Ms WELLS (Lilley—Minister for Sport and Minister for Communications) (09:02): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Introduction

Journalism matters.

It matters to our democracy, to the health and cohesion of our communities, and to Australians who rely on trusted reporting to understand what is happening locally, nationally and around the world.

But quality journalism does not happen on its own.

It is reliant on skilled journalists, strong newsrooms and sustainable news organisations.

In a 24-hour news cycle, people expect news to be accurate, timely and available—wherever they live.

To deliver this, Australia needs more journalists, not fewer, because journalists are the lifeblood of Australian news.

They tell our stories, they hold governments and institutions to account and they provide Australians with the information that they need.

The News Bargaining Incentive is not intended to raise revenue.

Its purpose is to encourage commercial deals between digital platforms and news publishers, as was envisioned under the previous news media and digital platforms mandatory bargaining code.

To be clear—the government's firm preference is that publishers do deals with platforms and platforms do deals with publishers.

News content contributes to engagement, to trust and to the overall value of major digital platforms.

It enriches their feeds. It drives revenue. And that is why platforms should make a commercial contribution to sustaining it.

And if they don't—they will end up paying more.

The incentive responds to the imbalance in bargaining power between large digital platforms and Australian news publishers.

That imbalance is particularly acute for small publishers, which do not have the same resources or commercial leverage as larger organisations.

If digital platforms decide to pay the charge, instead of making commercial deals, there must be a fit-for-purpose mechanism to return that revenue to Australian journalism.

That is what this bill does.

Any revenue raised by the News Bargaining Incentive will be used to support the sustainability of news and journalism in Australia.

This bill establishes the News Journalism Payment Scheme, which will distribute any revenue raised by the News Bargaining Incentive to eligible Australian news organisations, supporting a sustainable, diverse and independent news sector.

It will use a statutory, formula based model to provide stable, transparent and proportionate funding based on investment in public interest journalism.

Context

A high-quality and trusted journalism sector is fundamental to Australia's democracy and the way we live.

A rich and diverse media landscape keeps Australians informed, connects local communities, helps combat misinformation and disinformation, and supports social cohesion.

Local journalists report on the decisions and events that directly affect the people they serve.

They cover councils, schools, courts, businesses and neighbourhoods.

But quality journalism is costly to produce. And the economics of producing news has changed.

The commercial revenue that once supported news production is diminishing.

Advertising income has been significantly eroded by the shift to online—a market dominated by the same digital platforms that do not compensate Australian journalism.

Between 2006 and 2022, the commercial broadcasters share of Australian advertising expenditure fell from 43 per cent to 17 per cent as advertisers moved their spending online.

That decline threatens Australians access to quality public interest journalism.

That is why the government is creating a statutory solution to support public interest journalism and the journalists who produce it.

Key provisions of the bill

The News Journalism Payment Scheme will distribute any revenue raised by the News Bargaining Incentive to eligible Australian news organisations.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority administers the register of eligible news businesses under the news media bargaining code.

News businesses will need to be registered to apply for a payment under the News Journalism Payment Scheme.

There will be two payment periods following the collection of any revenue through the News Bargaining Incentive.

Payments will be allocated according to the number of journalists an organisation employs, including freelancers.

Put simply: the more journalists an organisation employs, the larger its payment will be.

Eligible roles will include journalists, photojournalists, videographers, data and visual journalists, and editors and producers involved in producing core news content.

Using journalists as the basis for payment recognises the vital work they do investigating, analysing, compiling and reporting the stories that matter to Australians.

A 20 per cent increase will apply for journalists working in regional and remote areas, journalists employed by small to medium news organisations, and journalists working in news organisations that serve diverse communities.

This recognises the challenges of employing staff in regional and remote Australia and the financial pressures experienced by small to medium publishers.

It also supports publishers serving communities that are underrepresented in Australia's media landscape.

Those communities deserve news services that understand their experiences and report on the issues that matter to them.

Payments made under the News Journalism Payment Scheme will serve a clear and valid public purpose: supporting ongoing investment in Australian news and journalism.

The bill will therefore impose obligations on payment recipients to maintain their journalists in respect of the payment received across the relevant period.

The scheme is not about providing payments without obligations.

It is about supporting journalists to remain in the jobs that are vital to the production of public interest journalism.

Additional support for small publishers and start-ups

I take this opportunity to thank the many news organisations, broadcasters, academics and other stakeholders that participated in public consultation on the News Journalism Payment Scheme.

Their feedback has helped inform the final design of the scheme.

One of the clearest messages from consultation was that additional support is needed for very small publishers and start-ups seeking to establish core news services online.

That need is particularly acute in areas where there is currently insufficient news coverage—often described as news deserts.

This bill therefore provides for a special allocation of five per cent of any revenue raised by the News Bargaining Incentive for a separate grants program.

That program will focus on supporting small publishers and start-ups to build their businesses and produce news for local communities.

This support matters.

Smaller publishers often operate with limited resources and face a disadvantage when dealing with the world's largest digital platforms.

Yet they can also be the organisations closest to the communities they serve.

They report on local issues that may never make national headlines and provide a voice for people who might otherwise go unheard.

Additional support for Australian Associated Press

Australian Associated Press plays a unique and vital role in Australia's media landscape. Through its wholesale news service, AAP provides its newswire service to more than 400 Australian news publishers, with more than 300 of those located in regional areas. For many news organisations, particularly those with limited resources, AAP's reporting helps supplement local coverage and ensure Australians continue to have access to trusted news.

That work delivers benefits well beyond any single publisher. AAP supports the production and distribution of quality journalism at scale, helping to strengthen the diversity, reach and resilience of the Australian news sector.

Under the bill, AAP will receive a dedicated allocation of five per cent of any revenue raised through the News Bargaining Incentive, acknowledging the essential role it plays in supporting public interest journalism and news organisations across Australia.

Conclusion

News and journalism are critical to the proper functioning of Australia's democratic system of government, the health and cohesion of our communities, and keeping Australians informed.

Australia must continue to have a free and diverse news media landscape.

But news is costly to make.

The government's News Media Assistance Program is already providing much-needed funding to news organisations, including by supporting the ongoing employment of thousands of journalists across Australia.

We want journalists to be able to focus on providing Australians with high-quality journalism without having to worry about the stability of their jobs.

After all, it is people who produce public-interest journalism.

We need more journalists reporting from our cities, from regional and remote Australia, and from communities that have too often been underrepresented.

This bill builds on the government's commitment to Australian jobs, quality journalism and a sustainable, diverse and independent media landscape.

I commend the bill to the House.

Debate adjourned.

Ms WELLS (Lilley—Minister for Sport and Minister for Communications) (09:12): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Introduction

This bill accompanies the News Journalism Payments Bill 2026, which will establish the News Journalism Payment Scheme to distribute any revenue raised by the News Bargaining Incentive to eligible Australian news organisations.

The News Journalism Payment Scheme will support a sustainable, diverse and independent media sector, and forms part of the broader package of bills related to the News Bargaining Incentive.

The News Journalism Payment Scheme requires consequential amendments to the Competition and Consumer Act 2010. These amendments are necessary to support the creation of the News Journalism Payment Scheme and its eligibility requirements. This bill provides those consequential amendments.

Key p rovisions of the b ill

The bill will enable the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to share information with the Secretary of the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications, Sport and the Arts, as the administrator of the scheme, regarding changes to the registration of news organisations.

Under the News Journalism Payment Scheme, news organisations will be required to register on ACMA's register of eligible news businesses to participate in the scheme.

The provision of timely information by ACMA regarding any changes to a news organisation's registration will support the efficient and effective administration of the News Journalism Payment Scheme.

I commend the bill.

Debate adjourned.

Dr MULINO (Fraser—Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services) (09:15): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

The News Media Bargaining (Administration) Bill 2026 forms part of the government's commitment to support a strong, sustainable and diverse Australian news media sector.

At its core, this bill is about a simple proposition: if large digital platforms benefit from Australian news, they should make a fair contribution to sustaining it.

Australian journalism matters to our democracy, informed public debate and local communities that rely on trusted reporting.

But the economics of journalism have changed. Advertising revenue that once helped fund Australian newsrooms has shifted substantially to large global digital platforms. At the same time, Australians continue to rely on news businesses to create quality news content that requires journalists, editors, photographers and producers.

That imbalance is not new. It was why the parliament supported the News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code in 2021.

The code was an important reform. It helped secure commercial agreements, supported investment in public interest journalism and recognised the bargaining power imbalance between large platforms and the news organisations whose content helps inform, engage and retain users.

But the code has a limitation. A platform can seek to avoid bargaining obligations by withdrawing or reducing the availability of news content.

That is not good enough.

Australian journalism should not depend on whether a large digital platform chooses to carry news, and platforms should not avoid contributing by simply walking away from it.

That is why the government is acting.

This bill establishes the administrative framework for the news bargaining incentive.

The purpose of the incentive is clear. We want platforms and news businesses to do commercial deals.

That is the government's preference, the market based outcome this legislation is designed to encourage, and what will best support a sustainable, diverse and independent Australian news sector.

The bill applies objective criteria to identify the largest digital platforms with significant search or social media services and substantial Australian digital advertising revenue. It is targeted at those platforms with the greatest market power and the greatest capacity to contribute.

The bill establishes a charge and offset mechanism. In-scope digital platforms will incur a liability based on their digital advertising revenue attributable to the operation of a significant search or social media services in Australia.

But platforms can reduce or fully extinguish that liability through eligible expenditure under commercial agreements with Australian news businesses.

In other words, platforms have a clear choice. They can do fair commercial deals that support Australian journalism, or, if they choose not to, they will pay the charge.

This is not about raising revenue for the government. Any revenue raised will be returned in full to the Australian news sector through the news journalism payment scheme.

The incentive is deliberately focused on encouraging deals. The offset is generous, recognises commercial agreements and provides enhanced incentives for agreements with small and medium news businesses.

That matters because media diversity is important for our democracy.

This reform is not only about major media organisations; it is also about independent publishers, regional outlets and smaller newsrooms that serve local communities and add to media diversity.

The bill encourages support to be spread across the sector, rather than concentrated among a small number of large organisations. Platforms will need eligible agreements with at least eight different news organisations to obtain the offset.

That requirement reinforces the central purpose of the scheme: more deals, with more news organisations, supporting more Australian journalism.

The government has consulted extensively on the design of the News Bargaining Incentive. We have listened to feedback and made targeted refinements to better align the legislation with its policy objective.

Those refinements include narrowing the charge base to Australian digital advertising revenue from significant search and social media services, strengthening the incentives for commercial agreements, and providing greater support for small and medium publishers.

The result is a practical and targeted reform.

Like the Minister for Communications, I would like to acknowledge the contributions to the development of this policy from many stakeholders over a long period of time. It has added significantly to the quality of the outcome that we are announcing as a government today.

It strengthens the news media bargaining code, responds to changes in digital markets, backs Australian journalism, and ensures large digital platforms cannot avoid making a fair contribution to the news content from which they derive value.

Public interest journalism is not free to produce. It takes journalists on the ground, editors, producers, photographers, newsrooms and a sustainable commercial foundation.

Australians should be able to access trusted information about their communities, economy and democracy, told through Australian eyes and with an Australian perspective.

That is what this bill supports.

The government wants large digital platforms to enter into and maintain fair commercial agreements with Australian news businesses.

Where they do, they can reduce their liability. Where they do not, they will pay a charge that goes back to supporting Australian journalism.

That is fair. That is practical. And it is the right thing to do for the long-term sustainability and diversity of Australia's news media sector.

Full details of the measure are contained in the explanatory memorandum.

Debate adjourned.

Dr MULINO (Fraser—Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services) (09:22): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

This bill accompanies the News Media Bargaining (Administration) Bill to impose the charge and establish the rate of charge that underpins the News Bargaining Incentive framework.

The charge is set at 2.5 per cent of Australian digital advertising revenue generated from significant search and social media services operated in Australia.

The charge works with the offset mechanism in the administration bill to create a clear incentive for commercial agreements to be made by digital platforms to support a strong and diverse Australian news ecosystem.

Full details of the measure are contained in the explanatory memorandum.

Debate adjourned.

Dr MULINO (Fraser—Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services) (09:24): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

This bill accompanies the News Media Bargaining (Administration) Bill to make a range of consequential amendments necessary to support the operation of the News Bargaining Incentive.

These amendments provide the supporting aspects of the framework required for administration, collection and enforcement—ensuring that there is appropriate interaction with existing tax laws.

They are an important component needed to effectively deliver the policy objective to support the sustainability and diversity of Australia's news media sector.

Full details of the measure are contained in the explanatory memorandum.

Debate adjourned.

Ms COLLINS (Franklin—Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) (09:26): by leave—I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Ms COLLINS (Franklin—Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) (09:27): by leave—I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Mr BURNS (Macnamara) (09:29): The former member for Dunkley, Peta Murphy, was a great friend of mine. In fact, she liked to tease me from time to time. When I was giving speeches in this place, if I didn't focus on the material, she used to call it 'story time with Josh', and only Peta could distil it down to that in such a great way. But I will try not to have 'story time with Josh', Peta. I will try and do your incredible report justice.

I want to start my speech by paying tribute to Peta Murphy, who, through the work of a committee report, has left an incredible legacy. All of us in this place feel a sense of responsibility and a sense of duty to honour Peta, and I know the minister, who is next to me, feels that deeply. She also was a great friend of Peta's. We miss Peta very much and we will continue on with the work she has left us—and that can't be said of every member of parliament—via a committee report. This parliament feels so strongly about the work that was done in that committee report, and that shows the intellectual bravery that Peta Murphy brought when she came into this place to this and her skill as a parliamentarian. We miss her very much.

The toxic relationship between gambling and sport is one that, frankly, every single member of this place understands we need to do something about it. The way in which it has really ingrained itself in the culture of sport in this country has meant that not only is there a cultural aspect of it but also a reliance on it, There is a toxic reliance on gambling—on gambling advertising, on this cycle of companies looking to target the most vulnerable people who are susceptible to their advertising, and sporting codes and organisations who are reliant on the money that gambling produces. Football clubs, with their pokie licences; commercial television; local sporting clubs; stadiums—it is everywhere.

There will be repercussions from this bill. This is not a bill where there aren't going to be any consequences in making the changes that we are putting forward in this bill. This will have an impact and it is real, but we have to do it. We have to break this nexus and this connection between gambling advertising and sport. When I think about my eight-year-old daughter, who loves the Carlton Football Club—that is one of the proudest things that I have been able to impart on her. We watch games together; I love watching the footy with her. And then you see the ads pop up—the multies, the betting, the celebrity endorsements—and you think, 'What is going to be left inside this child's mind about what she is actually watching?' It should be all about the game, not about the odds. We need to do something about that and that is what this bill does.

Unfortunately, it is not easy. The number of reforms that we have in this bill—I'm going to run through them in a moment—is significant. And, like every piece of legislation where we sit down with people across the parliament and we work out how we're going to pass it through the Senate, I know there has been a huge amount of work done by the minister and members in this place. Hopefully, it will be a great moment where we can make significant changes to improve the situation where gambling isn't investing in our sport and our TV channels.

I also want to mention a bit of history. The closest example of what we're trying to do here is when our country got rid of tobacco advertising. Actually, if you look at the timeline of how long it took for us, as a country, to take out tobacco advertising, it was significant. The first health warnings in Australia about tobacco were introduced in 1973. There was a radio advertising ban on tobacco three years later, in 1976. Australia subsequently banned tobacco advertising in newspapers and magazines in 1990—14 years later. The Tobacco Advertising Prohibition Act 1992 imposed much broader national restrictions on the broadcasting and publication of tobacco advertising from 1993.

It took Australia 20 years to take away tobacco advertising. Think about the media markets and the state of journalism in Australia in the nineties versus what it is now. If you look at the commercial advertising in the newspaper classifieds—around $4 billion a year was going into classified advertising back then; it's now about $200 million. All of that directly funds journalism in this country. All of that directly funds free and independent media. All of that funds commercial television and the sort of other advertising that funds Australian programs, and Australian content and kids programs, Australian industry and Australian jobs. It took 20 years to take away tobacco advertising, at a time when media advertising revenue was going up.

Right now, we are seeing the greatest transition away from independent news, from journalism, from the advertising that funds the important pillars of our democracy, not to mention our local sporting clubs and our sporting codes. And we're entering into a time when money is being moved into large tech companies and being invested in artificial intelligence. It's moving away from holding people and moving away from being invested back into the institutions that help create all of the different parts of our democracy and is moving towards other parts that make our democracy and our truth and our politics so much more difficult.

This is not simple. This is actually really difficult. I know that people out there ask: 'Well, why not just do a full ban? Why not just do it?' They are legitimate questions, and Peta Murphy laid the groundwork and the pathway against which we all must hold ourselves. But this also is real, and the consequences of this will be real: there will be millions of dollars less for journalism, for institutions, for sport—to invest in women's sport, in the AFLW. All of these things are going to need time to adjust. But we need to make sure that we are true to the point of what this bill is all about, and that is breaking the nexus and the connection between gambling and sport. Even though there will be consequences, we need to push on with these reforms.

The bill will make a significant number of changes to the number of ads on TV, making sure that gambling ads won't be on TV during sport, especially during specific hours. There'll be frequency caps outside of those hours. I also want to mention the fact that, whenever you're watching sport and you see these celebrity endorsements parading as being part of the television coverage, it's actually just an endorsement by Sportsbet or Ladbrokes or one of these other companies. All of that will be banned. Gambling advertising is not going to be normalised—this culture of 'what's happening over at the odds?' All that part of our radio and television coverage of sport is going to be gone.

When kids walk into a stadium, they're not going to see advertising all around the stadium. They're not going to see it on jerseys. They're not going to hear it on the radio while they're going to and from school. The way this bill outlines the online ban basically means that, as a parent, I am going to be able to opt out or switch off all gambling advertising on the streaming platforms in my home. That is a power that we want to give to each and every parent around Australia: if you don't want your kids to see gambling advertising, you can do something pretty simple and click 'opt out'.

If platforms choose not to have that function, the alternative is no gambling advertising on their platforms; they have to comply with this, or the answer is no gambling advertising. Here is the choice that this bill gives parents: either, if online platforms, social media and tech companies choose to not comply with the law and not provide these three steps of verification and options for parents, they will have no gambling advertising or, if they want to have gambling advertising on their platforms, they have to give parents and other people the choice and the ability to turn it off. That is a power that does not exist right now.

When you think about all of that and you think about my eight-year-old daughter, when we go to the footy and the MCG, there will be no gambling around the MCG anymore. There will be no gambling on the stadium. There will be no gambling advertising on the uniforms. When we travel to and from school, there will be no gambling advertising. When we're watching the footy at home, when we're watching it on 7plus, there will be no gambling advertising. We will have created a gambling advertising free home. That sounds pretty good to me, and that's exactly what this bill will be able to do.

There are also much broader reforms that are contained in this bill that I don't want to run out of time on, because they are significant and they have required a lot of work, and I'm really proud that we are taking them. We are going to ensure that illegal offshore gambling providers are reducing their gambling harm and ensure that anyone participating in gambling in Australia is doing so within the safety of Australian consumer protections. We're strengthening BetStop, which has helped thousands of Australians pull themselves out of problem gambling. We are going to address harmful and emerging online gambling products, including banning online keno and foreign match lotteries.

If you want to just pause on online keno, these are online pocket pokies where people can just click pokie and pokie time and time again. We see the ways in which people lose themselves in casinos until all hours of the morning. Well, just imagine lying in bed, pressing the pokie over and over again. People are losing thousands of dollars. All of that will be banned under this bill, and I think that is a fantastic reform. I've never spent a cent at a pokie. I've never spent a cent with any of these companies. I've never spent a cent on Sportsbet or Ladbrokes or any of them. That's a personal choice I make. But I think this is a wonderful thing, where we are not making it easy for these companies to just take money off people lying in bed with an algorithm and a formula that is not designed for people to win. It is designed for companies to make money.

The impact on foreign match lotteries also will mean that the local small businesses that are selling lottery tickets aren't going to have these foreign lotteries able to undercut them and have situations where people can buy tickets in offshore lotteries. People want to be a part of the lotto. My grandmother used to love doing that. I've never really seen the appeal, but at least we will ensure that Australians are buying from local newsagencies, and I think that's a good thing. There are many other things that this bill does. It closes regulatory gaps that allow some operators to offer lottery-style products under the guise of trade promotions and reward clubs. There are a number of other things that we're going to ensure that this bill does.

