Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026

Mr ZAPPIA (Makin) (18:38): I join my colleagues on this side of the House in speaking in support of the Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026. It is in the national interest and it should be our aim to ensure that every person has the opportunity to pursue the career of their choice and for which they have a passion. However, that has not always been the case, and it's still not the case, albeit that Australia provides more career opportunities than most other countries, particularly under the Albanese government's free TAFE policy and changes to the Higher Education Loan Program.

I understand that over 800,000 Australians have now enrolled in a free TAFE course, and that is good for the nation and good for the individuals. Those figures also highlight that young people in particular but also others want to further their education and achieve a professional degree or trade certificate if it is made easier for them to do so. Former Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam, just over half a century ago, understood that.

It was under his leadership that, in 1974, university and tertiary education was made free and opened up to all Australians. In 1989, the Hawke government introduced HECS, the Higher Education Contribution Scheme, to ensure university funding was sustainable while still ensuring university education was accessible to everyone. Today, around 60 per cent of high school students enrol in a university course, compared to around 12 to 14 per cent back in 1974.

The 60 per cent university attendance rate now puts Australia at above average in attendance when compared with most other advanced countries. However, we still have a way to go when compared to countries like South Korea, Japan and Canada, which have university attendance rates of more like 70 per cent or just under. South Korea and Japan, in particular, are good examples of the importance of education, both countries having become economic powerhouses through science and innovation industries that rely on university education.

We also know that young people from disadvantaged or regional families are still often faced with barriers to university education. In particular, living costs while at university, the need to enter the workforce at a younger age to support their families and, for regional students, simply having to live away from home are real barriers for many young people.

It is up to us in this parliament to try and break down those barriers. They result in a lot of young people losing out because they don't get to university—young people who quite often are very smart, but they come from disadvantaged families and therefore never get the opportunity to put their ability to the full test. It seems to me that, as a result of that, it is not only the younger person that misses out on the career that they might otherwise have wanted to pursue but also the nation that misses out, because those young people could have made a significant contribution to the prosperity of our country had they been able to get their university degree or even a further education degree in another field.

I know from past university attendance rates of high school students from Adelaide's northern suburbs that students that come from disadvantaged communities are far less likely to get to university. Indeed, in one study going back some 15 years, it was suggested that perhaps as much as seven times the rate of university participation occurred from the wealthier suburbs as occurred from the northern suburbs of Adelaide, which were at the time considered lower socioeconomic communities.

Looking at some figures from the census, it's very clear that the attendance rates of young people from low-socioeconomic areas or areas that are disadvantaged are far lower than they are for those from what we might refer to as the wealthier suburbs. We need to correct that, as I said earlier, both for the good of the young person and for the good of the nation.

Having said that, it's not to imply that everybody wants a university degree—and I accept that some young people simply don't—or indeed that university qualifications are more important than others. Again, every job is important and we cannot have a society without all of those jobs being filled up. But what we need to focus on is ensuring that everybody who wants to pursue a career that requires a university degree can do so—particularly as we now have free TAFE and they can pursue a trade qualification by doing that.

This legislation has four key objectives. Firstly, it embeds a new managed growth system. Secondly, it establishes demand driven, needs based funding to support students from underrepresented backgrounds.

Thirdly, it formalises the role of the Australian Tertiary Education Commission, otherwise known as ATEC, in allocating Commonwealth supported places. And, fourthly, it establishes a framework for ATEC's existing function of allocating international student places. I want to speak just briefly on international students because it's subject matter that has been given a lot of public discourse over recent months.

In 2025, there were some 800,000 to 850,000 international students who studied in Australia, according to one source. They were contributing around $53 billion to the Australian economy. That's a significant input into our economy—$53 billion.

In 2024, over $12 billion of direct university income came from international students. In other words, it was money that came from overseas into our country. Again, it is a fairly significant export, if I could use that term to describe what is happening.

Indeed, it's often said that the higher education sector is the fourth-biggest export that we have in this country. Over 50 per cent of those students who were coming to this country were coming from China, India, Nepal, Vietnam, Bangladesh and the Philippines. You could argue that, perhaps with the exception of China today, all of those countries are still developing countries.

I'll come back to that in a moment. I think that there is an importance in our accommodating international students if they are coming from developing countries. One of the things it enables us to do is assist those developing countries by opening up our universities to their students, who can get the qualifications they need and then go back to their countries and use those qualifications to help their own people.

In my view, that is an important thing that we should be doing as a good global citizen. But I notice that, regrettably, those student numbers are falling. In fact, using the last figures I was able to get hold of, they have fallen by about 20 per cent to a figure of about 680,000.

In addition to the point I just made about international students going back to their countries—they are also building strong bonds with this country by doing so—the reality is that, while they are here, those international students are creating jobs in the university sector and jobs for many local businesses that support them during their stay in Australia.

So, if we as a nation are to reduce the number of international students that come into this country, there will be flow-on effects as a result. I respectfully suggest to everyone in this place that the issue of university students should be very carefully managed, because there will be consequences, whichever way we go with respect to their numbers. Another matter that I want to briefly touch on is the issue of medical places.

Ever since I've been in this place, we've spoken about the shortage of GPs in particular and other health professionals more broadly throughout the country, particularly in the regional and remote areas of Australia. There is no question that we have a shortage of GPs. Quite often, we are relying on GPs from overseas to fill the shortages that we have.

It has been the case for years because, in my view, the medical places offered by our universities in this country have been rigidly capped. I'm not sure why that is the case, but I suspect it's in order to protect the existing medical profession. My view is that, if we are ever to have the workforce we need—particularly across all of the health professional areas and, as I said, in the GP space, where I know that there is definitely a shortage—then we need not only to have the universities relax their entry criteria for those students who want to pursue a medical career but also to increase the number of medical places that are available within the universities themselves.

The third issue I want to speak about with respect to universities is another that is raised with me from time to time. Again, it often gets a fair bit of media reporting as well. It is the issue of the salaries paid to vice-chancellors.

I looked up the list of what vice-chancellors are being paid in universities across Australia and it ranged from about a million dollars to a million and a half dollars. That's the kind of income they are currently getting. At the same time, I see universities cutting staffing levels, support services for the students that go there and other expenditure.

From a sector that is largely government funded, the payments to vice-chancellors are widely seen throughout the community as being excessive. The federal government funds our universities, and in 2024 the universities across Australia were funded to the tune of about $21 billion. That was to cover the entrance fees and so on of students.

Nevertheless it's direct government funding that goes into them. Government funding is taxpayer funding. Salaries of a million dollars or more to vice-chancellors may be the norm, but they need to be justified, because right now, when so many people are doing it tough, they're constantly asking the question: why are universities paying those kinds of salaries to their vice-chancellors?

I also note that there has been some criticism of this legislation by some of the industry groups, including the Business Council of Australia and others. I think the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry also flagged some concerns they have with the legislation. I don't dismiss their concerns.

I think they have raised some legitimate concerns that need to be considered. Having said that, I believe that this legislation goes a long way to achieving what we all want to achieve, and that is to ensure that everybody who wants to get a university degree can do so and that, in particular, young people from remote, rural and regional places of Australia or disadvantaged communities within the metropolitan areas are able to get to university when they can.

I'm pleased to see that the minister is sticking to that view and has provided this legislation, which I genuinely believe goes a long way to doing that. Sure, it may be that we will need to closely watch what happens in the year or two ahead, and I'm sure the minister is fully aware of that and will do so. But I believe the legislation achieves an objective that was started by the Whitlam government over half a century ago, and that is to ensure that everybody who wants to get a university degree can do so.

I commend this legislation to the House.