I want to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we gather and pay my respects to Elders past and present. This always has been, and always will be, a country of deep knowledge and enduring connection.

We meet on a continent whose peoples have been teaching, learning and transmitting knowledge for tens of thousands of years—the oldest continuous systems of education in human history. And that is not a rhetorical flourish. It is a fact, and it should frame every conversation we have about what a tertiary education system in this country is for, and who it is for.

It is a genuine privilege to give the oration this evening, and to do so while having had the privilege to work alongside Larissa Behrendt, Tom Calma and Mark Rose. Let me begin by saying something about that work, because it matters.

Self-determination for First Nations peoples in higher education is taking shape. And it is taking shape in an uncompromising way, as it should and as it must. We do not have the time for, and we will not waste energy on, anything less. I am committed to supporting Mark in this endeavour. It sits at the heart of the Accord, and it is core to the work of the ATEC, building on the contributions of Larissa and Tom during our interim phase.

I must also acknowledge the many important guests here this evening and thank you for attending. Particularly Professor Mary O’Kane AC—the architect of the Accord, and in every way the emerita commissioner of the ATEC. I also want to acknowledge all the incredible people who have delivered the Bradley Oration before me: Mary, of course, Peter Høj, Glyn Davis and our Minister for Education, Jason Clare. Thank you to the University of Sydney for the invitation and to the Vice-Chancellor, along with the many other special guests here tonight.

A particular acknowledgement to my fellow Commissioners, Fiona, Stephen, David and Mark. Stephen has not made the trip, but Fiona, David and Mark are here. I want to acknowledge the great work they are doing alongside our CEO, David Turvey. Let me assure you, we meet very often.

In recent weeks, leading up to tonight, I have had the opportunity to reflect a little on the journey I have shared with Mary over the past 30 years: the many times she nudged my career, the many times she influenced my life in higher education. A wonderful mentor and an extraordinary role model.

The Accord process was, for me, a very new experience. But for Mary, Larissa and the great Jenny Macklin, it was simply another major, potentially earth-shattering review. They had done so many. And Mary, in particular, has made such a profound contribution to our sector, to research leadership and to scientific enquiry in this country and globally.

To be part of that was a great privilege. Thank you, Minister, for the invitation. Before we had even begun, Mary and I were chatting on the phone in November 2022, and Mary suggested we write down the recommendations then and there and see how they lined up a year later. They did. Such is Mary’s insight.

It is worth pausing on that. What Mary was really saying was that the evidence already existed. The problems were already known. The solutions were already visible to anyone prepared to look. What was missing was not merely compelling analysis. What was missing was the courage to act. And that, I think, is the central lesson of the Accord as a principled, evidence-based contribution to the transformation of tertiary education in this country.

There has been an interesting history to the Bradley Oration because of the Accord review. Denise Bradley and Mary O’Kane: two very different but immensely influential people shaping our system and its future at crucial moments, with ministers Julia Gillard and Jason Clare prepared to bring about profound change, particularly for those from socially and educationally disadvantaged backgrounds.

I had the opportunity to meet Denise on many occasions, one of which we have already recounted. And I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge Bruce and the family who are here tonight. It is wonderful you could make it this evening.

My encounters with Denise were always memorable for me, as I navigated her strength of personality and intellect. When I first met Denise, I was the new Pro Vice-Chancellor of Research at Curtin, part of the fledgling Australian Technology Network of universities, and Denise was the long-term Vice-Chancellor at the University of South Australia.

Then, of course, there was the Bradley Review itself, when I butted heads with Denise on what constituted a viable university from the Northern Territory perspective, through to her work with the late Phil Clark on infrastructure funding, and many other moments in between.

Denise was formidable. She was demanding, and she was right about a great deal.

One of the most interesting perspectives that Mary brought to the Accord process was the historical one. For example, Australia’s history of university commissions and major sectoral reform: from Menzies to Whitlam, to Hawke and Dawkins, to Rudd, Gillard and Bradley, and now Albanese, Clare and O’Kane. Let us not forget, along the way, the establishment of the Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission in 1977 by the Fraser government, for the first time bringing colleges, universities and TAFE under one independent authority.

