Carina Garland (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The bill before us today is a really important piece of legislation. As a representative of an electorate with two universities and as someone who has been both a university student and an academic, I am very passionate about this reform. This has been a very long time coming. There have been generations of people, particularly women, who have not felt safe on campus and who have discontinued their studies as a result of dangerous experiences on campuses, which is an absolute shame. I want to acknowledge at the outset the advocates for change in this area on campus who have been doing a lot of hard work for generations, both attempting to change the way universities themselves respond to complaints and also seeking further government intervention to ensure that all university campuses in Australia are safe places.

The Universities Accord (National Student Ombudsman) Bill 2024 amends the Ombudsman Act to establish a national student ombudsman as a new statutory function of the Commonwealth Ombudsman. It gives effect to recommendation 18b of the final report of the Universities Accord, which was a landmark piece of work from our Albanese Labor government. The Universities Accord was the biggest and broadest review of the higher education sector in 15 years, setting out a blueprint for higher education reform for the next decade and beyond. The establishment of a national student ombudsman is also the first action of the Action Plan Addressing Gender-based Violence in Higher Education, which was agreed to by all education ministers earlier this year. Of course we need to ensure that, to meet our ambitions on the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children within a generation, we take action right across our communities, including in universities.

A little while ago, in my electorate, there was a roundtable hosted by Monash University which brought together representatives from almost every university in Victoria, members of the federal Department of Education and student and academic representatives to talk about what meaningful action to ensure that there is safety on campuses could look like. I was very privileged and honoured to be invited to that roundtable and to spend a day listening to experts in the field and students and staff reflecting on their own lived experiences. I reflect on the lived experiences of myself and my peers throughout my own academic life, both as a student and as a staff member in a university, and I recognise how important what we're doing today is: talking about introducing a new student ombudsman.

The National Student Ombudsman will really give rise to the action plan's recognition that higher education providers must play a role in driving broader social change needed to address gender based violence and that they have distinct responsibilities in relation to creating safe study, work, social and living environments. Unfortunately, a number of testimonies from people about their own poor experiences on campus relate to living in residential colleges. It is a shameful thing that people are not safe in their own homes, and colleges are people's own homes on campus, so, of course, universities have a role to play in ensuring everybody is safe.

The National Student Ombudsman will provide a national complaints-handling mechanism for all higher education students. It will be independent and impartial and will have a complaint-making process that is effective and accessible for students. Really significantly, it will adopt a trauma informed approach to complaint handling and bring parties together to resolve complaints through an alternative dispute resolution process as needed.

In the last budget, our government provided $19.4 million over two years to establish the National Student Ombudsman as an ongoing function of the Commonwealth Ombudsman. This is a really important investment. The bill amends the Ombudsman Act to establish the National Student Ombudsman to have powers to handle complaints from all higher education students enrolled within a Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, TEQSA, registered provider about a broad range of issues related to their higher education provider. It will have the power to investigate a student's complaint or investigate an issue on its own motion, and to refer a complaint to another body if that body is better placed to deal with the complaint, and provide associated information and documents as part of the referral. It will offer a restorative engagement process between a student and a provider where appropriate. It will offer alternative dispute resolution, such as mediation and conciliation, to settle complaints where appropriate.

It will make recommendations to a provider about administrative steps that should be taken to resolve a complaint; require a provider to give particulars about any action they propose to take in response to their recommendations; disclose information and provide investigation reports to the Department of Education and TEQSA where relevant; and provide the Minister for Education with a copy of an investigation report for tabling in parliament if the National Student Ombudsman considers the higher education provider has not taken appropriate action in response to its findings or recommendations. It can publicly disclose reports or make a statement if, in the National Student Ombudsman's opinion, it is in the public interest to do so; and it will report annually on complaint volumes, complaint outcomes and compliance with recommendations. This is a really robust and thorough approach to ensuring that our government and universities are taking appropriate action and taking the role we need to in order to address and eliminate gender based violence on campuses and right throughout our communities.

Before a report that includes criticism of a provider is finalised, the provider must also be given an opportunity to comment to allow for some fairness there. Other complaint bodies, such as state and territory ombudsmen, will be authorised to share information with and refer a complaint to the National Student Ombudsman to facilitate the referral of sensitive matters. There will be protection from reprisals here too. It will be an offence for a person to threaten another person or subject them to detriment because that other person has made, may have made, proposes to make or could make a complaint to the National Student Ombudsman.

This is a really significant step forward in the government's approach to eliminating gendered violence within a generation, which is, of course, the national ambition for all governments across the country. The fact that this will be an independent and trauma informed complaints mechanism should provide a level of comfort to people who take the often very difficult step of raising a complaint. We know it's not easy for people to voice their complaints. Indeed, in the past, if people have not felt that they would be listened to or that their complaints would be taken seriously, they have simply disengaged from study, and that is a terrible outcome. I hope that, through the establishment of a national student ombudsman, people will feel confident in coming forward to their education providers and that this step really sets a standard around the expectations our communities have about safety on campuses.

This student ombudsman proposal was a really important part of the conversations I've had with students right across my electorate and with parents across my electorate. I undertook a survey around the issue of higher education in my electorate, and I had hundreds of responses. Student safety was consistently raised as a very important issue, and it makes me feel really pleased to be part of a government that is taking action on an issue that matters so much to my local community. This is of course the key action of the Action Plan Addressing Gender-based Violence in Higher Education. All education ministers signed up to this. It will commence from 1 February next year. I hope that this finally shifts the dial on safety on campus. When I speak to students in my electorate in coming years around how they are experiencing their university lives, I hope that student safety and gender based violence ceases to be such a significant issue.

See this speech in context