Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026

Dr GARLAND (Chisholm) (10:50): In my first speech in this place, I shared how I am forever grateful for the education—the keys to the kingdom, as Paul Keating put it—that I received and acknowledged that education changes lives. It changed mine, and it changes so many lives for people right across communities in this country. I've also previously acknowledged the transformative impact that education has had right across Australia, particularly higher education.

Those words that I shared in 2022, when I first came to this place, including the words around my passion and strong conviction for ensuring we have a robust and independent higher education system, were true then, and they are still true today. We need a higher education system that values and fosters intellectual curiosity and supports people to think, to create new ideas and to ask the tough questions.

That's the kind of higher education system that is essential to the future of Australia. I'm really proud to stand on this side of the House and be part of an Albanese Labor government that absolutely values higher education. I've said in this place before that, when you value something, you invest in it, and Labor has taken our responsibility seriously when it comes to investing in higher education.

It's why our Labor government got on with future-proofing our higher education system as soon as we had the opportunity to do so upon forming government. We wasted no time at all. Led by Minister Clare, our government got to work.

The Australian Universities Accord was the biggest and broadest review of higher education in Australia in almost 20 years, and, through the accord, we undertook a top-to-bottom review of Australia's higher education system. Led by Professor Mary O'Kane AC, we engaged a panel of eminent Australians. Collectively, the panel represented some of the sharpest minds in this country, bringing a depth and breadth of experience throughout higher education that would be the envy of the world, as well as being well placed to make recommendations about the future of our system.

In November 2022, Minister Clare charged the panel with conducting a review to drive lasting reform in our higher education system. This is reform that would deliver a higher education system that would not only meet the current needs of our country, but meet the future needs of our nation too—a plan that would have targets and measurable outcomes so that we as a nation could track our progress.

The panel engaged extensively across the higher education sector through the university accord consultation process, engaging with students, staff, researchers, industry and other governments to examine a range of issues. My electorate of Chisholm is home to many students, academics, university staff and families with an incredibly deep interest in higher education.

I'm really pleased to say that my community had the opportunity to participate in the accord review process. This included direct feedback that I received via electronic correspondence and mobile offices, including on campuses at Monash and Deakin University, in my electorate at that point, and I had the opportunity to hear directly from students. I'm incredibly grateful for the feedback that was provided.

Students spoke with me and my staff about the need to improve student supports. They spoke about student safety on campus. They spoke about the lack of access to Commonwealth supported places and about the challenges of balancing studies whilst trying to earn an income and, at the same time, needing to undertake unpaid prac placements for their nursing or teaching degree.

Sadly, I also heard from students about their very deep worries around student debt and the prospect of potentially never being able to afford a home of their own, something we're seeking to fix through our recently passed tax changes around negative gearing. Feedback from our community was also received by way of a comprehensive higher education survey that I conducted across my electorate, which received hundreds of submissions.

Eighty-four per cent of respondents to my survey had previously studied at an Australian university, and 61 per cent were employed in higher education. I also was employed in higher education for a period of time. Working in universities was my first career.

So I'm very passionate about the issues people raised with me. The views I received from my electorate really helped inform the position I was able to take to government, and on behalf of my electorate of Chisholm I made a submission to the consultation on the Accord interim report. I stated in my submission that the issues uncovered through the Chisholm higher education survey demonstrated that there was a very clear expectation from the community and sector stakeholders that higher education should be meaningfully reformed—that we should not squander the chance afforded to us in government to make the deep and significant changes required in order to improve the Australian higher education system, which is an already excellent system but with clear areas where things could be improved.

I also submitted to the accord process that the platform provided in the consultation process was important in fostering consensus and driving transformative change, that consultation itself was very important and that through that consultation we could be more transparent and accountable around our expectations of higher education, ensuring that benefits would be shared.

Once again, I really want to express my gratitude to my community of Chisholm for their feedback and the opportunity to put their views to our minister and to our government around the improvements people saw as essential to our higher education system. I'm pleased the government listened, and the final report of the Australian Universities Accord process really did reflect many of the concerns raised by my constituents.

This final report serves as a blueprint for higher education reform over the next decade and the decade after that. We've already, as the Albanese Labor government, implemented more than 30 of the accord's 47 recommendations in full or in part. This of course includes making HECS better and fairer by cutting 20 per cent of HECS debts, and I know that means a lot for my community in Chisholm.