These threads are important. Think about what each of those moments had in common. Menzies, who understood that national capacity and national security were built in classrooms and laboratories. Whitlam, who understood that access was not a privilege but a right, and who abolished university fees on precisely that basis. Hawke and Dawkins, who understood that a mass system required mass architecture: a unified national system, income-contingent loans, a framework that could carry scale.

Gillard and Bradley, who understood that growth without equity simply entrenches advantage. And now Clare and O’Kane, who understand that growth and sustainability must be engineered deliberately, because they will not arrive by accident.

Different eras, different philosophies, different politics. But the common and essential threads that draw the reforms of the governments of Menzies, Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke and Albanese together demonstrate the strength of a world-leading higher education sector. And they demonstrate something else as well: that this has never been a partisan project. It has been a national endeavour.

In the context of the greatest initiative of the Bradley Review—the demand-driven system—we should be honest about just how vital it was as a macroeconomic reform, and why it was destined to be time-delimited and, to some extent, to fall short of meeting its high expectations.

This is not a criticism of Denise Bradley. Far from it. The demand-driven system was the right reform at the right time. It opened doors. It changed lives. It moved our economy and changed the character of our cities and our regions.

Just reflect for a moment on the 2011 and 2021 censuses. Population grew across that decade by 14 per cent. The number of people with a vocational education and training qualification as their highest qualification grew by 25 per cent, and those with a bachelor’s degree or above grew by 67 per cent. A remarkable success in upskilling the nation in little more than a decade.

But it raises the question of whether the shape of our post-secondary education profile is fit for the future.

A demand-driven system, however, without a matching supply-side architecture, without a sustainable funding model and without a coherent tertiary framework, was always going to have a finite life. And so it did.

Perhaps that is why the O’Kane-inspired reforms moved the sector towards long-term sustainability, driven by ambitious attainment targets and managed growth, with “Gonski for universities”, as the Minister refers to it, in the guise of needs-based funding.

However, key but more focused elements of the Bradley reforms have been retained: demand-driven access for First Nations peoples and a new approach to managing a demand-driven system for equity students. The reforms compound and endure, as they should.

You cannot expand access if the funding model is straining underneath it, and you cannot sustain a sector that has abandoned its equity mission. Before delving more into the current work of the ATEC and the challenges facing our sector, I wanted to briefly respond to Mary’s Bradley Oration a year ago.

Mary quite rightly challenged us on the unfinished business: from the impact of AI, funding infrastructure and exploration of the size and shape of our sector, to matters of social licence, autonomy and workforce dynamics.

A year on, we are making progress, and these are front of mind for the Commission as we navigate the generationally significant challenges facing the sector. It is a work in progress, some of which will be explored in the context of our next Statement of Strategic Priorities and the State of the Tertiary Education System Report, due in the middle of next year.

I thought it would be important this evening, as the inaugural Chief Commissioner of the newly established ATEC, and at this moment in time, to outline some fundamental beliefs around the system that the threads woven by the likes of Dawkins, Chapman, Bradley and O’Kane have delivered.

I do this not to be prescriptive, but because a steward must be transparent about the values it brings to the task. Stewardship without stated principles is little more than administration.

Let’s begin with income-contingent loans, in the purest sense articulated by Bruce Chapman, reflecting as they do so elegantly the public and private benefits of a tertiary education. They are a means of ensuring higher education is within reach and affordable, with loans repaid fairly and indexed marginally, perhaps based on lifetime earning capacity. In the future, we also need to address the distortions of the Job-Ready Graduates reforms.

Bruce Chapman gave this country one of those genuinely world-leading policy innovations. The income-contingent loan is now imitated around the world. It is elegant precisely because it aligns the interests of the student, the institution and the taxpayer. And it respects a simple truth: the ability to pay should never be the gatekeeper of the ability to learn.

An elegant instrument can be badly calibrated. We have seen that happen. We have seen indexation settings that impose genuine hardship on graduates on modest incomes. We have seen pricing signals that distort student choice rather than inform it. The instrument is sound. The settings must be just.

Next, properly and fully funded places for all eligible students admitted to university, based on rigorous, defensible, evidence-based assessment of the cost of delivery of a quality higher education course, and priced to purchase efficiently a quality educational product. I am pleased that we have just released, under the leadership of Stephen Duckett, a consultation paper on efficient costing and pricing.

