Bill Shorten
18 September 2025: Firstly, thank you for delaying your dinner by a week so I could be here. The reason for the delay was because I travelled to war-torn Kyiv at the invitation of a Ukrainian think tank. Being in a country that is fighting a brutal and unjust war means the speech I deliver tonight is a very different one from that I would have delivered last week.
My time in Kyiv was an epiphany. I met hundreds of brave Ukrainians. Young political leaders in their 20s who have had their lives brutally and permanently changed. University students the same age and with the same dreams as those at the ÂÜÀòÊÓƵ until the Russian invasion.
I met Eddy Scott, a British volunteer medic who, on 30 Jan –around the same time I started as Vice-Chancellor of the ÂÜÀòÊÓƵ – was hit by a Russian drone as he was evacuating people from Pokrovska. He has been well cared for, and the ‘Superhumans’ centre for war trauma has fitted him with state-of-the-art prosthetics built with Ukrainian technology.
I spoke to the Director of the Kyiv School of Economics lecturer who told me 15% of students in his MBA courses had been killed.
I learned that when Ukraine found itself at the whim of unpredictable external munitions supply chains and mercurial politicians, it ramped up its domestic drone manufacturing capability from none, four years ago, to 3.5 million per year. More than 96% of these lethal weapons are now produced domestically. Their producers get real time feedback from the war front and that information is funnelled directly into new tech and tactics. This was innovation on steroids due to the necessity to produce at speed and scale. And every day we ignore the lessons they have learned is a wasted day we will come to regret.
Tonight, I want to start a conversation that is informed by a sense of urgency and a desire to serve our nation. Our possession of a continent, rich in natural resources, can no longer be reliant on our distance alone for security.
For the better part of three decades, Australia has enjoyed a holiday from history. We’ve operated on the assumption that the strategic currents of our region were predictable, that our prosperity was assured, and that the great challenges of national resilience and sovereignty were problems for other less fortunate nations. That holiday is now over. We find ourselves in a world of escalating strategic competition, where economic resilience is a core pillar of national security.
Australia, in this new, demanding environment, is carrying a profound structural vulnerability. For all our wealth, for all our talent, our economy is dangerously simple. The Harvard Kennedy School’s Economic Complexity Index—a powerful predictor of a nation's resilience—ranks Australia an alarming 105th in the world out of 145. Our near neighbours are Botswana, Panama, Namibia and Togo. This is not an academic curiosity; it is our central strategic problem. We have become a nation with a world-class campus but no factories: a quarry but no forge.
For anyone not familiar with the concept of economic complexity, it is an economy’s ability to produce a diverse range of sophisticated products. This is seen a reflection of the knowledge and know-how held within and, therefore, serves as a measure of that knowledge and know-how. Higher economic complexity usually encourages faster economic growth due to the diversified portfolio of products and services making them less susceptible to economic and political shocks.
The structural fragility of our economy is the single greatest threat to our long-term security. And I put it to you tonight that our university sector, the engine room of our national intellect, is crucial to solving this crisis but, in its current form, is a reflection of it. This is no longer just a matter of educational policy, but one of national survival: in an era of profound geopolitical uncertainty, is it time to fundamentally re-imagine our universities as a core instrument of our national power?
Australia’s universities were internationalised as we rode the wave of globalisation over the last 30 years, but now the times have changed and we need to better leverage the advantages we have built up.
To do that, we must be bold. We need to dismantle the analogue structure and replace it with a new architecture for learning. Faster learning pathways that speed up knowledge and skill acquisition to meet industry needs – just-in-time modular, agile. Personalised learning - upskilling the existing workforce to capitalise on new technologies, approaches and knowledge.
First, we must break the monopoly of the three-year degree as the primary unit of educational currency. The future of learning is not monolithic; it is modular. We must continue to build a system of stackable credentials and accredited units, that lead to subject credits, that lead to sub-degree qualifications, that lead to degrees. This is not about devaluing a full university education; it is about creating multiple, flexible entry pathways and exit points to achieve it.
