Higher Education Legislative Reform

The Challenge

The Australian Universities Accord was a 12-month review of Australia’s higher education system established to ‘devise recommendations and performance targets to improve the quality, accessibility, affordability and sustainability of higher education, in order to achieve long term security and prosperity for the sector and the nation.’

The Accord made a number of recommendations to address fundamental challenges facing the Australian higher education system. As part of its response, the Government introduced the Universities Accord (Student Support and Other Measures) Bill 2024 into the House of Representatives on 15 August 2024, which fulfils a number of commitments made by the Government in the lead-up to the 2024–25 Budget in response to the Australian Universities Accord’s Final Report. The Bill passed both Houses of Parliament on 26 November 2024, and received Royal Assent on 5 December 2024.

Introducing the Bill was a key priority for Government to support students with cost-of-living pressures. The legislation to be developed to implement the Government’s budget measures was complex and had significant stakeholder impacts to be managed.

The Bill and all supporting materials had to be developed at pace to enable consideration by the Parliament in the Spring sitting period.

The Action

A Polis Partners team joined the department’s legislation taskforce established to get the Bill developed and passed through Parliament. We worked as one team with the departmental officers to coordinate inputs and actions from multiple policy areas throughout the entire process which included:

• finalising the draft Bill
• obtaining outstanding policy authorities
• drafting supporting material including the explanatory memorandum and second reading speech
• preparing Ministerial briefing on the Bill
• providing supporting materials in preparation for debate of the Bill including question and answer briefs, talking points etc.
• drafting a written departmental submission and preparing the Senior Executive for appearance at public hearings of a Senate Committee’s inquiry into the Bill
• coordinating responses to questions taken on notice at the public hearing
• preparing a Government response to the Senate Committee’s report
• coordinating responses to proposed amendments to the Bill through Parliamentary considerations
• drafting instruments and explanatory statements to support implementation of the legislative amendments.

Polis Partners also took the lead on tracking and coordination of the entire process to enable Senior Executive to be informed and prepared.

The Results

The Bill was passed on 26 November 2024. It includes amendments to the Higher Education Support Act 2003 and other legislation to improve the way HELP indexation is calculated by capping the HELP indexation rate to be the lower of either the Consumer Price Index (CPI) or the Wage Price Index (WPI) and providing an indexation credit to people’s HELP accounts to ensure the new HELP indexation cap has effect from 1 June 2023. This change will impact more than 3 million Australians, and will ensure that outstanding loans never grow faster than average wages in the future.

The Bill also provides for a weekly Commonwealth Prac Payment to support teaching, nursing (including midwifery) and social work students to complete their university practicum placements, and delivers FEE-FREE Uni Ready courses to create enabling pathways which will help more students to gain the skills they need to get into university and participate in tertiary education.