But I want to make this point: when negotiating anything in this parliament, we don't have the numbers, as the Labor Party, to pass everything through the Senate. That requires us to sit down with people and negotiate. It requires us to negotiate with either the Liberal Party or the Greens. There have been bills where we've gone through one, and there have been bills where we've gone through the other. Ultimately, that's about respecting our democracy. Obviously, I want to see a whole range of things that this bill makes an incredible contribution to. One of the things that we passed in our national conference was around inducements and the way in which these companies are offering people extra incentives to continue gambling and targeting the most susceptible people on that. I think that in the negotiations that is obviously something that the Labor Party in our conference said that we want to see included in the bill, and I know that there is a lot of work going on behind the scenes. I am working as closely as I can with my colleagues, and I know everyone is working to make sure we get something through this House and we get these reforms in.

That is because they will make a difference. They will make a profound difference. They'll give parents the power to turn off gambling advertising. They'll mean that, when young kids are walking into the colosseum of Australian football, they're not looking around seeing BetStop and Ladbrokes; they're walking around and seeing the great Australian athletes, men and women competing on the best sporting field in the country and possibly the world. It took 20 years from the moment in which tobacco advertising and health warnings were issued in Australia for a bill to come in. Well, we are doing this. This has never been done before, and this is a huge set of reforms that will have a big impact on breaking that nexus between gambling and sport. I thank every member who has contributed to this, the minister and so many others. Most of all, I thank Peta Murphy, who laid down the path, and now it's our job to walk down it.

Mr BIRRELL (Nicholls) (09:44): I too rise to speak on the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026. I was one of a group of members of this parliament who signed an open letter to the Prime Minister, along with former prime minister Howard and retired state premiers. In that letter, the signatories and I were asking him, the Prime Minister, to go further on gambling reform than the package he had originally announced. I did not sign that letter lightly. It came through frustration that this issue had been left to fester and that what was being proposed was manifestly inadequate.

Members from across this chamber, the government, opposition, crossbench—in listening to their speeches, I feel that they've reached the same conclusion independently about the same set of problems. That should tell the government something. I hope it's one of those times when the leaders of the government listen to their backbench, listen to the concerns and negotiate in good faith to get something that's actually meaningful. I didn't appreciate the statement from the Prime Minister at the end of question time: 'Take it or leave it. If you don't like it, we can go on with a status quo.' That's not how you deal with these issues.

I set a test myself on these issues, and I want to talk about it a bit to share my decision-making. I judge any bill on whether it protects children and whether it stops predatory conduct aimed at people who are already in trouble. I also look at what we decide as a parliament is legal and what people tell us has safe levels of use. I'm going to talk about tobacco, alcohol and gambling. All the evidence is that there is no safe use of tobacco. We continue to make it legal. We have a regulatory regime that has pushed a lot of the use into illegal products, and that is creating its own set of problems. I think we've got a lot of issues—and I see them all the time in my home state of Victoria—with the fact that our efforts to regulate that have gone so far that it's pushed use into illegal forms. But, having said that, there is no safe use of tobacco. It is legal, but there's no safe use. So there should be no advertising. I'm comfortable with that.

We discussed alcohol yesterday with the minister, the wine industry, the brewing industry and the spirits industry. Many Australians enjoy alcohol responsibly. Medical experts tell us there is a safe level of use for that product, so we allow some advertising of that product. We try to stop it being targeted at children because there is no safe use for children.

Ms Bell: Or pregnant mothers.

Mr BIRRELL: Or pregnant mothers. Thank you, member for Moncrieff. When it comes to gambling, there is a safe level of use. Many people enjoy the occasional bet. Many people enjoy more than the occasional bet with money that they can afford to lose, knowing when to stop and understanding the loss probability. It's not something I do very often, just around the spring carnival and at country races. Normally, my inadequacy in punting warns me off for another year, but it is fun. I don't think this bill as introduced passes the test that we want for having some advertising but making sure we protect vulnerable people and children.

We're three years on from the Peta Murphy report. In June 2023, a committee of this parliament handed down 31 recommendations, and it was bipartisan. Members from both sides put their names to those recommendations. As many people have said, this parliament should be incredibly proud of Peta Murphy for what she did in this place and everyone misses her. I want to appreciate the work of the deputy chair of that committee—the member for Cowper, Pat Conaghan—who also contributed greatly. I am very critical of the government for the delay in acting on elements of that report. I think more than three years passing between that report and a bill is not acceptable—three years in which ads kept running, losses kept climbing and children kept being exposed to gambling advertising. When the government did finally respond to the Murphy report, it did so on budget day, with the Press Gallery locked away in a budget lock-up. I think that it should have had more fanfare and should have had more transparency and should have been worked through more than that.

The issue, as many members of this place have said, is that we love enjoying sport with our children, and it's something that I do. It's something that many people do. It's a way of bonding. It's a way of talking about athleticism, teamwork and all sorts of things. With me, it's more soccer than anything else, particularly the Premier League. When you're watching a game, whether it be AFL, NRL, Premier League or A-League, you don't want to have that experience inundated with gambling ads and discussion of odds. I think that most people have reached the conclusion that there's just been an overload of gambling ads during sports broadcasts.

During the last parliament, when I was sitting on the backbench here, Peter Dutton, the former opposition leader, stood at this dispatch box and gave a budget reply speech that proposed a reform of an ad ban an hour before, during and an hour after live sports broadcast. Again, I think that was the then leader of the opposition expressing a frustration that the government was so recalcitrant to do something and that we needed to put something on the table to say that we need to do something about this and that we need to get these gambling ads out of our live sport. I think that was a worthwhile reform. I don't think it's the only thing that should have been done, but it's a worthwhile thing.

I want to make a couple more points. Firstly, on streaming services, there have been discussions of opt in and opt out, and that will continue to be a negotiation. I think opt in is a good system if it can be managed, but, if this parliament negotiates and decides for an opt-out situation for streaming, my strong view is that that opt out should be very, very clear and very, very easy to do. At the moment, it is not. We found that during the World Cup with the SBS. If you wanted to opt out, it wasn't clear and it wasn't easy. You had to go to settings and you had to do a number of things, and, consequently, most people didn't do it. Opt in is ideal. If it's opt out, it needs to be very, very clear, and streaming services need to make that opt-out option really, really clear.

I do I just want to talk a bit about carve-outs for racing and that distinction. There is a distinction between racing and the other sports that I've mentioned—rugby league, rugby union, soccer and Australian rules football. Horseracing and gambling are intertwined in a way that other sports aren't, and that has been the case for almost all of Australia's history, and I think we need to understand that. I've got a really strong, vibrant thoroughbred-racing industry. I've also got pacing and greyhounds as well, but the thoroughbred-racing industry in my electorate, as many country MPs have—I know we talk about the Melbourne Cup and the spring racing carnival, and we talk about the carnivals in other metropolitan cities, but it really is and can be the lifeblood of many people in regional communities. I've got the Seymour Racing Club, the Echuca Racing Club and the Kilmore Racing Club in my electorate, to name a few.

We do need to make sure that what we do does not affect, firstly, free-to-air broadcasting of sport, because a lot of people can't afford the cable services, the pay TV, so they want to be able to watch sport on TV, and we can't have the unintended consequences of significantly damaging racing, particularly in regional areas. That's the balance that everyone's looking for here. In an ideal world you'd go a lot further, but you recognise that things that you do, regulations that go too far, might adversely affect great industries like racing and people's ability to access sport via live free-to-air services.

I'll leave my comments there. I'm disappointed it's taken this long to get a bill on the table. I don't think the main bill is adequate. I believe the negotiations are ongoing, and I look forward to seeing what comes back. This parliament has a duty to do something about this, and the test it sets is: does what we do protect children and the most vulnerable people from obsessive gambling advertising and gambling advertising during sporting contests?

Mr REBELLO (McPherson) (09:55): I rise to speak on the gambling legislation before the House today. This is an area where I think we need to start from a fairly simple proposition: adults should be free to make choices for themselves, but with that freedom comes personal responsibility. But government also has a responsibility to protect vulnerable Australians, particularly children, where products or commercial practices can cause general harm. Those principles are not contradictory; in fact, good public policy requires us to hold them together.

For the overwhelming majority of Australians, buying a lottery ticket, having a punt on the races or putting a small bet on a sporting event is entertainment. Government should not treat every Australian who enjoys those activities as though they're incapable of making their own decisions. But, equally, we should never minimise gambling harm. Australians lose more per person to gambling than people in any other country, with total losses now exceeding $36 billion a year. Behind that extraordinary figure are people who have suffered financial distress, damaged relationships and profound impacts on their mental health, and families who have carried those consequences alongside them. There is a role for government here, but the test of reform cannot simply be where the government has done something; the test is whether it has done the right thing, and whether the legislation is targeted, evidence based and capable of reducing harm without creating new and unnecessary consequences. Unfortunately, these bills do not yet meet that test.

The Murphy inquiry reported in June 2023 after undertaking extensive work, and delivered 31 recommendations. Australians have now waited more than three years for the government to bring forward this legislative response. After that amount of time, we were entitled to expect legislation that was coherent, carefully designed and able to withstand scrutiny. Instead, there remain serious gaps. The coalition wants meaningful and workable gambling reform. We want the legislation to succeed. But, after three years of delay, parliament has an obligation to strengthen the bills where their protections fall short. We're engaging constructively with the government because gambling reform is too important to be reduced to political theatre. There are negotiations occurring about how this legislation can be strengthened, and I hope that the government and the minister listen carefully to the concerns that have been raised.

One of those concerns is gambling advertising. There's been some rewriting of history in this debate. Australians should remember that restrictions on gambling advertising during live sport did not suddenly appear with these bills. The former coalition government introduced the live sport restrictions that came into effect in 2018. Under the existing regime, gambling advertising is prohibited during live sport between 5 am and 8.30 pm. including during breaks in play and for five minutes either side of the event. That was an important reform because sport should be something families can enjoy together without children being conditioned to believe that every kick, every try and every result needs to have a price attached to it.

The scale of gambling advertising in this country demonstrates why this matters. The Australian Communications and Media Authority found that, in a single 12-month period, more than one million gambling advertisements were broadcast across free-to-air television and radio. Online, Australians are being exposed to more than half a million gambling advertisements. That is not advertising at the margins; it's saturation. When gambling messages are appearing at that scale, they become part of the background noise of everyday life. They normalise gambling. They embed it into the experience of watching sport. For people already struggling with gambling harm, that constant exposure can be deeply damaging.

There are measures in this bill that move in the right direction, but there are also aspects that require substantial improvement. The bill proposes a general cap of three wagering advertisements per hour on television between 6 am and 8.30 pm. I struggle with the proposition that we can say that we're fundamentally changing children's exposure to gambling while still designing a legislative framework capable of delivering three gambling advertisements every hour through much of the day.

There are also serious questions about streamed live sport. The existing online rules contain strong protections during play, during breaks and immediately before and after an event. We should be strengthening those protections, not creating new opportunities for gambling advertising to find its way back into the family viewing experience. You cannot credibly say that you're breaking the connection between gambling and sport while continuing to permit gambling advertisements during live sporting events. That is the contradiction at the heart of this aspect of the bill.

Sport is one of the great institutions of Australian life. It brings families together. It builds communities. It teaches young people about teamwork, discipline, resilience and competition. I want the next generation of Australians to grow up loving sport because of the contest, because of their team and because of the excitement of the game, not because they've been taught from childhood to associate every result with a bet. We can't go back and undo the gambling harm that's already occurred in Australian families, but this parliament does have control over what happens next.

And then there are inducements. This is an area where the evidence has been particularly confronting. The Murphy inquiry did not equivocate. Recommendation 16 called for online gambling inducements and inducement advertising to be prohibited without delay. The committee was particularly concerned by the role of VIP programs and inducements in encouraging people to continue gambling and losing. Yet, three years later, this bill still does not adequately deal with that problem. The evidence heard by the Senate committee recently about the treatment of vulnerable gamblers and the use of VIP account management, bonus bets and other inducements should concern every member of this parliament.

Government has an obligation to act where commercial practices are deliberately exploiting vulnerability. That's exactly where targeted regulation belongs. At the same time, we need to remember that legitimate gambling related industries employ Australians, sustain businesses and make significant contributions to communities. Racing in particular supports trainers, breeders, jockeys, stable workers, veterinarians, hospitality venues, transport businesses and communities right across regional Australia. We should be capable of protecting vulnerable people without pretending that every person who enjoys a bet needs government to save them from themselves. That is the balance that the coalition is seeking.

That brings me to a part of this bill that I'd like to spend some time addressing because its consequences are very real for the people in my electorate of McPherson. Schedule 4 proposes to prohibit foreign matched lotteries. Now, I've spoken to many across this chamber about this. That might sound like a fairly technical change buried within a much larger gambling reform bill. It's not. For one Australian owned business based in my electorate, it is an extinction notice.

The Lottery Office operates from Robina in my electorate on the Gold Coast. Its parent company, Global Players Network, is Australian owned and operates under a Northern Territory gaming licence. The government's own review identifies the Lottery Office as one of the licensed providers of foreign matched lotteries operating in Australia. This business supports around 50 jobs in my electorate, as well as expenditure with many other local businesses and suppliers of whom I have had the opportunity to speak. These are not theoretical jobs. They're not figures in a departmental briefing note. They're real people who go to work each morning. They pay their taxes, they have mortgages and rent, they raise families, they buy their groceries locally, and they contribute to the Gold Coast community in spades. They fund our sporting clubs and our community organisations, and they fill the funding gaps left by government. And this parliament is now being asked to vote for legislation that could potentially wipe them out.

This isn't gambling reform; it's a Labor protection job. Roger Cook, the Premier of Western Australia, has asked Canberra to effectively kill off a legal Gold Coast competitor to shield Western Australia's state owned lottery. The Prime Minister and the minister, through this legislation, will simply be rolling over to support their Labor mates.

Before doing that, members on that side of the chamber should understand exactly what this product is. A foreign matched lottery is materially different from a synthetic lottery, where there is no underlying ticket purchased in the relevant lottery and the operator itself pays an amount based on the result. That distinction matters. It matters even more when we look at the evidence the government itself commissioned.

The department of infrastructure undertook a specific review into online keno and foreign matched lotteries. That review was published earlier this year, and what did it find? It said:

The harms associated with … foreign-matched lotteries are not well understood.

It said:

Due to the lack of available data, the review could not identify a different harm profile or customer spending profile for foreign-matched lotteries compared with Australian-exclusive lotteries.

It recorded:

All foreign-matched lottery providers advised that winnings had been paid to customers ...

The Northern Territory regulator advised that complaints it had seen related to identity verification, and that consumers received their winnings once those verification issues were resolved. Most importantly, the department did not respond to that evidence by recommending that these businesses be banned. The department said that further research was needed to properly understand the risk profile before restrictions were imposed.

The review went so far as to say that 'more evidence' was needed to determine whether further regulation of foreign matched lotteries would actually be 'commensurate with the harms'. That is the government's own department. Only months later, the government's answer is not more research. It's not stronger consumer protections. It's not a nationally consistent regulatory framework. It's not extending appropriate provisions of BetStop or the credit card restriction. It is prohibition.

How did we get from 'we need more evidence before imposing further restrictions' to 'we're going to ban the entire product'? I do not understand it. That's the question the government has not adequately answered, nor was the prohibition on foreign matched lotteries—one of the 31 recommendations of the Murphy report. That inquiry called for major reforms across advertising inducements, consumer protection regulation and research, but it did not make the case that this government is now making for the destruction of this particular business model.

I ask the minister and I ask those opposite: Where is the evidence? What changed between the department's review and the drafting of this legislation? What new harm was identified? What problem emerged that could only be solved by prohibition rather than regulation? And, I ask to the minister sitting at the table, why should around fifty jobs on the Gold Coast, in my electorate, be put on the line before those questions have been answered?

I'm a great believer in personal responsibility. It's why I joined the Liberal Party, but I'm equally a great believer in government taking responsibility for its own decisions. It's very easy, in Canberra, to amend a definition in an act. It takes a few lines on a page. But, when those lines remove the legal basis upon which an Australian business operates, the consequences are not a few lines on a page. They're livelihoods, they're employees sitting around a kitchen table wondering whether their job will exist next year, they're suppliers wondering whether a customer will disappear, and they're people who have built careers in a business that is lawful, licensed and regulated who are being told that Canberra has simply decided that their industry should no longer exist. I cannot support that approach. I say to the minister and I say to the government, deep down, I'm sure you can't either.

There is also an important competition question here. Whatever the government's intention, the practical consequence of this prohibition is to eliminate a regulated competitor from the Australian lottery market and leave the largest incumbent lottery operators facing less competition. That should concern everyone in this parliament who believes in competitive markets.

There are stakeholders arguing strongly on the other side. Lobbyists claiming to represent traditional lottery retailers and newsagents have told the parliament that foreign matched products divert revenue and threaten their businesses. Even if those claims are true, government does not resolve competition between lawful businesses simply by banning one of them. If there's a consumer protection gap, close the gap. If regulation needs to be strengthened, strengthen it. If credit card use presents an unacceptable risk, address it. If consumers need stronger self-exclusion options, build them. Apply the appropriate safeguards consistently, and require every operator to meet them. That is regulation. Simply extinguishing a licensed Australian operator, when the evidence for doing so has not been established, is something very different.

The Gold Coast has been built by people willing to take a risk, build a business, employ others and back their own ingenuity. My electorate is full of those people. It's part of what makes our city so successful. Government should be very careful before it tells one of those businesses: 'You played by the rules, you obtained the licence, you employed Australians and you complied with the regulatory framework, but we've now decided to abolish the framework beneath you anyway.' That destroys confidence well beyond this particular industry. The government should remove the proposed prohibition on foreign matched lotteries from this legislation and, instead, undertake the evidence based work its own department recommended. Gold Coast workers, the hardworking people in my electorate, should not become the collateral damage in a rushed regulatory decision.

In the short time I have left, I'll say that we can preserve the great Australian tradition of enjoying sport without surrounding the next generation with gambling advertising, and we can regulate an industry without sacrificing competition, small business and Australian jobs in the process. That is the balance this parliament should seek and it is the standard against which this legislation should be judged.

Ms CHESTERS (Bendigo) (10:11): We stand here today with a comprehensive set of reforms before us. I want to take a moment to acknowledge the work that's gone into the legislation that's before us. I've been in the parliament for 13 years now. I've had lots of opportunities to be the chair and deputy chair of House committees, prepared lots of reports with lots of recommendations. I want to address this issue up front. When you present a report to the parliament from a House committee, there are recommendations; they are a couple of sentences. But to turn sentences into legislation does take time in this place and I want to acknowledge that. Quite a lot of the feedback that I've got in my electorate has been: why is it taking so long? To turn a couple of sentences in a recommendation into legislation does take time regardless of the report. In the previous government, we did lots of reports on education reform and, out of respect, the then government looked at them. This government responded to some of those reports and they were tabled in this parliament. This isn't lost between governments; it's picked up by other ministers. But I want to put up front that it does take a lot to turn a report and recommendations into legislation and that consultation has happened in a genuine way.

The reforms that we have in front of us address the concerns our community has, that there's been a disconnect, that harm is now being done to children and others through online gambling, that there's been a change in the way in which gambling interacts with everyday life and, in particular, sport. The changes that are before us today will return us to the situation where families and children can engage in sport, grow up watching the game that they love without thinking about gambling and without it being imposed on them at the same time.

The changes before us minimise the exposure to harm of wagering advertising, break the link between sport and wagering, and reduce the saturation and targeting of wagering advertising. What has shifted in the 20 or 30 years is the change in technology, and these laws are trying to keep up with that change. We can walk around with a phone in our pocket which is constantly pushing advertising and gambling to us. Streaming and online services have changed the nature of advertising.