Let me be very clear, while the structures I’ve referred to are critical to our collective future, they do not dimmish the importance of education. At a time of geopolitical and societal challenges and threats to the foundations of liberal democracy, we need the humanities and social sciences more than ever. This is exemplified by the looming AI revolution and the increasing centrality of cognitive skills, critical thinking, communication and the ability to learn to learn.
Imagine a Defence industry worker in Adelaide. They don't have three years to learn about quantum mechanics but they have a wealth of skills and experience and 4-6 weeks to complete a micro-credential co-designed with industry and Defence to fill identified gaps. That credential could be stacked to others, give them credit towards a Graduate Certificate in Strategic Technologies, which in turn could set them on the path to a Master’s degree if that is what they need. This is a system that builds skills at the speed of relevance, providing the workforce for AUKUS Pillar II not in a decade, but now. This is a recognition that today not only school leavers can benefit from university.
The ramping up of defence manufacturing will call for skilled workers in professions including scientists, engineers, project managers, technicians, welders, construction workers, electricians and metal fitters. Harmonisation of the VET and Higher Education sectors becomes even more of an imperative against the backdrop of national security needs National security doesn’t ask if you went to uni or TAFE or how long you studied. It just needs the right skills to uphold it.
Second, we must use technology to move beyond the industrial-era model of batch-processing students. The current system is designed assuming everyone commencing study knows nothing. This is a profound waste of human potential and time.
We have the technology today to assess existing skills and create an individualised learning pathway for every student. A defence veteran entering a cybersecurity degree already possesses a deep, practical understanding of risk management and operational security. Why force them to sit through first-year subjects covering these basics? An AI-driven diagnostic tool could assess their existing competencies—formally known as Recognition of Prior Learning, or RPL—and build a bespoke degree structure focusing only on the knowledge gaps. This is a shift from mass production to mass personalisation – a more efficient, respectful, and effective way to build our national talent pool.
The Western Governors’ University in the US is a great example of customising qualifications by creating a student’s skills profile, or achievement wallet. It is one of the only institutions offering competency-based degrees, at scale, and other universities are striving to replicate it.
At WGU, a woman who’d been a bookkeeper for 15 years but with no formal qualification was able to finish a degree in nine months with RPL. This is what it looks like to make a deliberate effort to measure and document the skills gained by lifelong learners in a systematic and a rigorous way.
Jobs and Skills Australia is currently looking into a national skills passport which was an idea floated in the Universities Accord Interim Report. This would support a more joined-up national skills system in Australia.
If we can crack the RPL nut, university study becomes much more affordable and inclusive, with less to pay for degree completion.
This brings us to the third, and perhaps most challenging, piece of the puzzle: the social contract. Our current system is a paradox. We tell our young people that a university education is the key to their future, then saddle them with a debt that mortgages that very future. We are asking individuals to bear the full financial risk for developing the sovereign skills that we, as a nation, so desperately need. Unfair and strategically foolish. We need more Commonwealth Supported Places.
A reimagined university system requires a reimagined funding model. If a particular skill—teaching STEM, artificial intelligence, or trauma-informed healthcare—is deemed a national priority, then the nation should share the risk of developing it. It does not mean the Job Ready Graduate Package. I’m not here to reopen the tired, old 1980s training levy debate. I acknowledge that businesses need profit not taxes but Australia needs their collaboration and partnership. A "National Skills Bursary" co-funded by government and industry, where companies in the health, defence technology, and resources sectors directly subsidise the micro-credentials they need, would remove the debt burden from the individual.
To achieve a more complex and resilient economy, we cannot begin by loading the next generation of innovators and operators with a mountain of debt. We must see the education of GenZ and Millennials – and that of mature students – not as a private benefit to be paid for, but as a public good in which to invest. This is why the Government’s first legislation in the 48th Parliament – to reduce student debt – is so significant.
And we must not underestimate the role universities can play in international relations through soft diplomacy – though some argue the name downplays its impact.
