Good morning, I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and pay my respects to elders’ past, present, and emerging.
I also acknowledge the Chair of Universities Australia, Professor David Lloyd, CEO Luke Sheehy, chancellors and vice-chancellors – thank you for your leadership and for bringing us together at this critical juncture for the university sector in Australia.
I begin by celebrating the great work of Australia’s universities.
Like the extraordinary achievements of educators, researchers, and innovators commended in last night’s Shaping Australia Awards.
From RMIT’s ingenious use of coffee waste to strengthen concrete by 30 per cent – to the University of Sydney’s life-changing research in cereal rust diseases – to UNSW’s point of care molecular testing for remote Indigenous communities, universities matter.
These projects provide a glimpse into the world-class teaching, research and innovation which defines our universities when they are at their very best.
The Coalition is determined to ensure your sector is at its best in everything you do.
Today, with a federal election about to be called, I am pleased to outline some of the Coalition’s priorities for Australian universities.
They are founded on one key principle.
That Australian students must come first.
In everything you do, the 1.1 million Australian students you serve must be first and foremost – in student satisfaction, teaching excellence, vibrant campuses which foster a love of learning, and high value degrees which provide real and meaningful employment outcomes.
To put students first, universities must be governed by strong and principled leaders who run their institutions efficiently, transparently and with integrity.
To put students first, universities must be able to operate with certainty and plan for the long term, free from day-to-day government intervention and policy chaos, overseen by a tough and feared regulator which enforces the highest standards when required.
To put students first, research must be in the national interest and universities must treat every taxpayer-funded research dollar as precious.
To put students first, universities must be a safe place for everyone, including Jewish students and staff.
These are the priorities of a Dutton Government.
As publicly funded institutions established to advance the lives of young Australians – and our nation – putting students first must be your mission.
In the two years since I first addressed your summit, we expected bumps along the road.
But this has been one wild ride.
I don’t think anyone could have imagined what was to come – the Albanese government lurching from crisis to crisis leaving higher education providers in considerable turmoil.
- • Regrettably, the government opened the floodgates to record levels of international students, fuelling the housing crisis, and then hit the sector with a botched student cap which has caused real damage to regional universities.
- • In the face of a weakness of leadership from Prime Minister Albanese and his education minister who took no action against the encampments, the classroom invasions, and the building occupations, an antisemitism crisis unfolded at some Australian universities – so serious on one campus that extremist members of Hitz but-Tahrir were permitted to menace students under the false cloak of academic freedom.
- • Three million Australians have been hit with skyrocketing student debt, fuelled by Labor’s cost of living crisis and economic mismanagement, which even after a change to the indexation formula is still up 11.1 per cent since the government was elected. Contrast this with the former Coalition government’s strong economic management, when low inflation meant indexation averaged just 1.7 per cent per annum.
- • There were high hopes for the Universities Accord. However, it is now clear the Minister outsourced much of the heavy lifting to Professor O’Kane and her panel which has resulted in a grab bag of policy announcements and uncertainty as to the road ahead. Consider, for instance, the prac payments – discretionary grant programs where you are being asked to means test students? Universities are not Centrelink offices.
I think it’s fair to say the university sector has suffered a loss of community trust throughout the term of the Albanese government.
The government’s weak leadership, chaotic policy agenda, and lack of consultation on the issues which matter have not helped your cause.
If elected, a Coalition Government will work with you, not blindside you, to get universities back on track and provide you with the certainty and stability that you deserve.
We understand universities are big and complex organisations, but they have not enjoyed a strong track record in supporting students.
Too many times, students have been left high and dry.
That’s why we advocated for a national student ombudsman, a key part of our focus to put students first and ensure universities were fulfilling their obligations to give their students the best learning experience.
We are pleased the government has adopted this Coalition initiative and we will work closely with the office of the student ombudsman to guarantee its success.
We have strongly backed the government’s gender-based violence code as an important mechanism to combat the alarming level of sexual harassment and assault on campus and in student accommodation.
Campus safety is paramount. So too is student success.
That is why we will seek to reinstate the 50 per cent pass rule – because we don’t believe there are enough safeguards to protect struggling students from leaving university with no qualification and a large student debt.
We are open to good ideas.
I commend UTS chancellor Catherine Livingstone’s call for universities to sponsor an independent and professional career counselling organisation.