I want to acknowledge all the people in my electorate who've written to me and raised this concern, from local branch members to local welfare groups to individuals who share their own story—their story of gambling, their story of their son being addicted to gambling or their story of growing up in a household of gambling. I'm the daughter of a gambler. My experience in childhood was very different to others and to what they're experiencing today. I remember being very young, and on Saturdays my afternoons were spent at the track—the racetrack—not like other kids. I remember learning mathematics through using the form guide. I remember that's how I did my times tables. After my dad and I had done the delivery runs for our second-hand business, and we'd gone to all the things that we did on a Saturday morning, our daddy-daughter time was at the track.

I think back now to that experience. I was the odd one out in the playground on a Monday when we reflected on what we did on the weekend. Every other kid didn't go to the track with their dad. Every other kid didn't learn their times tables by writing down the late mail. Every other kid wasn't told that the betting ring wasn't safe for a young girl because daddy had to do the conversations with the bookmakers, but they could just roam around the track chatting to people. I used to make up stories that my dad was a trainer so I wouldn't get so embarrassed. He wasn't. He was a gambler.

What changed was that our society could catch that kid, those girls, because there was only one in the playground that could understand the form guide and the betting odds. To this day, I can still talk about a quaddie or a quinella. I can still sit down, read the form guide and give you the best quinella picks you've got. My partner laughs about it. He didn't grow up in a house like that. I still have a cathartic feeling when I hear the racing channel—which is bizarre and odd and shouldn't be the case—because I heard it so much as a young child. My point is, whereas I was the only one in the playground, what we now have, because of the changing nature between sport and wagering, is more children talking about sporting odds and more children seeing it normalised.

There was a period when you'd watch a rugby league match and heroes of rugby league in the eighties and nineties were doing a live cross and talking to people, saying, 'If you go to your betting app right now'—whichever one they were promoting—'you can put money on, you can get the odds about the first kick and who's going to get the first goal'—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Dr Garland ): Sorry to interrupt, Member for Bendigo. Member for Moncrieff, no phones are allowed in the chamber.

Ms CHESTERS: and I can remember watching that, going: That's shifted. That's changed. That shouldn't be happening. This is what this bill seeks to address. It's minimising the exposure of children to harm. It's being able to watch that game without that interruption.

I acknowledge some of the change that's already happened. As the member for Macnamara said, the AFL moved quickly and has taken the gambling around the stadium off. It was always a shock to see that, and a recall memory for me to see that when we went there, because it didn't happen when we were younger. Banning it from shirts is a big step forward. It's breaking that normalisation of gambling for children so that families can enjoy watching football, watching sport, without that interruption.

With the bill that's before us, what we're trying to do is to ban ads on TV during live sport between 6 am and 8.30 pm and to put a cap on ads outside these hours of three per hour between 6 pm and 8 pm. The bill also seeks to ban gambling promotion by celebrities, athletes and influencers. Those heroes that I just spoke about are being used to target kids and youngsters, especially young men, but this bill aims to stop that. We're banning advertising on stadiums and jerseys, which again seeks to normalise advertising. We're banning radio ads at drop-off and pick-up times. We're banning online advertising, except when users use the opt-out function that allows them to opt out of advertising and apply family-friendly settings.

I think back to the World Cup and how important it would be to make sure that families know that they can do that. The broader reforms in this bill haven't received the attention that they should. The banning of online keno—I talked about phones in this particular reform, which I so desperately want to see passed. Phones just normalised it for so many young people. They could be shopping or at work, and then, all of a sudden, it pops up in their feed, and they give it a go. That shouldn't happen. Our phones should be free of the availability to gamble.

We're expanding and changing BetStop to make sure that it can help more people and to stop it being misused. We're changing the way foreign matched lotteries work and function. We are tackling the illegal offshore gambling providers and reducing the impact of gambling harm to ensure that people participating in gambling in Australia do so with the safety of Australian consumer protections. I was shocked and horrified to hear through another committee, where we were looking at a treaty, about the influence and the way in which overseas gambling is having an impact on Australia, and it is good to see some of the recommendations of the treaties committee report being picked up and addressed with this legislation.

We are cracking down on fake lotteries operating under the pretence of trade promotion. I'm not saying that everybody engages with them, but the insidious way that they use Facebook, they use marketing apps, they use shopping apps—before you know it, you're hooked and part of a gambling app. These are just some of the many legislation reforms that are here, and they are an incredibly important step to go forward. We do not want a case where gambling continues to be normalised for children.

This is a huge step forward, and I want to really say that to the people in my community. This is about those young men and women at the Lake View Hotel or at the All Seasons after work, making sure that, if they want to have a bet, it's done safely and they're not being chased by gambling throughout their work day. This is about making sure that families can watch their football or their sporting without being bombarded by ads. This is about ensuring that we're supporting those children, that not more kids are talking about gambling ads, that more kids are not talking about betting or learning about our capitals based upon where racetracks may be, and that they're not learning their times tables or how to do mathematics by being able to understand the form guide.

We can catch those one or two kids that might become problem gamblers if it is that simple, if it is that one or two. But, when it becomes a classroom, it becomes so much harder for us as a community to catch. This is about making sure that the next generation isn't being chased by gambling on their phone. Gambling breaks families. It's insidious.

Gambling addiction is one of the hardest things for people to break. I can remember the words of my father over and over again: 'Just one more bet. This one will get us out. Just one more bet.' I can remember the way in which my mum would try and hide money, the way in which we as girls would beg him not to go, and the nights that we lost travelling to cities to go to racetracks or to different gambling opportunities. I've never put money in a poker machine. I had a Sportsbet account at one stage because I was always interested in the odds at election time, but I'm not a gambler. I think it's because I grew up in a household with a problem gambler, and I don't want any child to have that experience.

What we can do in this bill is find the balance and restore the balance. We can minimise children's exposure to harmful wagering advertising. We can break the link between sport and wagering and restore that love of the game without being bombarded. We can reduce the risk and targeting of wagering in advertising and ensure that that great pastime remains a great pastime for people and doesn't chase them when they wake up in the morning, when they're at home or when they're in the workplace; that it's done in a safe way; and that, if they need help, they can get help.

Ms BELL (Moncrieff) (10:24): I rise today to speak on the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026. I want to thank the member for Nicholls for his outstanding contribution to this debate earlier. He highlighted some concerns very similar to those I have with Labor's bill as well.

I want to begin with something very simple. This debate is not about telling responsible Australian adults how to spend their money. That's their choice. That's their freedom of choice. It's not about telling someone who enjoys a punt on the Melbourne Cup that they shouldn't have one. I, indeed, enjoy that myself. It's not about telling families who buy a lottery ticket on a Saturday that they are doing something wrong somehow. And it's certainly not about treating every Australian who places a bet as a problem gambler. Most Australians understand the difference between entertainment and addiction, and most Australians take responsibility for their own decisions. I believe in that personal responsibility, as a Liberal.

As the shadow minister for youth, my greatest concern lies with our young people, particularly our children, because children don't get to make the same informed choices that adults do. They don't have the same understanding of risk. They don't have the financial independence or maturity to understand the consequences of addiction. And yet we are allowing gambling to become increasingly normalised in the environments where our children spend their time. Around 600,000 Australian teenagers under the age of 18 gamble each year. That's a big number—600,000. It's not an abstract statistic. It's sons and daughters. It's young people sitting on the couch, watching the footy with their families. It's our responsibility to protect those young people.

I want to share a story I was told in a meeting this week with the Salvation Army, who support those who are most vulnerable in our community. It's the story of a 17-year-old. Let's call him Kyle. He was living in a youth refuge when he opened up about his gambling addiction. He'd been gambling on a sports betting app since he got his first job—good on you, Kyle—at 14. He said: 'I pay rent, bet the rest and get my mates to buy me food. But they know when I win I'll pay them back.' It doesn't leave much wriggle room, does it? Kyle's story really stayed with me because, at 17, he should be thinking about schoolwork, his mates and his future, not how he's going to find enough money to keep on gambling.

What struck me most is that Kyle didn't start gambling when he turned 18, as an adult. No, he started when he was 14. That's why this debate matters to me as the shadow minister for youth. We can talk about billions of dollars in losses, advertising regulations and industry revenue, and all of those things matter, but behind every statistic is a person encountering harm. Sometimes, that person is a child. As young people are growing up in a world where a gambling advertisement can appear on their phone, on social media, around sport and, increasingly, alongside the entertainment they consume, we need to ask ourselves: what are we teaching our children about gambling? If every time a child watches a sporting match they see gambling promoted, they hear odds discussed as casually as a score and they see betting presented as part of the excitement of sport, we shouldn't be surprised when gambling starts to feel normal to them. Gambling harm is not normal. Sport should be an opportunity to bring families and communities together. Sport delivers opportunities; it should not be a vehicle for marketing gambling products to children. That's why I have serious concerns about this bill in its current form.

The coalition has three fundamental principles when it comes to gambling reform. First, Australians should have choice—choice that a democracy delivers. Second, adults should take responsibility for their decisions and their actions. That is not easy when you're being harmed by gambling. Third, government has an obligation to protect vulnerable Australians, particularly children, from exploitation and harm. Those principles are not contradictory. In fact, I believe they are common sense. We should be able to strike a balance. We can respect the freedom of responsible adults while recognising that children should be protected. We don't expect a 10-year-old to understand the risks associated with every financial product. We don't expect a teenager to have the same capacity for judgement as, say, a 40-year-old. And we shouldn't expect children to navigate an increasingly sophisticated gambling industry on their own.

The industry has enormous resources. It has sophisticated data. It has sophisticated marketing. It understands consumer behaviour. And some operators have demonstrated just how targeted that marketing can become.

The evidence heard by the Senate inquiry last week should concern every member of this parliament. Former NRL player Luke Bateman gave damning evidence about his experience with VIP account managers, including claims that he was targeted with bonus bets, drugs and other inducements. That testimony should make us all stop and think, because, if sophisticated adults can be targeted and manipulated in this way, what chance does a vulnerable young person or a child have?

The advertising provisions are simply not good enough. One of my biggest concerns with this bill is that it does not go far enough to protect children from gambling advertising. On its face, the bill would permit up to three gambling advertisements per hour during children's television—three gambling advertisements per hour. I struggle to understand how that can possibly be described as putting children's welfare first. We know advertising works—businesses don't spend billions of dollars on advertising because it has no influence on behaviour—and, when children repeatedly see gambling associated with sport, excitement, success and social activity, it contributes to the normalisation of gambling.

We need to be particularly careful about the message we are sending to young people, who are already surrounded by digital advertising. A teenager can sit down to watch a game; they can pick up their phone during the game; they can open up social media, watch a sporting highlight or go on to a streaming platform. Everywhere they turn, they can encounter gambling. That's the environment today's young Australians are growing up in, and government needs to recognise that reality.

The government proposes to weaken elements of the gambling advertisement restrictions introduced by the former coalition government. In 2018, the coalition introduced a broadcast and online ban on gambling advertisements during live sport, including the five-minute blackout before and after live sport between 5 am and 8.30 pm. That was an important reform, yet this bill would allow digital platforms to show gambling advertisements during scheduled and unscheduled breaks in live sport, subject to the proposed triple-lock opt-out. For live sport streamed online, gambling advertisements could appear during breaks in play. That means a child watching a game online could potentially see a gambling advertisement immediately after a goal. The five-minute blackout before and after live sport has also been removed for online streaming. So we need to ask: why are we weakening protections when we should be, in fact, strengthening them? The Prime Minister has repeatedly suggested that this government is introducing a ban on gambling advertising during live sport, but the reality is that the coalition government introduced that ban eight years ago. Australians deserve honesty about what this legislation actually does.

None of this is to suggest that gambling is inherently wrong. It's not. Millions of Australians participate in legal forms of gambling—we know that.

But we cannot ignore the harm experienced by some Australians and their family. Australians lost approximately $32.2 billion to legal gambling in 2023-24. Those are among the highest per-capita gambling losses in the world. And the consequences aren't just financial. Gambling addiction can contribute to psychological distress; it can cause relationship breakdown; it can cause or contribute to financial hardship; it can affect people's ability, indeed, to work—and families often carry the consequences alongside the person experiencing their addiction. A parent who can't pay the mortgage, a family struggling to pay the bills, a relationship under enormous strain, children who don't understand why there isn't enough money for the things their friends take for granted—these are the human consequences behind the numbers. And that's why this parliament has a responsibility to get the balance right.

At the same time, I want to make something very clear: we cannot pretend that the gambling and wagering industries don't matter to Australia. They do. The gambling sector directly employs around 33,000 Australians. Gambling-specific taxes generate more than $10 billion for governments around Australia, which contributes to critical infrastructure projects and programs. The racing industry is particularly important to regional communities. Thoroughbred racing contributes more than $13 billion in economic activity and supports more than 100,000 jobs. More than half of those jobs are in regional Australia. So, when we talk about gambling reform, we need to be responsible in our approach. Good regulation should target harm without creating unnecessary harm of its own. That means listening to the community. It means listening to families, to experts, to industry and carefully considering the evidence before making changes that affect thousands of businesses, workers and the community. And that's the track record of the coalition.

When we were in government, we delivered some of the most significant gambling harm minimisation measures in Australia's history. We introduced the broadcast and online ban on gambling advertising during live sport. We legislated BetStop, the national self-exclusion register, to help people who need support to take a break from gambling, and we prohibited betting companies from offering sign-up inducements under the national consumer protection framework. These were meaningful reforms and they were designed to reduce harm while preserving choice for responsible adults. That is the balance we should be seeking today.

What is particularly disappointing about this bill is the time the government has had to get it right. The Murphy inquiry handed down its report in June 2023, and it contained 31 recommendations covering gambling regulation, consumer protections, advertising research and harm minimisation. Australians have waited more than three years for the government's legislative response, and, when that response finally came, it was released on budget day, when journalists were in budget lock-up. That is hardly the kind of open and transparent consultation Australians should expect for legislation of this significance. The government then opposed the current Senate inquiry into this bill.

But ultimately, for me, this debate comes back to the young Australians that we all represent in this place. I think about the young people who are growing up surrounded by technology. They're exposed to more advertising and more commercial influences than any previous generation, and we have a responsibility to make sure that the things we allow into that environment are indeed appropriate. There are many things that aren't. Our children should be able to watch sport without being sold a bet. They should be able to enjoy their favourite team without being told what the odds are. They should be able to watch a game without gambling being presented as an essential part of the experience.

The normalisation of gambling doesn't happen overnight; it happens gradually. A bet here, an ad there, an odds promotion during a game, a bonus bet, and before long something that should be treated as an adult activity becomes just another part of growing up. That's what concerns me. So let me be clear about where the coalition stands: we support reducing gambling harm, we support protecting vulnerable Australians, we support protecting children, we support evidence based reform and we support responsible adults having the freedom to make their own responsible choices.

After three years of delay, deflection and deception over gambling reform, the Albanese government's failings on this bill are inexcusable. Australians can be assured we won't be supporting this deficient legislation in its current form. That said, we appreciate that the government is engaging with the opposition in good faith to strengthen this bill, and those negotiations, of course, are ongoing. There have been a range of negotiations between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, as well as between the communications minister and the shadow minister for communications and digital safety. While the second reading debate is now underway, potential amendments to this bill are still being worked through. These will then return to our party room to be considered and to be finalised.

We need stronger protections around gambling advertising, we need to address gambling inducements that target vulnerable people, and we need to make sure that existing protections are not quietly weakened through changes to online gambling advertising. This isn't about stopping a responsible Australian from having a punt. It's about making sure that a child doesn't grow up believing that gambling is simply part of watching sport. It's about making sure that vulnerable Australians aren't deliberately targeted by sophisticated marketing. And it's about making sure that families don't have to pick up the pieces when gambling does become an addiction. It's about recognising that, while adults can make choices for themselves, children depend on us to make responsible choices for them. As the shadow minister for youth, I take that responsibility the most seriously. We owe our children an environment where they can grow up, play sport, watch sport and enjoy life without gambling being marketed to them at every turn.

Mr CHAFFEY (Parkes) (10:39): I rise to speak to the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026. We know Australians are amongst the biggest gamblers in the world. They like to have a go, they like to take a chance and they love to see the long shot come from behind to in front of others despite all odds. But there is a difference between having a couple of dollars on the Melbourne Cup and an addiction that leads to people losing their jobs, their homes and their families. There are people who can safely have a bet every now and then, and then there are those people that cannot put the brakes on, who fall into addiction. And the technology has made it easier and easier for us to lose everything.

In my maiden speech, when I was elected to parliament as the member for Parkes, I spoke about the strengths and the forbearance of my stepfather. My stepfather was a hardworking lucerne farmer who put in long hours to support the family that became his own. He provided financially for us, but it was never enough. It would have been enough if it weren't for the gambling addiction of my mother. The extent of this addiction only became fully known to us in the family when she began to show signs of dementia at the age of 74. It was the only thing that stopped her addiction.

My mother's story is not only her story. It's my stepfather's story. It's my story. It's my sisters' story. It's all of our family's story and our friends' story. Her gambling addiction led to other stresses and sorrows in our family—her violence towards my stepfather and all of the pain that went with that. One disease led to another. There were financial stresses and emotional stresses. It impacted on every part of growing up and has left the scars that will remain with all of us forever. This is the case for almost all Australians who are addicted to gambling. It would be a rare case for someone to suffer this addiction without it becoming a problem for all of those within their life.

My mother found a way to gamble wherever she was, whenever she could, whether it was the pokies or the horses. When she became less mobile in her elderly years, it was phone accounts. Today, you don't have to go down to the TAB or to the pokies to hand over your pay packet. You can do it online in the comfort of your own home. You can do it secretly, unaware of or unwilling to acknowledge the damage it's doing to you or to your family. You can gamble all day, every day, spending every last dollar and then some. Gambling is accessible everywhere—in thousands of different forms, right across Australia. The lure of a better bet or just forgetting your own life for a while is just too great for some of those who can't see it any other way.

In the end, not only are Australians the biggest gamblers; they are also the biggest losers. The St Vincent de Paul Society submission on this bill stated that Australians lost $36 billion on gambling in the 12 months to March 2026. That's $1,635 per adult. Instead of going into the budget for the rising power bills, for the mortgage payment, for the food, the fuel, the school fees, this money is being fed into pokies. It's being spent on scratchies and keno, on betting on horses and dogs and just about any other kind of sport, and straight off the credit card on online gambling. Giving away money through gambling has unfortunately been normalised right throughout our country. This is despite the sad and terrible stories of so many ordinary people. Some of those stories we heard at last week's Senate inquiry.

Clubs and pubs have always held a place in regional communities as employers, as supporters of our community and as contributors to our economy. About 33,000 Australians work in the gambling sector, and it contributes billions of dollars in wages and economic activity. Gambling specific taxes add more than $10 billion into government budgets to go towards essential services. Horseracing is not only an Australian tradition; it contributes more than $13 billion in economic activity. More than half of the 100,000 jobs in the industry are in regional areas. Charities, not-for-profit organisations and community programs benefit from gambling revenue. There remains a place for clubs and pubs, there is no doubt about that.

There remains a place for horseracing and for sponsorship and for responsible betting in Australia. It is the insidious practices in this sector that are the darkest part: the inducements held out to those who can least afford them, to those who are already in serious trouble. Those practices tell people with an addiction to go on, to have another bet, that this one will 'pay for the rest' and asks them, 'What harm could it do?'

We have heard, over and over again, the harm it can do, and it is considerable harm. The hearings also heard of inducements—such as illegal drugs, hotel rooms, sex workers, games tickets—to keep people gambling. In whose world is this acceptable? Gambling companies are targeting those who have tried to get out of gambling, who have closed their accounts, luring them back into addiction. How is this justifiable? They are offering free bets just to keep gamblers coming back and coming back and coming back again. People have turned to fraud, to stealing from family members and to hurting those around them just to put on the next bet. We need to take action against these inducements, these evil words whispered into the ears of those who are already on their knees.

Why do we need gambling ads during children's television? Why do we need to open the way for more gambling ads during online streaming or live sports? Why do we need businesses personally targeting those who are vulnerable, like my mother? There are people throughout every town, in every community, who are impacted, and the true cost could be hidden for months or even years. The damage can be felt for generations. I know, in this place, we often disagree, but I also know that everyone here today, in this federal parliament, wants to make a positive difference to the lives of those who are suffering this terrible addiction.

