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Attributable to Universities Australia Chief Executive Officer Luke Sheehy:
Chair, thank you for the opportunity to appear today.
Australia needs more people going to university.
We need the skills, productivity and opportunity that come with it.
For the individual, university can open the door to a better job, a higher income and choices they might not otherwise have.
For the country, more graduates means more teachers, nurses, engineers and other skilled workers.
They mean a stronger economy and a more productive Australia.
That’s why the ambition behind this Bill matters.
Universities Australia supports that ambition.
But this reform is not just about how many students go to university.
It also changes who makes decisions about university places, funding and, potentially, international student numbers.
So, getting the balance right matters too.
This Bill isn’t without flaws.
To the Government’s credit, it has listened to some of our concerns and amended the Bill in the House last week.
Those changes matter.
Universities now have greater certainty that the funded places they are already delivering will be protected.
The Government has also narrowed the power for a minister to impose additional conditions directly on an individual university.
We welcome those changes and thank the Government for listening.
What has now come to the Senate is better than what entered the House.
But the work doesn’t stop there.
The Government’s amendments stop short of the changes we have advocated for.
Crossbench members put a number of those changes before the House.
The Senate should finish the job.
Our submission covers a range of issues, but there are four priorities we want to focus on today.
The first priority is growth.
The House amendments give individual universities a much stronger floor for the places they are already delivering.
But there is still no equivalent floor for the system as a whole.
The Minister can set the total pool of university places without a clear legislative guarantee that it will at least cover universities’ existing core student load.
If we are trying to grow the system, as is the intent of the Bill, it should be built to grow.
You can’t grow from a shrinking base.
The second priority is university autonomy.
In this Bill, we believe the Minister is seeking too much power over individual universities.
The Government has sensibly narrowed section 36-65, and we welcome that.
But the underlying power remains.
A minister could still impose unreasonable conditions directly on the funding of an individual university.
Universities are accountable for public money.
Governments should set national priorities.
But universities are autonomous institutions.
They are not departments of state.
The mission-based compacts process run by the Australian Tertiary Education Commission is the new mechanism to set expectations of universities and to hold them to account.
There is no need for the minister to have the power to impose extra conditions separate from and additional to the compacts process.
This power should be removed.
And that judgement shouldn’t depend on who happens to be minister today.
Ministers change. Governments change.
Powers put into law remain and can be misused by whoever comes next.
The third priority is international education.
The Bill creates powers that could be used to limit the number of new international students individual universities can enrol.
If those powers are ever switched on, government should set the national policy and the overall number.
The ATEC should make decisions about individual universities.
The Minister should not be given the power to direct the ATEC to allocate a particular number of places to a particular university.
A minister should not have greater power over an international student allocation than over a domestic one.
Same system. Same safeguards.
Universities also need enough notice to recruit, make offers and plan properly.
The overall allocation should be settled by 30 June for the following year.
Certainty delivered at the last minute is not certainty at all.
The fourth priority is Needs-based Funding.
Take a student who grows up in Mount Druitt and moves to Kensington to complete their university studies.
Under the Bill, that change of address could affect whether they are recognised as coming from a poorer background.
But moving from Mount Druitt to Kensington does not change where that student came from, or the barriers they faced getting there.
Disadvantage does not disappear when a student changes postcode.
The rules should recognise a student’s permanent address when they start their course, and universities should be consulted before the detailed funding rules are locked in.
The Government has made good progress in strengthening the Bill in the House last week.
We acknowledge that and we welcome it.
The Senate now has the chance to build on that progress and get the balance right.
Australia needs more people going to university.
We need the skills, productivity and opportunity that come with it.
Parliament should give universities the certainty and the freedom to deliver.
But opening the doors to more students should never mean handing government the keys to our universities.
Thank you, and I’m happy to take questions.
