Welcome to Budget Week 2026! Possibly a bit boring for some, but there is a weird sense of anticipation about what is going to happen and what policy initiatives will be announced.
For most Australians, there is probably a bit of a sense of ‘we know already – just get on with it’.
Australia is an inequitable economy. In terms of the states and territories, we have Western Australia looking at long-term budget surpluses and handing out cash to everyone with a driver’s licence. Victoria on the other hand, is facing very significant debt-to-GSP (Gross State Product) out to the end of the decade.
These are useful examples between mining and related supply chains on one side (WA), and services, manufacturing, education and smaller regional businesses on the other (VIC). That is, an embedded gap between faster-growing, capital-intensive sectors and places, and slower-moving parts of the economy that face weaker demand, tighter margins, or more limited flows of investment and labour.
These two speeds are not only about sectors, they are about geographies and also labour markets.
These are differences that are often reflected in regulatory settings as government policies and agencies move away from a one-size-fits-all approach. The Australian Government’s Regulatory Policy, Practice and Performance Framework states that regulation should be targeted, risk-based, focused on users, driven by evidence, digitally adaptive, and focused on continuous improvement. In practice, this is an approach to regulation that should support lighter-touch settings where risks are lower, and stronger oversight where public harm or systemic risk is higher.
Recently, however, this has not necessarily been the experience of independent tertiary education institutions. The current intense media scrutiny on a number of public tertiary education institutions has highlighted significant and ongoing regulatory and governance failures over the period since the pandemic. Each of these institutions is the largest in its sector in each of the relevant jurisdictions. As such, the risk to the public and the risk to the tertiary education sector is very significant, not least because they are the best funded institutions in those jurisdictions.
However, regulatory action has been delayed, in some cases for 3-4 years, or it has been slow and almost apathetic. It might be felt that had these same issues surfaced at an independent institution, the action would have been swift and devastating.
The point here is to ask whether we have the priorities as outlined in the Regulatory Policy, Practice and Performance Framework backwards? Are we taking a swift and direct approach where the actual risks are minimal, but a gentle and possibly casual approach when the risks are very significant just by virtue of the institution type?
Perhaps there is a place for a single-focus approach to be blended alongside the risk based approach.
The alternative is possibly going to be strong and agile smaller economies (like regional communities) getting smashed by larger and wealthy ones handing out stimulus into an economy already heady with demand (like wealthy state and Federal budgets can afford to). Maybe it’s just the cost of doing business and built into taxpayer budgets after all.
For independent institutions, we can’t end up like smaller economies and regions. That is, getting smashed by poor practice and ill-advised initiatives that have ripple-effects across the entire sector. Poor management and governance is not the cost of doing business, it costs business, students, communities and economies.
Felix Pirie
ITECA Chief Executive Officer
Further Information —
If you have any questions regarding the above, please contact the ITECA team at [email protected].