All of us would like for no more people within Australia, or their families, to go through the damaging effects of gambling. I know that this damage is something we do not want for future generations. I want my children and my grandchildren to know the difference between having a flutter on the Melbourne Cup and handing over your family's hard-earned savings to gambling. I want my grandchildren to grow up in a safe environment. We need stronger measures to ensure we help protect young people from becoming addicted to gambling. There has been too much delay. It has allowed people to slip through the cracks. It has allowed families to go without and to face the fallout of a family member who has a serious addiction.

I'm sure you've heard all about it, but it cannot be said enough: our approach as a coalition is based on three fundamental principles. First, we are a free and fun-loving country, and Australians deserve choice. Second, adults must be responsible for their own actions and their own decisions. Third, we, as leaders in government, have a real obligation to protect those who are vulnerable, particularly children, from exploitation and harm. These are principles that can work seamlessly together in many other areas. Australians are good people—strong, innovative, enterprising, family people—but, like any person around the world, there are people who are particularly vulnerable.

We cannot throw the doors open to those who would take advantage of them. They are taking advantage of not only the vulnerable but also the families who love them. There is a way to walk the line between protecting the vulnerable and the freedoms of all Australians, but it is not the way you see before you in this legislation. It goes further, but it does not go far enough. While I support tougher measures, this legislation is a missed opportunity to go further and to get it right. I know from experience how deep the cut of gambling addiction can be. I feel very strongly that we should be sparing others from this pain. Gambling causes immeasurable harm, a harm that can never be conveyed in dollars. It is important to see this important concern on the table. It is a pity that, in future years, this legislation will mean that it needs to be brought back, again and again, to be further improved.

Ms LE (Fowler) (10:50): A constituent of mine from Villawood said this just recently: 'I don't want my community, especially our kids, growing up thinking gambling and sports are inseparable.' He's a father. He coaches his son's junior side on Saturday mornings. He is not an activist. He has never lobbied a politician in his life, and he came to see me about something else entirely, but he needed to tell us that. He was asking for his son to be able to watch a game of football without being taught, ad by ad, that betting is simply part of it. I myself have had loved ones who've been impacted by gambling, as I'm sure many members of this House have heard. Many members of the House have also shared stories from their own experience as well as from their constituents.

My proposition today is a simple one: Australians should be able to watch the footy, use their phones or sit with their children in the lounge room without being relentlessly targeted by gambling advertising. Betting companies should not follow people from the television screen to their phones, from the live commentary to their social feeds and into their text messages. Our children should not grow up recognising betting logos as easily as they recognise the jersey of their favourite team.

Let me put some of the numbers to what this looks like in my electorate. Fowler has long been the epicentre of gambling harm in this country. The profits flow to the wagering industry; the damage stays on our doorstep. For years, the Fairfield local government area, at the heart of my electorate, has ranked among the worst in New South Wales for gambling losses. The latest club gaming report, covering the three months from December 2025 to February 2026, shows Fairfield was the single highest losing local government area in the entire state. In 90 days, my community lost $131 million on gaming machines in clubs alone. That is more than a million dollars leaving the pockets of local families every single day. Broken down further, it is roughly $60,000 an hour, close to what a typical household in my electorate earns in an entire year—gone in 60 minutes. Across the whole of 2025, total losses on gaming machines in Fairfield exceeded $720 million. In neighbouring Liverpool, which my electorate also takes in, losses have risen 17.5 per cent in a single year—not levelling or declining but accelerating.

None of those figures include online sports betting. They do not include betting apps, racing or lotteries. When you add those, the drain on the families of Fowler is difficult to comprehend. I understand gambling machines are regulated by states, not by this parliament, but it's important to know the numbers, which tell you about the ground on which this bill lands. In multicultural, hardworking communities like mine, gambling harm is deeply entrenched. We cannot then allow online wagering platforms to exploit the same vulnerability by turning every smartphone into a portable casino. This parliament has a duty to act where it holds the power.

I'm not here to attack our clubs. In south-west Sydney, our clubs are not simply gaming rooms. They are where families hold funerals and weddings. They are where a pensioner can get a meal that they can actually afford. They are where our kids play sports, where community language groups meet and where new arrivals find their footing. Many of the people I represent are employed there, so I will not stand in this place and pretend that that is nothing. I know where my community chooses to spend their Friday nights and their weekends with their families and where they can go to eat cheap meals, but I will not pretend that a million dollars a day is the price of a community meal. Both of those things are true at once, and the people I represent are perfectly capable of holding both.

The national picture is stark. Australians lost approximately $32.2 billion on legal gambling in the 2023-24 financial year—$32.2 billion. We have the highest gambling losses per person of any country in the world. Adults in this country lose an average of more than $1,500 every year to gambling, and total losses have risen 26 per cent since 2018-19. One million Australians either experience severe gambling harm themselves or live with someone who does. Many more have lost more than they can afford. Australia has taken a lax approach for decades, and the consequences are plain. Per capita losses have grown almost every year since national reporting began in 1975.

This is not about advertising being annoying. Gambling advertising exposes Australians, including children, to a product that causes serious harm with very little corresponding social benefit. It normalises gambling from an early age. It teaches children that betting is part of sport, rather than a commercial product engineered to extract money from their families.

The Grattan Institute and public health experts have made the point that gambling products are uniquely addictive—and I think we've heard often in this House, from many members, about how those products are designed to make them very addictive. That is why we must move past the idea that this is solely a matter of individual responsibility. The traditional 'responsible gambling' framing places the entire burden on one person, while ignoring the extraordinary imbalance between a single consumer and a multibillion-dollar industry armed with data, algorithms and marketing.

We learned this lesson with tobacco. We did not ask individuals to resist cigarette advertising through willpower. We recognised the risks and we restricted the marketing.

That brings me to this bill before us, the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026. I acknowledge the government's intention to begin addressing this, but this bill falls short of what is required. In 2023, the Murphy report, You win some, you lose more, gave this parliament a clear road map. That bipartisan inquiry produced 31 practical, evidence based recommendations. The bill before us adopts only three of them—just three out of 31.

First, there's the advertising cap. Three ads per hour between 6 am and 8.30 pm still allows very significant exposure, because that is peak time. Three ads every hour, all day, means children will continue to see betting woven into ordinary sports viewing, and it leaves peak evening viewing unaddressed. We should be honest about what happens when we leave loopholes. Previous restrictions during live sport did not end the saturation; companies simply found other routes to the same audience. A partial ban risks pushing advertising into direct marketing, inducements, social media, streaming and targeted messages aimed at people already in trouble. That is why the Murphy report did not recommend a cap; it recommended a comprehensive ban across broadcast and online media, phased in over three years. A phased approach gives broadcasters and sporting codes time to replace that revenue, as they have adapted before. Sports will survive without gambling ads. Families in Fowler have already waited long enough.

Second, there's the racing exemption. By excluding horse, harness and greyhound racing from the definition of a 'sporting event', a substantial share of gambling advertising remains untouched, despite racing being a major source of harm.

Third, there's the timeline on stadium and uniform branding. Allowing those arrangements until late 2031 means another five years of children seeing betting logos on the teams they love. Five more years is a childhood that will be still exposed to that.

Fourth, there's age verification. Asking platforms to take reasonable steps while prohibiting high-integrity methods such as government ID makes it harder, not easier, to keep young people out.

There is a fifth gap, and I do not believe anyone else in this debate will raise it. In communities like mine, gambling harm carries a heavy stigma. Families deal with financial ruin in silence. People fear judgement. They hide losses from their partners, their families and loved ones. They tell themselves one more bet will fix it. By the time anyone asks for help, the damage is done. Now, add this to it: in Fowler, more than three quarters of people speak a language other than English at home. Our gambling help services, our self-exclusion register and our awareness campaigns are built in English for English speakers. A Vietnamese Australian grandmother, an Assyrian Australian father or grandfather or a Khmer Australian in Cabramatta, Canley Vale or Liverpool cannot ask for help in a language nobody offers it in. Not one line in this bill addresses that, and it should.

There's one more thing we do not do: we do not count. There is not a single published figure for what my electorate loses on online wagering—not by council, not by state and not by this parliament. We meticulously count every dollar lost on machines. The online industry, we do not measure at all. We cannot properly regulate what we refuse to count.

Alongside many on the crossbench, I believe this parliament should aim at the full version of the Murphy report. First, we need a phased, comprehensive ban on gambling advertising across all platforms. Second, we need direct action on inducements—the bonus bets and the deposit matches that exist for one purpose, which is to keep people chasing losses—not merely the VIP perks that reach the few but the everyday offers that reach the many. Third, we need a strong national precommitment framework for online wagering with enforceable maximum-loss limits. Precommitment means a person decides, before they gamble, what they can afford to lose, and the system holds them to it. It must be a genuine safeguard not a box-ticking exercise where someone nominates a limit nobody could ever reach. Fourth, we need help services, self-exclusion tools and awareness campaigns delivered in languages our communities actually speak.

While machines remain a state responsibility, the Commonwealth has a clear duty to bring states together and pursue nationally consistent mandatory precommitment. Communities like Fowler cannot afford governments passing responsibility back and forth while hundreds of millions of dollars disappear.

Television networks and sporting codes can adapt. They have adapted before, and they will again. The families in my electorate have less room to adapt. The median personal income in Fowler is about $520 a week, and 46 per cent of renting households are in rental stress. This is money that was meant for groceries, for school, for shoes or for a bond. The question is simply this: can families in Fairfield, in Liverpool and across Australia afford another quarter of losses like the last one, without stronger protections in place?

I acknowledge the work of my crossbench colleagues in this House and in the Senate who have pursued these reforms with clarity and persistence. I will support every amendment that makes this bill stronger because my community cannot afford another decade of incrementalism. But I want to be honest with the people I represent about what this bill will and will not do. It will take some advertisements off some screens; it will not take millions of dollars a day out of Fairfield. They deserve to be told that plainly.

I want to come back to that father in Villawood. He was not asking for much, only that his son can watch a game without being sold something every time he does. That is not a lot to ask. This parliament should be able to deliver it.

I want to say this message: if gambling is affecting you or someone that you love, please call the National Gambling Helpline. The number is 1800858858. It's free. It's confidential. It's 24 hours a day with interpreters available.

Mr TEHAN (Wannon—Manager of Opposition Business) (11:04): I've got to start today by saying that I like a punt. I like a bet. I like having a beer with my mates and having a bet. I also have a stake in a couple of horses, and I love horseracing and the horseracing industry. I think there is no better sight in Australia than the Grand Annual steeplechase being run with 14,000 people there at the venue. It's the largest crowd you will get outside of a metropolitan race meeting like the Melbourne Cup or the carnival in Sydney, with them all standing up on the hill watching horses do what they've done for over 100 years. As a matter of fact, the Grand Annual steeplechase will be run for the 150th time next year. But it's not just events like that; it's the Dunkeld Cup, where you get young people who've finished school all going there—and, once again, you'll get 8,000 to 10,000 people in a beautiful setting, with Mount Sturgeon as the backdrop, just having fun and enjoying themselves. If you go to Coleraine and to Casterton, these are wonderful racetracks which have wonderful race meetings. You can go to Hamilton and watch the horse trials, and you get a sense of the people that are employed in the horseracing industry. You see the jockeys, the trainers and everyone else—the strappers who love and care for the horses like there is no tomorrow. It just gives you a sense of people getting up early, working hard and doing something that they love.

I can go right around my electorate and see things like this. It can be the Warrnambool dogs and the wonderful meeting they have during the Warrnambool Racing Carnival. You can go to Hamilton for the harness racing; they do a fantastic job. People come from south-west Victoria and South Australia, bringing their horses to participate. Terang is another great meeting. Mortlake is another great meeting. I'm going to leave parts of my electorate out. Ararat has both harness and great thoroughbred racing; people come and participate in the Ararat Cup, which is fantastic. It is the same in Colac. Right throughout my electorate, this is an industry which is creating jobs and giving passion to people who are involved in it in a way that's very hard to capture.

We have to make sure that the ability for people to race is always there, because it's something we've always done. If you try and take it away, it won't work. Prohibition won't work. You have to, like you have to do with all things when you are being responsible in government, make sure you get the balance right. For me, with these gambling reforms, getting the balance right is absolutely crucial. We don't want to impact and hurt an industry which provides thousands and thousands of jobs in regional and rural Australia and in urban Australia while we deal with something we need to deal with—that is, gambling advertising and the change which is occurring in society, in the way that gambling advertising is working, so that we protect children and protect people who are very vulnerable to being exploited.

Getting the balance right is exactly what the government and the opposition want to do. We want to make sure that there are sensible changes which address keeping harmful advertising away from children, and we want to make sure that, for those who have identified themselves as having a problem when it comes to gambling, we do what we can in the best way that we can to protect them—all while not impacting on those who like to have a bet or on those industries which provide such enjoyment and, in particular, much-needed employment which generates incomes and puts roofs on homes, over people's heads, so they can bring up families and participate in the community. That is what we need to see in this bill.

I think we're all in agreement—those on the government side and us on the opposition side—that the first attempt made by the government probably doesn't get the balance right. There have been some very sensible suggestions as to how we can change it and get the balance right. When we're dealing with issues like this, I think this place works well when there is a lot of passion on both sides. And I understand why there is a lot of passion on both sides.

I had a family member who got in a lot of trouble because of their gambling. If it wasn't for a brother stepping in, helping and supporting them, they would have got in very serious trouble. My uncle was able to help my other uncle to basically straighten himself up and to stop the harm that he was causing himself. It is critically important that we provide avenues and mechanisms to help those who need help, and that is what we're seeking to do.

We're trying—and should be trying—to do it in a way where we don't take away the individual right of an adult to spend their money how they see fit. If they get enjoyment from putting $25 on a horse or $25 on a pacer or $25 on a greyhound, they should be able to do it. And, if they're offered money back for running second or third, they should be able to take that up. I like the fact that, when I have a bet and the horse finishes second, I get my money back. I can't see what's wrong with that. That's a good offer which I'm happy to take up. I will say here quite publicly that sometimes you win; sometimes you lose. The way it works, more often than not, is that the bookies who set the odds are trying to make sure they're the ones that win. But sometimes they'll offer you odds more in your favour or offer you money back for running second and third. That ultimately should be a choice that you have.

As a House and as a Senate, as a parliament as a whole, if we sit down and work this through, I think we can get the balance right. What I see as getting the balance right is making sure that we address the issue when it comes to children and their exposure to gambling advertising—and we should do that in the best way we possibly can—and that we make sure we look after those who are vulnerable, those who can be exploited; we have to make sure we're dealing with them. But we also have to make sure that we're not forcing gambling offshore nor forcing gambling towards organised crime. That will help no-one. We've got to make sure that we continue to have legalised gambling happening here in a way which benefits the industries which provide really important jobs and really important occasions for society. In particular, if we get this balance right, it will mean in my electorate that Terang, Hamilton, Coleraine and Casterton will still be able to offer race meetings, where the community come together and enjoy themselves.

I'll end on this point: if you want to see a community enjoy itself, then, for the 150th running of the Grand Annual Steeplechase in Warrnambool next year, make sure you get down and participate and see the spectacle for what it is. You can come, you can have a bet and you can have a drink. You can come and you don't have to have a bet. You don't have to have a drink. It's your choice. But you can come and watch an event which brings the community together, brings thorough enjoyment to everyone who's involved, whether it be the trainers, whether it be the jockeys, whether it be the strappers, whether it be everyone else involved in the industry or the community, who like nothing better than coming together and enjoying themselves and having fun.

Mr CONAGHAN (Cowper) (11:15): I'm pleased to rise to speak to the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill and I do so as the former chair of the committee that put forward what is known as the Murphy report. I'm glad to be speaking last because I've listened to many of the contributions to this bill and it would seem that there is a broad misunderstanding of the role of the committee. The role of the committee wasn't to ban gambling. It wasn't to restrict choice for punters to go out and do just that—have a punt. It wasn't to cripple the gambling industry that creates over 30,000 jobs a year. It was to stop the predatory practices by online wagering services that cause so much devastation throughout our communities, and that seems to be forgotten. The predatory practices by the online wagering services have gone on for so long. If I go through the history, we're going back to late 2022 when this committee started and the report wasn't published until mid 2023. The late Peta Murphy, who was not only a highly intelligent lawyer but a fierce parliamentarian, was extremely passionate about this committee.

During the inquiry, we heard from two different groups: (1) those who are affected; (2) those who inflict it. Witness after witness came into this place and spoke of loved ones, family members, who were targeted by predatory online wagering services. Some of them survived; some of them didn't. We heard evidence from a family member who had to cut down her brother from a tree because he was targeted even though he had tried and tried and tried to get away from these practices of online wagering services. There are other people whose family members didn't survive because of the debt and the shame of what they went through.

Now, I accept we can't protect everybody from themselves but what we can do as a parliament is stop this type of behaviour from those who inflict it. Those online wagering services that gave evidence, in my view, simply diminished or demeaned the situation, placated the committee by saying, 'We will work with you,' but have since done nothing but lobby both sides to weaken the legislation, and they continue to do that today.

Everyone in this place is on a committee. I ask: What's the point? What is the point of being on a committee that delivers 31 recommendations unanimously—no dissenting reports—to the government to say, 'This is what we have considered.'? This comes from evidence from people who have been affected. This comes from the intelligence of every single member sitting in this place on that committee, and we say, 'This is what should be implemented'—only to be discarded: 'Well, we're not going to take that into account.' What's the point? What's the point of having elected representatives come into this place and sit on committees and make recommendations? Those recommendations don't just come from us; they come from our constituents. Why are we here?

Labor sit over there and laud Peta Murphy—and so they should. She was a wonderful woman and a great parliamentarian. Well, step up and make it not the Murphy recommendations or the Murphy report but the Murphy reform. Implement those 31 recommendations. That won't make gambling fall off the face of the earth; that's rubbish. It's just like what they said when they cut advertising for smoking. Smoking rates have never been higher—you can thank the Labor government for that; that's a different issue. The racing industry won't be affected. The gambling industry won't be affected. Those working won't be affected. Gambling won't go overseas. Nothing will change except we will be providing those barriers for predatory practices on vulnerable people.

Step up, Labor. Step up and implement those recommendations, because Peta worked hard. We all worked hard on those recommendations, and we listened. They're not just stories; these are people. These are real people who will suffer for the rest of their lives because of those practices.

This bill, the main bill, does nothing. In fact, it waters down the 2018 position of the coalition. There is no point to the main bill. It won't protect anyone. It won't stop the inducements and the predatory practices that we have seen. I don't care if you gamble—I gamble—but gambling harm does not discriminate.

As a lawyer, I acted for a young man who was another lawyer—highly intelligent—who stole a great deal of money from his employer, from the trust account. He knew, eventually, once that trust account was audited, he would be found out. He was smart, but he couldn't stop. He was being targeted by these online wagering services, given inducements and money. We can't just say, 'Well, that's okay; it's up to an individual.' We have a responsibility. The responsibility lies in those 31 recommendations. They should be implemented at least for the memory of Peta Murphy.

Ms WELLS (Lilley—Minister for Sport and Minister for Communications) (11:23): I thank members for their contributions to the debate on the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026 and the National Self-exclusion Register (Cost Recovery Levy) Amendment Bill 2026. The government will not support the member for Ryan's or the member for Curtin's second reading amendments, as they do not deal with the substance of these bills.

Thank you to my colleagues in the Labor caucus who have engaged sincerely and constructively on this important issue. I also thank the Labor rank-and-file members who built the Australian Labor Party platform and now rightfully recognise that reducing gambling harm is a priority of our party. Great things happen when lots of small things are brought together.

I also acknowledge the work of the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee in considering these bills, and the members of the community—particularly the harm reduction advocates and the survivors of gambling harm—who gave evidence and gave much of themselves in coming to this place for the recent inquiry. As we have heard through the debate, for many Australians, gambling harm is not an abstract policy problem eased by parliamentary debate. It is a parent worried about what their child is absorbing by watching sport. It is a friend trying to take that courageous first step away from secret gambling. It is a family dealing with the consequences when gambling stops being entertainment and starts becoming harm.

