The Universities Australia Chair delivered a major national address on the state of Australia’s university sector at a critical moment for the nation’s future. The speech set out the sector’s role in driving productivity, skills and innovation, and outlined the reforms needed to ensure universities could continue to deliver for students, communities and the economy. It also reflected on the challenges facing the sector and the opportunities ahead, with a clear focus on building a stronger, more prosperous Australia.

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I too pay my respects to the Traditional Owners of this land and extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander colleagues who are joining us today.

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to join us this afternoon. I particularly acknowledge:

• Chancellors and Vice Chancellors
• The Secretary and Deputy Secretary of the Department of Education
• The Chief Commissioner, Commissioners and staff of Australian Tertiary Education Commission
• The CEO and staff of the Australian Research Council
• President of the Academy of Social Sciences
• Members of the diplomatic corps, staff from ministerial and shadow ministerial offices, and
• Colleagues and friends.

On a hot, humid February day in 2019, I started as Vice Chancellor of Griffith University. On my first day, without a car and not clear on public transport, I got a taxi from my hotel to the Gold Coast campus.

When I directed the driver to Griffith and said I was starting work there, his unexpected response was: ‘What do you know about Glycomics?’ I pretended ignorance, and he spent the ride enthusiastically discussing our Institute for Glycomics and, in particular, the important work they were doing on developing a malaria vaccine.

Now, I’ve had a lot of conversations with a lot of taxi drivers over the years, but none of them had been like this.

It turns out he was a Rotary Club member and the great folks at Rotary had been fundraising to support this vaccine development for years. He felt both pride and ownership of the achievements of his local university and its potential to save lives around the world.

It was an auspicious start and over the years I have connected with so many people who feel the same.

I’ve got to meet our extraordinary graduates who have used their Griffith education to do everything from: creating hit TV series Bluey, to setting up a health service that has reduced maternal and infant mortality rates in PNG, to being the first woman to lead the Queensland police force, to being the first Arab astronaut.

I’ve worked with colleagues who are engaged with clinical trials to cure spinal cord injury, who are working with mothers in prison to reduce recidivism and improve post-prison lives, who are working with First Nations entrepreneurs to support their businesses, and who are recording whale songs and migration patterns.

Over seven and a half years later, as I finish my time at Griffith, that has been the constant – the joy and privilege of engaging with bright, passionate students, staff, alumni and members of the community.

Indeed, that has been my experience since the day I decided to give up a career in the law and become an academic. I know every one of my colleagues from every one of our universities would have similar stories of the impact and importance of their students, staff and alumni.

Much else, however, has changed over that time and not all for the better.

Our staff are still innovative, talented and care deeply about their teaching and research. But many are uncertain about their jobs, under pressure to do more with less, and fatigued by change.

Our students are still terrific and often inspiring, but many are under real financial pressure which makes it hard for them to focus on their studies, many are hungry, some are homeless. They are worried about a future with more debt and less employment certainty as technology changes the workplace, and they have increasing needs for both material and psychological support.

The recent increases in the students who will receive payments for their practical placements in healthcare will make a real difference – it is truly welcome. I thank the government for this great advance, but as ever more remains to be done.

Universities must also be honest that too many students have had experiences that fall well short of what they should expect from their university and for that we, the leaders of the sector, need to be accountable.

Next week, the 2026 National Student Safety Survey launches – the third time we’ve done this landmark survey with some confronting but important results in the past. We’ll be inviting students to anonymously share their experiences of life on campus. As a sector, we’ll respond to those results with empathy but – importantly – with action.

We are similarly working hard to respond to antisemitism and the shocking stories that came out in the Royal Commission. UA has supported training in antisemitism, developed by the team at Monash, and worked with the Special Envoy and Jewish student groups on change. The Respect at University survey told us that racism was not limited to antisemitism and under the new Standards we will work with TEQSA and key community groups on Islamophobia, racism against First Nations people and all other forms of racism. We are responding to these serious concerns with urgency, transparency and accountability.

We must take responsibility for our own institutional failures with respect to these issues and others. Our sector hasn’t always lived up to the high standards we set for ourselves, and that the community rightly expects of us. I know we are all striving to do better in the future.

However, many of the challenges of the past seven years are caused by forces external to universities.

The rapid and visible development of AI. The slightly less rapid and slightly less visible impact of AI powered robotics. The impact of COVID on youth mental health. And divisive social issues turbo charged by malign foreign actors.

Both young people starting out and older workers with greater experience are now facing the world with trepidation. They are not sure what jobs will be safe in the future – younger people may not be sure that there will be jobs in the future. Even jobs that persist are likely to change in both foreseeable and unforeseeable ways.

There are plenty of people who will tell you with confidence what the future of work looks like, but the real answer is that we just don’t know where we will be in a decade.

We do know that, at present, university study has strong outcomes.

