The program for tomorrow’s public hearing into the Australian Tertiary Education Commission (ATEC) legislation has been published and reads like an exercise in going through the motions.
A total of three hours has been allocated for Senators to question witnesses about what is arguably the most consequential pieces of tertiary education legislation in decades.
The witness list includes Universities Australia, which gets its own 45-minute timeslot, and two of the other higher education peak groups, Innovative Research Universities (IRU) and Group of Eight (Go8) who will share 45 minutes between them.
The National Tertiary Education Union and Department of Education will also be appearing. Astoundingly, sector experts Andrew Norton and Claire Field have been given a total of 15 minutes, together, to appear as witnesses.
The other public university peak, Regional Universities Network (RUN), will not appear. Nor will the peaks representing the international education sector or the more than 160 non-university higher education institutions in the private sector.
As reported by Koala (310125), Senate submissions have already raised concerns and recommendations about ATEC’s scope, independence, governance architecture and relationship with existing regulatory and funding bodies.
A recurring theme in submissions was how ATEC will engage with the complex, nuanced and highly interconnected international education sector (public universities, private higher education providers, dual-sector institutions, VET providers, and transnational education arrangements) when there is no requirement that Commissioners have direct experience in international education. How ATEC will allocate international student commencements to the private sector was also a key concern of the submissions.
A three-hour hearing will not be sufficient for Senators to meaningfully interrogate these issues. Whether they are properly examined may ultimately be academic, given the clear parliamentary numbers pointing to the Bill’s passage.
The Universities Accord (Australian Tertiary Education Commission) Bill 2025 passed the House of Representatives on Tuesday. ATEC is already operating in an interim capacity. Once the Bill clears Parliament, as it almost certainly will, the Commission will be fully operational later this year.
Tomorrow’s program can be found here.
