Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026
Senator DOWLING (Tasmania) (10:58): I rise to support the Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026. Like a lot of legislation that comes to this place, there is a fair bit of machinery underneath that title. We're dealing with concepts like managed growth funding, needs based funding and the Australian Tertiary Education Commission.
But the principle underneath it is pretty straightforward. Where you grow up should not decide how far you can go. Your parents' income should not decide whether a university is for you, and living in Burnie, Queenstown or Smithton should not mean that higher education is something that only happens somewhere else.
The universities accord makes clear the scale of the challenge ahead of us. By 2050, around 80 per cent of working-age Australians will need some form of tertiary qualification—a certificate, a diploma or a degree. That does not mean, though, that everybody needs to go to university.
It means we need more people at TAFE and more people at university, because Australia is going to need more nurses, teachers, engineers, technicians and skilled workers. So this is about opportunity, but it's also about productivity. If we want higher wages and a stronger economy over the next 20 or 30 years, we need to build that skills base now.
That is why this government has already implemented more than 30 of the accord's 47 recommendations, either in full or in part. We've cut HECS debt by 20 per cent and made indexation fairer. We have raised the minimum repayment threshold and moved to a marginal repayment system, and we've introduced paid prac for teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work students.
We've also expanded the university study hubs and free bridging courses, established a National Student Ombudsman and opened the first demand driven Commonwealth supported places for First Nations students who meet the entry requirements. This bill is the next big structural step in that tertiary reform program. It establishes a new managed-growth funding system and demand driven needs based funding over the next decade.
These reforms will inject an additional $3.6 billion into higher education and are expected to support around 230,000 extra commencing domestic students. That's not simply about creating more places; it's about opening more places to people who have historically been least likely to get one—students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, First Nations students and students in regional Australia.
Under the new system, places for low-SES and regional students will effectively be uncapped. Universities will also receive more funding when they enrol students who need more support to succeed. The principle is similar to what we have with needs based funding in schools.
The greater the need, the greater the support. The base equity amount will be $1,535 per eligible student, and the base regional amount will be $1,398. In some cases, that is more than double what universities received per student under comparable previous programs, and that funding can be used for support in tutoring, mentoring, scholarships, grants and the higher costs of providing education in regional communities.
For Tasmania, that piece matters enormously. The University of Tasmania is our only university. In many respects, it operates as a whole-of-state university system.
UTAS has told the Senate inquiry that it supports this bill and regards needs based funding as one of the most important improvements to university funding in a generation. Its central point is also a sensible one: supporting disadvantaged students means supporting the institutions and campuses that reach them where they live. Sixty per cent of Tasmanians live outside of Hobart.
UTAS campuses in Launceston and Burnie, along with regional and online delivery, are often the pathway that lets people study and build a career without having to leave their community. The evidence shows why that matters. UTAS reports that its Tasmanian campuses have very strong participation from low-SES students.
Its regional campuses, in particular, reach Tasmanians who've traditionally been much less likely to access higher education. Indigenous participation is also above the national average across UTAS's Tasmanian campuses. An extraordinary figure is from UTAS reports in Burnie—20 per cent of its first and second year medical students are Indigenous, more than 140 nurses completed the Bachelor of Nursing on the north-west campus over 2024 and 2025, and the first pharmacy graduates from the north-west are now all working in the north-west region.
That is what regional higher education can do. It builds a workforce, it keeps skills in the community, and it helps put nurses in hospitals and health professionals in places that have struggled to recruit them and where they're needed most. There are human stories underneath those numbers too.
Take Cleo Gower, who was able to study nursing on the Cradle Coast campus. She was among the first to graduate in Burnie and now works as a registered nurse at the North West Regional Hospital. That is opportunity becoming workforce capacity in the same community.
UTAS has also raised constructive questions about the further implementation steps behind this bill. It has made the case for recognising the real cost of smaller scale regional delivery, for making sure disadvantage is properly recognised as students move through their studies and for ensuring bridging and outreach programs can help people become ready for tertiary education.
These are important considerations as ATEC and the funding guidelines put this new system into practice because opening the door is not enough if a student cannot get to the door. A university place only matters if students can afford to take it up, if they have the support to succeed and if they can access the course in the first place. I also want to be clear about what these reforms are not.
These are not about lowering standards. Students will still need to meet rigorous entry requirements. They will still need to do the work.
They will still need to pass the subject. What this bill does is tackle barriers that have too often had very little to do with ability, issues like family income, geography and whether someone happens to live close to a large metropolitan campus. Addressing those structural barriers is good social policy.
As an economist, I also see this as good economic policy. Australia cannot reach an 80 per cent tertiary attainment rate by educating the same people from the same places in the same way. Tasmania cannot afford to leave talent sitting on the sidelines because someone grew up in the wrong postcode, and regional communities cannot build the workforces they need if the only path to a qualification is to leave.
This bill changes the funding system so that growth follows need, support follows students and opportunity is spread fairly. That is the direction set by the universities accord, it is the direction this government is delivering and it is a direction that matters deeply for Tasmania. I commend this bill to the Senate.