Three years after completing an undergraduate degree, 91.7 per cent of domestic graduates in the labour market are in full-time employment. Those with any type of post-school qualification have an employment rate of 80 per cent, and those with no post-school qualification have an employment rate of only 58 per cent.

The ABS statistics from last year tell us that employees with a bachelor degree earn a median $300 more a week than Certificate III/IV holders and $700 more a week than employees without a post-school qualification.

That doesn’t mean that university is for everyone, or everyone gets a better outcome by going to university, or that this state of affairs will never change.

But we are sending our young people down a dangerous path when we begin opining that university is no longer worthwhile when the evidence to date simply doesn’t support this.

There are two slightly different questions opponents raise in this regard. One is whether young people need a university degree at all. The other is whether it is good value for money.

I’ve said it before and I will keep saying until it changes but the question of value for money lies at least in part in the hands of the parliament – they are setting the prices, and also deciding the costs for most Australian students

As universities, it is our important duty to ensure that the quality of education is as good as it can be.

We are responding to the challenges and opportunities of AI, supporting cohorts struggling with more financial and mental health issues, engaging more productively with industry and TAFE, and providing educational opportunities for people at all stages of life. That is our obligation as a sector.

On the government side, it is their obligation to ensure that the costs of study are not so high so that people whose lives would be better with a degree are not priced out.

The previous government’s Jobs Ready Graduates policy is recognised by all as failing in this important respect.

In addition, there also needs to be proper funding of teaching that is fit for purpose in this new environment. It is easily forgotten that JRG not only placed more financial burden on students but also took substantial resourcing out of universities – around $800 million a year.

That’s $800 million not being spent on innovative teaching, smaller classes, teachers with permanent jobs, support for more niche disciplines.

It’s $800 million that cannot be used to create forms of assessment that are more AI proof or support building the expertise of teachers to use AI tools constructively and imaginatively.

JRG was a fiscal boon for government and a financial burden for students and universities.

Both elements of the JRG – the increased student debt and the decimation of teaching funding – are in urgent need of reform.

The other more fundamental question – as to whether university is worthwhile at all, even if reasonably priced, is one that universities need to face.

In an AI world, where knowledge and analysis can be generated in minutes, is there still a role for universities? They are hard and uncomfortable questions to grapple with. But I am strongly of the view that university remains absolutely crucial to students and to our society.

A true education, which teaches critical thinking, deep analysis, an understanding of a body of knowledge rather than fragments of it, which inculcates skills, which encourages questioning, has both a fundamental value and a utilitarian one.

Education, the seeking of knowledge, the desire to learn, to understand is inherent in what it means to be human, a matter regrettably ignored in much public debate.

I recognise, however, that when people choose to give up years of their life and take on a debt, most are also looking for more pragmatic outcomes in terms of career opportunities or progression.

In my view, a rigorous education is one of the best bets for providing this in a world where narrow skill sets might put you in high demand for a couple of years but completely disappear a few years later.

Education, in almost any discipline, should create deep skills that are transferable as what the workplace requires changes over time.

I don’t want to be naïve enough to claim that every university experience is like this, but I do want to say that this is and should still be our aim. Our funding models should reflect that and not be stuck in a world dominated by lectures and tutorials.

Recent national teaching award recipients show what teaching for the modern world looks like.

Monash’s Virtual School which provides student teachers with real teaching experiencing in support school students in countries like Ukraine and Myanmar.

Simulation-based postgraduate psychology at Macquarie which uses role-playing, simulated initial client interviews, and psychological assessments before sending students on placements.

And RMIT’s Bridge of Hope Innocence Initiative that has students investigate claims from people who have been convicted of an offence but claim to be innocent.

Teaching, however, is only one part of what universities offer to Australian society. If we want those who graduate from university to have a good range of high-quality jobs to go into, there is much work still to do.

We must innovate, develop new intellectual property, set up companies that have national and global impact, and ensure we have sovereign capability in key areas.

The good news – the wonderful news – is this.

Australian universities punch far above our weight in undertaking world leading research and, increasingly, in translating that into real world impact.

In terms of quality, the 2027 QS World University Rankings place nine Australian universities in the top 100 and 27 in the top 500 universities in the world. We are a country with about a third of one per cent of the world’s population and we have nine per cent of the universities in the global top 100. How extraordinary.

That matters for far more than international prestige. It reflects the fact that our universities are among Australia’s greatest concentrations of knowledge, research capability and talent.

They educate the people who will build the industries of the future, undertake the fundamental research on which new technologies depend, and bring together government, business and communities to turn ideas into practical solutions.

Much of that work may never result in a new company or business, nor does it need to in order to be worthwhile. Its value may be seen in better public policy, improved health outcomes, stronger communities, or knowledge that opens possibilities we cannot yet foresee.

