Labor is “absolutely committed” to demand-driven university funding and will end the government’s two-year freeze on commonwealth grants, Tanya Plibersek says.

On Thursday, Labor’s deputy leader and opposition education spokeswoman will tell the Universities Australia conference in Canberra that the party “won’t walk away” from the uncapped enrolment system introduced under former prime minister Julia Gillard.

The Coalition announced a two-year unlegislated freeze in commonwealth grants funding in its midyear budget update after the $2.8bn package of funding cuts and fee rises announced in the 2017 budget was blocked by the Senate.

While it did not directly cap student places, the decision effectively ended the previously bipartisan agreement on demand-driven funding because universities will no longer receive additional direct commonwealth grants funding if enrolments increase.

While Labor opposed the decision, it had yet to publicly declare whether it would reverse it. The education minister, Simon Birmingham, had questioned why Labor announced plans for a review of tertiary education if it supports uncapped places.

Extracts of Plibersek’s speech seen by Guardian Australia reveal she will promise to end the freeze if Labor is reelected.

Plibersek will say the demand-driven system “unlocked opportunity for smart, hard-working kids” and that the freeze will “put a brake on enrolment growth in regional and outer suburban areas and among poorer students”.

“Under Labor, we were proud that we oversaw an increase of 190,000 students, many of whom were the first in their family to go to university,” her speech says.



“That’s why Labor is absolutely committed to the demand-driven system. And we won’t walk away from it.”

The universities sector has argued the freeze is effectively a $2bn cut which will see the equivalent of almost 10,000 student places go unfunded in 2018.



Simon Birmingham says the sector has seen its wealth expand rapidly since demand-driven funding was introduced in 2012, and that universities were able to fund places above the cap before the system was established.

He wants to introduce a performance-based funding model from 2020 in a bid to increase graduate outcomes and improve attrition rates.

Plibersek will also promise to push for changes to university college behaviour after a report released by action group End Rape on Campus on Monday detailed decades of institutionalised hazing and misogyny in residential colleges, especially those at the University of Sydney.

Plibersek will say the “shocking behaviour” and culture revealed by the report “must end”, and promise to force universities to ensure university colleges are safe.

“I was at uni about 30 years ago [and] 30 years ago we saw the same kind of complaints, and heard the same kind of responses from residential colleges and universities,” Plibersek will say.



“Put simply: if university residential colleges can’t provide a safe environment, universities should make them.”



The University of Sydney vice chancellor, Michael Spence, has said the university is powerless to stop college hazing practices because the colleges are governed by acts of state parliament, not the university.

It means the commonwealth has limited sway in addressing the issue.

But Plibersek will argue that if universities can’t ensure the safety of residential colleges “they should sever links with them” and that Labor will “compel” university colleges to fulfil their duty of care.



It’s understood that possible measures being considered include reform agreements with the states and territories or financial penalties directed at residential colleges or universities who breach the rules.

“If some residential colleges and universities refuse to treat this seriously, governments must make them,” Plibersek will say.

“I want to be very clear, if we need to force colleges to do the right thing by their students and staff we will.”