Australia’s opposition will review university fees, reintroduce the “50 per cent pass rule”, reclaim veto rights on research grants, regulate vice-chancellors’ salaries and “leave no stone unturned” to stamp out campus antisemitism if it wins the forthcoming federal election.

The Liberal-National party coalition might also scuttle the proposed Australian Tertiary Education Commission (Atec) if it wins the poll, which is due to take place by mid-May.

“We see no compelling case to proceed with the Atec,” shadow education minister Sarah Henderson told Universities Australia’s Solutions Summit. “This is another layer of education bureaucracy at a significant cost, which will not take our universities forward.”

In a frank address to the conference, Henderson laid out a higher education policy platform centred around the “key principle that Australian students must come first”.

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She said the coalition remained in favour of the Job-ready Graduates (JRG) changes to fees and funding it had introduced in 2021, but would review the reforms if it won government “in line with what our legislation said we would do”.

Henderson berated the government for not having completed the review “which was meant to have happened in mid-2022. Labor has undertaken at least 19 separate [education] reviews except for this one.”

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She said a coalition government would reinstate the “50 per cent pass rule”, stripping students of access to government subsidies once they have attempted eight subjects in the same course at the same institution and failed to complete at least half of them, which was introduced as part of the JRG reforms but abolished on the recommendation of the Universities Accord panel. “We don’t believe there are enough safeguards to protect struggling students from leaving university with no qualification and a large student debt,” she told the conference.

Her party would also consider ways to “better shine a light on the sector”, including an “Australian universities performance index” offering “transparent, easily accessible information” on completion rates, student satisfaction, course quality and cost.

Henderson said a coalition government would “seek to reverse” last year’s changes to the Australian Research Council (ARC), which took responsibility for approving most research grants out of the education minister’s hands.

“Under our Westminster system of government, the buck stops with the government of the day and not an unelected board,” she said. “We will take research integrity seriously and will hold the ARC to account for its enforcement of grant conditions.”

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Henderson said the government had “outsourced” the “hard work” of higher education policy to Atec, which was set to commence within months even though no legislation was yet in place.

She indicated that a coalition government would not honour the government’s appointment of Universities Accord chair Mary O’Kane as interim chief commissioner of Atec, and said the selection of fellow accord panellist Barney Glover as a commissioner raised a “potential conflict of interest” given that he was also commissioner of Jobs and Skills Australia.

Henderson said universities must be governed by “strong and principled leaders” and overseen by a “tough and feared regulator”. She said the salaries of public universities’ vice-chancellors should be set by the Commonwealth Remuneration Tribunal and not universities’ governing bodies. “In this cost-of-living crisis the current situation, frankly, does not meet the pub test.”

She said the coalition would force universities to overwrite a new definition of antisemitism that they adopted on 24 February and replace it with the “more robust” International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition.

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A coalition government would also implement a national higher education code on antisemitism, and require universities to “fully cooperate” with a new antisemitism task force led by the Australian Federal Police. “Everyone has the right to be safe on a university campus,” she said. “Academic freedom must not be used to falsely cloak incidents of antisemitism.”

Henderson reiterated her party’s intention to deliver a “tougher” cap on international students. “We will have more to say [on that] in the coming weeks,” she said.

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john.ross@timeshighereducation.com