Jane Knight, Professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in Canada, says it is more accurate to describe it as “knowledge diplomacy”. Knight said soft power suggests influence and attraction; cultural diplomacy is about people mobility; while knowledge diplomacy emphasises mutuality and shared progress.
The original Colombo Plan was groundbreaking in its benefit to economic cooperation and social progress in the Asia Pacific but also positioned Australia as part of the ‘neighbourhood’. It created lifelong affection and gratitude for Australia and Australian friendships, networks, mentors and collaborators for many of the current leaders and innovators in the Indo-Pacific, as well as deep cultural understanding of Australia. The Plan was revived by the Abbott Government in 2014, but this time we also sent Australian students to the Indo-Pacific. A two-way exchange improved Australia’s overall Asia literacy and enhanced our reputation as a regionally engaged and like-minded partner.
I think it is right to take a moment to recognise the work of the Albanese Government – especially that of the Prime Minister, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Defence Minister Richard Marles, and Minister for International Development and the Pacific and Defence Industry, Pat Conroy – in deepening connections with the Pacific family to achieve our shared goal of a peaceful, prosperous and resilient region.
Today, there is growing evidence that universities can make strong connections in the region and support the development of neighbouring countries. Our expertise can be employed across a range of current and emerging issues in our region – bio-security, climate change, poverty reduction, health, aged care and education among them. While collaborative research builds joint knowledge and capacity.[1]
It is not just a moral obligation of our wealthy nation to assist developing economies; being a good neighbour is a preventive national security measure. To support the economic and social wellbeing of neighbouring populations and to see them thrive is preferable to dealing with a potentially failing state.
Any new architecture for learning must be housed in a new institutional structure. The current model encourages a homogenous sector where all Universities are chasing the same goals. It spreads our limited resources too thinly and forces institutions to compete on a narrow set of global rankings that do not necessarily align with our national interest. At its best that breeds uniformity, at its worst, mediocrity.
Australia’s higher education market is saturated with prestige-driven narratives that often alienate millennials, GenZ and potential students from regional, first-in-family, neurodiverse, mature-age and non-traditional backgrounds. It is time for change.
It is time for mission-based differentiation. It is time for mission-based compacts overseen by the ATEC, as outlined in the Universities Accord, ably led by Education Minister Jason Clare. I can hear the sceptics. Individual compacts have failed before. But that has been due to complacency, myopia, competition or because selfishness took over and it was easier to retreat to the comfort zone.
That argument no longer holds water. We are in a very different world from when we last chose to go slow or ignore these issues. The context has changed, the need has increased, and it’s more pressing than ever. Compact incentives can promote disruptive new thinking. I would welcome greater government and ATEC intervention in the university sector to support the differentiation. This is genuinely profound reform.
It’s time to open the dialogue on whether our current higher education structure is fit for purpose and to ask whether we continue to put difficult questions in the too hard basket for fear of disrupting the status quo.
First, should we create a stream of specialist universities?
Why shouldn't Australia have a national University of Advanced Technologies focused, laser-like, on the engineering, computing, and physics skills required for our sovereign defence industry? Why not a national Health Sciences University, dedicated to tackling the complex challenges of an ageing population and future pandemics? Or a University of Foreign Studies as many of our Asian neighbours do.
Or alternatively, differentiated universities as opposed to every university trying to be comprehensive.
Such institutions would concentrate our finite research funding and talent, creating genuine, world-leading centres of excellence, rather than dozens of competing, under-resourced departments.
Second, should we create a well-resourced stream of universities that demand and reward excellent teaching?
The vast majority of undergraduate students need and deserve pedagogical excellence. not just proximity to a research lab. What differentiates universities from TAFE is research-led teaching that incorporates the latest research and research inquiry methods, drawing on case studies and data from research to develop analysis, evaluation and critical thinking skills. [2]
Why not empower a set of institutions whose growth, funding, and staff promotions would be based on the quality of their teaching and the success of their graduates – rewarded for greater student satisfaction. They would become world leaders in the science of education itself, training the teachers, nurses, and engineers who form the backbone of our society. This is not about creating a two-tiered system; it is about creating a fit-for-purpose system, where excellence is defined by the successful execution of a clear and distinct mission.
