At the AFR Higher Education Summit last week, Jonathon Duniam, the new Shadow Minister for Education and Early Learning, spoke of ushering in a more bipartisan era for higher education. He received a round of applause. It was tentative and somewhat unexpected—but it mattered. It showed that, even in a sector accustomed to contest and change, there is appetite for greater certainty and stability.
For students, bipartisanship promises just that: confidence that the goalposts for getting into and through university won’t shift every election cycle. For families, it means knowing that the decisions young people make about study, debt, and careers won’t be upended by political fashion.
For universities, it offers the long horizon needed to invest in people, build partnerships, and take risks that lead to genuine breakthroughs. Too often, higher education has been unsettled by abrupt changes, in funding, prioritisation, and geopolitics. Even the suggestion of a modicum of stability is a welcome change.
Still, bipartisanship should not be confused as comfort. It is not about silencing debate or erasing difference. Done properly, it anchors policy in the national interest and ensures governments are held to account. A constructive opposition strengthens the sector by testing assumptions, sharpening ideas, and improving decisions.
Common ground matters—but so does knowing when to challenge.
That is the role Mr Duniam must play. By his own admission, he has a brief to learn. He will need to press Education Minister Jason Clare on the big questions—particularly around research, where Australia risks losing ground internationally—and be ready to put forward credible alternatives. If he does, he will add substance to the national conversation and help secure the policy settings universities need. A stronger opposition is not a threat to higher education but a vital ingredient in ensuring the best policy outcomes.
Australia’s universities remain among the country’s greatest assets. They have educated generations, produced discoveries of global consequence, and built a reputation for quality that few nations of our size can claim. They are also anchor institutions in their regions, supporting jobs, driving local innovation, and shaping communities. Yet the signs of strain are real. Our progress in global rankings risks stalling. Opportunities in international recruitment markets—once a defining strength—are being left on the table. And we are not using our universities as fully as we might to project Australian influence and soft power abroad.
The challenges we face only heighten the need for clarity. National productivity depends not just on broadening access but on producing graduates with the skills to lead and adapt. Universities can do both: level up by extending opportunity, while also pushing the leading edge of discovery and application. But that requires steady policy, not mixed signals or stop–start reforms. Universities cannot plan ten-year strategies when the rules change every three.
Artificial intelligence is one example among many. AI is already reshaping how we live and work. The question is whether we will help shape this future or simply consume what others create. Meeting that challenge means embedding AI literacy across all disciplines so that graduates in teaching, health, law, and engineering—among many others—leave not only able to use these tools, but ready to lead others in adapting to them. It is not the only challenge: but it illustrates the kind of clarity of direction universities need if they are to prepare students for the world they are entering.
The applause for Mr Duniam’s remarks was hesitant and surprising, but it carried hope: hope that a more constructive and stable approach to higher education might now be possible.
Yet it also carried an expectation. Stability cannot be allowed to drift into complacency, and consensus must not mean silence. The sector needs both support and scrutiny if it is to thrive.
If government and opposition can hold to this spirit—clarity where it is needed, challenge where it counts—universities can get on with what the country needs of them. They can educate the next generation, fuel discovery, drive productivity, and project Australia’s voice in the world.
That is the promise of bipartisanship done well: stability with scrutiny, ambition with accountability—and a higher education system ready not just for today’s needs; but for tomorrow’s as well.
Professor Rorden Wilkinson is Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) at Macquarie University.