Lambie would keep new university chiefs under $430,000
Senator Jacqui Lambie wants to limit what the bosses of Australia's public unis are paid. Universities that ignore the cap could lose their right to run as a uni.
Official name: Tertiary Education Legislation Amendment (There For Education, Not Profit) Bill 2025
- New vice-chancellors at public unis would have to be paid less than $430,000 a year.
- The education minister could set a different amount for a new boss. Parliament could reject it.
- The national university watchdog could check pay and punish universities that break the rule.
- The bill is from Senator Jacqui Lambie, not the government. It was dropped in 2025 and put back on the Senate's list.
Who it affects
- Future vice-chancellors of public unis: Their pay would have to stay under $430,000 a year unless the Minister sets another amount.
- Vice-chancellors in the job now: Nothing changes for them. The cap only applies to people hired after the law starts.
- University councils: University councils are the boards that run unis. They would have to set the boss's pay under the cap or risk being punished by the watchdog.
- Students and taxpayers: Senator Lambie says the money saved stays with teaching at universities paid for by the public.
Universities set their bosses' pay
A vice-chancellor is the head of a uni. They run it day to day. Right now each university council decides how much its vice-chancellor is paid. It follows its state's laws and its own rules.
Senator Jacqui Lambie, a senator from Tasmania, brought this bill to the Senate, Parliament's second house. She is not a government minister. She says vice-chancellors are paid far too much. She says public money given to unis should not be wasted on bosses' pay.
Her bill sets a legal limit of $430,000 a year. She says this puts university bosses below the pay of the Federal Treasurer, the minister in charge of the nation's money. She brought it in with a partner bill about pay in the public service.
Pay cap at ANU
The Australian National University in Canberra is the one university set up directly by a federal law. So the bill changes that law first.
Under the change, the uni's vice-chancellor must be paid less than $430,000 for each year of their term. The Minister could set a different amount for the first year of a new term.
That would have to be done in a written rule that both houses of Parliament get to see. Either house could vote it down.
Any new amount would have to be set by 1 July of the year before. That stops the Minister changing the pay after the fact. If the uni's own rules clash with the cap, the cap wins. So the uni council cannot find a way around it.
Pay cap at other universities
Most unis are set up by state laws. So the federal government cannot change their pay rules directly.
Instead, the bill uses the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency. It is the national watchdog that signs up unis and checks how good they are. A uni must be signed up with it to give out degrees.
The bill makes the pay cap a condition of being signed up. This applies to every public uni on a list in the federal law on university funding, except the Australian National University.
The same rules apply as in Canberra. Pay must be under $430,000. The Minister can set another amount for a first year if it is done a year ahead. The cap also covers a uni's head if the job has a different title.
Say a uni in Perth hires a new vice-chancellor and offers $900,000 a year. Under this bill, that offer would break its sign-up condition.
Checks and penalties
The watchdog could ask any public university for facts to show it is keeping to the cap. The university would have to hand them over.
Say a uni breaks the cap and does not fix it within three months. That counts as breaking its sign-up condition. The watchdog could then use its usual punishments. These include cutting the time the uni is signed up for, or cancelling it.
A legal safety clause
The bill notes there is some doubt about whether the federal government can set this kind of condition. The doubt is about unis created by the states. The High Court, Australia's top court, has said the federal government's power to step into state bodies may be limited.
So the bill says what happens if a court finds the condition goes beyond federal power. The condition simply would not apply. The bill's notes point out that the watchdog already sets rules for state unis in many other ways.
Waiting in the Senate
If passed, the bill would start the day after the Governor-General signs it. The Governor-General stands in for the King. The cap would only apply to vice-chancellors hired after that date.
Senator Lambie brought the bill into the Senate on 5 February 2025. It was dropped when the last Parliament ended on 21 July 2025. It was put back on the Senate's to-do list on 23 July 2025.
It has not been debated or voted on since. So it would still need to pass both the Senate and the House of Representatives, the lower house.
Its journey through Parliament
| 05 Feb 2025 | Senate: Introduced and read a first time |
| 05 Feb 2025 | Senate: Second reading moved |
| 21 Jul 2025 | Senate: Lapsed at end of Parliament |
| 23 Jul 2025 | Senate: Restored to Notice Paper |