It is a minefield. School leavers must be able to access better advice about their work and study options.
If a Coalition government is elected, we will ensure universities are more transparent and accountable to the students they serve.
We will consider ways to better shine a light on the sector such as an Australian Universities Performance Index – to provide prospective students and their families with transparent, easily accessible information on key aspects of a university’s performance – from completion rates to student satisfaction to course quality to cost.
As a parent, I can attest to the complexity of navigating the university system.
For school leavers or those seeking to re-skill or upgrade their qualifications, just working out to which course to apply is a challenge.
So rather than judge universities on the research dollars they generate which drives international students and global rankings, let’s focus on home-grown performance.
This reform will drive competition, lift teaching standards, and ensure students make informed choices about their education.
On data just released, the number of international students in Australia is at a record 849,000 – up 8.3 per cent since December 2023 – placing increasing pressure on housing, infrastructure and services.
The uncontrolled surge of international students is a direct result of Labor’s ‘Big Australia’ policy – an immigration mess.
This of course is driving the rivers of gold at some members of the Group of Eight – but the regional universities continue to suffer from ministerial direction 107 and now 111.
At one Group of Eight university, where foreign student revenue was $1.45 billion in 2023, international students comprise 50 per cent of the total student population.
The proportion of foreign students is frequently much higher in post-graduate courses.
For too long, universities have relied on a business model which yielded them eye watering revenues which are not sustainable or in line with expectations of the Australian community.
This has not been good for our country or for the education outcomes of Australian students.
We need to get the balance right.
Every country has a responsibility to run its migration program in the national interest.
As Catherine Livingstone said yesterday:
“We persist with offering opaque and inflated claims of our direct impact. For the community, we’ve been focused on optimising our own economics with ever-increasing numbers of international students, with an apparent tin ear to community concerns on the perceived impact of immigration on housing availability and affordability.’’
As we have announced, we will deliver a tougher student cap than what is proposed by the government, focused on excessive numbers of foreign students in metropolitan cities, particularly Melbourne and Sydney where two thirds of foreign students live and study.
But our approach will ensure you have long term certainty, underpinned with proper consultation, with special consideration for the regions where foreign students are integral to local economies.
We will have more to say in the coming weeks.
We recognise your concerns about university funding.
On the upside, we have announced an extra 100 Commonwealth Supported Places per year for medical students in 2026 and 2027, increasing to 150 places per year from 2028.
We will ensure that more GPs go to the places most in need, in rural and regional Australia.
In the December 2024 MYEFO, the government announced two new funding streams – needs based and managed growth funding.
As many of you have raised, it is difficult to assess what this means in practice.
Australian schools receive needs-based funding.
The Coalition has guaranteed the Commonwealth’s ten-year school funding agreements, delivering billions of dollars in additional funding to public schools.
But what needs-based funding means in a university context is less clear.
As is managed growth, given the government is forecasting another 1 million students by 2050 without any modelling, or at least any modelling that’s been made public.
What matters most is that students are university-ready, if that is the path they choose, which is why we are determined to raise school standards by getting back to basics, delivering explicit instruction and other evidence-based teaching methods in every classroom.
With one in three students failing NAPLAN, these reforms really matter.
We do know the National Priorities and Industry Linkage Fund and Innovative Places have been abolished and the Higher Education Partnerships and Participation Program and the Indigenous Student Support Fund will be subsumed.
The Coalition will assess these funding changes against a clear set of principles – will this support the quality of teaching and learning, labour market needs, equity access so all Australians can aspire to a university education, student success including completion rates and employment outcomes, innovative models of education delivery and transparency and performance accountability?
But the hard work you would expect a government to undertake is being sent to the Australian Tertiary Education Commission (ATEC).
Surely this is core business for the Minister and the department, so why is this being outsourced?
The ATEC tells us the government doesn’t know what to do.
There’s no proper understanding of ATEC’s role, no legislation, and yet it is set to commence in three months’ time.
I might add the appointment of the Jobs and Skills Australia Commissioner as one of the interim ATEC commissioners is concerning, given the potential conflict of interest.
Certainly, we see no compelling case to proceed with the ATEC because this is another layer of education bureaucracy at a significant cost, which will not take our universities forward. It certainly does not add value to students.
The Coalition’s position on Job-Ready Graduates has not changed, but in line with what our legislation said we would do, we will review the arrangements – a review that was meant to happen in mid-2022.