What we have before us is a significant and meaningful suite of reforms that will do more than any other Australian government has to protect children, families and communities from gambling harms. These reforms will minimise children's exposure to wagering advertising while reducing the overall saturation of advertising on television and radio and the targeting and saturation of advertising online. The bill also contains provisions to disrupt illegal gambling operators and crack down on online lottery products. The bill also strengthens BetStop, the national self-exclusion register, so it can better support Australians at risk of gambling harm. The cost recovery levy bill enables the costs of a comprehensive national awareness campaign to be recovered from industry, ensuring more Australians know about BetStop and can access it when they need to with no cost to taxpayers.

Together, these reforms represent the strongest action to date on online gambling harm. The measures will commence from 1 January 2027, and we have consulted broadly with stakeholders to ensure effective implementation. The Australian Communications and Media Authority will be empowered with a range of strong and proportionate penalties to deter noncompliance with the new rules and act faster against illegal operators. ACMA has also been provided with additional resourcing to strengthen BetStop compliance and enforcement and to support more awareness raising and system improvements.

It is clear from this debate that the parliament has strong views on the prevalence of gambling advertising, along with the use of inducements by wagering service providers to target vulnerable customers. I remain committed to working constructively across the parliament on sensible additions to strengthen this bill further. We want to see it passed, so see you next week for amendments.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Boyce ): In accordance with the resolution agreed on 12 August 2026, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.

Mr PASIN (Barker) (11:27): Mr Deputy Speaker, I wish to draw your attention to the state of the House.

(Quorum formed)

Mr MATT SMITH (Leichhardt) (11:30): I rise to speak on the Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026. This bill is a lot of things—a future for our universities, more opportunity for our uni students, better outcomes for Australia—but it's important to remember that these laws are part of a much larger body of work. In February 2024, the government released the final report of the Australian Universities Accord. It's a blueprint for higher education reform over the next decade and the decade after that. The universities accord says that, over these next few decades, we'll need to increase the number of people in the workforce with a certificate or a diploma or a degree to about 80 per cent. That means more people at TAFE. That means more people at university. We need to take action now to make sure our tertiary education system is set up to deliver the skills that the future of Australia requires.

The Albanese government has implemented more than 30 of the accord's 47 recommendations in full or in part. This includes things like making HECS fairer with a 20 per cent reduction and changes to the way the marginal threshold repayment is made, introducing paid prac for the first time, and doubling the number of university and study hubs. All these things are great, but they're all very abstract when they're read out.

I grew up in a town where the options were basically 'you go work on the rigs' or 'you go away for university', and that was kind of it. A lot of guys did the rigs. A few guys did university. One of my mates became the first person from his family to go to university, and now he's the CEO of a company in Perth. That's a long way from Sale. When we were in year 12, back in the late nineties—I've just aged myself—his mother was having a conversation with my mother. My family are all tertiary educated. What his mother didn't know was: How was he going to get to school? What was it going to be like? What were his opportunities going to be? What did this mean for her and her family? And she didn't care, because, whatever it was going to take, she was going to get her eldest son to university. He got there and he excelled. His children will go and so on and so forth.

This is about providing opportunity. Sometimes, in the regions, we don't always see the opportunity that is available in the cities, because we're further away, because of geography, because of a whole bunch of reasons. That's why, in the last few weeks, there have been a lot of really exciting announcements up in the Far North. There was the opening of the Yeinie Building by JCU. Cairns is lucky; we have not one but two world-class universities. Now, at JCU in Cairns, you can become a doctor from go to whoa—right the way through. And we know this for sure: if you train in the regions, you stay in the regions. This is a great outcome.

On top of that, just last week, the sod was turned for the new CQU campus in Cairns. This will be offering a plethora of allied health opportunities: medical imaging, OT, speechies, pharmacies—all of the things that we're told every day are needed in the bush. People will come from Cairns. They'll fall in love with the Far North. They will stay and they'll deliver health outcomes for the region. It's also doing engineering. The great thing about that, though, is that no-one has to leave. Everyone gets to stay. That is an important part of the education process. I want my daughters in Cairns to believe that their future belongs in Cairns, that they can go to university in Cairns and that they'll stay and make the Far North a better place.

Speaking of openings in the Far North, I was on Thursday Island very recently with Minister Giles. We visited the Thursday Island TAFE, which opened just a couple of years ago. It was really exciting because it had been doing a bit of health work and stuff, a bit of nursing stuff but now you can complete your diploma of nursing on Thursday Island right the way through. You can stay there and go straight into the hospital or one of the many health clinics that are on the 17 islands right across the Torres Strait and the Cape, and that's really important. For people in regional areas, particularly remote regional areas, travelling away is difficult. If you live in a place where there are no traffic lights and you move to Sydney for higher education, that's a bit of whiplash.

I was in the Daintree a few weeks back and I had to go to Sydney for a committee hearing. It gave me whiplash—a lot of big shiny buildings, a lot of noise, a lot of traffic. For a young kid who is 17 or 18 years old, to have to try to cope with that is really hard. It leads to dropping out and leads to people not completing what they've started. A bit of homesickness makes it harder. This investment in trying to get regional kids to be able to study near home, be it through the study centres, be it through TAFE, be it through university, is so important to give those opportunities where people are and to make sure that the people who get those opportunities stay in those areas, the places they belong. I'll give you a tip about country kids, and I know you know this, Deputy Speaker Boyce: country kids want to be in the country. We don't like cities. It's not who we are. It's not what we're used to. You want wide open spaces. You navigate by the tree or the hill or the creek; you don't go by 'big silver building third on the left'—they all look the same.

I'm excited to commend this bill. I'm excited about the future of regional education. I'm excited about fee-free TAFE and what that means. I'm excited about all those new nurses who've taken the opportunity with the paid prac and fee-free TAFE, who've taken mid-career breaks. I met a woman named Terri at the Cairns TAFE, who, for a variety of reasons, had fallen into admin work. Life had taken her away from her dream as a child. Then with fee-free TAFE, she put her hand up in her 50s. She's an enrolled nurse now. She's walking the halls at Cairns Base Hospital as we speak, doing the things she wanted to do as a little girl.

I have a litmus test for jobs—that is, if you can go to Kmart and you can buy a kid's outfit for that job then that's a job that people are going to want to do going forwards, like carpentry, police, fire, nursing. These kids get to be who they want to be, what they wanted to be as a four-year old because of fee-free TAFE, because of university in the regions. I think that a lot of people would love to go back to their four-year-old selves, five-year-old selves, and take them by the hand and go, 'Look, we've done this. It might have been a circular route. It might have had a few speed bumps along the way but, because the government is investing in the education of regional people, now we are doing what we wanted to do as a young'un,' and their parents will be proud.

To see it in Terri's face is to understand what that meant to her, what it meant to her family. Because of paid prac, she had that safety net. She didn't have to sleep in her car—as we sometimes hear—or live on those two-minute noodles. She was able to get sustenance. She was still able to get her kids to school. With all of the things involved in her day-to-day life, TAFE supported her to live out her best version of herself. In her being the best version of herself, she improved the lives of countless Far North Queenslanders because she is going to work every single day excited. She's not going to burn out. She's not ever going to be, 'Oh, I don't want to do this,' because she waited 50 years to do it—a half century, a lifetime. But she got there in the end, and I couldn't be prouder to be part of a government that has provided that to her. It goes beyond the story of Terri.

Minister Giles related the story of Ash, one of the first people who will be graduating from the Thursday Island TAFE as an enrolled nurse. He can go back to Darnley and work in the health clinic there and be a part of his community and be a part of the change to make sure that those comorbidities that we're seeing so often in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are got on top of, because we know that community wants to listen to community first and foremost. They don't want locums. They don't want people flying in, flying out. They do a great job; don't get me wrong. But you want to have your own telling you, helping you through, showing you and guiding you in a way that you understand, that works with your culture and that works where you live. That's not unique to Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander communities. That's right across the gamut. People want to know from people like them. Country people want to hear from country people about what's right for them.

That's what this bill does. It provides the regions with the workforce moving forwards that will allow us to thrive. We are the beating heart of Australia. We generate the food. We generate the energy. We generate the heart. The more workers that we have, the more education that we have, the better off Australia will be because of this. This bill opens so many doors. Your education and your health are everything. This is such a big part of this, and I commend this bill to the House.

Ms PENFOLD (Lyne) (11:41): by leave—I thank the government for enabling me to continue the speech that I started here several weeks ago. For a young person growing up in Taree, Wingham, Gloucester, Dungog, Harrington, Tea Gardens, Bulahdelah, Forster-Tuncurry, the Manning Valley or one of the many hamlets spread across the Lyne electorate, pursuing a university degree has traditionally meant moving away from home, leaving family support networks behind and taking on significant additional costs before they even begin their studies. This is my story too. I grew up in Hannam Vale, attended school in Taree and then had to move to Canberra to attend the Australian National University. That opportunity changed my life, but it came at a cost, and for too many regional families those costs remain a barrier today.

Research undertaken before the establishment of the Taree Universities Campus found that fewer than 18 per cent of people in the Mid North Coast region completed a university qualification. Many young people who left to study built careers elsewhere and never returned, contributing to workforce shortages in health care, education and other critical sectors. That challenge inspired local leaders to think differently, and that is where the story of the Taree Universities Campus begins. I want to acknowledge the work of the former member for Lyne, the Hon. Dr David Gillespie, who was instrumental in supporting the establishment of the Taree Universities Campus through the regional university centres program. Together with local community leaders, he recognised that, if we wanted more regional Australians, more local people from the Manning Valley and Great Lakes area, to participate in higher education, we needed to bring opportunity closer to home.

Today, the Taree Universities Campus stands as one of the great regional education success stories in Australia. Its mission is simple: go further, closer to home. It provides local students with study spaces, technology, academic support and a community that helps them succeed while remaining connected to their families, workplaces and communities. The campus serves a region of around 94,500 people. It's not simply a study hub; it's a workplace development hub. Its model focuses on encouraging participation in higher education, supporting students through their studies and helping graduates move into local employment and careers. The success of TUC is also reflected in its broader community impact. TUC has a strong connection to local high schools in the area and holds a CareerQuip careers expo every year, which attracts over 1,800 students from across the mid coast and features more than 70 exhibitors, including universities, TAFEs, government agencies and employers. That is exactly the kind of aspiration-building initiative that regional Australia needs.

I also want to acknowledge the broader higher education ecosystem serving our region. The University of New England has maintained a presence in Taree and has been educating regional Australians for generations. The University of Newcastle has a long and proud history in our region. Charles Sturt University's Port Macquarie campus is helping train the nurses our community needs. Central Queensland University is creating pathways into teaching, engineering, business and accounting, and UNSW continues to expand opportunities for students on the Mid North Coast, including providing medical degrees in our region. These institutions understand the simple truth: talent is evenly distributed across Australia; opportunity is not.

The coalition recognises the success of the Taree Universities Campus model. That is why we committed $5.5 million towards the TUC expansion project. This funding did what few imagined, providing a permanent home for TUC in the old Greater Taree City Council chambers on Pulteney Street. That investment supports expanded teaching and learning facilities, has strengthened workforce development pathways and created additional opportunities for local students to study close to home. It's an investment in education. It's an investment in our local health care. It's an investment in regional skills and an investment in closing the gap for local Biripi and Worimi peoples. It was an investment in the future prosperity of the Manning Valley.

There is another issue that goes directly to the heart of educational opportunity in regional Australia. There is little point in creating a university place if a student cannot afford to stay the course, and there is little point in talking about widening participation if we ignore the financial realities facing students undertaking mandatory professional placements. In fact, this issue is one of the clearest examples of why regional voices matter in policy development.

Several years ago, while I was attending O-week at Charles Sturt University in Port Macquarie, I spent time speaking directly with students about the challenges they faced. Again and again, allied health students raised a simple issue. It wasn't HECS. It wasn't about course fees or academic workload. It was about mandatory professional placements. Students told me they were expected to leave paid employment for weeks or months at a time in order to complete placement requirements.

Many were travelling long distances. Many were paying for temporary accommodation but were still paying for rent at home. Many were losing income at precisely the point they needed it most. They described the impossible choice between earning a living and completing the practical training required to graduate, and those conversations stayed with me. They weren't complaints; they were just practical observations from students trying to build careers in professions that regional Australia desperately needs.

Those discussions helped shape what is now Nationals policy. We took those conversations. I worked with the Young Nationals. We developed a motion that is now part of our Nationals policy platform, and that is to support extending Commonwealth prac payments to allied health and veterinary students. We welcome the introduction of the Commonwealth prac payments for nursing, teaching, midwifery and social work students, but we have been clear that the job is not finished, because placement poverty does not stop at nursing or teaching.

A physiotherapy student faces the same loss of income. An occupational therapy student faces the same accommodation costs. A speech pathology student faces the same financial pressures. A psychology student faces the same challenge. A veterinary student travelling to complete rural placements faces the same reality, and we sure need those big animal vets in regional Australia. If we're serious about increasing participation in higher education and addressing workforce shortages, then Commonwealth prac payments should be extended to allied health and veterinary students.

I wrote that part of the speech before the government made the announcement, and I thank the government for the commitment it made in July to extend to an additional 10 allied health disciplines. I've certainly been vocal in this chamber when there have been questions to the minister in question time. I hope you've heard me on the other side. I'm not going to claim that that's the result. You certainly heard me about the Taree urgent care clinic! I'm waiting for that one! I'm waiting for that result! We're getting something for allied health.

There is still further to go on this, but I acknowledge the government's response on this issue. I know that it will be welcomely received by students at campuses in the Lyne electorate. Opportunity is not simply about getting into university; opportunity is about being able to finish, and that's why those prac payments are very important.

This brings me to the legislation before the House, the Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026. The coalition has not yet finalised its position on this bill and will refer it to a Senate committee for detailed examination. Our final position will be informed by the evidence received through that process.

This bill makes significant structural changes to Australia's higher education system. At its core, it does four things. It allows the minister to determine the total pool of Commonwealth supported places to be allocated through ATEC. It allows the minister to determine the total pool of international student places. It gives the minister powers to allocate places directly, impose conditions on providers and issue directions to ATEC. It also establishes a needs based funding system, with many of the key details ultimately determined through ministerial guidelines.

The common thread running through each of these reforms is the expansion of ministerial control. This bill represents a significant transfer of authority from universities and higher education providers to the executive government. Now, some of these powers could be used constructively. They could be used to address regional workforce shortages. They could be used to increase opportunities for regional students. They could be used to support private higher education providers and improve access in areas that have historically been underserved. But parliament should not simply assume that, because they might be used wisely, powers should be granted without scrutiny.

The bill gives the minister substantial influence over domestic student places, international student places, needs based funding and the conditions imposed on higher education providers. Many of these decisions will not be subject to parliamentary disallowance, many will not be subject to merits review and many will depend heavily on ministerial discretion. That raises legitimate questions about accountability, transparency and oversight. It also raises questions about competition and institutional autonomy.

Competition between universities is not something to fear. Competition encourages institutions to improve quality, student experience, course offerings, academic reputation and graduate outcomes. Universities should remain accountable for public funding, but they should also retain the flexibility to respond to student demand, local workforce needs and emerging opportunities. That is particularly important for regional Australia, and that is why one of the first tests of these new powers should be whether the government is prepared to use them to support communities like mine.

If the minister is to have greater control over Commonwealth supported places, then I would suggest his first task should be straightforward: allocate additional places to support regional education models that are already delivering results, like TUC; support more nursing places, more teaching places, more allied health places; support more opportunities through regional campuses and regional university hubs; and support places linked directly to workforce shortages that communities like mine experience every day. If these powers simply centralise decision-making in Canberra, then regional Australia gains little, but if they are used to direct opportunity towards communities that have historically been overlooked, then perhaps some good can come from this legislation.

The success of the Taree Universities Campus demonstrates what can happen when communities are empowered to solve local problems. At the end of the day, the test for this legislation is simple. Will it create more opportunities for regional Australians? Will it strengthen pathways into nursing, teaching, allied health and other professions our community desperately needs? Will it help more students study closer to home? Will it help communities—like Taree, Gloucester, Wingham and Forster—build the workforce they need for the future? If it does, then it will be a worthwhile reform, but if it simply creates more bureaucracy and more centralised control, then it will have missed the point. Regional Australians do not need more bureaucracy. They need more opportunity. They need governments to believe in their capability. The Taree Universities Campus has shown what is possible when local communities are trusted, supported and empowered. That should be the lesson that guides this parliament as we consider this legislation.

Dr TRISH COOK (Bullwinkel) (11:53): I rise today to speak in strong support of the Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026. The title of this bill is not just a piece of legislative phrasing. It is a profound statement of intent. It is a promise to the young people in our outer suburbs, to the families in our regional towns and to every single Australian who has ever looked at a university campus or a TAFE facility and wondered, 'Is that a place for me?' For too long, for too many Australians, the answer to that question has been determined not by their talent, not by their drive and not by their work ethic, but by their postcode, by how much their parents earn and by how far they live from a capital city. With this bill, the Albanese Labor government is drawing a line in the sand. We are opening those doors wide. We are reshaping the landscape of Australian higher education—not just for the next parliamentary term or for the next decade, but for the decade after that.

This landmark legislation did not appear out of thin air. It is a culmination of rigorous, systemic and deeply consultative work.

In February 2024, our government released the final report of the Australian Universities Accord. It was, and remains, a generational blueprint. The accord laid bare a stark reality about the future of our national economy. It told us that, over the next few decades, the nature of work in this country would be shifting rapidly. The jobs of tomorrow—in clean energy, in advanced manufacturing, in health care, in education and in tech—will require higher skills.

To meet that challenge, the accord set a clear, ambitious national target: we need to increase the total number of people in our workforce with a tertiary qualification—whether that is a certificate, a diploma or a university degree—to approximately 80 per cent. That's quite a number. Eighty per cent of our workforce will need to be skilled and tertiary trained. This means that we'll need more people at TAFE and at university, and we cannot possibly hit the target if we continue to leave brilliant minds on the sidelines just because of structural inequities in our current funding model. We need to take action right now to set our tertiary education system up to deliver on Australia's future skill needs. And this is exactly what this bill does.

Under the Albanese Labor government, we don't just commission reports and let them sit on the shelf; we're delivering on them. I'm incredibly proud to stand here today and note that our government has already implemented more than 30 of the accord's 47 recommendations, either in full or in part. We are transforming higher education right now, block by block.

Let's look at what we've already achieved. We've made HECS fairer and better. We didn't just tweak the system; we cut 20 per cent off HECS debt for millions of Australians. We capped indexation to the lower level, which is the CPI and the wage price index. We shifted to a fairer marginal repayment system, and we raised the minimum payment threshold. We are wiping away the anxiety of compounding debt for young workers.

We introduced paid prac for the very first time. For decades, student teachers, nurses, midwives—like me—and social workers were expected to work full time for weeks on placement for free, whilst studying, whilst managing kids and whilst maintaining their part-time jobs. Basically, they were forced into placement poverty. We've stepped in to provide financial support so they can complete their degrees, with support, and get into the workforce.

We've doubled the number of university study hubs. We've established 20 new regional university study hubs and 14 suburban university study hubs, bringing higher education directly into the communities—including the ones in Northam and York in my electorate of Bullwinkel—that need them the most.

We've increased free university bridging courses, ensuring that students who didn't get the traditional ATAR score still have a clear, fully supported pathway into higher education. We've established the National Student Ombudsman and a national code to prevent and respond to gender based violence, ensuring safety, accountability and respect on our campuses. We've also made demand driven, Commonwealth supported places available to all First Nations students who qualify for the course, removing arbitrary caps on Indigenous opportunity.

Every one of these actions is about equity. And today, with this bill, we take the next monumental step. We're tackling the core funding architecture of the university sector itself.

The Australian Universities Accord explicitly recommended adopting an entirely new funding model for higher education, one that is carefully planned, transparently managed and intensely focused on student success. This bill enacts that exact commitment, injecting an additional $3.6 billion into Australia's higher education system over the next 10 years.

At the heart of this reform is the formal establishment and empowerment of the a ATEC, the Australian Tertiary Education Commission. ATEC will serve as an independent expert steward of our tertiary education system. Rather than universities operating in silos, ATEC will manage funding through mission based compacts, ensuring that federal funding is perfectly aligned with actual student enrolments and real-world national skills shortages.

