Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026
Ms JARRETT (Brisbane) (17:26): I'd like to speak about something that goes to the heart of what Labor governments have always stood for: the idea that where you start in life does not determine where you finish—and few things have more power to change the course of a person's life than education. That's why the Albanese Labor government has introduced this bill, the Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026.
It's not simply another piece of legislation about university administration or funding formulas. At its core, it's about opportunity, it's about fairness and it's about equality. Every person who wants to go to university should be able to do so, and every person should have the opportunity to set themselves up for the future and be what they want to be.
This bill is also about the future of our nation. It's about preparing Australia for the jobs and the challenges of the decades ahead. The Universities Accord identifies enormous challenges for our country.
By 2050, Australia is expected to need a workforce where around 80 per cent of working-age Australians have a tertiary education, either through university or through vocational education and training. We can't simply achieve this by asking the same people who have traditionally gone to university to keep going. We have to widen the doors.
We have to reach Australians who have historically been underrepresented in higher education—people from low-income families, people from regional and remote Australia, First Nations people, people with disabilities and Australians who might be the first person in their family to ever walk onto a university campus—because talent is not concentrated in wealthy suburbs, intelligence is not determined by postcodes and ambition does not disappear when you cross the Great Dividing Range.
Talent exists everywhere; it's opportunity that does not, and this bill is about changing that. Today, close to half of Australians in their 30s have a university degree. But, as Education Minister Jason Clare pointed out, university attainment of young people from poorer families or regional Australia is roughly half the rate we see across the broader population, and it falls even further in various parts of the bush.
That should concern all of us, because, when a capable young Australian misses out on an education simply because of circumstances, that is not only a loss for that individual; it is a loss for Australia. That person could have become a nurse, a teacher, an engineer, a scientist, a social worker, an accountant, a doctor or perhaps the first person in their family to graduate from university and change the expectations of the generation that follows them.
That is the extraordinary thing about education—the benefits don't stop with the person receiving it. Education changes families, education changes communities, and ultimately it changes countries. One of the central reforms in this bill is the creation of a new managed growth funding system to not only support more university places but ensure those places are directed towards Australians and communities where they're needed the most.
Under the legislation, the Minister for Education will establish a total allocation pool, effectively determining the overall number of fully funded Commonwealth supported places available each year, and the Australian Tertiary Education Commission, ATEC, will then be responsible for the allocation of places. From 2027—that's just next year—there are expected to be around 16,000 additional fully funded Commonwealth supported places each year, increasing to around 19,000 additional places in 2030.
Over the next decade, the government expects the system to support approximately 230,000 additional commencing university students. Think about what that represents—230,000 Australians, 230,000 opportunities, 230,000 people who may become teachers, nurses, engineers, health professionals, researchers, innovators and the skilled workers Australia will depend on.
That is nation-building. This reform matters also enormously for regional Australia. For someone growing up in Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne, university may be relatively accessible.
There may even be several universities within commuting distance. You might live with your parents. You might keep your existing job.
You might already know people who went to university or who will go with you. Imagine being 18 years old in a small regional community. The nearest university could be hundreds of kilometres away.
University means leaving your family, finding somewhere to live, paying rent, finding work, paying transport costs and trying to study at the same time. When you think about it, for those students, the question is not only whether they are smart enough to go to university; it's also whether they can actually afford to do it? That's a fundamentally different problem.
That's why we're expanding university participation and saying it cannot simply be about creating places. We also have to give students the support they need to succeed and thrive. That brings me to the second major reform contained in this legislation, needs based funding.
The principle is familiar to anyone who understands Labor's approach to education. Different students have different needs, and educating students facing greater barriers can require additional resources. The legislation therefore embeds needs based funding within the core university funding system, providing additional support associated with students from disadvantaged backgrounds, First Nation students and students studying at regional campuses.
That matters because getting someone through university gates is really only half the job. We want them to graduate. A student who is the first person in their family to attend university may need different support from somebody whose parents and grandparents went to university.
A student moving hundreds of kilometres from a regional community may face different pressures. A student juggling study with 20 or 30 hours of paid work because their family cannot financially support them faces different challenges again. Giving everybody exactly the same thing doesn't mean equity.
Equity means recognising these differing needs and giving them the support they need. These reforms also represent a significant investment in the future of our university system. The government estimates that the changes will deliver an additional $3.6 billion in university funding over the next decade, and that investment matters.
What matters even more is what we receive in return—more Australians educated, more skills in our economy, more graduates entering essential professions, greater participation in regional communities, greater participation for disadvantaged Australians and First Nations people, and ultimately a stronger, more productive country. Education should never, ever be viewed as an expense.