The idea of marginally funded places, as some form of efficiency dividend to the taxpayer, is abhorrent because it incrementally reduces the quality of the teaching and student experience. It drives our world-class universities further towards a financial crisis.

Let me be very clear about this. There is no such thing as an efficiency dividend in education that does not ultimately extract its cost from students: larger classes, fewer tutorials, less feedback, diminished pastoral support, reduced lab time and placement quality, and an overreliance on AI.

That is not efficiency. It is erosion of the very thing—quality—that gives an Australian degree its value in the first place.

Now to international education, where we acknowledge the enormous benefits of this vibrant component of our system. Changes are necessary to the governance of this critical part of the system. We need to move to a balanced, sustainable and managed growth strategy for international education. Quality, integrity and security cannot be compromised. It is vital that governments give clear, unambiguous and long-term direction to a vital part of our economy.

We understand the complexities of the current debate on migration settings and the relationship to international education. Without debating whether international student numbers should form part of the calculation of net overseas migration or not, we need to appreciate the realities of some of the settings being suggested for the country. One is the significant impact on our reputation in the region as a trusted, reliable partner in building economies and exchanging knowledge and expertise, most clearly exemplified in our graduates and our research collaborations.

What about the impact on research? Investment in our hugely cross-subsidised, vital research capacity and capability is not entirely the issue of substance. The true risk is a massive decline. What that means in healthcare, food security, environmental management, advanced manufacturing and public policy is staggering.

What about attainment targets and productivity? They are at risk. Ultimately, so are our living standards. There is a balance point. The current settings are broadly right. We need consistent visa processing. Universities need to align and realign to safer, more sustainable international student profiles for the long term.

I want to be clear about what I am not saying. I am not saying integrity measures are unwelcome. They are necessary. Genuine students deserve a system that protects the integrity of their qualifications. Genuine institutions deserve a system that protects their reputations. The Australian public deserves confidence that the system is being managed in the national interest.

Integrity and sustainability are not the same thing as restriction. There is a difference between managing growth and suppressing it. What we need is predictability. Institutions and students cannot plan on short-term horizons. Our regional partners cannot build partnerships on uncertainty.

Clarity, consistency, long-term direction. Those are the things the system needs and thrives on from government. In return, the sector must deliver quality, integrity and a genuine commitment to sustainability. Let’s be clear-eyed. We will not see significant growth return in the foreseeable future. Universities need to explore their futures with a conservative and balanced approach to international student profiles. The caution coming from the compact discussions tells us that much.

International education has been one of Australia’s great success stories. It has built bridges of knowledge and trust across our region. It has produced generations of leaders in Southeast Asia, the Pacific, South Asia and Africa who studied here, know us and work with us. That is soft power in its truest form.

But a success story built on an assumption of perpetual growth is a success story with a fault line running through it. We are seeing that now. We know that volatility impacts our universities almost existentially. It impacts our sovereign research capability, and it impacts our capacity to maintain a world-class tertiary education system. We already see the early signs of tension and risk in the sector: declining cash reserves and another deep round of structural change looming.

One of the most prominent reforms emerging at the moment is our commitment to a more joined-up tertiary education system, and a much deeper appreciation of the balance needed between continued growth in higher education and stimulating growth in the VET system.

Harmonisation is proving an attractive strategy for many universities. We can do more with shared infrastructure and new credentials: degree apprenticeships without an FBT anchor dragging them down, vocational degrees, micro-skills and micro-credentials. New models of dual-sector collaboration not dominated by universities.

We also need a true commitment to equality of recognition across our two sectors. However, we have built, over decades, a hierarchy in our national imagination. University is at the top, VET somewhere below. That hierarchy is not justified by the evidence. It is not justified by the labour market. And it is certainly not justified by the national interest.

Some of the most skilled, most sought-after, most economically essential work in this country is done by people who trained in the VET system. And some of the most urgent national challenges—in energy transition, the care sector, advanced manufacturing and construction—will rely critically, but not exclusively, on a growing and dynamic VET sector. We need to mean it when we refer to equality in recognition. We need to build the funding settings, credential architecture and pathways that make it real rather than aspirational.

Now to research. We need to significantly lift our level of investment in research. This is not just to counter the decline in international student revenues, but to address a fundamental sovereign risk issue for Australia. There is also the critical need for greater career certainty for researchers and scientists. It is in the national interest, and the Strategic Examination of Research and Development proposes a way forward. Without it, we will languish behind many other countries.

