Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026

Senator FARUQI (New South Wales—Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens) (10:08): I move: (1) Schedule 1, item 59, page 41 (line 23), omit "at the time the person enrols in the unit,". This amendment is about the timing of low socioeconomic status—or SES—applications. Again, for a bill that the Albanese government has marketed as being all about equity, an understanding of how disadvantage operates and impacts on student lives was sorely missing from this bill.

Universities, staff and academics all criticised the profound inequity in the bill, especially when calculating the applicability of needs based funding and a student's low SES at the time the person enrolled in the unit. This means that the low-SES student living in a regional area who moves to the inner city for university will apparently no longer be disadvantaged.

This perverse position should really never have made it into the bill and into parliament. This Greens amendment will remove the words 'at the time the person enrols in the unit,' that precedes 'the person is a low SES student'. The government has, appropriately, agreed to support this amendment to ensure that low-SES regional students who move for university are not excluded from much-needed support.

This will make the bill more sensible and more equitable and will remove any ambiguity around who is a low-SES student and who isn't just because of where they live and where they might have moved from. Question agreed to.