This bill establishes two revolutionary funding mechanisms: a managed growth funding system and a needs based funding. The new managed growth funding system will effectively uncap the number of places for students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds and regional areas, and, as a member of a seat with a regional area, I'm particularly happy with that. It sweeps away the old rigid caps that starved universities of the resources that they needed to expand. Our changes are expected to result in an extra 230,000 commencing domestic students at university over the next decade. Think of the family, the lives and the communities that will be permanently transformed by these 230,000 opportunities. Getting a student through the door of a university is only half the battle, and the accord was very clear that an increase in underrepresented students must be matched by an absolute focus on their success. It's not enough to enrol them. We have to support them to graduate. That is where demand driven, needs based funding comes into it.

Members in this chamber will be very familiar with the concept of the Gonski funding for our high schools and schools. The idea of that is that funding should follow equity, providing extra resources to schools that take on students with greater needs. This bill brings the Gonski philosophy to higher education. The more students a university has who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds or from First Nations communities or who study at regional campuses, the more funding that university will receive to help those students participate and succeed. Direct financial assistance, like emergency grants and equity scholarships, are provided as well so that a broken laptop or an unexpected bill doesn't force a student to drop out. By offsetting the significantly higher operational costs of running regional and remote campuses, it will ensure that students in the regions get the same quality of infrastructure that those in the major cities get. This is a structural shift from a system that simply funds places to a system that funds people.

Alongside these monumental funding reforms, this bill also introduces critical measures to ensure the integrity, safety and long-term sustainability of the sector. The bill sets out a clear, robust framework for ATEC to exercise its existing function to allow international student places, specifically in scenarios where the Minister for Education makes an international allocation pool determination. This ensures our international education sector remains world class, sustainably managed and aligned with our national infrastructure and housing capacities.

Furthermore, the bill makes small but vital technical amendments to modernise information sharing between the Commonwealth Ombudsman, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency and ATEC. By cutting the red tape and allowing these regulatory bodies to securely share data, we ensure that student complaints, safety issues and systemic risks are identified and acted upon swiftly. It creates a seamless net of safety and quality assurance across the entire tertiary landscape.

As I conclude, I want to bring this back to what the bill really represents at its core. When we look back at the history of this country, the great leaps forward have always occurred under a Labor government opening up the doors of education. It was true when Whitlam abolished fees, it was true when Hawke and Keating expanded the system and it's true today under the Albanese Labor government. This bill recognises that our greatest national resource isn't what's buried in the ground; it's in the minds and the potential of our people.

When we give a young person from a regional town or an outer suburban community like Bullwinkel the opportunity to go to university, we aren't just helping them. We are training the nurse who will look after us baby boomers in hospital in the very near future. We're educating the teacher who will inspire the next generation in the classrooms of the schools that come to visit us in this place. We are equipping the engineer who will design a new renewable energy grid.

The Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026 is a visionary, fully funded, structurally sound package that sets Australia up for a prosperous, fair future. It says to every single Australian: no matter who you are or where you come from, your potential is our nation's potential. As a recent graduate of university, I'm particularly thrilled that our universities are going to get the support they need to expand and continue to deliver on the great education that they provide their students. I commend this bill to the House.

Ms LE (Fowler) (12:06): When I was in a refugee camp, as our family was being processed, my mum—my late mother—applied to be resettled. She came up to me, a young girl, and she said, 'I have applied to be resettled in a country called uc dai loi—Australia. It is an island.' She said, 'The reason why I'm picking it is because I heard it has the best education system in the world.' This was late in '79. My sisters and I arrived here with very little English—hardly any English. Of course, I had my primary education cut short because of being in refugee camps, so I started primary school in year 5 and that's where I started to learn English.

This bill is called 'opening the doors of opportunity', and I think if there's any community in this country that knows what it feels like to have doors closed on them it is the community of Fowler. In my electorate, seven in 10 people speak a language other than English at home. The median personal income—I often share this in the House—is around $520 a week. Our families work hard. Many run small family businesses, and they hold onto one belief above almost everything else: they believe that education will open doors for their children that were closed to them. When the government puts the words 'opening the doors of opportunity' on the front of the bill, of course I will pay attention, and I have no doubt my community will also. This is because we've heard amazing headlines before in this House—my job is to ask whether the substance matches the slogan.

Before I do that, I want to acknowledge the Minister for Education. The minister and I do not agree on everything; however, I have never doubted his passion for education and I have never doubted where that passion comes from. We hear it every time he stands in this House. How proud he is that he grew up in Cabramatta, in the heart of my electorate. He went to Cabramatta Public School and Canley Vale High School, where he was dux. He was the first in the family to finish school and the first to go to university. His mum and his dad still live in Cabramatta, and they are my constituents.

The minister knows exactly what a closed door looks like for a young person from south-west Sydney, because I'm sure he's sat in classrooms full of many kids who probably came from similar backgrounds to mine—coming into primary education halfway through, not getting the full education that he probably would have had. I will hold this bill to the standard of the minister's own story. If a boy from Canley Vale High School can become the Minister for Education, then the test of this bill is simple: will it make the journey more likely for the next generation in Cabramatta, Fairfield, Liverpool or Bonnyrigg, or will his story remain the exception that proves the rule?

Let me explain why this matters so much in Fowler. Our young people are often left behind not because they lack talent or ambition but because of distance, language and socioeconomic disadvantage. Opportunity in this country still depends far too much on your postcode. For our students, a train fare, a textbook or simply knowing which subjects to study and which careers to do is the difference between a door opening and a door staying shut. That is why, last month, I held the Fowler Future Fest at the Fairfield showground. More than a thousand year 12 students came through the showground. They met employers, trades, small businesses and universities. I thank the Fairfield City Council—they helped host that amazing day for thousands of high-school students who have never had exposure to a career day being held in their backyard and having council being part of that—as well as all the many small businesses and not-for-profits who took part in the day. I also thank Western Sydney University for being part of the day. Student after student came to me and said how great it was to have a careers expo there. For the first time, many of them could see what subjects they needed to study and what degrees they could take up. They did not need a marketing campaign; they needed a door and someone willing to open it. That is the lens I bring to this bill.

I acknowledge what the bill does. It establishes a managed growth funding system designed to provide demand-driven, Commonwealth supported places for students from disadvantaged backgrounds and from regional and remote Australia. It introduces needs based funding for higher education similar in concept to the Gonski funding in schools, so that universities enrolling more students from low-income families, regional communities and Indigenous backgrounds receive additional resources to support them. For a community like mine, that matters. It should mean that a young person from Fowler who gets the marks for nursing, engineering or teaching does not miss out on a funded place because of where they live or how much their parents earn.

I will claim this modestly but clearly as a small win for the young people of Fowler. Over two terms, I have stood in this chamber and argued that students from south-west Sydney cannot just be an afterthought. I fought for addressing the inequities within our secondary education system. I've spoken on HECS indexation, the Job-ready Graduates Package and the accord reforms. Some of what the crossbench and I have been fighting for is reflected in this bill; I acknowledge that. But a door is not open just because the sign on it says so. I must ask the government: honestly, is this bill real reform or mere media signage? 'Opening the doors of opportunity' is a wonderful headline; it will look very good on a pamphlet when election time comes. My community deserves to know whether the substance behind it is just as good.

Here is where my doubts lie. First, ministerial discretion. The minister will set the total allocation pool and will have significant influence over how funding envelopes are set and adjusted. Students in Fowler cannot plan their futures on shifting political winds. If this funding is real, then legislate clear principles and reporting requirements so that no future governments can quietly tighten the pool or steer funding away from the communities that need it most.

Second, the risk that needs based funding becomes a label rather than real change. The indicators of disadvantage must be robust enough to capture students in south-western and Western Sydney, not just regional and remote Australia. Universities must be held to account for spending this money on tutoring, mentoring and support for disadvantaged students, not on filling general budget holes. There must be ongoing evaluation of whether completion rates for these students improve. We have seen in other sectors that needs based funding on paper does not always mean equitable in practice.

Third, this bill leaves untouched the very policies that are closing doors right now. It does not reverse the distortions of the Job-ready Graduates Package, which I have called on the government to do. It does not fix the unfairness of HECS indexation, including the sensible change to the time of indexation proposed by the member for Kooyong. Debts are still jumping faster than graduates can pay. You cannot open the front door with one hand while holding the back door shut with the other.

Let me also remind the government that, if you truly want to open doors of opportunity for young people in Fowler and across south-west Sydney, then please also invest in apprenticeships and invest in alternative pathways for those whose future is not a university degree. Together, with a change of the dates on indexation, reverse the job-ready graduates scheme. That is what opening opportunity actually looks like.

I will support this bill, but I will do so with caution. It is a small win for my community and a meaningful one, but I put to the government that there are things that still need to be done. This cannot be where we stop. It cannot become an election brochure while the hard work is left undone. I will keep standing in this place for the young people of Fowler—the students studying at the kitchen table after a long shift and the first-in-the-family kid who walked through Fowler Future Fest and saw, for the first time, that a degree could be for them. The Minister for Education was once one of those kids. He knows better than anyone in this House what is at stake. I ask him to make sure that this bill lives up to its name. Our young people do not need another slogan. They need the door open.

Ms BRISKEY (Maribyrnong) (12:16): In a first-year uni lecture in February, every seat is taken, and there are people sitting on the steps. Go back to the same subject at the end of the year, and there are some gaps. Some of those gaps are because people have changed their minds, and that's okay, but some of them are people who could not make it work. The gaps are not spread evenly. If you grew up in a house where money was tight or a long way from campus, you're up to twice as likely to be one of those gaps. Nobody has ever left university because they stopped being clever. They leave because the textbooks came to $400 in March and then rent went up in April. They leave because the unpaid prac placement is three months. They leave because they picked up an extra shift and then another one, and, by week 9, they were far too behind to catch up and too embarrassed to say so. Governments of all persuasions have spent a great deal of time in this place talking about who gets through the front door of our universities, but very few have spent the time on what happens in week 4. With the Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026, our government is doing both.

Close to half of all of Australians in their 30s now hold a university degree. That is genuinely a remarkable number. Inside one lifetime, it has gone from something a few families did to something a whole generation grew up expecting, but it is about half that if you grew up in a poor family or in the regions and less again in the bush. A young person from a family without much money is less likely to get a crack at university in the first place, and then, if they do get there, they are less likely to finish. That is about not ability but opportunity. It is about who gets the chance to use what they've got. Every one of them is something this country loses, and we never find out what we've lost.

My community is about a maximum of 20 minutes away from some of our country's top universities. If you get on the 59 tram at Airport West on a weekday morning, you are sitting among people who are going to work and people who are going to lectures—and a fair few of them doing both. Distance is not the problem; the money is. There are families in Tullamarine and Avondale Heights where the question at the kitchen table is not whether a kid could get to university; it is whether the family can carry three years of textbooks, transport and rent while that kid earns less than what they could do in a full-time job. That conversation happens every summer between the ATAR results coming out and preferences closing. More often, it is the kid who calls it off, because they can see what it is costing the home and their family, and they decide not to be an additional burden.

Last year, Victoria's first suburban university study hub opened at Broadmeadows, which is just up the road from my electorate. This study hub is part of our government's network of study hubs. There are 20 new regional ones and 14 in the outer suburbs. The evidence is clear that, where you put one up, participation goes up. That tells us something quite plain about what has been holding people back. It was never the talent; it was the practicalities.

Since coming to office, our government have been working on the principle that the doors of opportunity should be open to all, and it is worth going through how we have sought to achieve this, because this bill is an element and a continuation of it. Starting in the early years, our three-day guarantee helps open that first door of educational opportunity. We changed the law to the access of three days a week of early education to ensure that it is guaranteed for everyone, because the old activity test locked out precisely the children who benefit the most. Before I came to this place, I worked with early childhood educators. I can tell the House what they had been saying for over a decade to the coalition government, but they just simply refused to listen.

Then we have the extra $20 billion into our public schools over the next decade—the schools that do the heavy lifting and who teach the children most likely to start behind. Every dollar of it is tied to reform—phonics checks, numeracy checks, small-group tutoring, catching kids up, keeping them up and getting them to the end of year 12. Then a young person who walks out of public school in Ascot Vale at 18 with the marks and the motivation to walk through the next door of higher education—until now, we have left that door with a latch. This bill is what seeks to lift that latch, to address a gap that did not open on its own but was widened deliberately by those opposite.

In the middle of the pandemic, when nearly every other major employer in the country was thrown a line, those opposite wrote the rules so universities were locked out of JobKeeper, and tens of thousands of people lost their jobs. They capped the funding. They let equity programs wither. They churned through minister after minister with no plan for any of it, and they made an arts degree cost more than a medical one. There is only one reason a government does this, and it is to talk young people out of aspiring to higher education. They had the better part of a decade to build the skill base this country was always going to need, and they spent it treating one of our greatest national assets as a cost to cut and a culture war to fight. We are not tinkering with a system that's not working; we are rebuilding one that was run down by those opposite. That is why this is the seventh accord bill not the second.

The accord itself is the biggest look at our higher education since Bradley nearly 20 years ago, with 47 recommendations. This government has now implemented more than 30 of them either in full or in part. We cut student debt for 3.2 million Australians by 20 per cent, and more than $16 billion has been wiped off. In my electorate, that was over 27,000 people who woke up one morning owing less on their student debt than they did the night before. We capped indexation at the lower of CPI and wages so the debt can never again grow faster than what people earn. We moved to a marginal repayment system and lifted the minimum threshold so somebody repays what they can actually afford instead of a number set in another decade. We brought in paid prac for the first time for teaching nursing and midwifery and social work students, and we're expanding that—another clear example where the talent was never the reason preventing people studying these essential degrees. It was the unpaid work they couldn't afford while rent was due at the end of a degree, where walking away costs the most. We made university-ready bridging courses free. We set up the National Student Ombudsman and the national code to prevent and respond to gender based violence so the young a young woman's degree does not end because of what somebody did to her on campus. We made Commonwealth supported places demand driven for every First Nations student who gets the marks, and we established the Australian Tertiary Education Commission so somebody is finally stewarding the whole system rather than each piece of it in isolation. That was the first six bills. This one changes who gets in and who gets to stay.

The first half of this bill is the managed growth funding system. The minister sets a total allocation pool—the number of fully funded places available each year. The commission allocates them, and each university allocation is built from two parts: a core student load so nobody goes backwards and a growth allocation on top of it. The growth allocation is where the commission can direct places to students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds, from the regions and from the bush. If the commission judges that the pool is not big enough to meet demand from those students, it can go back to the minister and ask for it to be lifted.

I know there are people in this place who have decided to call this 'capping'. I would say to them: look at the mechanism. This isn't a cap; it's a floor, with the ceiling taken off for the students who have been missing. We have already done exactly this for First Nations students. We legislated in 2023 and we have the results that show it works. There will be 16,000 additional places next year and the year after that and the year after that. From 2030, it rises to 19,000 a year. Over the decade, we expect to fund an additional 230,000 commencing students, backed by $3.6 billion.

The bill also cleans up the mess underneath. Right now, in the scramble of enrolment, some universities are taking on students that receive no Commonwealth funding at all. The accord was blunt about what that is doing to the system. Around 20,000 additional places are expected to go to those over-enrolled universities next year. Under-enrolled universities get a temporary funding floor to the end of 2031 so the transition does not cost anybody their staff.

The second half is needs based funding, and it is the same idea that we've already accepted in our schools—a student who starts further back needs more support to get to the same place. A campus in the regions costs more to run. Nobody in this chamber argues about that when it comes to a primary school. The money goes to the unglamorous things that actually keep a struggling student enrolled—the tutoring, the mentoring, the academic support, the scholarship or emergency grant that covers the textbooks or the transport fare. There are programs that have tried to do this before but they were capped. Last year, that came out to be as little as $600 a student. This bill sets a base equity amount of $1,535 and a base regional amount of $1,398, both indexed every year so they do not go backwards—more than double—and it is demand-driven. The more students a university enrols who need the help, the more help they get, which means a university can no longer be rewarded for recruiting a cohort and then losing them.

This bill does one more thing. It puts the allocation of international student places for individual providers in the hands of an independent commission, where the minister sets an overall pool. There is no statutory cap on international students today, and this bill does not create one. What it does is take a decision that currently sits with the government and hands it to an independent body, which is what the universities themselves have asked for.

About 60 per cent of students in Commonwealth-supported places across this country are women. Of the students this needs based funding is built to reach, two in three are women. We talk a great deal in this place about the gender pay gap and too often we talk about it as though it's a question of confidence or negotiation or a choice an individual woman makes. It's not. Our government knows it is structural and it is set early in the years before a woman ever gets a chance to sit down to have a conversation about salary. The most reliable thing we can do about what a woman earns across the whole of her working life is to open the door to a qualification and make sure she can afford to stay until she has it.

There is a hard-headed argument here too. The court said that by 2050 we'll need about 80 per cent of the workforce holding a certificate, diploma or degree. That is what it will take to staff our hospitals, to build more houses, to run the clean energy economy we're building right now and to do the jobs that don't even exist yet. Every one of those workers is a person who has to get a qualification first. Every student we lose in second year is a nurse we're short of in 2040, and we pay for that shortage one way or another. But we do not get to this 80 per cent by sticking to the status quo and simply hoping.

This bill does not reach back. It does nothing for the people who left after the first year and never went back, or the ones who looked at the whole thing at age 17 and decided it was not for them. There are a lot of them. Some of them are my constituents. They do not get those years back. Here is what this bill does: it means a kid from my community whose single mum is working two jobs just to stay afloat gets a funded place because her ATAR is great and not because there happened to be room left after everyone else had been sorted. It means the first person in a family to go to uni has somebody to ring in week 4 of the first semester when it has all gotten away from them and they are one decision away from not coming back. It means the hundreds of dollars for textbooks in March is not the reason somebody quits in April.

This is not the last bill our government will seek to deliver on education. There is a great deal more work to do to make sure that our country's system is as fair as it should be, from the earliest years all the way through. But it is a next step, and it is a big one. Nobody has ever left university because they stopped being clever. They leave because we let them. This bill is us making it easier for them to stay. This bill is our government opening another door of opportunity for working families in Maribyrnong and right across the country. I commend the bill to the House.

Dr RYAN (Kooyong) (12:30): Before I was elected, I was fortunate to spend part of my career in the university sector, where I saw firsthand the public good that universities deliver not only through educating the next generation of Australians but through research, innovation and engagement with the communities that they serve. A former MP for Kooyong, Sir Robert Menzies, when he was almost quadrupling university funding in 1957, said:

… universities are to be regarded not as a home of privilege for a few, but as something essential to the lives of millions of people who may never enter their doors.

He believed education improved Australia's wellbeing and its living standards and that universities were a nation-building project.

The people of Kooyong still believe passionately in the importance of universities. In the last four years I've spoken with many university leaders, researchers, lecturers, students and parents about the state of our education system. It is clear to them and to me that our higher education sector is under significant pressure. In fact, it's under threat. Students are graduating with unprecedented debt. Some face lifelong debt resulting from their tertiary studies. Many tell me that they didn't understand what they were signing up for when they took on HECS. Researchers face chronic underfunding and increasing career uncertainty with unreliable grant schedules and dwindling success rates. Academic staff are expected to teach larger and larger classes with fewer and fewer resources. Universities are increasingly reliant on international student revenue to cross-subsidise teaching and research. But, at the same time, employers are reporting shortages of doctors, nurses, engineers, teachers and other skilled professionals. At the same time, politicians are dog whistling about the impact of international students on our society, ignoring the fact that they have been responsible for as much as half of our economic growth in recent years.

The universities accord final report recognised that Australia's prosperity depends on a stronger, more accessible, better supported higher education sector. The accord carried an ambitious vision, recommending that by 2050 Australia should increase tertiary attainment to at least 80 per cent of the working age population. It recommended growing the number of Australians aged 25 to 34 with a university qualification from 45 per cent to 55 per cent, and it recommended doubling Australian Commonwealth supported students to 1.8 million. While they are very ambitious, these targets reflect the scale of the workforce challenges facing Australia, challenges in key sectors in a rapidly changing global economy.

The Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026 represents a significant legislative response to the accord's final report. The government claims that this legislation will enable the creation of up to 230 additional student places over the next decade, with a particular focus on expanding opportunities for students from disadvantaged backgrounds and regional and rural communities. Widening Australia's higher education participation is absolutely crucial, but, if this government is serious about opening the doors of opportunity, it must ensure that this bill genuinely expands opportunity rather than imposing unintentional restrictions.