Our research capacity has been substantially cross-subsidised by international student revenue. That has been true for a generation, and we have benefited enormously from it. When that revenue declines, whether through policy settings, geopolitics or market shifts, it does not simply affect university balance sheets. It affects the research that underpins our capacity to be innovative and entrepreneurial across all facets of our economy and society.

It affects something less visible but more consequential: our ability to attract and retain the scientists and scholars who do this work. Careers built on short-term grants and perpetual uncertainty cannot compete with jurisdictions that offer stability and long-term investment. This is a sovereign risk issue, and it deserves to be treated as one.

It is worth reflecting for a moment on the way in which this challenge is being tackled in two important partners to Australia: Canada and the UK.

In Canada, the Carney government is keeping the international student caps tight, cutting new visas to about 155,000 this year and holding them flat for the next two years, but carving out exceptions for graduate students and investing significantly in research: C$1.7 billion to attract top international researchers and fund infrastructure. The message to struggling universities, of which there are many, is basically “talk to your province”. So it is: cap the numbers, attract and retain the brightest, and let the provinces handle the fallout.

In the UK, it is a similar mixed approach from the Burnham government. They are adding pressure with a £925-per-international-student levy from 2028, which will cost universities around £1 billion. They are also offering some relief with two-year post-study work visas for graduates of high-compliance universities, pension cost cuts and a pivot towards exporting education to offshore campuses—with a £40 billion target by 2030—instead of just recruiting more students inbound to the UK. There are no direct bailouts, though. The line is that universities manage their own finances, and we are seeing significant ongoing deficits, large-scale redundancies and mergers.

Both countries are tightening the flow of international students while offering targeted carve-outs for elite talent and research, and neither is stepping in with rescue funding. We are relatively fortunate to have a government willing to invest in managed growth in student load, but the long-term potential impact on our research capability cannot be overstated.

Now let me turn to nurturing new forms of collaboration across the university sector. We need it to deliver consistently high-quality programs at the national level. This is not homogenisation. Not consolidation for its own sake. Genuine collaboration: shared platforms, shared services, shared infrastructure, shared courses where it makes sense, and distinctive missions where it matters.

The era of every institution attempting to do everything, everywhere, at scale, is over. Frankly, it was never sustainable. The question is what replaces it, and the answer must be deliberate collaboration, not accidental duplication.

Not surprisingly, I believe in a system steward and the concept of stewardship. During the early stages of the interim version of the ATEC—ahead of the legislation—Mary, Larissa and I were musing over how the ATEC would embrace stewardship. We looked at overseas comparators, from the UK and Europe, and it was interesting talking to the architects of ATEC-like entities and hearing their views on what the characteristics of a system steward should be.

Some concepts stood out: cooperation and collaboration, coherence and consistency, compassion and, importantly, courage.

This means stepping in, rather than merely responding to challenges. Not as a regulator, but as a partner committed to the success of the institution, its staff and its students. Examples were given highlighting the problems that compound through inaction or delayed response. This is manifest in our sector already, and stepping in constructively should be a characteristic of the ATEC.

I want to say something about courage, because it is the hardest of those characteristics and the one too readily avoided. A regulator is driven by process and compliance, and rightly so. We are fortunate to have world-class regulators in ASQA and TEQSA. A steward cannot be driven in that way.

A steward must sometimes say the uncomfortable thing early, rather than the comfortable thing late. A steward must sometimes engage before the crisis is undeniable. A steward must sometimes hold an institution to account while simultaneously helping it to succeed.

That is a difficult line to walk, but it is the line the ATEC should walk. And it is why the characteristics Mary, Larissa and I kept returning to were not primarily technical. They were human: cooperation, compassion, courage.

Now I want to briefly comment on the outcomes of the compact process for 2027: the data and the lessons learned, along with areas of focus and the response of universities.

The compacts represent a genuine shift in how we manage the system. Not a compliance exercise, not a form, but a structured conversation about mission, about community, about strategy and about purpose.

The discussions were extensive and frequent over three months, culminating in a finalised mission-based compact and the allocation of Commonwealth Supported Places. Equity targets were set for 2027, and critical strategic issues of concern to the sector were canvassed. The discussions were collegiate and bidirectional.

