Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026

Senator STEELE-JOHN (Western Australia) (12:04): I join my colleague in recognising the incredibly long-held positions of Senator Faruqi and her advocacy on behalf of Australian university students and Australian universities more broadly. The Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026, which we are debating today, does a couple of fundamental things.

It changes the way in which funding is managed in this system to one which is needs based. Managed growth entails a number of different flow on mechanisms to be put in place. To be quite honest, when the bill was delivered by the government to the parliament, initially there was one way to describe it, and that's half baked.

It really was half baked. Now, thanks to the work of Senator Faruqi, a number of the Greens amendments and a number of the red flags around this legislation that we communicated have been taken up and accepted. Some of these concerns have been addressed in the bill.

In fact, I think a majority of the initial concerns have been addressed by the adoption of our amendments. I remember when this legislation was initially bowled up to us. I reflect on how fundamentally slapdash some of the legislation coming out of this government so often appears to be.

Given the big game that Labor talks in relation to the university sector and the university policy, you would expect them to come up with policy that is well rounded and consulted on thoroughly with open ears to those who live, work and have built their careers within the university sector and to students who overwhelmingly would have voted at the ballot box in the previous election to put the absolute political boot into the Liberal Party and deliver a more progressive parliament.

Yet the legislation, as it initially came to us, was undercooked. Senator Faruqi's intervention has addressed a lot of that. But I do have to ask: with a 94-seat majority in the other place given to them by the Australian people, is this the best we can do?

I shudder to think what the coalition would have done with a similar mandate. I'm not sure we would recognise Australia in this moment had they been given such an endorsement and such an opportunity to right the wrongs as they see them in Australian law. And yet here we are, getting to the point where an election is about a year away, and we're relying on the crossbench in the Senate to fix up a bunch of problems in relation to a piece of legislation that really didn't cut the mustard in the first place.

And if anyone thinks I'm making just a generic political point here, let me take you to an explicit piece of my portfolio focus. I'm the health spokesperson for the Greens. I have been for the last couple of years.

In that role, it's been my obligation and my job to meet with Australians and to travel the country to collaborate with those in all the different parts of our health sector. One of the things that has been put squarely back to me over and over again is that, if we are to build an accessible and affordable healthcare system that meets the contemporary needs of the Australian community, we need to be looking at how we support students who wish to train and educate and enter the health workforce to be able to do that effectively and as quickly as possible while maintaining the highest level of expertise.

In so many areas there is huge community demand, and yet there is a small and sometimes shrinking workforce. One of the clearest ways—one of the most effective ways—to begin solving these workforce challenges is to support students who are seeking to go into health care in the various different areas to be able to study and to be able to carry out the practical elements of their study in a way that is sustainable for them.

As is right and correct for many of these areas of expertise and focus, there is a need to move from a space of academic theory to practical application before you then go on to work directly with Australians—with patients—to deliver health care and support good community health outcomes. While you're doing that work—while you're training and while you're putting it into practice—it is really difficult to also hold down a job.

Sometimes, it's impossible to do that because of the level of focus that is required and the hours that are required. This phenomenon is acknowledged in some parts of the system. We have the Commonwealth prac placement support programs that have existed.

Quite tangibly, they have come in the form of weekly payments. Now they sit at about $338 a week. It's means tested.

It's tagged to the Austudy levels—and we do know that those levels are too low and they need to be increased, but it is something. What we have seen over the years is other areas of the health profession advocating to the government that this program be expanded to include additional professions. We did, at last, see the government make a much-needed, long-overdue overhaul of this program so that professions such as occupational therapy, psychology, speech pathology and about 10 others are now able to access this program.

That's to be welcomed. That was a good step forward. I know many OTs, speech pathologists and other allied health professionals who welcomed that move, at last, and think that it is a step that will bring us closer to addressing those workforce shortages in those areas.

But, again, what do we see? We see policy that is half baked. Who did they, once again, leave out?

They left out medical students, meaning that people training to be doctors—people training to go into these vitally needed areas—will not receive that payment despite the relentless advocacy of their peak bodies to draw the government's attention to the fact that, without these types of supports, we are seeing students who are training to be our next generations in these critical fields go without meals while they're on the job, training to do some of the most complex procedures and medical work that is able to be done.

This is resulting in serious problems for medical students as a whole. We see, in the data, the impact of this falling on those who were already disadvantaged when they entered the field of medical studies and decided to be students. Again, I'll give you a practical, tangible example brought forward by the association.

A lot of people have spoken for a long time in this place about the need to get more First Nations people into the process of becoming medical students and then through to qualification, for all of the reasons that should be well understood—the value and benefit of somebody with lived experience training in the profession. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Sterle ): Senator Steele-John, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but it being 12.15, I shall now proceed to Senators' statements.