But spinouts provide one tangible measure of what can happen when university research moves beyond the campus and into the economy. The latest national survey of public research commercialisation records 422 active spinouts across Australian publicly funded research organisations. In 2024 alone, those organisations created 89 new companies, earned $241 million in commercialisation income and secured $1 billion in industry research contracts.

Universities are at the heart of that story.

Hysata was spun out of the University of Wollongong to commercialise a breakthrough high-efficiency green-hydrogen electrolyser.

MGA Thermal emerged from the University of Newcastle and is developing scalable thermal energy storage.

Q-CTRL grew from fundamental quantum research at the University of Sydney.

And Synchron spun out from the University of Melbourne has been perfecting a stent-like brain implant to give people with severe paralysis the autonomy and means to be understood.

These companies are not isolated success stories. They are examples of a much larger national asset: a university system that generates ideas, develops talent, solves problems and creates new economic opportunities for Australia.

The Ambitious Australia report applauded what has been achieved but sent a stark warning that more was needed. I recognise and thank the government for some of the moves they have made in this direction, particularly the incredibly welcome decision to seek membership of Horizon Europe. But critical work remains outstanding.

We need to ensure we are addressing the underpinning elements of long-term success - reversing the decline in research funding for fundamental research is an important start. Improved support for scaling and investing in nationally significant research infrastructure that will underpin significant public and private sector breakthroughs is critical.

With the abolition of the Australian Economic Accelerator, we need to have a solution to help ideas make it from the lab to impact on peoples’ lives.

Innovation, of course, does not just apply to products and new intellectual property. It also applies to social, economic, political and cultural change – and Australia has much to be proud of in this regard.

We are one of the world’s oldest continuing democracies. In 1894, South Australia became the first place in the world to give women both the right to vote and the right to stand for parliament. The Australian version of the secret ballot, introduced in Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia in 1856, was adopted around the world as the ‘Australian ballot’.

There has been plenty of social and economic innovation as well, from the Harvester Judgment’s ‘fair and reasonable’ wage principle to a world-leading national social media minimum age of 16.

Our current day humanities and social scientists are critical to facing the challenges of these times when faith in democracy and institutions is under threat and when we need new solutions to old problems.

For the world is indeed moving quickly and universities need to play new roles in helping to rise to the challenge, which brings me to my final point: what are the policy and cultural settings that are required to ensure that universities can fulfil our role?

Let me focus on two issues: improving the quality of policy and public debate and protecting university autonomy.

So, the first one: having better and more serious policy debates. As a society we need to be able to look at the full consequences of policy decisions and not just become distracted by the theatrics of politics.

The most pressing example here for our sector – but by no means the only one - is international students as an element of migration policy.

There may be good reasons for reducing the number of international students, or indeed other migrant groups, but we need an honest and informed policy debate about the consequences.

Over decades, both sides of politics have reduced public funding for universities, shifting some of the costs to Australian students while capping the amount they can be charged and thus leaving a large gap in university budgets.

Universities were sent out into the world to find additional funding to fill that gap, to ensure that we could:

• cross subsidise expensive to deliver or low enrolment but important courses for Australian students
• cover the full cost of research, including on costs
• invest in critical infrastructure (both physical and digital), and
• deal with the ever-increasing cost of compliance.

Many people think that because we are called public universities, governments pay for all those things. They do not, they do not pay for any of them, and they show no interest in doing so. Generating revenue from international students was the only realistic solution.

A lot of public discourse likes to describe this as universities being greedy, risky, and addicted to international student funding. We are, in truth, forced by government policy to be reliant on it.

The reality is that the Australian taxpayer got a world class university system at a cut price and the Treasury – and the taxpaying public – got the benefit.

With the egregious increases in the cost of student visas and post study work rights visas in recent years, the government is becoming reliant on international student income, despite warning universities of the risks of such reliance.

So, you can have or promote a policy to cut international student numbers radically but what’s the plan for the financial sustainability of our universities? Will the taxpayer resume responsibility for them or will we as a nation happily see thousands more job losses and the closure of small campuses?

And we might also ask what’s the plan for areas like health and aged care which are reliant on those students and graduates?

And what of the consequences to our tourism industry which gets the benefit of friends and family visiting students in Australia?

And what are the long-term diplomatic consequences if young people in our region go to university in China rather than Australia?

And frankly, what’s the plan for economic growth if we are disinvesting in migration, skills and knowledge formation and innovation?

At the end of all that analysis, a government may still want to deeply cut international student numbers for other worthy reasons, but at least people will be eyes wide open that along with the positives they have been promised, there are negative consequences as well. The politicians pledging cuts-might even start working on a plan for dealing with some of those consequences.

The second set of changes I would like to see is the creation of both legislative settings and a public culture which ensures universities have sufficient independence and autonomy.

I know at first blush this sounds self-interested – a form of special pleading.