It's an investment. It's an investment in productivity. It's an investment in families and in social mobility.
It's an investment in innovation and an investment in Australia's future. This is part of the bigger Labor reform agenda. It's also important to recognise that this bill does not exist in isolation.
It forms part of the Albanese government's broader response to the Australian Universities Accord, one of the most significant reviews of Australia's higher education sector in decades. In fact, this is the seventh piece of legislation introduced by the Albanese Labor government to implement the accord. The accord is attempting to answer a very big question: what sort of education system does Australia need for its future and for the next generation?
Our economy is changing and technology is changing. Artificial intelligence is changing workplaces, the energy transition is creating new industries, our population is ageing, demand for health care is increasing, and Australia needs more skilled workers across the vast parts of our economy. We need nurses.
We need teachers, engineers, doctors and allied health professionals, scientists, technology specialists, construction workers and skilled vocational workers. Meeting these challenges requires both university and TAFE. Frankly, we should never have to have a debate about university versus vocational education.
They're both equally important, and Australia needs both. Labor believes that both should provide genuine pathways to secure and meaningful work. There is also something deeply Labor about these reforms, because widening access to education has been part of Labor's story for generations—since inception, basically.
Labor understands that education is one of the most powerful forms of economic policy available to government. Give someone access to education and you give them something much more valuable than a temporary advantage—you give them skills, you give them knowledge, you give them choices, you give them independence, and you give them the ability to build their own future.
For generations of working Australians, university was where someone else's children went, but that changed a long time ago, and governments played a huge role in changing that. Our responsibility now is to make sure the next generation of Australians get the opportunity to do what they want to do. A child growing up in Logan, Ipswich, Townsville, Cairns, Rockhampton or even regional Queensland should be able to dream just as big as a child growing up in the wealthier parts of Sydney or Melbourne.
Their parents' income should not determine the size of their ambition. Their postcode should not determine their potential, and whether their parents went to university should not determine whether they believe university is somewhere they belong. There's another important element of these reforms.
We should not judge success simply by how many students enrol. We should judge success by how many students succeed. There is little value in encouraging a disadvantaged student to begin a degree if we abandon them once they arrive.
So universities have a responsibility, too. They need to provide academic support, and they need to provide appropriate services. They need to identify students who are struggling before those students disappear from the system.
They need to create environments where students from different backgrounds can genuinely feel that they belong. That's why linking growth with needs based support is so important—so that we're not simply opening the door, we're helping people walk through it and reach the other side. Lastly, this bill represents a shift to a more strategically managed university system, with better sharing of information to support outcomes and better inform the commission's work.
There is a powerful economic argument for these reforms, as I said earlier. Australia's future prosperity increasingly depends on knowledge and skills. We cannot compete internationally simply by working longer hours.
We need to work smarter. We need productivity growth. We need innovation.
We need workers with the skills required by a modern economy. That means investing in people and investing in human capital. When Australia educates another nurse, we strengthen our health system.
When we educate another teacher, we strengthen our schools. When we educate an engineer, we increase our capacity to build infrastructure and develop new industries. When we educate another scientist or researcher, we increase Australia's capacity to innovate.
And when someone from a disadvantaged family becomes the first in their family to graduate from university, as I was, we potentially change the economic trajectory of that family for generations. That's why education policy is good economic policy. But, ultimately, there's an even more simple reason to support this legislation: it's fair.
Australians believe in a fair go—not a guarantee that everyone will achieve exactly the same outcome or result, and not a promise that success will come without effort, but belief that everyone deserves an opportunity to try. If you work hard at school and earn the marks required for university, your family's bank balance should not be the thing that stops you from going there.
If you grow up in regional Queensland, distance should not automatically close the door. If nobody in your family has attended university before, you should still be able to become the first. That is what social mobility looks like, and that is the Australia that Labor should always fight for.
The universities accord makes clear Australia will need significantly more people with tertiary qualifications in the decades ahead, and this bill is an important part of meeting that challenge. It creates a new managed growth fund, it expands the number of places, it provides support to around 230,000 additional students, it embeds needs based funding and it represents approximately $3.6 billion in additional investment.
But behind those numbers are people: a kid from Logan, a young woman from regional Queensland, a First Nations student who wants to become a teacher, a mature-age worker who wants to start over again or a migrant who's intent on making things better for their family. These are reasons that matter, and this is why Australia cannot afford to waste talent. Your postcode should not determine your potential, your parents' income should not determine your ambition and your background should never determine whether the doors of education are open to you.
The great promise of education is that it allows people to build lives bigger than the circumstances into which they were born, and our job is to make sure that promise belongs to everyone. That's what opening the doors of opportunity means, and that's what these reforms are about. I commend this bill to the House.