One of the central reforms in this bill is the move to a managed growth funding model. Currently, Commonwealth funding for student places is allocated through the maximum basic grant amount. In 2026, $7.75 billion was allocated for student places. Under this model, the total number of Commonwealth supported places, or CSPs, across Australia has not always been clear, and this bill does change that approach. Instead of allocating a dollar amount, the minister will determine a total allocation pool of Commonwealth supported places. In 2027, it's supported that the total allocation pool will deliver about 625,000 CSPs.

There are benefits to providing greater visibility about the size of our education system. Universities need certainty on the number of places available so they can plan workforce infrastructure and course delivery. The minister has announced that the government will grow the total allocation pool by an additional 16,000 places in each of the next three years. All of this sounds fine. However, there is no obligation for the Minister for Education to grow the size of the system. In fact, under this bill, the pool could actually shrink below the existing core student load. It's an unintended consequence of the legislation. It leaves the door open for future ministers who are less well disposed to the sector to unilaterally cut student numbers. Given the well and often stated hostility to the university sector by the Liberal Party, the National Party and One Nation, this issue needs to be fixed. At this point, the total allocated pool is a ceiling with no floor. The bill should establish that the minimum total allocation pool must equal the existing core student load of table A universities. Without this, universities will have no guarantee that the system will in fact grow under this and future governments. This issue is to be addressed by the member for Curtin in her amendments later in this debate, and I support her proposal.

Once the minister has set the total allocation pool, the Australian Tertiary Education Commission, or ATEC, will then allocate places between universities. This means that, from 2027, universities will receive an allocation of student places rather than a funding amount. The change will improve transparency, but, at the same time, it will reduce the flexibilities that universities have traditionally had to adapt to changes in student demand. For years, universities have operated under a soft cap with the ability to overenroll students. This has given them the ability to create additional places when demand has exceeded supply of CSPs. In many cases, those additional students did not pose a financial impost, because universities could retain the student contributions for those over-enrolees. Under this bill, however, universities will have limited capacity to exceed their allocation. Overenrolments will be capped at either five per cent above the original allocation or 750 places, whichever is lower. If the universities exceed this threshold, they will lose student contribution revenue for those additional students.

Documents released under FOI showed that, in 2024, nine Australian universities delivered student places worth five per cent or more above their maximum funding. There is no clarity or transparency on how many universities are in that position now. The minister has argued that this change will end a Hunger Games system in which popular universities attract more students than others, but there's a definite risk that the opposite occurs—that students lose opportunities because universities become overly cautious about making offers, wary of the potential financial penalties, even where those universities do have the potential capacity to support those students. At the very minimum, this legislation should ensure that a student who has already begun a Commonwealth supported place can't lose that status. The government has to provide this express guarantee. For example, it could do that in section 30-30 of the bill. The government should also provide in section 30-20 that the ATEC must allocate each tertiary provider a domestic student profile that is not less than the provider's core student load. These safeguards are the bare minimum, and I again commend the member for Curtin's amendments, which will deliver some of these changes.

There is a trade-off inherent to these reforms. This bill will facilitate increased CSP participation through the minister growing the total pool allocation, but, at the same time, the bill introduces new restrictions on the ability of individual universities to respond to increased demand through the imposition of hard caps on the domestic student profile. In that sense, the reforms in this bill are internally contradictory. Total allocation pool enrolments will increase overall by 230,000 over the next 10 years and will increase in a managed way—but possibly by less than the growth that would have occurred in a system with more flexible arrangements, like our current system.

University growth has occurred in unmanaged and unintended ways, which is why the accord recommended, and the government is introducing, a system of managed growth. But the bill fails to address one of the key reasons that universities have experienced unintended growth across certain disciplines: the Job-ready Graduates, or JRG, Package. The JRG Package was introduced in 2021 to steer students towards particular fields by restructuring student contribution amounts. Under JRG, by next year, students in the highest contribution band will pay more than $54,000 for a standard three-year bachelor's degree and over $90,000 for double degrees. At the same time, though, universities will continue to have to absorb an annual funding shortfall of $800 million, because JRG reduced Commonwealth contributions for degrees by more than it increased student contributions. Just remember: it's $54,000 for an undergraduate bachelor's degree.

Innovative Research Universities found that, in 2024 alone, the students in the highest-charging fields paid up to $1.3 billion more than they would have if JRG hadn't existed. Recommendation 16a of the Australian Universities Accord final report called for student contribution rates in the highest-charging fields under JRG to be urgently remediated. In February this year, the minister recognised that JRG has failed, and yet section 33-7 of this bill entrenches existing Job-ready Graduates funding clusters.

Managed growth is an important reform to meet Australia's educational attainment goals, but we can't promote those while imposing punitive debts on students and while undermining the sustainability of university teaching. Those aspects of growing the universities sector are at odds with each other. Managed growth might widen and might even open the door to opportunity, but this bill leaves in place a very nasty surprise waiting on the other side of that door. I ask the minister to explain to the House why, having redesigned almost every other part of the higher education landscape, the government has chosen to leave its most widely criticised—even internally criticised—element in place.

On current advice, the ATEC is developing a new higher education costing and pricing framework, with advice expected in the second half of 2027. The summary of progress to date on that work revealed that the forum was not intended to revisit the Job-ready Graduates Package, but rather to focus on understanding costs. So, three years after the accord called for urgent remediation of Job-ready Graduates, we'll receive a report that doesn't even consider the fact that arts and law and finance students are paying more than $18,000 a year, and that they've been doing that for far longer under the Albanese government than they did under Scott Morrison.

On the current trajectory, it will take at least eight years and two parliamentary terms to begin to reverse JRG. It will take at least eight years after Labor first labelled this scheme 'highly inequitable' and 'dubious' for them to even approach it. Without an explicit direction to bring that work forward, students will commence and continue to study in 2027 and 2028 under a contribution schedule that every review to date, including the government's own, has found to be broken.

The government legislated the universities accord act earlier this year. It drafted that act with ministerial powers. I want the minister to use the powers that he gave himself, and so I call on him to, firstly, immediately advise the ATEC that reviewing the funding arrangements introduced under the Job-ready Graduates Package is a short-term, urgent and strategic priority under section 15 of the act; and, secondly, immediately issue written directions by legislative instrument under section 71 of the act requiring the ATEC commissioners, in carrying out the commission's functions, to prioritise providing advice and recommendations to the minister on options for reforming the funding arrangements introduced under the Job-ready Graduates Package.

This bill does do important things to open the doors of opportunity. It legislates needs based funding for disadvantaged First Nations and regional students. It's a meaningful acknowledgement that a university place in this country means something very different depending on where you grew up and your family's financial circumstances, and this bill sets Australia on a path towards the attainment targets that the accord identified as essential to our national prosperity. But the doors that prospective students walk through will not be defined by opportunity while the Job-ready Graduates scheme remains in place. In recognising that, I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1) notes that:

(a) next year, university students will be paying over $54,000 for standard bachelor's degrees; and

(b) this bill fails to address the unfair and punitive funding arrangements introduced under the Job-ready Graduates Package;

(2) calls on the Government to exercise powers under the Universities Accord (Australian Tertiary Education Commission) Act 2026 (Cth) to:

(a) immediately advise the Australian Tertiary Education Commission (ATEC) that reviewing the funding arrangements introduced under the Job-ready Graduates Package is a short-term, urgent strategic priority; and

(b) immediately issue written directions, by legislative instrument, requiring the ATEC Commissioners, in carrying out the Commission's functions, to prioritise providing advice and recommendations to the Minister on options for reforming the funding arrangements introduced under the Job-ready Graduates Package".

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Dr Garland ): Are the amendments seconded?

Ms Chaney: Yes. I second the amendments and reserve my right to speak.

Ms CLUTTERHAM (Sturt) (12:45): I rise today to speak in support of the Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026. There can be no argument that giving more Australians the chance to go to university and succeed is essential to meeting the nation's future skills and economic needs. Backgrounds, postcodes and bank balances cannot stand in the way of more Australians going to university to attain a higher education degree, to allow them to participate in the critical nation building endeavours our country needs to embark on, to ensure a secure, sustainable and prosperous future, to allow us to compete in an increasingly competitive global marketplace, to enable us to innovate and enjoy the benefits of targeted research and development and to ensure that our national security is properly prosecuted.

Australia needs more university educated workers, not fewer. More opportunity is good for students, good for their families, good for communities, good for the economy and good for our country. The Australian Universities Accord made it clear that, if Australia is to prosper in the years ahead, we must grow Australia's participation, performance and investment in tertiary education so we can generate the knowledge, skills and research our nation needs. The final report recommended that the tertiary attainment rate of all working age people with at least one certificate III qualification or higher be lifted from 60 per cent currently to at least 80 per cent by 2050. It also recommended increasing the proportion of university educated Australians aged 25 to 34 from 45 per cent currently to 55 per cent by 2050. In making these recommendations, the final report noted that the tertiary system will need to more than double the number of Commonwealth supported students in universities from 860,000 currently to 1.8 million by 2050.

As well as increasing the number of skilled workers in our country ready to contribute to our economy and our communities, higher education provides many other essential benefits to Australian society. By encouraging intellectual endeavour, creativity and personal accomplishment, universities also promote democracy, critical thinking, debate, the embrace of different perspectives and the fostering of civic values. A university degree can also lead to expanded professional and personal networks, more defined career goals and, of course, employment. Further, the world faces a host of challenges ranging from economic inequality to climate change and geopolitical conflict to ongoing wars, and universities and graduates play a key role in helping to address some of these challenges. Given these benefits, creating accessible educational opportunities for students of all postcodes, backgrounds and bank balances to develop responsive skills is critical for a vibrant future workforce, for responding to challenges through innovation and for ensuring our communities are resilient.

Universities also encourage critical thinking and the consideration of different perspectives. You might not agree with a particular perspective that is being put, but you must consider it. You may dismiss it, but you've heard it and you've thought about why you might be dismissing it. You don't just accept it. You evaluate it, check it, challenge it and develop your own independent view on it. And you're actively encouraged to do this. You know that, if you don't, you might have missed something or you might be misinformed or disinformed. And we know that misinformation and disinformation, either deliberate or by virtue of laziness, are one of the biggest dangers facing our country, because they draw on inaccurate or incomplete information, depriving the information consumer of the facts and distorting the decisions that the consumer of the information might then make.

People who have been taught to think critically, to assess and challenge information, to not simply agree with the first thing that is said to them and to not simply accept the contentions of those who shout the loudest are better placed. The overarching negative effect of misinformation is that, without an accurately informed public, democracy cannot function. Again, you might not agree with the information, but if it is accurate—based on facts, data and evidence—you can at least make your next decision and make your choice with the comfort of knowing that you had the relevant information you needed.

We know that misinformation and disinformation create division. They create polarisation. And sometimes misinformation or disinformation based on rumour, gossip or a malicious agenda can have devastating consequences: disengagement with democratic processes, hostility to political figures, and violence. Disinformation has a competitive advantage over accurate information in the attention economy, because it is not constrained by the truth. The effort required is minimal, and the digitisation of media and the explosion of social media has also enabled producers of misinformation and disinformation to access sophisticated and extremely convincing tools of digital forgery, such as deepfakes, the digital alteration of an image or video that convincingly replaces the voice, face or body of one individual with that of another. That's not just a tech problem or a communications issue. It's a crisis of trust.

Tackling this means protecting communities from harm while upholding freedom of expression and other human rights. Freedom of expression and other human rights need to be protected at the same time as countering disinformation because of its capacity to unravel the threads that hold societies together. In settings with increased instability it can tip societies into violence. It can also corrode the norms of debate and science-backed evidence that societies have typically taken for granted. Countering this is difficult, because the monumental challenge facing us is structural. The information ecosystem simply was not designed with truth or safety as its key features. It was designed for engagement, which comes in many forms, including hate.

Well-developed critical thinking skills by virtue of a university degree can play a key role in countering these challenges, because these skills allow one to assess the strength and appropriateness of the information being presented through questioning, examining and evaluating different positions. These skills are not just useful with respect to misinformation and disinformation. Questioning, challenging and evaluating have a place in every profession. It was my full-time job, in my pre-politics career as a lawyer. Doctors, nurses and engineers do it all day. Goodness knows, teachers do it all day, as well as mechanics, plumbers, electricians and business owners. The ability to challenge, evaluate, question and go beyond the algorithm is fundamental to the success of our economy, our community and our liberal democracy.

Universities that produce graduates with a thirst for knowledge, a thirst for facts, a love of learning, a determination or arm themselves with the evidence they need to justify a decision they are working towards reduces the impact misinformation has on our democracy. I'm not saying that it is only those with a university degree who can counter misinformation because, with effort, we all can, but we know that universities arm students with the tools to do this, and the more people who are armed with a desire for facts and accuracy, the better.

This bill will see additional funding to the tune of $3.6 billion invested into the tertiary sector over the next decade to increase the number of students at university and to meet Australia's future skills needs. It does this through a new managed growth funding system and demand driven needs based funding to support students from underrepresented backgrounds to access and succeed at university. The estimated impact of these changes is that there will be an extra 230,000 domestic students commencing study over the next decade, getting those crucial critical thinking skills, developing the capacity to examine different perspectives and to reach an informed and evidence based view. This can only be a good thing for our democracy and our communities.

Labor is the party of education. We know that education lifts people out of poverty and gives people an opportunity: an opportunity to contribute to their communities, to do something for their families and to do something for themselves. We know that opportunities like this should not be limited to those with means or those who live in metropolitan areas. Everyone should have this opportunity. To be pro-education is to be pro-business, pro-private-sector, pro-public-sector, pro-productivity and pro-economic-prosperity because, without an educated population, you don't have any of those things.

This bill, which opens the doors of educational opportunity to a more diverse range of people, is not the only step that the Albanese Labor government has taken to ensure education is accessible and affordable. I will never forget 3 November 2024 and being in the Norwood International High School in my electorate of Sturt when the Prime Minister announced that a re-elected Albanese Labor government would make HECS better and fairer by cutting 20 per cent off of HECS debts. We have delivered that.

That is in addition to the indexation of HECS debts, moving to a marginal repayment system and raising the minimum repayment threshold. People should not be put in a position where they decide they will not go to university because it will be too hard to pay off the corresponding debt.

People should not be put in a position where they decide not to study for teaching, nursing and midwifery degrees because they cannot afford to take time off to complete the practical component of their degree. Paid prac is a delivered Albanese Labor government policy of which I am particularly proud. I completed a Master of Teaching and Secondary Education about a decade ago as a mature-age student who was able to take a combination of unpaid and paid leave from my employment to complete the prac. The unpaid portion hit even though I was in my late 30s. Imagine being a young student in your early 20s living out of home and being asked to give up your income for weeks at a time so you can complete a degree in a critical industry. Paid prac is meaningful change and meaningful action to ensure that students who want to can enrol to study to become teachers, nurses and midwives—and now, significantly, additional allied health professions.

This bill represents the seventh accord bill that the Minister for Education has introduced. There were 47 recommendations in the Australian universities accord, and, with the passage of this bill, the Albanese Labor government will have implemented 36 in full or in part. Prompt yet careful progress is being made as the Albanese Labor government seeks to shore up our tertiary education sector so that it's primed to deliver the skilled workforce Australia needs to advance its national security and economic prosperity and contribute to a Future Made in Australia. I commend the bill to the House.

Ms CHANEY (Curtin) (12:59): I rise to speak on the Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill. Higher education changes lives. Every Australian should have the opportunity to experience the life-transforming benefits of higher education. We'll only meet our future skills needs by expanding access for people who are currently underrepresented, including people from low-SES backgrounds, First Nations people and regional, rural and remote students. I support the intent of the Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026, which is to drive managed growth of our higher education system and expand the opportunities of higher education for all Australians. But I do hold some concerns about its implications for student choice and the autonomy and flexibility of the higher education system.

This bill does three things: it replaces our current funding model with a managed growth system; it legislates a new needs-based funding stream for equity and regional students; and it creates rules governing how international student places are allocated. On the first point, university funding currently runs through the Commonwealth Grants Scheme on what's called the maximum basic grant amount, a dollar ceiling that each university gets for domestic teaching. It's a soft cap. If a university enrols more students than the ceiling technically covers, it gets no extra Commonwealth funding for those students, but it keeps the student contribution anyway.

The accord found that this funding system was leading to unplanned, unmanaged and underfunded growth, with consequences for students and higher education providers alike. This bill responds to that by moving from a dollar ceiling to a hard headcount of student places set by the minister and distributed between universities by the new and independent Australian Tertiary Education Commission, or ATEC.

The bill also legislates needs-based funding, an ongoing top-up paid by the Commonwealth for every eligible equity student and regional student, reflecting the greater costs of delivering quality higher education for these students. The bill also gives the minister the power to determine the total number of international student places, with ATEC holding the job of allocating those places to providers.

I support the objective of this bill, which is to expand opportunity and access to higher education. The principle of managed growth is right. We want a better-educated workforce, more Australians at university and at TAFE, and a system that plans for that growth instead of stumbling into it. The Universities Accord tells us that by 2050 we'll need four in five working age Australians to hold a university degree or TAFE qualification. Today we sit at around half of that, and the gap won't close on its own.

I strongly support the introduction of the needs-based funding system to reach people who might not otherwise have the chance, but good intentions in the bill's name don't guarantee good outcomes in its operation, and I hold some concerns about this bill. These concerns are shared by a range of stakeholders who've provided submissions to the Senate inquiry.

My most significant concern is that this bill could constrain student choice. Right now, universities that enrol beyond their funding ceilings still keep the student contribution for those extra places, but this bill moves to a hard cap. If a university enrols more than five per cent above its allocation, it will get nothing for those students at all. The issue is that it's not that hard to exceed the cap. A stronger acceptance rate or better second-year retention could mean a university will be over the cap. Suddenly a university can't accept any more students because there's a hard cap on enrolments.

There are some safeguards for this. A university can ask ATEC for more places and ATEC can ask the minister. But if that takes too long, students will wear the consequences. This doesn't even need to occur for it to have an implication for student choice. The rational response for a university facing just the risk of overshoot is to restrict offers because it's easier to top up an allocation later than to wear the consequences of breaching that cap. Several universities have told the committee that they've already begun withdrawing guaranteed ATAR pathways ahead of this bill, so students will pay the price for that caution by missing out on a place. I support a managed system stewarded by ATEC, but universities should offer a place to every student capable of succeeding where they have the capacity to teach them. Otherwise, this bill will have the perverse effect of restricting opportunity and access for students around the country. I look to the Senate committee and the government to ensure that there is enough flexibility in this system so that this doesn't happen.

There's also a question hanging over this bill as to whether a student could ever lose their Commonwealth supported place through the operation of this bill's new powers. There is some protection for a student's place in the Higher Education Support Act, but this bill could give the minister powers that could lead to students being kicked off Commonwealth supported places through no fault of their own. So I'll be moving an amendment to make it really clear that, once a student holds a Commonwealth supported place, that place cannot be taken away from the student through any power that this bill introduces. It would be unworkable and unfair for a student in their second year of university to be told that they will no longer receive Commonwealth funding for the rest of their course because of some bureaucratic decision about numbers made in Canberra.

The second area of concern I have relates to excess ministerial power and centralisation. This bill takes a significant amount of flexibility and autonomy away from universities. A great deal of decision-making power moves to ATEC, which is at least meant to be independent, but a great deal also moves to the minister. This government says it's committed to a thriving, growing higher education sector, but a command-and-control approach is not the way to secure that future. We should be encouraging universities to grow, to specialise and to compete with each other in ways that improve outcomes for students rather than centralising every lever in Canberra.

This bill would, for example, allow the minister to put specific conditions on individual universities before providing them with funding, with no clear guidelines or safeguards for what these conditions could entail. I've drafted an amendment to remove this excessive and overbearing power. It's the role of the independent ATEC to work with individual universities and higher education providers through mission based compacts. It's not for the minister to be able to make directions of their choosing, which could be politically motivated to specific universities as a funding condition.

I acknowledge that I've had constructive conversations with the minister's office on this issue. The government is aware of this problem, and based on the discussions that have been had to date I'm optimistic that improvements will be made in the Senate. I'll also move an amendment requiring the minister to publish a statement of reasons for a series of important decisions: the total number of Commonwealth supported places, or the total allocation pool, and the total number of international students, which the minister decides each year and which has enormous consequences for the higher education sector and the economy.