What we are learning is valuable because it is granular: where institutions are making genuine commitments to access, where they are genuinely embedded in their regions, where the rhetoric of engagement is matched by measurable outcomes, and where it is not.

In summary, 624,590 fully funded places were allocated, an estimated increase of 23,000 fully funded places on this year. Transitional commencer load limits were set, up almost 24,000, or 10 per cent, on projected commencer load this year. This will give universities the confidence they need to ensure eligible students get a place and, importantly, eligible equity students are not left stranded.

National, state, territory and regional priorities were discussed and addressed enthusiastically, along with responses to build equity, drive self-determination for First Nations peoples, ensure a more effective and joined-up tertiary education system, support quality teaching and build an understanding of the challenges facing our research training system.

The compact discussions have also highlighted a number of issues needing long-term consideration. Success and retention data are highly variable across the sector, and universities are responding to the challenge, but more needs to be done. Campus infrastructure and new facility development require more direct, frequent and deeper engagement between institutions and the ATEC.

Regional competitive pressures are creating viability challenges and, as I have mentioned, international education is at a crossroads for many universities.

Beyond the challenges, the discussions highlighted the extraordinary role our universities are playing within communities across the country. Our first State of the Tertiary Education System Report next year will highlight this and address the social licence commentary that dominates the media discourse on our universities. A short snapshot of the compact outcomes and many of these contributions was released by the ATEC today. I have one I made earlier. It is worth a read.

So what comes next? The first of the four-year compacts, 2028 to 2031. A new Statement of Strategic Priorities, currently out for consultation. New domains being proposed: Global Engagement, Collaboration, and Student Experience and Safety. Another round of negotiations, new performance domains and richer data.

There will be more informed discussion of strategy and opportunity, with a clear system perspective and a mission-based focus. By the middle of next year, this will have been completed, subject to the government announcing the Total Allocation Pool and the National Planning Level as soon as possible after the budget next May.

That is the trajectory: from compliance to strategy, from data as an obligation to data as a decision-making tool, from a sector of individual institutions to a genuine national system with differentiated missions and deep, resonant collaboration.

So what are the challenges beyond those I have already articulated? They are worth more than a little reflection. The two macro settings—the level of the Total Allocation Pool and the National Planning Level—are crucial determinants of the trajectory of the sector: its health and vitality, and its ability to deliver the National Tertiary Education Objective.

We need the settings for 2028 to 2031 to accommodate the growth we envisage and calibrate the viable future for the sector we need in the national interest. The demographic trends are clear from the Intergenerational Report. Our population is growing, it is ageing, and the demand for skills—in care, technology, construction and energy transition—is accelerating, not stabilising. Migration at sustainable levels is vital, as is a clear and consistent international education strategy in tandem with it.

Artificial intelligence, its impact and the resulting changes to our economy loom large. AI compounds this. It will reshape what skills are needed and how they are taught. It will disrupt professions and create new ones. And it will place a premium on the very thing universities exist to produce: the capacity to think critically, to evaluate evidence, to reason under uncertainty. Our universities are ready for it, and we see AI as a cross-cutting theme for the next Statement of Strategic Priorities.

Finally, we must consider the balance between investment in our universities and the critical importance of the next National Skills Agreement. We need to ensure that we not only promote equality of recognition between two vital sectors, but also create pathways, new credentials and a commitment to lifelong learning that gives the best chance of reaching our aspirational and ambitious 2050 attainment targets.

These are not reasons to be anxious. They are reasons to be deliberate.

In closing, the Accord gave us a framework. The ATEC gives us the machinery. The compacts give us a mechanism. But none of it means anything without the will to act.

From the Mills and Murray reviews that created our first Universities Commission in the 1950s, the great reforms of our sector were driven by people willing to spend political capital on a long-term national project. They did not wait for perfect conditions. They did not wait for complete evidence. They acted.

That is the tradition we inherit and that we must honour. The threads are there to trace. The evidence is in and compelling. The first tentative steps have been taken. What is required now is for the steward to guide the way.

Thank you.

Hero image: Professor Barney Glover AO delivering the 2026 Bradley Oration (photo credit: University of Sydney / Michael Amendolia).