Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026

Senator SHOEBRIDGE (New South Wales) (11:17): I rise first of all to acknowledge the work of my colleague Senator Faruqi in this space, endorse her comments and particularly note the raft of concerns about this bill that remain unaddressed including the genuine cost-of-living crisis that we know students are facing with ever mounting HECS debt. I haven't spoken to a student who remembers getting a haircut on the HECS debt, but I've spoken to plenty of students who are looking at a lifetime of debt for simply wanting to get an education to contribute to society.

We still don't see a solution for the so-called Job-Ready Graduates scheme that saw these appalling cost hikes for arts degrees. It was a conscious attack from the coalition to dumb down our universities and to attack critical thinking. We're five years—it feels like forever—into a Labor government, and they still haven't addressed that despite repeated offers from the Greens to solve that.

Degree costs have continued on their upward path. Student payments remain below the poverty line. These are the core issues in the university sector that despite the name on the box of this bill—it's called the Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026.

Again, as we know, the doors of opportunity are very narrowly open under Labor, particularly for students who don't have family support, those who are first generation at university, those who are considering career that isn't in the finance sector or a highly paying sector but is essential for our society like teaching, nursing, social work, critical thinking.

They're the ones who continue to be under the gun despite five years of a Labor government. There's one other thing that I think absolutely needs to be addressed with urgency in the university sector, and it's playing out in university campuses in my home state of New South Wales. It's playing out on the campuses of the University of New South Wales, of the University of Sydney, of UTS, of Macquarie University, but I know it's playing out across universities Australia wide.

While there's talk of building opportunities—what this bill talks about—what students and academics are facing right now are universities reaching for AI to dumb down degrees, to replace staff and to put at risk the reputations of some of our finest institutions. Last week, the University of New South Wales said it had signed this so-called strategic partnership with OpenAI—a US owned, tech-bro owned vampire company who has no interest in building Australia's education sector, who has no interest in educating Australians and who definitely has no interest in our universities being competitive.

Without putting any guardrails in, without talking to the staff and without articulating what the strategic partnership will mean for job security, for the quality of degrees, for teaching, they make this big announcement. This is the statement that UNSW made: The collaboration, one of the largest AI education deployments in the Asia-Pacific region, aims to help ensure graduates are equipped to use AI critically, ethically and effectively.

Who are they partnering with? OpenAI, the same US tech-bro owned corporation that let its agents escape the sandbox and run wild. What are the what are the checks and balances being proposed here?

Where are the restraints in how our university sector rolls out AI to endanger our research capability? It's not all upside with AI. There's serious risk of deskilling our researchers, rogue AI agents taking that research and heading off heaven knows where.

There's complete silence from this government about—not a whisper about one of our premier universities and, at different times, one of our highest ranked university on global ratings uncritically rolling out a foreign multinational AI player right throughout its universities in what it describes as 'the largest AI education deployment in the Asia-Pacific'. That's not a good news story.

That's a flashing-lights warning story. It's not just that. Less than a week after that, the University of Sydney made an announcement as well.

The University of Sydney comes out and talks about 'a university-wide investment in AI to ensure every student and staff member has free and equitable access to advanced AI tools'. And then we get this guff: Tomorrow's leaders will also need to understand AI's ethical, social and environmental impacts, and possess the ability to work with this technology critically and responsibly.

We will support you for that future by providing equitable access to advanced AI tools. Whatever the University of Sydney's Vice President of Operations, Ms Gower, might say about it being a human centred approach to AI, ask the staff—the academics, the people who are going to have to deliver for this. How they see this deal of the University of Sydney with the same bunch of US tech-bro AI vampires is as a threat.

Because, at the same time that the university went out and made its announcement that they're going to be incorporating a foreign owned AI into every aspect of the university's operations, the NTEU members, the people who actually have to teach, do the research and undertake the critical thinking at University of Sydney, were out on strike seeking enforceable consultation protections around AI.

This is how this is how managerial and out of touch management at our universities is—these vice-chancellors and their cronies that hang around them, paid a million bucks a year and more. I think, in Sydney, they also get a free, posh residence. You get a million bucks in your bank account and a free, posh residence if you're the vice-chancellor in Sydney, and then you use that privilege to roll out AI and take away the jobs of the actual teaching staff.

And we get Labor coming in here with their—what is it named?—Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill. Well, under Labor, the door's been opened to vampire, US owned AI to come and march through our universities and take away jobs, destroy the critical thinking that we're going to need for our students and continue to empower the managerial class to run through our universities.

I want to say, on behalf of my party, the Greens, that we stand in solidarity with the NTEU members who are on strike, asking for genuine, enforceable consultation protections before universities like Sydney or UNSW enter into these multiyear deals. And we want to make sure that they're enforceable rights so that the vice-chancellors on their million bucks a year and their $500,000, $700,000, $800,000 per annum human-development staff-squashing managerial teams don't get to destroy our universities.

The only door of opportunity that seems to be opening here is the door of opportunity for US big tech to come in, deskill and put at enormous risk some of our most important institutions. I would urge the government to go and look at what the community thinks about this and the lack of action on protecting our universities from the rollout of US owned AI, because you have a look at the comments on social media about Sydney university's post and they're not saying: 'Oh, amazing—wonderful opportunity.

I'm glad you've invited these robber barons in to come and attack our university.' They're calling it 'despicable garbage'. They're calling it 'fascism-maxxing'. They're naming it for what it is.

There's some marginal good in this bill. The marginal good is great. But there's this massive risk, and it's not academic; it happened last week—the week before this bill got rolled in to literally destroy the integrity, the reputation, the qualities of our universities, because, under Labor, US big tech, US AI companies, are marching through our universities, and the staff are on the front lines fighting it, going into industrial action, saying, 'You can't do this without us.' What's the answer from Labor?

Nothing, because it turns out that the same big tech companies that are talking to the vice-chancellor at Sydney university and schmoozing with the vice-chancellor at UNSW are in there with a ready-access door to the Prime Minister, trying to do a job on creatives and trying to get a red carpet to roll out their AI vision right across this country—to steal our water, our power and our data and, in this case, to have that march through some of our most important institutions.

Unless this government is willing to come and work with the Greens to address the risk of AI through our universities—you can pass as many 'opening the doors of opportunity' bills as you like, but, unless we address the risk of foreign owned AI through the march of our institutions, this won't amount to a hill of beans.