My concern about the minister's powers is most significant when it comes to international students, where politics can so quickly override good policy. I've made this argument to this House before. When the government tried to give the minister the power to cap international enrolments by course and by university last term, I opposed those provisions. I've never doubted the need for better regulation of quality and integrity in the sector, but course-by-course, university-by-university ministerial control over an export industry worth tens of billions of dollars a year is overreach. I said then that if the government wanted sustainable growth in this sector it should go back to the accord and determine settings through the mission based compact process, not through a unilateral ministerial power.

This bill is an improvement in a number of ways. While the minister is given the power to determine the overall number of international students, it's up to the independent ATEC to allocate them between providers. This is better, but there's a catch. The minister also has a broad power to make provider-specific directions to ATEC with regard to international students. So, as far as I understand it, the minister of the day could tell ATEC that UWA must receive no international students. This is clearly not appropriate.

I acknowledge again that I've had productive conversations with the minister's office on this issue. There may be some important instances where this power is necessary, but there is a risk that it could be used in a way that's overpoliticised. So I look to the committee and the government to ensure that this power has appropriate limitations and safeguards. I'll be moving amendments to prevent the minister from issuing provider-specific directions to ATEC with regard to international students to align the framework with the system for domestic students.

Finally, I'd like to reflect some concerns from the university sector that the legislation contains some holes that undermine its ambition to grow the higher education sector. The minister told this House in his second reading speech that 230,000 additional Commonwealth supported places will be funded over the next decade. I don't doubt that that's this government's intent, but intent isn't legislation. Actually, this bill doesn't guarantee growth. It legislates ceilings but no floors. The total allocation pool sets a maximum number of Commonwealth supported places. It doesn't guarantee a minimum. That being said, from conversations with the minister's office, I am satisfied that the government is aware of and planning to act on this issue.

To conclude, this bill gets the direction right. Managed planned growth based on the country's needs is better than the unplanned unmanaged drift the accord report described. Needs based funding is an overdue step towards the equity this system was always supposed to deliver, and bringing proper stewardship to international student places through an independent commission rather than unilateral ministerial decision-making is also an important step.

A bill titled 'opening the doors of opportunity' has to be judged against that standard. Does it open doors, or does it relocate the bottleneck? On the evidence now before this House, the hard caps risk closing doors on students through no fault of their own, and the ministerial powers aren't yet matched by appropriate safeguards. I'll be moving amendments in the consideration in detail stage to fix these problems. I want this bill to succeed, and succeeding means it has to work for the students trying to get into university to build a life for themselves not just for the bureaucrats in Canberra.

Ms CAMPBELL (Moreton) (13:11): What if Australia's next groundbreaking scientist, next innovative engineer or next inspiring teacher never even considers going to university because no-one encouraged them to or there seemed to be too many barriers? That question becomes even more poignant when we think about people from disadvantaged backgrounds, lower socioeconomic backgrounds and First Nations communities and those living in regional areas. For many of these young people, there is no clear pathway to university. For some, it seems out of reach because of financial pressure, and, for others, it's distance, or it can simply be a case of not having any role models from your community who have gone to uni, bringing to life that evocative phrase 'you can't be what you can't see'. It's not a lack of ability or talent holding people back; it's a lack of opportunity and it's a lack of support. It is why the Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026 is so very important. Labor has always been the party of education. It is part of our origin story, it is our legacy, and it is our future.

This bill is in direct response to the recommendations of the universities accord, which was released in February 2024. Since that time, the Albanese Labor government has been swift to implement its recommendations. So far, we've actioned more than 30 of the report's 47 recommendations. A major focus of this reform was improving the operation of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme, or HECS. This included reducing existing student debt by 20 per cent, which we delivered as promised at the start of this term. We also ensured that indexation on HECS debts was capped to the lower of either the consumer price index or the wage price index. We introduced a marginal repayment system and increased the minimum income threshold at which repayments begin.

When you think about that 20 per cent off student debt, as students—thousands of them from my local electorate on Brisbane's south side—logged on and looked online, it came off immediately. Not only does this go to the cost-of-living relief that so many Australians and, particularly, young people need right now; it also goes to reducing the barriers to get a higher education degree. These measures ease the financial pressure on current students and graduates as they enter the workforce, at a critical and pivotal moment in their lives.

Labor also introduced the Commonwealth Prac Payment—direct and practical support for students undertaking essential degrees, such as teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work, as they complete their mandatory practical placements. Just last month, this was extended to students in ten allied health disciplines—students like those undertaking pharmacy that I met just last month. What they described was something very interesting. They described the fact that not only would it take the pressure off and not only would it mean that people would not have to scrimp and save in secondary jobs to go through, but it would make their lives easier and that it would make that pathway to getting into the workforce just that little bit simpler. I note that the assistant minister is a pharmacist herself and indeed, I believe, would be celebrating the paid prac placements of those students.

The Albanese Labor government has also increased the number of free university bridging courses, removing barriers to tertiary education access. This has given students from diverse backgrounds increased opportunities to prepare for and begin higher education. This was matched by doubling the number of university study hubs, with the establishment of 20 new hubs in regional locations and 14 in suburban communities. These hubs are designed to provide local access to resources and support for students who may not be able to relocate to major cities.

Equity measures form another very important part of Labor's reform package. All First Nations students who meet entry requirements are guaranteed Commonwealth supported university places, ensuring financial barriers do not prevent access to higher education opportunities. We also established the new National Student Ombudsman in response to student safety and wellbeing challenges. This provides an independent avenue for complaints and for support and operates alongside the national code to prevent and respond to gender based violence.

Finally, we created the Australian Tertiary Education Commission to guide the broader higher education system. This body acts as a central steward, overseeing and coordinating the tertiary education system to ensure it operates effectively and, critically, meets the needs of students, institutions and the wider community.

The universities accord told us that we need action now in order for Australia to meet our future skills needs. That means that we need to get more people to TAFE and that we need to get more people into university now. We know that people talk about university as the great equaliser, because it is. Education is that great equaliser, but it's important to remember that it is also the engine room for who we want to be as a nation and what our economy looks like, as a country. This is critical to meet the universities accord recommendation to increase the number of people in the workforce who have a certificate, diploma or degree to 80 per cent, because, if we want Australia to be a place where we build homes, we need more young people doing trades in plumbing and carpentry and electrical. If we want young people to be supporting the care economy, we need more people at universities studying pharmacy and nursing. It is those things that will make us stronger.

The accord also told us that we need more higher education students from underrepresented backgrounds, like those I mentioned earlier, and more support for them when studying. That is the crux of this bill. It implements a new funding model for higher education that will be managed by the Australian Tertiary Education Commission. It comes with a significant investment of $3.6 billion to boost the number of students at university to help us achieve that important 80 per cent figure.

The two pillars of this new funding model are managed growth funding and needs based funding. Managed growth funding will be the powerhouse behind building a bigger, better and fairer education system—a system that will give more Australians more opportunity to attend university. And needs based funding will focus on young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, providing them with the support they need to succeed once they are at university. The reforms will also clarify and strengthen the role of the Australian Tertiary Education Commission, particularly in how Commonwealth supported places at university are distributed.

After the passage of this bill, the government will set the total number of Commonwealth supported places while the Australian Tertiary Education Commission will allocate those places to specific universities. The commission will also be enabled to allocate additional places where there is demand from students from regional and remote communities and disadvantaged backgrounds. In practice, this means the managed growth funding system will remove the cap on the number of university places for people from low socioeconomic backgrounds or regional areas, remove it for the people who need barriers removed the most. Instead, the system is designed to expand access, ensuring that more students from these groups have the opportunity to enrol in the higher education if that is the path that they want to pursue.

These changes are expected to significantly increase participation in higher education. In the next three years, an additional 16,000 places per year will be made available for students. From 2030, this will grow to 19,000 additional places per year. And, ultimately, projections indicate that an additional 230,000 domestic students will begin university studies over the next decade. This anticipated growth reflects the broader goal of making higher education more accessible and making it more inclusive. To ensure the success of these reforms, universities and other higher education providers will receive support as they transition to those new funding arrangements. This assistance will help institutions adapt to the updated system while maintaining quality education and student outcomes through the changeover period.

As I mentioned, needs based funding will be directed towards students who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, First Nations students and those studying at regional institutions. Frankly, your bank balance should never be a barrier to a good education. This is similar, in principle, to the Gonski model used in school education, where schools receive funding according to their location and the needs of their students. Applying this system to higher education means that institutions which enrol a higher number of students who meet certain equity and regional criteria will receive additional funding so that the support goes to where it is needed most. This ensures that universities are better resourced to support students who may face greater barriers to accessing and succeeding in their higher education journey.

As part of this shift, the level of funding provided per eligible student will increase substantially. The bill sets the base equity contribution at $1,535 per student and the base regional amount at $1,398. This is a significant increase compared to previous arrangements, where university sometimes received as little as $600 per student. The updated funding levels are designed to more accurately reflect the real costs of supporting students who are in need. In some cases, the amount allocated for each student is expected to more than double from the previous year.

Universities will now have flexibility in how they use this additional funding to improve student participation and to improve their success. This may include providing enhanced academic support services, such as tutoring and mentoring, as well as offering direct financial assistance through scholarships and through grants. Institutions will also be able to use the funding to help offset the higher operational costs associated with maintaining campuses in regional and remote communities—ultimately strengthening access and educational outcomes across the sector.

Labor is proud to support improving outcomes for students from underrepresented backgrounds. Labor's reforms in the tertiary education sector have been widely welcomed by stakeholders—both universities and students alike. The President of the National Union of Students, Felix Hughes, said, 'These reforms recognise that equity must be built into the higher education funding system,' and 'supporting students from underrepresented backgrounds is essential to creating a more accessible higher education system.' The CEO of Universities Australia, Luke Sheehy, agreed. He said:

Australia needs more university-educated workers, not fewer.

That means opening the door to university for more Australians, no matter their postcode, background or bank balance.

More opportunity is good for students, good for communities and good for the economy.

This bill speaks directly to the word that's been thrown around this place so often of late. It speaks to ambition. The reforms in this bill are aimed squarely at people from disadvantaged backgrounds, people whose lives are often shaped by challenges that many of us will simply never face. For many of them, ambition is not centred solely on personal achievement but encompasses uplifting their families and their communities. These people are not lacking in talent, nor are they lacking in motivation. Instead, they are navigating systems that make their pathways to university harder at every step. That is where this bill comes in, because it reflects core Labor values that every person deserves a fair go regardless of their background, their personal circumstances or their bank balance.

Mr WALLACE (Fisher) (13:26): I rise to speak on the Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026. At the outset, I want to make the coalition's position very clear. We've not finalised our position on this bill. It makes substantial structural changes to Australia's higher education system. It should therefore be tested thoroughly, properly, carefully and transparently through the Senate committee process. The Senate has now referred the bill to the Education and Employment Legislation Committee, which is due to report on 3 September 2026. That inquiry should examine the practical effect of this legislation; its fiscal consequences; the protection for students and providers; and the safeguards, if there are any, against the misuse of executive power. If the bill comes to a vote in this House before that committee has reported, the coalition will not oppose it, but our final position will be determined after the evidence has been heard and the committee has completed its work.

That is the responsible approach, because this is not simply a bill about funding more student places. It's a bill about who holds power over Australia's universities. It's about how many students they can enrol, which courses they can offer, where growth occurs, the extent to which institutions can respond to student demand and how international students are allocated, and the conditions under which providers can continue to receive Commonwealth support.

At its heart, this bill shifts Australia away from a system in which institutions retain meaningful flexibility towards a system in which the minister, directly or indirectly, holds extraordinary power over the sector. The minister sets the domestic Commonwealth supported place pool. The minister sets the international student allocation pool. The minister may determine demand driven courses. The minister can directly allocate places in specified circumstances. The minister can impose conditions on specified providers. The minister determines many of the operational details of needs based funding through guidelines. Those powers are not merely exercised by this minister; they are powers that would be inherited by every future Minister for Education.

That is the proper test that we in this place have to examine. We shouldn't legislate on the assumption that this minister nor every future minister will exercise broad discretionary power cautiously, transparently and wisely. Parliament must assess the machinery it creates, not simply the intentions of the government currently occupying the Treasury benches.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Dr Garland ) (13:30): The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour, and the member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.

Mr WALLACE (Fisher) (16:14): There are real problems in higher education. No-one should pretend otherwise. There are concerns about quality, student experience, workforce shortages, artificial intelligence, antisemitism and social cohesion on campus, international student numbers, access for students in the outer suburbs and in the regions, and the position of private higher education providers. The coalition recognises that a future government may need stronger tools to respond to these problems. For example, powers over international student allocations could be used to align international education with national capacity in housing, infrastructure and services. Powers attached to public funding could, if appropriately designed, be used to require stronger standards on antisemitism, social cohesion and institutional accountability. A more flexible pathway for Commonwealth-supported places could assist private providers in priority workforce fields, and place allocations could be used to support regional and outer-suburban opportunity where it is genuinely needed. Those are legitimate objectives, but good objectives don't automatically justify unlimited powers. The question for this parliament is whether the bill gets the balance right between national stewardship, institutional autonomy, student choice, accountability and parliamentary oversight.

On the evidence already received by the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee, there are significant reasons to doubt that the bill has that right balance. Universities Australia, the peak body for Australia's universities, says:

The Bill shifts significant decision-making authority to the Minister and the ATEC, with many of the framework's most important features left to Guidelines, non-disallowable instruments and administrative decision-making rather than primary legislation.

Universities Australia supports the broad direction of reform but recommends passage only with substantial amendments.

QUT, my old university, makes the point even more directly. It says:

The case for the Bill's funding reforms is clear. The case for these extraordinary Ministerial powers has not been made.

QUT warns that a measured delay to improve the bill would be preferable to legislation that permanently weakens university governance, autonomy and parliamentary scrutiny.

UniSC, in my electorate of Fisher, also provided a submission. They are in general support of the bill's objectives but they also warned that a centrally managed system may fail to keep pace with local population growth, workforce need and student demand. Now, as one of the members for the Sunshine Coast, many students tell me—in fact, I was at Chancellor College just recently—that moving away to study under this government's cost-of-living crisis is just not a realistic option. Travel, accommodation costs, caring responsibilities and lost income mean that, if a local place is unavailable, university may simply be unavailable to them.

UniSC rightly argues that decisions cannot be made solely from Canberra using lagged data; they must reflect local knowledge, local demand and the needs of high-growth communities just like mine. If we want more young people in Fisher to study locally, uniSC needs the certainty to plan, invest and grow with our community. I want to send a shout-out at this opportunity to Helen Bartlett, the vice-chancellor. She is doing a great job at uniSC as she embarks, on behalf of the university, on developing our very own medical school that the member for Fairfax and I worked so very hard for 10 years to develop with Griffith University. The time has now come for UniSC to have its own medical school, and the member for Fairfax and I will be continuing to push that very hard.

Most of the submissions raise legitimate concerns, including excessive ministerial discretion, insufficient transparency, weak parliamentary oversight, threats to institutional autonomy, rigid allocation settings or risks created by the overenrolment penalty regime. The bill's treatment of the Australian Tertiary Education Commission deserves particular attention. Labor presents ATEC as an independent steward, but independence from the sector is not the same thing as independence from the executive government. ATEC commissioners can be removed by the minister where their performance has been unsatisfactory for a significant period—terms which are not defined. ATEC cannot employ its own staff. It relies on APS staff made available by the department. It cannot independently engage contractors or consultants. It must have regard to ministerial priorities, and it remains subject to ministerial directions. These things should be ringing alarm bells in the broader education community.

More concerningly, the bill creates additional avenues for the minister to influence international student allocations, including by specifying matters with which ATEC must comply and by directing it to consider varying provider-level allocations. It is a body which may administer decisions but is structurally constrained by the executive by design—by this Labor government's design. The international student provisions require particularly close examination. Universities Australia states in its submission that the minister should set the broad framework but ATEC should make provider-level decisions independently according to transparent criteria. It also argues that the international allocation framework should be subject to independent statutory review. The coalition will examine those proposals seriously before we reach a position on these.

There's also a fundamental practical concern with the new managed-growth model. Under the current system, universities can enrol more students than the Commonwealth directly funds. They do not receive additional Commonwealth funding for those students, but they can retain the student contribution. That system is not perfect, but it has allowed universities to respond to genuine demand and educate more students using the same taxpayer contribution. This bill treats that flexibility as overenrolment and imposes a financial penalty. It changes a capped-funding model into a capped-places model. Why should parliament penalise an institution that educates more Australian students for the same taxpayer contribution? Universities have warned that the likely response will be more cautious offers, higher entry thresholds, early closure of applications and fewer opportunities for capable students.

The bill's fiscal claims also require a clear explanation from the minister. The minister's public pitch has referred to $3.6 billion over a decade and 230,000 additional places, yet the explanatory memorandum refers to $2.5 billion in additional net funding over 11 years from 2024-25 and 200,000 additional commencing domestic students over the decade. Those are not trivial differences. Where does the additional $1.1 billion come from? How did an additional 30,000 places appear? Why do the MYEFO papers refer to $2.5 billion over 11 years while the minister now promotes $3.6 billion over a decade? Was the new funding included in the budget? Was it being offset, cut or repurposed to pay for it? What protections exist against a funding announcement today becoming an unfunded liability tomorrow?

The Parliamentary Library's Bills Digest notes that the $2.5 billion MYEFO measure was partly offset through $16.4 billion in repurposed funding and efficiencies over 11 years. That makes transparent scrutiny of the government's new claims all the more important. The bill's needs based funding provisions also need closer scrutiny.

The principle of better support for First Nations students, low SES students and regional delivery is sound. The coalition supports genuine opportunities for Australians who have historically been locked out of higher education, but the practical operation of the scheme will turn heavily on ministerial guidelines, eligibility criteria, modifier amounts, regional classifications, conditions of grant, and expenditure rules. Adelaide uni says important policy settings are left to guidelines, and recommends a legislative requirement for genuine consultation before they are made or varied.

This is exactly why the committee process matters. Parliament should not be asked to sign a blank cheque and discover the real scheme later, in guidelines drafted behind closed doors in ministerial offices. The coalition will approach this bill constructively but not casually. The coalition will make its final decision after the work of the committee is complete. Our standard will be straightforward: does this bill expand opportunity without centralising— (Time expired)

Ms RYAN (Lalor—Chief Government Whip) (16:26): The name of this bill, the Universities Accord (Opening the Doors of Opportunity) Bill 2026, says it all. It speaks to this Labor government's intent and it speaks to this Labor government's motivation. It says everything about what we stand for. We stand for opening doors of opportunity. We stand against baking in disadvantage. I think this is a fitting title. At its core, this legislation is about ensuring that opportunity is given to all those across the country who have the capacity, the talent and the ambition to reach for it.

Australia has never lacked talent. Communities like mine in Lalor prove that every single day. It's a community where people don't lack ambition, and they deserve every opportunity to realise it. This bill recognises that simple truth because we on this side of the House understand the impact that education can have on an individual's life. We understand how it changes lives. We understand how it can change communities. The member for Gellibrand sits here with me in the chamber tonight. He and I between us represent the city of Wyndham. Nowhere is it more tangible than to see what it means when people aspire and are supported, and how people's ambitions can be lifted just by being in classrooms with people who strive to, and want to, have more.

This Labor government understands that. We understand how that ambition and aspiration can change a community, can change a school, can change our country and can change an economy. That's why this government aspires for a higher education level for all Australians, not just because it's good in itself—although it is—but because our economy will demand it. We need to have more educated Australians into the future, to ensure that we can maintain the economy that we're so proud of.

Two years ago we released the final report of the Australian Universities Accord. Since then, we've implemented more than 30 of the accord's 47 recommendations. From cutting 20 per cent of HECS debts and introducing paid prac—and then extending that as late as this week—to doubling the number of university study hubs, Labor's vision is one that recognises that Australia's future prosperity depends on the education system we build today. I stand by that—in early education, in school education, in TAFE, in free TAFE and in higher education. That means a higher education system that is larger, smarter, fairer, focused on the future and open to all.

Debate interrupted.