Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026
Mr MONCRIEFF (Hughes) (18:23): 'Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears and never regrets.' Those words, attributed to the great polymath Leonardo da Vinci, speak to a timeless truth. Education is the great equaliser and enabler. It is the single most powerful driver of social mobility and the ladder by which young people from suburbs like those in my home of southern Sydney can build a better life for themselves, their families and their communities.
The democratisation of education increases the supply of innovative and interested minds. In turn, increased education makes for a more exciting society. That is why education is a core value of the Australian Labor Party.
It empowers workers, grows the stock of human capital, promotes economic mobility and gives people the skills and confidence to withstand powerful shocks. As the party of growth and security, Labor will always work to improve higher education and expand its accessibility to all. At the start of 2024, our government released the final report of the Australian Universities Accord.
It provides a roadmap for reforming higher education to expand access and opportunity well into the future. The Albanese Labor government has already improved the fairness of HECS by cutting 20 per cent off every student loan, capping indexation, moving to a marginal repayment system and raising the minimum repayment threshold. That means billions of dollars in debt has been wiped out for over three million Australians, including 18,226 students in my electorate with a HECS debt and 589 with a VET loan.
Now, if wages fail to rise faster than inflation, indexation will be capped to the lower of the CPI or the wage price index, ensuring that student loans no longer outpace students' purchasing power. We've raised the minimum repayment threshold from $54,435 to $67,000 and introduced a marginal repayment system. Under the previous repayment structure, earning $1 over the threshold required a percentage payment on your entire income, acting as a high effective marginal tax rate and disincentivising work.
Now, repayments only apply to income earned above the threshold. We have introduced the National Student Ombudsman and National Higher Education Code to Prevent and Respond to Gender-based Violence. Academic success depends on an environment where students feel safe, respected and supported.
Following persistent advocacy regarding safety failures across university campuses, our government has established the National Student Ombudsman, a single entry body that can investigate student complaints spanning academic disputes, administrative fairness and welfare concerns. Higher education institutions must also comply with new mandatory standards to address gender based violence.
Student safety is not an optional campus policy. That's why the national higher education code now requires providers to maintain secure student accommodation, establish trauma informed support services and publish de-identified reporting data, with compliance overseen by the Department of Education. We have made Commonwealth supported places available to all First Nations students with the marks to get in, and we have established the Australian Tertiary Education Commission as a steward of the tertiary education system.
Years ago I had the privilege of being able to study economics and finance at the University of Wollongong's southern Sydney, now Sutherland, campus. Like so many young people growing up in the shire and in Sydney's southern suburbs broadly, I faced the daily calculus that every tertiary student must grapple with—long commutes, the pressures of working, paying for textbooks and transport, and the challenges of navigating studies.
It was just as important as what I was able to learn in the lecture theatre where I studied. Having access to a local university campus, right in Sutherland and Loftus, meant that I was able to access high quality tertiary education without the barriers of long hours of commuting between home, work and university. It meant that I could stay connected to the community that I grew up in, remain employed in the local area and focus on my studies without the kind of geographic and financial barriers that many students face.
The skills and experience I gained through my studies went on to inform and equip me for my work in the finance sector and subsequently to my involvement in government and arrival in this place. This has instilled in me the deep understanding that good local access to education can unlock real opportunities and growth. There are few places that the Albanese government's commitment to accessible education is more visible than at the Suburban Study Hub Macquarie Fields in my electorate of Hughes.
This study hub is a game changer for students and residents in south-west Sydney. For those students living in the Macarthur suburbs of Macquarie Fields, Glenfield, Ingleburn, Long Point and Bardia, travel to university can involve long hours in the car or on trains or buses every day. Those in the outer suburbs of Sydney without good public transport connections often feel acutely the challenge of commuting to a metropolitan campus while juggling insecure work or other commitments.
For mature-age students or parents caring for children while trying to upskill, that commute is a critical determinant. For the quiet Australians in the outer suburbs of southern and south-western Sydney, accessibility is not a buzzword. It can be the difference between pursuing higher education and being held back simply by the accident of geography.
Proximity is powerful. The new Macquarie Fields suburban university study hub has been a game changer for so many students in my electorate. It provides high-speed internet, dedicated quiet study spaces, academic support and a welcoming learning community right at their doorstep.
It transforms the tyranny of distance into an accessible pathway to further opportunities. The Macquarie Fields suburban university study hub is one of 14 new suburban university study hubs, along with 20 new regional university study hubs. It is so much more than a quality facility.
