Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026

Senator WHITTEN (Western Australia) (11:29): The Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026 is dressed up as opening doors. What it actually does is hand the keys to Canberra. It is disheartening to see universities being asked to give up their autonomy and just as disheartening to see how many of them are eager to oblige.

Until now, universities have decided how many students they would teach and in what courses. While that hasn't been perfect, it was, at least, guided by competition. Popular, high-quality universities grew because students chose them.

Unpopular ones had to lift their game or shrink. Minister Clare calls that the hunger games. He says this bill ends it.

What he calls hunger games is actually a market. Competition drives quality and innovation. Students vote with their feet.

Universities that deliver quality teaching and better outcomes attract more of them. Universities that do not don't. We want that contest.

We don't want student places doled out by the bureaucrats in the Australian Tertiary Education Commission. Let the universities compete on their merits. But, to Labor, merit is a dirty word.

They only talk in terms of equity, where they sit on high and decide what is fair. They decide which groups are deserving of funding. This is the political capture of our higher education system.

We opposed the ATEC legislation on exactly this point—an independent commission in name but a central planner in practice. The government had to peel back some of the minister's most naked powers after the sector and the Senate pushed back on this bill. Make no mistake.

A great deal of control remains. The minister still sets the total pool. The minister can vary it.

Those determinations are not disallowable. Labor has stripped out parliamentary oversight of these figures. It's not surprising that they don't want that oversight.

After all, the Labor government's record on overseas student numbers is abysmal. Under this government, Australia has, by far, the highest number of foreign students per capita in the world. Around 2½ per cent of our population are international students—one in 40 people.

That's two to three times the level of places like New Zealand and the UK. Under Labor's watch, almost 30 per cent of our student population are international students. Where is the fair go for Australian students?

We're hearing about tutorials and lectures being held entirely in foreign languages because the majority of the students are from overseas and don't speak adequate English. That's completely unacceptable. At the University of Sydney, now, over half of the students are foreign students.

At the University of New South Wales, it's 47 per cent. This has been complete mismanagement, on the side of Home Affairs, of our student load and ensuring Australian students get the first look-in. ATEC must allocate its placements with regard to government priorities.

The minister can, once again, steer the ship. The minister still has the power to impose conditions on university funding. Labor have shown their fondness for aggressively expanding ministerial powers.

Look at the powers they want to hand the Minister for Communications. They want their ministers to be able to determine what online harm is. They want them to have full control over what we can and can't see online.

The government becomes more totalitarian with every passing bill, aided and abetted by their buddies in the Greens. There are some elements of this bill that are worthy of support. One Nation supports help for students who are genuinely disadvantaged but meet the standards to attend university—regional kids who face higher costs through accommodation or travel, students from lower income families who need a leg-up.

We understand and support helping these kids into university, provided they have met the standards to be there. This is not based on identity; it is based on the circumstances of the students. But this bill, in line with Labor's identity politics, goes further.

It builds extra money around cohorts defined by the colour of their skin and by postcode, and it leaves the detail of 'equity groups' to guidelines that can be altered without changing the act. This means that, down the track, a minister could alter the needs based funding grants guidelines to add whatever they like. This opens up our university funding to political games and favours.

Need is a very subjective measure, and, if the political carrot is there, it can be a very malleable subject. Any additional funding should follow only genuine need and academic readiness, not immutable characteristics, not race or gender. Equality of opportunity is a laudable goal.

Equality of outcome—that's the 'equity' term that's bandied about in here—always results in worse outcomes for all. The committee evidence given by universities on this bill is inconvenient for the government's story. The cohort that continues to lag badly on course completions is the existing demand driven cohort.

Throwing more money at a category does not magically lift attainment. It can do the opposite. Universities chase the money.

They enrol students they are not set up to support or those who don't meet the standards, simply to chase the additional funding. In these cases, unsurprisingly, we are seeing poor results for these cohorts. Those outcomes are not positive for the failing students.

Completion rates stay poor, the student is left with debt and no degree, and the university keeps the loading. That is the outcome of a pervasive incentive. There are also issues with how the money is directed.

At present, it goes to the university, with only loose guidelines around how they have to use it. It is only primarily, not exclusively, for support services, which leaves room for it to be used on the other programs. If you want to reduce barriers to entry for students with genuine needs who have met the standard, send the money to the student.

Who better to decide whether they need rent help, a laptop or help with travel costs than the person actually sitting in the lecture theatre? Instead, universities receive the grant and are trusted to spend it on wraparound services. We already know what it looks like: bloated administrations, DEI officers, gender departments—entire units that have nothing to do with teaching a student how to be a nurse, an engineer or a teacher.

Student money and taxpayer money disappear into the bureaucracy black hole. Slim the administrations down. Stop wasting the surplus on ideology.

This bill would be useful if it could put a cap on the number of student visas, but, sadly, Labor couldn't even bring themselves to include this. An oversubscribed university may continue accepting international students, and ATEC merely takes that into account in the following allocations—no penalty, no punishment. We will continue to see Labor pumping in international students who treat our education system as a pathway to residency.

What we continue to have is poorly targeted, high-volume student migration that strains housing, strains infrastructure and turns too many universities into businesses that live off full-fee overseas enrolments. Australians should come first. This bill merely creates a pool and an allocator; it does not fix the underlying addiction.

One Nation has released our well-considered policy to combat Labor's out-of-control mass immigration scheme. We will cut immigration by over 750,000 in the first three years, with 470,000 of these visas coming out of the student and graduate visa categories. Australia's uncapped education visa program has been abused for far too long under Labor.

Massive numbers of dependants and family members have come with these students, putting pressure on housing, infrastructure and services. Under One Nation's plan, our education visas will be targeted to high-quality, high-value study for the skills that Australia needs. They will not be used as a back door to bring in families and dependants.

Australians will be given the first look in at university placements, not overseas students, who universities have been targeting for fees. One Nation is here to fix a very broken system. Here's what we will and will not support in this.

We would support extra help for regional Australians and for students who have earned a place but face obstacles due to where they live. We would support directing growth toward genuine workforce shortages in nursing, teaching, engineering and agriculture. We would support money going directly to students that need it, to prevent universities from chasing extra funding from underprepared students.

But we will not support central planning of university places by ATEC and the minister. We will not support funding that follows identity categories instead of genuine needs and merit. We will not support more money flowing into university administrations that have already grown fat on DEI and activism.

If you've earned a place, you deserve to have the opportunity to continue your education, and One Nation supports this. This is not what is happening here. This bill concentrates power in Canberra and weakens competition and quality.

It focuses on immutable characteristics as the basis for funding. One Nation will oppose it. The door this bill opens leads to more bureaucracy and more government control, not opportunity.

I foreshadow my second reading amendment.