In the education portfolio, Labor has undertaken at least 19 separate reviews – except for this one.
In kicking the can down the road, Labor has not only left universities hanging but broken its core election promise on university funding.
I was recently briefed on Federation University’s cooperative education model where all students from year two will take placements two days a week with local industry. This is really exciting.
A genuine partnership which brings together paid work with industry and seeks to build regional workforces.
There are many great stories of how universities are working with industry to provide the best opportunities for graduates.
In contrast to our work in government, we are disheartened by the lack of focus on the commercialisation of research in the national interest – and we will put this back on the agenda.
We will also treat taxpayer funded research with the respect it deserves.
In removing ministerial discretion from some – and not all – Australian Research Council grant programs, the government has absolved itself of its responsibility to safeguard precious taxpayer funds in the interest of all Australians.
We will seek to reverse this decision because under our Westminster system of government, the buck stops with the government of the day, not an unelected board.
And in stark contrast to the government, we will take research integrity seriously and will hold the ARC to account for its enforcement of grant conditions.
We support a strong and effective higher education regulator.
Given TEQSA has the power to advise and make recommendations to the Minister about the quality or regulation of higher education providers, if requested by the Minister or on its own initiative; it is concerning that TEQSA sat on its hands, doing so little to address campus safety, whether it be protecting women from sexual assault or Jewish students from antisemitic hate.
It’s a poor indictment on our regulator that the gender-violence code will be administered by the department of education.
And it is a shocking reflection on the Albanese government that it took no meaningful action to throw the book at universities over these safety issues.
We are also concerned about a range of governance issues which the government has not addressed including the salaries of vice-chancellors.
In analysis by Julie Hare of the Australian Financial Review, Australian vice-chancellors are the highest paid in the world, with some earning more those leading the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Stanford and MIT.
That is why we believe the salaries of vice-chancellors at public universities should be set by the Remuneration Tribunal and not university boards.
In this cost-of-living crisis, the current situation does not meet the pub test.
Since 7 October 2023, the Coalition has made clear that everyone has the right to be safe on a university campus.
Academic freedom must not be used to falsely cloak incidents of anti-Semitism.
As Marcia Langton so compellingly argued in her recent column in the Australian – No excuse for allowing Jewish hate to fester on our campuses – she said:
“Academic freedom is not freedom of speech; these are very different concepts and rights. Only academics are entitled to academic freedom, and this right is conditional on their work conforming with the rigorous rules of the academies and their disciplines that relate to evidence, ethics and integrity.
Freedom of speech is also limited by laws relating to defamation, racial and other forms of discrimination. University administrators and anti-Semitic protagonists alike have conflated the two concepts; one seeking refuge against their responsibilities on false grounds and the other seeking free licence on our campuses to spread anti-Semitism and hatred.”
I am proud to reiterate that a Dutton Government will adopt a zero tolerance of anti-Semitism on university campuses.
We will not wait for universities to act in their own time.
We expect all universities to fully cooperate with a new, dedicated Anti-Semitism Taskforce led by the Australian Federal Police and other agencies.
While we appreciate the vice chancellors’ agreement to adopt a definition of anti-Semitism, this has come too late.
So much damage has been done.
If elected, we will require all universities to implement the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, a more robust framework, a definition which must be enforced.
We will also implement a National Higher Education Code to Prevent and Respond to Anti-Semitism.
We continue to raise alarm bells about Labor’s refusal to listen to its own anti-Semitism Envoy, Jillian Segal, and establish a judicial inquiry into anti-Semitism at Australian universities.
We will leave no stone unturned, including amending the Fair Work Act, if required.
I am inspired by the words of Ben Sasse – the president of the University of Florida, who said –
We will always defend your rights to free speech and free assembly—but if you cross the line on clearly prohibited activities, you will be thrown off campus and suspended. … that means a three-year prohibition from campus. That’s serious. We said it. We meant it. We enforced it. We wish we didn’t have to, but the students weighed the costs, made their decisions, and will own the consequences as adults. We’re a university, not a daycare. We don’t coddle emotions; we wrestle with ideas.”
Ladies and Gentlemen, universities matter.
But universities run in the best interests of their students really matter.
If I am given the honour of being the next Minister for Education, I look forward to working closely with you – with certainty, not ambiguity – to share in this crucial mission.
Thank you.