024 and led by Professor Mary O'Kane, argued that Australia must increase the share of the workforce with tertiary qualifications from around 60 per cent today to at least 80 per cent by 2050.
That's a nation-building task and one on which our productivity nationally depends, but we will miss that target if higher education remains harder to reach for people from low-income backgrounds, First Nations people or people with disability, and it will not be achieved if regional Australia is left behind. The Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026 seeks to make the higher education funding system more responsive to student demand and provide additional support for students who face the greatest barriers to participation.
I support this ambition and I will support the passage of this bill through the House, but not before I table what are some significant concerns, including overly broad ministerial powers in this bill, the allocation of international student places and the removal of equity funding for regional and rural students. It is a fact that people from regional areas are less likely to attend university than their metropolitan peers, and we really need to close this gap.
In my electorate of Indi, just 17 per cent of adults have a bachelor's degree or higher—well below the national average of 26 per cent. Higher levels of educational attainment are clearly associated with better health, higher incomes, stronger workforce participation and overall improved wellbeing. In a nutshell, higher education means greater prosperity.
But educational attainment shapes more than a person's individual outcomes; it shapes an entire community. We need people with all kinds of skills and talents to build strong communities. We need higher levels of tertiary attainment rates because that means regional communities can attract and retain the skilled workforce that we need.
Research from the Grattan Institute shows that when a school leaver moves to a major city for university, only one in five return to the regions within a decade. By contrast, when regional students study at a regional campus close to home, three-quarters of them stay local for the long term. Strong tertiary options close to home mean more young people can build a future for themselves in the community that raised them, and the community sees the benefit of nurturing their young.
It means more teachers in our schools, more nurses in our hospitals, more engineers shaping our infrastructure—more skilled workers helping regional Australia truly prosper for generations to come. It also means more opportunity for people at every stage of life to pursue further study—mid-career people, people changing their careers and people undertaking higher research degrees.
Beyond supporting our workforce pipelines, regional universities play a central role in research and help communities seize new economic opportunities and innovation. Some of the most fantastic ideas and innovative solutions come from the regional universities. That's why regional universities like La Trobe and Charles Sturt University are so important to the electorate of Indi and so important across rural and regional areas.
They don't just provide education; they are an investment in the long-term productivity and prosperity of our regions. The role that they play in the electorate of Indi is truly transformative. This bill amends several acts relating to higher education.
First, it establishes a managed growth funding system. Instead of the current system, where funding is measured not by student places but by a total dollar amount given to each university, the new system will revolve around a national allocation pool. This pool, measured in total student places, will be set by the minister and allocated by the Australian Tertiary Education Commission, or ATEC.
That pool could grow on the commission's advice, particularly to meet demand from students from low-socioeconomic, regional and remote backgrounds. The bill also introduces needs based funding supplements. Universities will receive additional funding for every student they enrol from a low-socioeconomic background, every First Nation student and every student studying at a regional campus.
However, it won't provide a supplement for students from a regional area, and I'll return to this soon. The bill also creates a new system for allocating international student places, with the minister setting an overall international allocation pool. It also authorises the commission to allocate commencing overseas student places to providers.
Overall, the higher education sector has welcomed the intent of the bill. Most universities and stakeholders support its passage, but they have cautioned against rushing this bill through the parliament. The CEO of Universities Australia, Luke Sheehy, has said: The ambition is right, but the detail matters.
He also said: Changes of this scale need to be scrutinised closely to make sure we get them right for students, universities and the nation. I agree. The government should not move this bill through either house before the Senate inquiry has reported.
If the ambition is right, then the parliament must take the time to get the detail right and prevent any perverse outcomes that shut the door. I want to focus on the managed growth system that this bill creates. Some stakeholders, particularly those with a metropolitan focus, have warned that the introduction of a managed growth system could reduce student choice.
This argument is linked to new penalties if a university enrols above its allocation, something known as overenrolment. Some universities argue the penalties will make them more cautious about offering places, and the aggregate drop could disproportionately affect access for rural, First Nations and low-socioeconomic students. However, I've listened to universities in my electorate who believe the concerns around managed growth impacting access are overblown and misguided.
These regional universities argue that, when a metropolitan university over enrols students, it disproportionately pulls students away from smaller universities and those in rural areas. A core focus of smaller and regional universities is to expand higher education for underrepresented students, and they do an outstanding job supporting equity and regional enrolments.