It is not. The idea of university autonomy has both an individual and institutional element. For the individual, it is the collective manifestation of the rights of academics and students to be protected by academic freedom.

But having autonomous universities is also an inherent good - a critical protection against creeping authoritarianism and populist pressure.

A thriving liberal democracy requires a range of strong, independent institutions to stand between the significant power of the State and the relatively powerless individual. Unions and businesses organisations, media and religious institutions, and – for centuries – universities serve this important role.

It is no coincidence that authoritarian turns by governments through global history almost always target the independence of universities early.

We cannot take our democracy for granted. We must protect the role universities play in support of democracy, including and especially when that means speaking truth to power.

This rationale for autonomy was powerfully articulated by our former Prime Minister, John Curtin who said:

“Above all, the University must be a citadel for freedom – for intellectual, social and moral freedom. No matter what handcuffs or prisons other institutions may find necessary, the seat of learning must be the bulwark for liberty. What may be expedient for the State may well be a menace for mankind.”

So today, I am calling on the government to consider legislative protection for university autonomy. To make clear what it is that governments cannot and should not interfere with to help stem the tide of government overreach.

When governments seek to regulate our media, the democratic threat is recognised, and so questions are asked and debated as they should be. The same is not true for universities.

Every time government sets out to regulate or, indeed, informally push universities in particular directions, they do so for a good reason.

Indeed, many inside universities and university unions are often – misguidedly in my opinion – encouraging them to do more.

But the creeping regulation over years, the creation of new federal bureaucracies seeking to impose their agendas and their judgment on our work, the populist backlashes from the left and right when they don’t like something we do – all this is creating an ever narrower space for freedom of both institutions and individual faculty and students.

The cumulative cost of this approach needs tallying, and there needs to be a reckoning.

Now, let me be clear: if you give Australia’s forty odd universities freedom, some will make mistakes.

Indeed, let’s be honest, every single one of them will get something wrong, try something that fails, predict a future need inaccurately. The immediate solution to some always seems to be government intervention.

But some universities will try something innovative that succeeds beyond all expectations, some will spot coming employment needs that everyone else misses and cater to them, some will pioneer new forms of teaching, create new knowledge and research breakthroughs.

If, however, you try to control too much from the centre and the government or ATEC gets it wrong then every single university will make the same mistake.

To take an example. It seems perfectly sensible to say that we should direct more of our resources to disciplines where the future jobs will be and the government should decide what those are and require universities to focus on these areas. There are elements of this in the ATEC agenda.

Trouble is that humans generally, businesses and – especially – governments, are not at all good at predicting the future needs of the workforce, even in much less turbulent times than these.

It wasn’t so long ago that we were being told that we needed more and more graduates from every discipline who could code – quite different IT skills will be more urgently required. We have tech companies looking for employees with arts and humanities background who can bring the creativity and lateral thinking to the table. Some of the more manual jobs young people are being urged into may well be totally transformed or even destroyed by robotics.

Can a central planning authority ever move at the pace required, with the certainty needed to meet this task? History tells us: no. And the pace of change is far faster now than it was previously.

No institution will get this 100 per cent right, but we are better off trusting that the University of New England, deeply embedded in the communities around Armadale will have a better sense of the education and research that will benefit that region than even the most thoughtful and enlightened Canberra body.

There is a place for regulation, for accountability, and a reasonable debate to be had at where the limits of university autonomy end and how accountability for public money is overlaid.

But I fear at present, there is no debate at all - just an endless sense that whatever regulation seems expedient can be introduced and that it will not prove a menace.

As I come to the end of my time at one wonderful university and look forward to starting at another, I remain proud of this sector. I want to see it thrive.

I want to see our universities be diverse, innovative, and dynamic institutions – anchored in what is best of the past but curious and bold about the future.

Much of the onus is on us. We must strive every day to do better, recognise our shortcomings, and prepare for the complex future.

But it is a shared responsibility with government, with industry, with our broader society and, frankly, it is not just universities that have room for reflection and improvement.

Having quoted Labor luminary, John Curtin earlier, let me finish with Robert Menzies, who quadrupled federal government funding for universities:

“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.’ ‘We must become a more and more educated democracy if we are to raise our spiritual, intellectual and material living standards.”

Both Curtin and Menzies lived through terrible times when the worst of humankind was on stark global display. Both understood universities to be essential institutions in a strong democracy and thriving society.

I began today with a story about a taxi ride. Of a taxi driver who felt pride in the work of his local university and a sense of ownership in what it was achieving.

With so much focus on what is negative in universities at present and so little on all that is great, I suspect I might have a different conversation with him today.

My hope is that, maybe not on my first day as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, but certainly in the years ahead, conversations about universities will once again be dominated not by controversy or failure, but by the lives they change, the discoveries they make, the communities they strengthen and the possibilities they create.