It’s true.
You can usually do your degree quicker also or you can take your time and take up to 10 years – it depends on you and how many units you can do.
You do get a real degree and it’s not an “Open University” degree, for example if you do the Bach of Business you graduate with a degree from Monash Uni, if you do the Arts you graduate with a degree from Macquarie or Griffith (whichever one you do the units with). – Your Degree will be the same as if you went to the actual University and will say nothing about being done via Open University.
There are no entry requirements – only for the Bach of Education and for the Post Grad Degrees.
You can get HECS (HELP) the same as if you were at uni and you do it all by correspondence and in your own time (so you can work full time too).
Here is their website, the next enrolments close in February so you have plenty of time to enrol if you don’t get an offer from uni.
The only thing is that because it is all by correspondence it means that you have to be pretty motivated to get it done.
Here is the site you can check the FAQ and the degrees to see if there is any you want, when you look at the degrees it also shows you what Uni you will get the degree from.
https://www.open.edu.au