La Trobe University, for example, has 7,388 students from a regional area, and, of that, 4,991 are studying at a regional campus. In 2025-26, their regional campus retention rate was an astonishing 89 per cent. These are strong outcomes that demonstrate the value of well-supported regional institutions, so measures that support their viability, like controlling the risk of over enrolments, are actually welcome to regional universities.
An area of this bill warranting closer examination is the treatment of regional students under the new needs based funding model. Until now, being from a regional area has been recognised as a form of educational disadvantage in its own right and attracted supplementary funding. This reflects that regional students face unique barriers and ensures providers are funded to support them.
Under the new arrangements, concerningly regional students are no longer recognised as a separate equity cohort. Regional campuses will continue to receive some funding to reflect the higher costs of delivering education in regional Australia, but universities who make efforts to enrol regional students won't receive any extra support for those efforts. La Trobe University has warned that, compared to the previous arrangements, the new model will make it harder to fund support programs targeted at regional students unless they qualify on other equity grounds.
This is because any additional supports would have to be covered by universities' own budgets. If increasing higher education participation for regional Australians is a goal of the accord—and I know that it is a goal—it's difficult to understand why regionality in and of itself will cease to be a basis for additional support. I'm also concerned about the breadth of powers that will allow the minister to impose funding conditions in writing on any individual university.
Unlike the funding agreements the new system replaces, which were required to be published on the department's website within 28 days, these determinations do not have to be published at all. This is a departure from existing transparency arrangements and weakens public accountability and parliamentary oversight of higher education funding. Universities Australia wants these powers removed, and Monash University wants the power to sit with ATEC instead.
The Regional Universities Network describes the powers in this bill as 'excessive and unnecessary' overreach, warning that they raise serious questions about university autonomy. The Australian Technology Network of Universities makes an important point that these powers are not just for today but will be inherited by governments of the future. The questions for this parliament are whether these powers are appropriate and what risks they might pose for the higher education sector into the future.
I am also concerned about the proposed power for the commission to allocate international student places. While moving this power from the minister to the commissioner is absolutely an improvement, I am yet to be convinced that powers of this kind will benefit domestic students, universities or the Australian economy. The universities accord did not recommend enrolment caps and warned restrictions of this kind would largely benefit metropolitan institutions.
I remain concerned that this proposal could damage Australia's international reputation, suppress a significant driver of our economy and undermine the viability of regional universities. Let's not forget that international education is Australia's fourth-largest export, bringing in $54 billion nationally and $18 billion into Victoria alone. International education as a revenue raiser should never become an end in and of itself though, so the challenge is to get the balance right.
For regional universities, revenue from international enrolments helps underwrite delivery of regional campuses, courses and services. Strong and sensible regulation is, of course, necessary without scapegoating international students. Without doubt, we should stamp out unscrupulous actors and ensure the sector is sustainable and operates with complete integrity, but we should also be careful that allocation powers are not self-defeating and don't ultimately undermine the sector's ability to deliver quality education to Australian students.
I support further reform of the sector, including reform of the Job-ready Graduates Package. I voted for the bill that implemented Job-ready Graduates at the time because it also delivered important reforms for regional communities, including the tertiary access payment and regional university study hubs, but I criticised the Job-ready Graduates fee structure at the time for its sheer lack of evidence.
We know now that these concerns were indeed very well founded. The package has not meaningfully shifted students into so-called priority courses. Instead, it's simply left this cohort of students in more debt.
It's overdue for reform, and the government has had more than four years to respond to the evidence. If the purpose of the universities accord is to 'open doors of opportunity', then we must fix the policies that have proven to place unnecessary barriers in front of some students. The parliament must act to make higher education affordable, available and accessible for all Australians, whether they live in a regional area, come from a low-income background, are the first in their family to study or face other barriers to participation.
Studying at a university or TAFE should not send you broke. It should not force you to leave your community, and it should not depend on whether a regional institution has been weakened by policy decisions made without proper regard for regional consequences. The government's ambition is right.
More Australians should be able to access tertiary education, and the system should better support the students who face the greatest barriers. But with that ambition we must not disregard detail. Detail matters.
Our task as a parliament is to open doors of opportunities for students. That's the standard by which this reform must be judged.