Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026
Mr NG (Menzies) (12:21): One of our core beliefs as Australians is in a fair go for all. At the heart of a fair go for all is equality of opportunity, and at the heart of equality of opportunity is education. My mum was the first in her family to go to university.
She grew up in different parts of Melbourne and regional Australia, even living on Gabo Island for a while when her dad was a lighthouse keeper. It's in the far north of Victoria. She told stories about sharks circling the jetty and penguins under her bed.
If that's not regional and remote Australia, I don't know where is. She also worked as a hospital worker while she was studying a law degree. She was pregnant with my sister, and then, when she did her master's degree, she brought me to lectures as a baby.
Eventually, she became a lawyer. That was possible because of a system that opened doors for her. The community of Menzies, who I'm proud to represent, understand this instinctively.
Places like Doncaster, Box Hill, Warrandyte, Templestowe, Park Orchards and Balwyn North are communities built by people who believe that, if you work hard and play by the rules, the system gives you a fair shot. They are people like my dad, who migrated to Australia from Singapore with nothing, and my mum, who studied while she worked as a hospital worker. They are people who sacrificed to give their children opportunities that they never had themselves.
That is the lived experience of thousands of families across my community, and it is a story that the Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026 is writing for the next generation. That story did not write itself. It was built by Labor governments over decades.
It was Gough Whitlam who made university free, abolishing tuition fees and opening the doors of higher education to a generation of Australians who never imagined it possible—the children of factory workers, nurses, tradespeople and families who had never had anyone go to university before. It was Bob Hawke and Paul Keating who built HECS, a system that allowed students to access university without paying upfront, repaying their debt only once they were earning enough to do so.
It was the Gillard government who commissioned the Gonski review and began the work of needs based school funding, the principle being that resources flowing to a school should reflect the needs of the students in it, not the postcode they happen to live in. Now, it is the Albanese Labor government continuing that work, fully and fairly funding every public school and delivering the biggest new investment in public education in Australia's history.
With this bill, the government is extending the same principle—that access to higher education should be determined by capability and effort, not by background or postcode or the size of a family's bank account—into the tertiary education system. Every major advance in Australian education has been driven by Labor, and the bill continues this. Not long ago, I had the privilege of visiting La Trobe University's SOLAR Lab, along with the Minister for Education, Jason Clare; Assistant Minister Ged Kearney; the then deputy premier and now premier, Ben Carroll; and the member for Bundoora, Colin Brooks.
SOLAR stands for Science of Language and Reading. This lab gives researchers and teaching students the chance to observe and apply the very latest in educational innovation—the cutting-edge techniques about how children actually learn. We had the opportunity to watch one of the outstanding teachers from Templestowe Heights applying these techniques in practice.
But the real stars that day were not the researchers or the academics; they were the students from Templestowe Heights Primary School, from my community of Menzies, who were sitting there reading passages aloud from Hatchet, a book old enough that I also studied it at school. The principal, Rhys Coulson, and the teachers at Templestowe Heights are part of a national movement of educators who understand that how we teach matters just as much as what we teach.
That visit demonstrated the opportunities that university can provide to individuals and to the country to train people up for some of the most important jobs in the world, such as teachers, and it showed how this investment can pay dividends for future generations. That is what this bill is about. Over the next few decades, Australia will need around 80 per cent of its workforce to hold a certificate, diploma or degree.
That reflects the transformation already underway in how we work, how we build and how we compete. The Australian Universities Accord is a blueprint for higher education reform over the next decade and beyond. This Albanese Labor government has already implemented more than 30 of its 47 recommendations.
We doubled the number of university study hubs in regional and suburban areas. We introduced the National Student Ombudsman. We established the Australian Tertiary Education Commission, providing genuine stewardship for the tertiary sector.
We've also cut HECS debts by 20 per cent. We introduced paid placements for teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work students, and recently the Albanese Labor government expanded paid prac to 10 more health and allied health professions. Recently, with the Deputy Prime Minister, I had the pleasure of visiting Box Hill Hospital in my community, and there we met a number of students who are undertaking their placements.
There were nursing students who would soon be able to benefit from paid prac. We also met a number of OT and physiotherapy students, who were very happy to hear about the government's announcement of paid prac, although, since they were doing their placements then, they weren't able to take advantage of it. You could see that they were juggling their part-time jobs as well as working full time to get that practical experience they needed to develop the skills to practice their profession.
They also had to work as footy coaches or work in Big W at the same time, in order to get the accreditation they needed. Paid prac will mean that they'll be able to focus on their studies and get their qualifications without the stress of also having to work part-time jobs to pay their rent and pay their bills. This bill delivers the next step.
