Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026

Senator McKIM (Tasmania—Australian Greens Whip) (11:53): The name of this bill is the Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026. If Labor really wanted to open the doors of opportunity in the tertiary education sector in Australia, they would make university education free. They would erase all current HECS debts in this country.

People might say, 'Oh, well. Here go the Greens again. You know, money doesn't grow on trees.

How could you possibly fund such an extravagant commitment?' Firstly, it's not an extravagant commitment; it's an investment not just in the future of this country but in the future of millions of Australians who aspire to be tertiary educated. But there are so many choices that Labor could make in order to be able to afford wiping HECS debts and making tertiary education genuinely free.

I'll reel off a few right now: make the super wealthy one per cent in this country pay a wealth tax; make big corporations pay their fair share of tax; walk away from the AUKUS nuclear submarines, which are on track to cost over $350 billion dollars; walk away from the $10-billion-plus handouts that you give, every single year, to publicly subsidise the burning of fossil fuels, in the middle of a climate crisis.

There are so many ways that Labor could afford to genuinely open the doors of opportunity in the tertiary education sector, but Labor is not doing that. Labor is not doing that. This place, the Senate, and the other place, the House of Representatives, are riddled with people who got the opportunity for a free university degree.

The cabinet is riddled with people who got free university degrees. Those were the good old days. I had the opportunity to get a free university degree.

The Prime Minister had the opportunity to get a free university degree. One of the differences between us is that I am here arguing that university degrees should be free today, while the Prime Minister is happy to require young people, mostly, to mortgage their futures in order to get a decent tertiary education. If we want to talk about opening the doors of opportunity in the tertiary education sector, let's actually talk about some of the things that the government is choosing not to do that would genuinely open the doors of opportunity.

There's a whole range of issues with this legislation, and I want to thank and congratulate my good friend and colleague Senator Mehreen Faruqi for the work that she has done with the government to develop amendments, many of which I understand will pass through this Senate. Let's be very clear that Senator Faruqi has delivered significant improvements to this legislation.

However, despite its title, 'opening the doors of opportunity', it does represent a significant missed opportunity, and, despite Senator Faruqi's outstanding work, there are still opportunities that have not been grasped by the government in relation to this legislation. This bill has been marketed by Labor as equity reform, but I want to talk about the Job-ready Graduates scheme—one of the most unfair, inequitable, egregious policies in higher education that, since its introduction just five years ago, has cost students $2.1 billion.

Instructively, between 2020 and 2024, low SES student commencements have decreased by nearly 10 per cent. Is that telling us something? Is that telling Labor something?

If it's not telling Labor something, it absolutely should be. What it should be telling Labor is that the people who are the poorest in this country, the least well-off financially, are finding it harder and harder to enrol and sustain themselves while they are studying for a tertiary education. Of course, since the Job-ready Graduates scheme was introduced in 2021, grocery prices have gone up 27 per cent.

I'll add there that the price-gouging supermarket duopoly is responsible, through its greed and through its unconscionable behaviour, for a significant part of that increase in grocery prices. You've got utility prices up 39 per cent, nearly 40 per cent. Fuel prices are up over 40 per cent.

Rents for students are up 40 per cent since 2021, yet you've got youth allowance and Austudy remaining far, far below the poverty line. Not only are we saying to young people, to students, 'you need to mortgage your futures through the unfair HECS system, which the majority of people in this place and the other place didn't have to do'; we are also saying to them that the allowances, in terms of youth allowance and Austudy, that you are being paid, if you are being paid, will remain well below the poverty line.

This is real-life stuff. This is students skipping meals to be able to afford to pay their rent. I don't know about you, colleagues, but I reckon, if you're worried about being hungry, those are not optimal conditions for high-quality study.

Again, this government has missed a significant opportunity to genuinely improve the lives of students. We could in this country actually be prepared to take on the big gas corporations who are contributing so massively to climate change, which is, of course, another threat hanging over the heads of all of us but, in particular, young people. We could be taking those gas corporations on and making them pay, for example, a 25 per cent tax on gas exports, and we could fund universities, we could remove the job-ready graduates scheme, and we could increase Commonwealth supported places and, in fact, provide every student with a Commonwealth supported place.

Labor could use that revenue to make universities genuinely free again, which is, of course, the opportunity that Prime Minister Albanese had when he was younger—how quickly people forget themselves when they come into this place. The Prime Minister loves to tell his log cabin story about the struggles that he and his family faced when he was growing up, but I'll tell you what, you can tell those stories all you like, but you will be judged, Prime Minister, on your actions not your words.

If you want to do something genuine to help other people who are struggling today as they are growing up, then one thing you could do is take on the big gas corporations, make them pay a 25 per cent minimum gas export tax and use that money to make tertiary education genuinely free. That would build our country. It would provide the opportunity that is contained in the title of this legislation, 'opening the doors of opportunity'.

The Greens are here, ready to work with Labor to deliver some of those things, but Labor will choose not to work with us, so we will, as Senator Faruqi has so admirably for so long, continue to be shoulder to shoulder with young Australians, to fight to make universities genuinely free and to fight to wipe all HECS debt and to relieve some of that burden, which is overwhelmingly placed on young and younger people in this country.