I see you have the usual problem of wanting to switch career halfway different from previous job and education. I disagree with what some above have mentioned about never entering at entry level or taking a pay cut.

The "best" outcome is of course to sell to your new employer that you are a qualified professional with other non-technical skills that can be useful, can learn on the job fast etc etc. so you don't have to start from scratch and can maintain salary and move on directly from there.

But experience tells me that this kind of reason unlikely to fly, you best stick to asking for around 2.5k (after getting the SCM degree) which is starting pay for fresh grad. My reason as follows:

1) At 26 years old with an accountancy diploma, you really are no different from a fresh uni grad in the eyes of a line manager of HR. Trying to sell otherwise as being street wise, plenty of business experience etc is stretching too much. Maybe 35 years old still can, but 26 the story is laughable.

2) Your main competitors are the SCM degree fresh grads from better local uni, dun mean to insult SIM, but it's an open secret that SIM degree prestige much lower than 3 local uni and even a lot of Australia uni. You try to ask anything more than lower end of degree entry pay, you price yourself out of competition

3) Things like good preso skills, writing, quick to learn etc. are just SOP stuff that every candidate will say, you can emphasize that during interview, but dun kid yourself that these are big selling points.

4) Accountancy has very limited application in SCM except for the fact that it shows you are OK with numbers. It might give you slight advantage in certain fields like material planning or report analytics.

There's no short cut, if you want to make a career switch, have to pay the price. That's why you don't see a lot of people switching functions, but then at least you are still very young and not mid career.
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