Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026

Senator PAYMAN (Western Australia—Australia's Voice Whip) (10:48): The Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026 is an important bill and one that I'll be supporting. But it's also a bill that misses some of the problems affecting Australians who choose to pursue higher education. The increased funding, particularly for cohorts who have historically faced more adversity when seeking to attend university, is welcome.

This follows the investment from the government in the expansion of the Commonwealth prac payment scheme to a number of new disciplines, including physiotherapy, speech pathology, radiography and pharmacy. As a former pharmacy student, I understand how intensive and time consuming these courses can be, so I welcome this expansion, which comes into effect as of 1 July 2027.

However, one cohort which missed out from the scheme was medical students. When people think of medical students, they associate the highly paid career that studying medicine leads to with a student body of relative affluence. While this is the case for some, as in all disciplines, it isn't true for all.

I've heard harrowing tales of the poverty that some medical students experience in order to meet their placement requirements. These young Australians who are working towards the goal of being able to serve and help our communities are missing meals, sleeping in cars, considering and attempting suicide and taking on a mountain of debt. Why have these students been left behind?

This bill provides for needs based funding grants to higher education providers to support, among other groups, Indigenous students. The Australian Medical Students' Association found that one in two Indigenous medical students will drop out because they aren't able to support themselves through placement. If the government were serious about supporting First Nations people to become doctors, they would support them not only to get to university but to make it all the way to graduation.

In a country as rich and as fortunate as ours, how are we letting these students down so badly? It just isn't good enough. For some students, their troubles don't end at graduation.

The Senate Education and Employment References Committee has been examining outcomes for Australian university graduates. That report is due to be tabled in November. I don't intend to pre-empt its findings, but I want to share a few stories from submissions received by the committee.

Many young Australians, particularly those in fields like information technology and computer science, feel like they have been sold a lie. I discussed this during a debate on the inquiry, and numerous submissions refuted what I said. They said there was no promise that a university degree would entitle young Australians to easy employment.

Indeed, a university education should not be looked at solely as a process by which a job is acquired, but to say that there is no contract, implicit or otherwise, between universities and young Australians is just not right. 'Learn to code' was an oft repeated mantra of the late 2010s and early 2020s. One graduate outlined in a submission to the inquiry what following this advice had led to: I am a recent computer science graduate from the University of Queensland.

I completed a Bachelor of Computer Science in 2023 and then completed an additional thesis-based honours year in 2024, graduating with First Class Honours. Despite this, and despite securing an internship during my studies, I have been unemployed for over a year, from most of 2025 through to mid-2026. A student who graduated at or near the top of their class, with internship experience, has been unemployed for more than a year.

How is that possible? Something is clearly wrong, and yet the submission from the graduate's alma mater, the University of Queensland, contends: A university education remains a great investment … The graduate's submission notes that, in 2024, a third of computer science graduates had not achieved full-time employment within six months of graduating, more than double the rate for nursing and engineering students.

Another important point is made by the submission: … Australia's R&D expenditure sits a critical low of 1.68% of GDP, well below the OCED average of 2.7%. The United States more than doubles us at 3.8%, South Korea more than triples at 5.13%. This is during the time of a global race of potentially one of the most important technologies in history.

Graduates of the sciences are keenly aware of this. Unless you want to research new ways to extract iron ore or make things that kill people, a career in science outside of academia usually entails a move overseas. Another submission illustrates how graduates find themselves in a job market where the odds are stacked against them.

Mr Nasir, a graduate of the University of Sydney, outlines his experience applying for an entry-level data analytics position with his current employer: The hiring manager appreciated my initiative to meet him in advance and promised to keep a tab on my application. After applying, I waited for my call-up to an interview, but it never arrived. I later found out that at least 220 applicants applied, of which only 10 were longlisted, and only 5 were progressed to the interview stage.

I made it into the top 10, but my experience at the time was not enough to compete with the top 5 shortlisted for the interview. Competing in such a field for what is supposed to be an entry-level position puts a graduate at an inherent disadvantage from the outset, when ads for these roles inevitably attract applications from individuals with more experience than a graduate can hope to have.

This leads to an inflation of requirements for entry-level positions, which, again, defeats the purpose. A concern that was frequently raised is the use of international students as cash cows to fund universities. The inequity of international student enrolment is considered by Emeritus Professor Richard Heller, who submitted that international students do not reflect global needs for higher education: Individual ability to pay fees appears to be the driving force, and universities attract who they can and who will pay fees.

The pattern of enrolments serves no clear strategic purpose for Australia, or the need for boosting a country's knowledge stock; it has become an income generation exercise for Australian universities. Universities rightly fear the vulnerability of their heavy reliance on international student fees to cross-subsidise teaching and research. The government has indicated that it wishes to reduce the number of international students coming to Australia each year.

This bill and the funding for domestic students that goes with it somewhat softens the blow for the universities, but the development of the reliance of universities on international students occurred over a period of many years, and the process of returning university funding to a more stable footing will take time. This bill will support some Australians to attend university, but I think it will leave others behind.

Much more also needs to be done for Australians who graduate university to help them achieve their maximum potential. This is good not only for the graduates but also for the economy. Modelling by Pearson suggests inefficient education-to-work pathways cost the economy $12.5 billion a year.

Unless we work to develop the conditions necessary for a robust and complex economy, we will remain a country that digs rocks out of the ground and makes matcha for one another, leaving us at the mercy of international conditions. A sound university system with genuinely strong graduate outcomes and a private sector with a level of R&D investment which encourages graduates to stay in Australia will result in a more complex economy which is more resistant to external shocks.