Or an alternate strategy for specialisation – rather than letting a thousand flowers bloom, universities with an identified set of research focus areas.
And third, how do we overcome the gaping chasm between Australia’s excellent discovery research and our ability to apply and commercialise it?
Our universities do the lion’s share of research in this country. Innovative Research Universities – of which ÂÜÀòÊÓƵ is a member – does 25% alone. Our focus is on applied research that benefits the communities in which they are based, but also on broader national and global issues.
It may surprise some to hear that most of the growth in research productivity in the last 20 years has come from universities outside the Go8.
If we are to go from a mining-based to an advanced manufacturing economy, the university and corporate sectors have to amp up their knowledge transfer. For too long Australia has not reaped the rewards of our universities’ excellence in discovery research. Despite increased collaboration with industry[3], too much goes offshore or falls into the valley of death, never to be seen again.
Australia’s $1.6 billion Australian Economic Accelerator program is helping translate basic research through to commercialisation. But another way to get universities and industry together would be R&D collaboration premium for industries which partner with publicly-funded universities – a recommendation put forward in an Australian Government review of R&D tax incentives in 2016. The argument being that combining the push of universities towards industry via the Australian Economic Accelerator and the pull of industry towards universities via the collaboration premium, we could supercharge the Australian research ecosystem.[4]
The idea of specialist universities does not make research and teaching mutually exclusive, rather the differentiation would be complementary and serve the nation in a much more efficient way.
This brings me back to my central proposition. Reimagining our modern universities is not simply an educational reform; it is a national security and foreign policy imperative. The new architecture which comes from the questions I have asked is designed to rebuild our sovereign capability from the ground up, addressing the three critical missions our nation requires of its universities.
First, it supports our security aspirations by cultivating a sovereign skills base. The agile, modular system is the way to produce the thousands of nuclear engineers, cyber specialists, and AI technicians that the AUKUS enterprise demands, at a pace that matches the urgency of our strategic environment.
We also need myriad and many AI and cybersecurity specialists to make sure we reap maximal benefit from the potential of AI and don’t get left behind by the rest of the world.
Second, it acts as a bulwark against authoritarianism and radical extremism by embedding critical thinking in every graduate. In an era of rampant deepfakes and "digital pollution", a system that prioritises evidence-based analysis and intellectual rigour is our most potent defence against the erosion of the shared, verifiable reality that binds our democracy together.
And third, it nurtures the innovation required to build a more resilient and complex economy. This new model is the mechanism by which we finally solve our national paradox. It is the forge that will allow us to turn the raw materials from our quarry into the high-value, sophisticated products of a truly sovereign nation.
The choices our nation makes regarding our universities will have profound and lasting consequences for our national security, economic prosperity, and social stability. Like the post-war generation that built the physical infrastructure of modern Australia, our task is to build the intellectual infrastructure for the century ahead. It is time to stop admiring the problem and start building the solution. It is time to re-arm our nation, intellectually, for the challenges to come.
Look around at the world and see the disruption – the vagaries of the White House; the attacks on global institutions we have come to trust as safety nets; displaced populations; famine; wars and rumours of wars. There are many people around the world who have disruption forced upon them. But we have nothing to fear from disruption if we are the ones driving it. We have a choice.
Don’t just do what’s doable. Do what needs to be done.
Thank you.
[1] The IRU signed a partnership MoU with the multi-campus University of the South Pacific in 2023. It’s an example of where a group of universities can work together to partner with the Pacific in a way that an individual university can’t.
[2] By definition in Australia at the moment a university must produce above world class research in more than 50% of its teaching areas (TEQSA) A teaching only university would be full of research consumers rather than knowledge creators.
[3] The IRU’s collaboration has increased by more than 260% over the last decade.
[4] It is no longer the case that all the quality research happens in a small number of places –that is an Australian success story, which we now need to leverage for the future.