At its core, this legislation builds a new funding architecture for Australian higher education, one that is designed to grow the system, support those students who have historically been left behind and align Commonwealth investment with where it is needed most. The bill establishes a new managed-growth funding system. In practical terms, it effectively uncaps university places for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and from regional areas.
Universities will be funded in proportion to the students they enrol and support. The more students a provider takes from a disadvantaged background, the more funding they will receive to help those students succeed. This is the same logic that underpins the Gonski funding for schools, and it works.
The legislation also introduces needs based funding. This is direct, targeted support for students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, First Nations students and those studying at regional campuses. The base equity amount is set at over $1,500 per student, and the base regional amount is around $1,400.
That is more than double what was provided under similar previous programs, which in some cases was as little as $600 per student. Universities will be able to put that funding towards tutoring, mentoring, academic support, scholarships and offsetting the higher costs that come with regional campuses. These changes inject $3.6 billion into Australia's higher education system over the next decade.
They are expected to result in an additional 230,000 commencing domestic students at universities across that period. That is 230,000 people whose path to a degree and the opportunities that come with it become possible because of this legislation. Let us be clear about what those opposite have delivered when it comes to higher education.
They cut university funding, they deregulated fees and they tried to drive up the cost of a degree. They allowed HECS debts to spiral, with indexation eating into balances faster than graduates and students could repay them. They underfunded the sector and stepped back from the role government has to play in ensuring Australia's skill base matches our economic needs.
The result was a system that worked well for those who were already advantaged and left too many others behind. This government has reversed that direction step by step. We cut 20 per cent from HECS debts.
We changed the way debts are indexed so that it is the lower of either CPI or wage growth, restoring hope to students that they'll be able to pay off their student debt. We introduce paid placements so that student nurses, teachers, social workers, midwives and, more recently, pharmacists, OTs and physiotherapists are not forced to choose between their studies and paying rent.
We established the ATEC so that tertiary education has genuine long-term stewardship and is not left to drift from one political cycle to the next. Now we are rebuilding the funding foundations. Evidence based teaching is not just a phrase.
At Templestowe Heights, it is the difference between a child who learns to read with confidence and one who falls further behind. Our broader school funding reforms are part of that same agenda: full and fair funding for every public school; billions of dollars in new investment, tied not to blind spending but to evidence about what actually improves education outcomes; phonics checks and numeracy checks to identify the children who need extra help; and small-group tutoring to give those children the support they deserve.
This is the biggest new investment by an Australian government in public education. This bill extends that same logic upwards into the tertiary education system because the question is not simply whether a child learns to read in year 1; it is whether that child, 20 years later, can access the qualification they need to participate fully in the economy that we're building and to participate fully in the civic life that we all contribute to.
Menzies is one of the most sought-after places to live in Melbourne's east for a simple reason: families move to our area due to our outstanding schools. People really value education in our community. They move to places like Surrey Hills, Mont Albert, Doncaster, Doncaster East, Box Hill and Blackburn because they know their children will get an outstanding education.
They plan their lives around school zones. They make financial sacrifices to get into those catchments. They make their single biggest investment—buying a home—based on which schools are within walking distance.
That reflects decades of a community committed to education. It also reflects strong principals, dedicated teachers, parents who are involved and engaged, and a culture that takes learning seriously. Menzies has some of the best schools in Victoria.
Our public schools consistently perform at the highest levels. Our school communities are tight knit, diverse and ambitious for their children. What families in Menzies understand is that a great school is not just about the building; it's the foundation of a child's future.
It shapes what is possible, and it determines what doors open for them later in life. That is exactly what this bill is about. This bill matters because the decisions we make about education are decisions about what kind of country we want to be.
Do we want to be a country that reserves opportunity for those born into it or a country that ensures equality of opportunity for everyone, regardless of their background, where they're from or what language they speak at home? Do we want to be country that talks about skills shortages while doing nothing to address the structural barriers keeping capable people out of university or a country that invests, plans and builds a tertiary education system that can actually deliver the workforce our future requires?
This government has made its choice, with 230,000 more students at university, needs based funding for those who need it most, a managed system built for the long term and a funding model that rewards universities for doing the hard work of genuine inclusion. Labor is the party that has opened the doors of Australian opportunity in our country and in education.
This bill opens them wider. It opens them wider for students from regional areas and from disadvantaged backgrounds, for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and for people like my mum, who will be the first in their family to go to university. I commend this bill to the House.