Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026
Ms MILLER-FROST (Boothby) (13:21): This government knows that for this country to prosper we need to harness the skills and talents of all Australians. Educational opportunities are an important part of that, ranging from an early childhood education with our three-day guarantee to fully funding public schools, fee-free TAFE and the Universities Accord. All stages and pathways of education are important to the future prosperity of the country and to the opportunities and lives that all Australians can live.
A country can only be as good as the educational opportunities it affords all of its citizens, including its most disadvantaged communities, because, as we all know, education can mean the difference between getting a leg up in life and falling behind. In this place many of us, including myself, are the first in our families to have gone to university. Some are the first to complete a trade qualification or even high school, and each one of us carries with us the knowledge of what that education has meant to our lives, and the opportunities that we've been afforded.
It is the pathway that brought us here to this place to debate the best possible future for Australia and for all Australians. We're confronted with the following challenge: Australians from lower socioeconomic backgrounds or from rural or regional Australia are less likely to get a degree. If they start, they are less likely to complete it.
Educational justice—the pursuit of fairness and equity within our education systems—should be available to all Australians. We often say education changes lives, because it's true. It changes our lives, and it changes the lives of our families.
In my previous career in public health, it was known that the best way to reduce infant mortality and improve child health was to educate mothers. The answers have always been clear, but the execution has often fallen short. The Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026 will ensure that higher education can be accessible to more Australians.
As the Prime Minister has stated, 'in Australia the doors of opportunity are open to all of us', a sentiment that has echoed down the decades since Gough Whitlam first declared in 1972 that 'education is the key to equality of opportunity'. This bill comes in the wake of the government's Australian Universities Accord final report that was handed down two years ago—the biggest review into our higher education sector in nearly two decades, which sets in motion plans for higher education reform for the next two decades.
The Albanese Labor government has already taken up 30 of the 47 recommendations. We have cut HECS debt by 20 per cent, indexed HECS to the lower of the CPI or the WPI, implemented a marginal repayment system based on income and raised the minimum repayment threshold. We've introduced paid prac for teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work students.
During the winter break, we announced a further 10 types of health degrees where paid prac will now apply. We have doubled university study hubs, with 20 new regional study hubs and 24 suburban. We've increased the number of free bridging courses, helping students build the foundation skills necessary to enter university.
We've introduced the National Student Ombudsman and a national code to prevent and respond to gender-based violence. We have made demand-driven Commonwealth supported places available to all eligible First Nations students, and we've established the Australian Tertiary Education Commission, with responsibility for independent stewardship of the higher education system.
The report also recommends a new funding model for higher education that is planned and managed by the ATEC through mission based compacts. It recommends increasing the number of students from underrepresented backgrounds and establishing mechanisms to facilitate their success, because Australia will need to increase its accredited workforce—those with a certificate, diploma or degree—to 80 per cent by 2050 in order to meet the demands of the future.
With an investment of $3.6 billion over the next decade, the Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill will equip more Australians with future skills while entrenching educational justice in our higher education system. It will do this in three ways: by introducing a managed-growth funding system, by introducing demand-driven needs based funding and by formalising the ATEC's ability to allocate Commonwealth supported places.
Firstly, the managed-growth funding system will uncap the number of places for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and regional and rural areas. The Minister for Education will have the power to set the total allocation pool or the total number of Commonwealth supported places each year, while the ATEC will have responsibility for allocating these places to universities and other providers.
This will make the system fairer and better for all. It will mean 16,000 more university students year on year—19,000 from 2030 and, in total, 230,000 commencing domestic students over the next decade. The demand-driven needs based funding model will provide extra funding to students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, First Nations students and students based at regional campuses.
Funding will be proportionate; if universities have more students that meet these criteria, they will accordingly receive more funding. The equity amount will be set at $1,535 and the base regional amount at $1,398, and these amounts will be subject to indexation every year. This uncapped model is a significant change from the uncapped model that was part of the previous Higher Education Participation and Partnership Program.
The needs based funding will now mean that the amount of funding will more than double per head in certain instances, from what was as little as $600 under the previous HEPPP. Universities can invest the additional funds in much-needed programs and supports, including mentoring and tutoring, remedial writing programs and writing centres, scholarships and grants allowing students to focus on their studies rather than take on multiple jobs, and covering the higher costs of operating regional campuses.
This change is not only about making education accessible to a wider group of Australians; it's also about making the education experience for those students sustainable in the long term, especially for those who come from communities with generally lower attainment and attendance rates. In my electorate of Boothby, the Albanese Labor government's commitment to equitable access to higher education and investment in growing the accredited workforce is one of the strategies I'm most excited about.
The government and Flinders University have jointly committed to a $300 million new healthcare centre, a 10-storey health education facility that will produce 1,300 health professionals: nurses, social workers, occupational therapists, speech pathologists, paramedics, physios, psychologists and other allied health workers every year—a fantastic contribution to our growing health workforce.
Through its Health2GO student-led allied health clinic, it will provide more than 10,000 additional free or low-cost appointments for members of the public to access allied health services. The clinic provides valuable clinical placements that are part of allied health training. They will also work with the adjacent Flinders Medical Centre to assist with triaging waiting lists, as they have with ophthalmology waiting lists, reducing a four-year waiting list to four months and fast-tracking those with active disease to a rapid specialist review.
Flinders uni was started 60 years ago, and one of its main aims was to establish an alternative university for the southern suburbs. Flinders is now a global leader in educational justice. At the university's city campus, which was established to provide— The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Claydon ): This debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43.
The debate may be resumed at a later hour, and the member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.