It represents the core philosophy of the universities accord, breaking barriers to higher education and expanding opportunity for all. The Albanese Labor government has also, for the first time, introduced paid prac for teaching nursing, midwifery and social work students. Now we're expanding it to cover 10 more courses, including clinical psychology, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech pathology, paramedicine, radiography, pharmacy, rehab therapy, audiology and podiatry.
These are some of the most essential jobs in my community in southern Sydney and across Australia, but too many students in these roles have been forced to choose between continuing in their studies and paying their bills as they give up paid work to take on weeks of unpaid placements. I recently spoke with student pharmacists Mia, Shi-Anne and Sebastian and heard firsthand about the huge difference that this will make to students studying these courses.
Mia, Shi-Anne and Sebastian told me that it would be an enormous relief to students like them, allowing them to progress in their studies without having to forgo the paid work that covers their rent and groceries. It means students will get more opportunities to do placements in their community without having to worry about how they'll pay their rent and their bills.
They told me about students having to moonlight their paid jobs with their pracs, which is stopping them from getting enough rest and putting safety at risk. This bill, the Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026, aims to stop that. For them, paid prac will go on to be one of those reforms that, when they look back in the future, they won't believe wasn't already there.
We shouldn't routinely be making students choose between finishing a degree and paying the rent on their home. Paid prac is both sensible cost-of-living relief for students and an investment in our future health workforce and Medicare. With the rise of AI and uncertainty surrounding work, access to higher education is a must-have.
Lifelong learning is a critical component in a workforce that is dynamic, future focused and ready to pursue, head on, the coming trends in the labour market and the wider economy. The universities accord states that, in the coming decades, the number of Australians in the workforce with a certificate, diploma or degree will need to rise to 80 per cent. That means more mature-age workers in TAFE or university learning new skills to prepare for a rapidly changing world of work.
Accessible higher education is what turns headwinds into tailwinds and approaching storms into rising tides. Workers that are capable and equipped with the skills and confidence to take advantage of new technologies are able to withstand these powerful forces and shape them to propel Australia's future prosperity. The Albanese Labor government has wasted no time in confronting these challenges head on.
We have already implemented more than 30 of the accord's recommendations in full or in part: HECS relief and reform, introducing and expanding paid prac, rolling out suburban and regional university study hubs, increasing the number and availability of bridging courses, improving safety and governance, giving First Nations communities greater access to Commonwealth supported places and empowering our university regulators to steward the sector with an eye to the future.
Building on the $2.5 billion committed in the 2024-25 financial year, this bill introduces an additional $3.6 billion investment into higher education over the next decade. This transformative funding injection will fundamentally re-engineer how university places are allocated. Contrast this with the previous government's disastrous demolition job on higher education.
Under the job-ready graduates scheme, higher education funding became mired in a tangled web of arbitrary caps and misaligned incentives, with an ideological government committed to picking winners and white-anting programs. This bill is overhauling that broken model with a new managed growth funding system. Managed by the ATEC, this system will directly align Commonwealth funding with actual student enrolments and expand the number of university places allocated to students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and regional areas.
It will effectively uncap the number of places for students from these backgrounds. If a student has the talent and determination, they will have a place in our higher education system if they want it. It will also formalise the role of the ATEC in allocating Commonwealth supported places.
These changes are projected to result in an extra 200,000 commencing domestic students at Australian universities over the next decade. That's 200,000 lives forever changed and 200,000 skilled workers added to our economy. We're also introducing demand-driven needs-based funding to provide extra support for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, for First Nations students and for students studying at regional campuses.
In some cases, this will more than double the amount of funding per student. The base equity amount will be set at $1,535, and the base regional amount at $1,398. That is more than twice the average amount provided to universities per student last year, which in some cases was as little as $600 under the previous program.
Universities will be able to allocate this funding towards the bread-and-butter components of student success such as tailored academic tutoring and peer mentoring to help students master complex subjects; direct financial assistance through scholarships and grants; and the offsetting of higher operational costs of running regional and satellite campuses, ensuring that institutions like the Sutherland campus of the University of Wollongong—of which I was a student—can keep their doors open.
Higher education changes lives. When I reflect on my time walking through the grounds of that campus of the University of Wollongong as a student, it's clear that it changed mine. And when I visit the vibrant suburban study hub in Macquarie Fields, I know that students in my electorate and across southern and south-western Sydney will be able to access the same opportunities that I had as a student.
The doors of opportunity are there, and good access to higher education is the key to unlock them. I commend this bill to the House.