We've changed the way student debt is calculated, which is a significant change. That happened when we capped indexation on HECS debts to the lower of the CPI and the WPI. That has meant that more than 23,000 people in my electorate will never again see their debts grow faster than their wages.

That's really important. We also introduced, for the first time, paid prac for teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work students, which is a really important initiative to which we've since announced an expansion. One of our initiatives, too, was the introduction of the National Student Ombudsman, as well as the National Higher Education Code to Prevent and Respond to Gender-based Violence.

These are two reforms that I was particularly passionate about. Through the accord process I heard directly from students and staff about their own lived experiences both on and off campus. It also gave me cause to reflect on my own lived experiences and those of my peers throughout my academic life, both as a student who lived on campus and as a staff member in a university.

I recognised how important it was to introduce a new student ombudsman, and I'm pleased to say that we have delivered on this recommendation. The Australian Universities Accord recommended adopting a new funding model for higher education that's planned and managed by the Australian Tertiary Education Commission through mission based compacts. It also recommended increasing the number of higher education places for students from underrepresented backgrounds, matched by a focus on the success of these students.

These changes will inject an additional $3.6 billion into Australia's higher education system over the next decade to increase the number of students at university and to meet Australia's future skill needs. I do at this point want to acknowledge that there is unfinished business here—the unfinished business of repealing the Job-Ready Graduates scheme. This is something I've been pretty outspoken on for a number of years, including before I entered parliament.

I've had some very constructive conversations with the minister on this issue, and I hope to see more progress soon. This bill before us today, though, enacts our commitment to expanding access to university through a new funding system. It will embed a new managed growth funding system and establish a demand-driven needs based funding model to support students from underrepresented backgrounds to access university and to succeed at university.

The completion of courses is very important. It will also formalise the role of the commission in allocating Commonwealth supported places. This new managed growth funding system will effectively uncap the number of places for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and from regional areas.

This new system will address existing issues in the higher education funding system and will better align Commonwealth funding with enrolments at universities. Our changes are expected to result in an extra 230,000 domestic students commencing at university over the next decade. That's 230,000 lives that are going to be changed and who are going to be able to access opportunities they may not have otherwise been able to.

Higher education providers will be supported to transition to the new funding system. Demand-driven, needs based funding will provide extra funding to support students who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, First Nations students and students studying at regional campuses. Similarly to Gonski funding for schools, the more students a university has that meet the appropriate criteria, the more funding the university will receive to help those students to participate and to succeed at university.

Under this new needs based funding system, the amount of funding per student will more than double next year in some cases. This bill sets the base equity amount at $1,535 and the base regional amount at $1,398. That is more than double the average amount that was provided to universities per student last year, which was as little as $600 under similar previous programs.

Universities will be able to use this extra funding for things like tutoring, mentoring and other academic supports, for direct financial assistance through scholarships and grants, and for offsetting the higher cost of campuses in regional and remote areas. In addition, the bill sets out a framework for the commission to exercise its existing function to allocate international student places, where the minister for education makes an international allocation pool determination.

In summary, this bill embeds a new managed growth funding system to support growth of domestic students, particularly those from low socioeconomic backgrounds and regional and remote backgrounds. It establishes a demand-driven, needs based funding model to support students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, First Nations students and students studying at regional campuses.

It critically formalises the role of the Australian Tertiary Education Commission in allocating Commonwealth supported places to higher education providers. Significantly, these changes have been supported by a range of stakeholders within the higher education sector. Australian Technology Network of Universities Executive Director Dr Andy Marks stated: Making access to university fairer is just the beginning … these measures will also lift the nation's skill-base in targeted-technology based areas.

Professor Theo Farrell, the Vice-Chancellor of La Trobe University, has said: For Australia to meet its future workforce and productivity needs, we must increase access to higher education and ensure there is enough growth in the system … this legislation is an important step towards that vision. On funding, we've also heard from students, including through the National Union of Students national president Felix Hughes, who has said: These reforms recognise that equity must be built into the higher education funding system and that supporting students from underrepresented backgrounds is essential to creating a more accessible higher education system.

There is, of course, more to be done when it comes to making our higher education system better, fairer and more accessible. This legislation is a very important step. It will help to open the doors of opportunity, as the name suggests.

It's opening those doors wider. That's what the Labor government is committed to doing for every student in my electorate and everywhere throughout our nation. On that, I commend the bill to the House.