I rise to speak on the Universities Accord (National Higher Education Code to Prevent and Respond to Gender-based Violence) Bill 2025. Too many young people over too many years have had a story to share about feeling or being unsafe on campus. We know that's happening right around the country. I started university 20 years ago this year. It wasn't safe enough then; it's not safe enough now. I and many others can share stories of feeling and being unsafe on campus, and it's a reality lived by too many young women around our country today.

I've met with the National Union of Students many times, and I want to acknowledge their work and advocacy and their fight for student safety on campus. I particularly acknowledge the work of women's officer Ellie Venning from South Australia. The NUS have been fighting every day for safer campuses, and they support the implementation of the code. Through their work, they've highlighted that, even where universities have protocols for addressing harassment and gender based violence, staff often lack specific training and wellbeing counsellors are not equipped to support culturally and linguistically diverse or queer students.

According to the National Student Safety Survey 2021, nationally, we know one in two students knew nothing or very little about the reporting processes for harassment. In my home state of South Australia, that number is even higher at 59 per cent. Of course, when we talk about this issue and the many aspects of it, we are not talking just about numbers; we are talking about real people. Our future teachers, our future doctors, our future clinicians, our future engineers—every single one of them is taking up that life-changing opportunity that university can present, many of whom have fought extraordinarily hard to take their place on campus and step into the future they want to create for themselves, too many feeling unsafe, too many being unsafe, who have been fundamentally let down.

We know that when students do report incidents, many believe that police are their only option, and only if there is CCTV footage, otherwise it becomes their word against the perpetrators'. We know the stress and anguish of this when students are making decisions about reporting or about their future actions. We know of students going to great lengths to avoid their perpetrators, including changing tutorials, disrupting their studies or leaving their studies. We see the burden falling on them to adjust. While every university sets its standards, we know we can see perpetrators moving between campuses or moving between universities.

The evidence is abundantly clear that gender based violence, specifically sexual violence and harassment, is occurring in our higher education institutions at significant and unacceptable rates. We know that too many students and too many staff members simply don't know where to go for support. They don't know how to make a complaint. We know they have been fundamentally and thoroughly let down. It simply cannot be left in the too-hard basket any longer. The latest student safety survey showed us that a staggering number of students are being sexually assaulted each year in a university setting—hundreds a week—a third of universities don't have taskforces or committees set up to address sexual violence, and many are not simply meeting the mark when it comes to transparency. This just has to change. I acknowledge that I don't think there is a single person in this chamber who doesn't see that.

This bill is part of our action plan addressing gender based violence in higher education, agreed to by all education ministers last year. The National Student Ombudsman was another key measure of the action plan which kicked off in February. These measures, when taken together, help ensure greater oversight and accountability of higher education providers and will help drive the social change we need to see in the higher education sector to prevent and respond to gender based violence. The ombudsman was a necessary first step towards keeping students safe and ensuring they are heard when they make a complaint. This bill is a crucial next step.

I want to reiterate that many, many people have been calling for these reforms for a long time. Many have advocated and campaigned for them and supported them. This bill will establish a new standalone regulatory framework to reduce the incidence of gender based violence. It's about working with our world-class universities to keep staff and students safe.

We know from the Universities Accord final report that at least 80 per cent of our workforce will need a VET or university qualification by 2050. Currently, 60 per cent of our workforce has a higher education qualification. By the year 2050, 80 per cent will need not just to have completed high school but to have gone to university or TAFE or to have had some other higher education or tertiary studies. What this means is that for our economy to thrive, for states like South Australia to reach their full potential, we need more Australians taking up the opportunities of higher education. Those Australians need to feel safe when they step onto campus. They need to know where to go for support. We shouldn't accept any reality which sees a single Australian, a single young woman, abandon her study, abandon the future she has marked out for herself, abandon every shred of work she has put in to go to university and to set herself on a course to live the future that she desires and sees for herself, because she wasn't safe or didn't feel safe. That is a future we should all reject. This bill is long awaited, especially for students and victims-survivors. I commend it to the Senate.