Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Quality and Integrity) Bill 2024

Mr HAWKE (Mitchell) (17:25): I rise to address the government's Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Quality and Integrity) Bill 2024. The coalition reserves our position in relation to this until we see the Senate inquiry. We want to know a lot more about the impact of the bill. However, after extensive years of experience inside the student system and administering it in the executive for some period of time, I am concerned about many measures that the government is putting forward in relation to this bill.

There is too much arbitrary power for the minister over caps and over the caps on international students that the government's proposing. It is hard to run an international college if you're in the private sector or a university that deals with volumes of student numbers, visa approvals, revenue streams and all of the variables that come with bringing in humans and the fact that people change their minds. Students are no different to any other group of humans. They may well change their minds. It's hard enough without the government arbitrarily setting limits every 12 months, unreasonably by fiat, of whatever the minister feels like. Generally, we have a scepticism that this will be because of the government's mismanagement of the immigration system more broadly, taking it out on the student sector and using the cap to somehow reduce the number of people in the country arbitrarily without any good evidence and with too much ministerial power.

 I want to point out that the demonisation of students through COVID is particularly poor from the Labor Party. In the speeches we've heard, they make the same point, 'Oh, you told students to leave.' Well, in 2019, when COVID came about, the government sensibly advised students to return home while we faced a pretty unprecedented worldwide crisis that nobody was certain about. Borders were shutting around the world in some countries, like China. People were being locked into houses and boarded in. It was a very fragile environment. Sending people home during that period was a good choice for that time. Now they want to rail against it and say they would have said, 'Stay in Australia with uncertain prospects of returning to your family and slave away working,' even though most businesses were making them redundant. Therefore, the government would have paid for students to be here doing nothing, not being able to work, not being able to function, and not being able to study.

The faux outrage from members opposite about this issue is actually a complete misappreciation and misunderstanding of basic humanity and the responsibility of a government in a crisis. The government made the right call. It told students to go home, and a lot of students did go home. That wasn't for fun or because the government felt like it; that was an emergency situation. We don't have to go into what that was. I'm sure all members understand and accept the basic premises. It was a one-off event, and it had to happen. Railing against that as some sort of argument for this bill is complete and utter nonsense.

Labor supported those measures at the time with the students, and, of course, they understood why, and so did all the Labor premiers. Everybody understood why. And we all went through that very sad situation. Many students who stayed here couldn't feed themselves. Communities came forward and fed students. Then the government extended its payments to students in recognition of that. Keeping everyone locked in the country didn't seem a very humane response. The Labor Party needs to wake up and maybe edit the talking points they're giving out to the backbenchers. They probably don't really appreciate what they're saying or how stupid the position they're adopting really is. With massive hindsight, it is massively stupid and massively foolish to make this argument, and it wouldn't have been done by them or anybody else in government.

When we get to the core of this bill, the overreach has come because of the government's fundamental mismanagement of the numbers of people coming into the country through their own migration settings and their lack of experience in managing it. I think the housing crisis, of course, has added fuel to this fire, but I agree with the member for Griffith. I'll say it: to blame students, particularly, for housing or rental affordability is an odd instinct of this government, and this bill is a hard response to that. It won't fix anybody's housing or rental crisis and, at the same time, risks a very big export industry—one that brings in a lot of workers to Australia.

I invite members here who are not from major capitals like Melbourne or Sydney to go into any restaurant in Sydney at any time of the day or night. You'll find students working in the kitchen. The truth is a lot of Australians don't want to work in kitchens anymore. A lot of Australians simply won't do it for the wages there. It's done by international students. You go into many businesses now—with security guards and all kinds of things—and people are doing work, from their international student visa, that is not filled by Australians. They're not taking Australian jobs either; they're simply doing a lot of heavy lifting inside the economy in a lot of sectors like hospitality and in roles that we cannot get people to fill.

The government dramatically reducing student numbers is not about addressing the shonks and the dodgy operators. They've always been there, and they always have to be continually managed out of the system. International education is heavily regulated by ASQA and TEQSA and regular state and federal reviews. The vast bulk of the sector is doing the right thing. The vast bulk of the sector spends all day, every day, year in, year out, in compliance, and that includes our major universities, who do a very good job of this. For the government to say this is a bill about shonks and dodgy operators is counterintuitive. It is not about those things.

In fact, I've just received an email from the new vice-chancellor of Western Sydney University and all the people there explaining their position on this bill and why it won't work. I want to say to members here from Western Sydney—and there are plenty of Labor ones as well as people in the coalition—we should very carefully read the view of Western Sydney University, one of Australia's most modern and internationally competitive universities, and their objections to this bill. They do a great job managing international students in Western Sydney, to the benefit of Western Sydney and our life in Sydney, and they make a great point. This is a major university funded by the taxpayer, funded by the Commonwealth, and they are worried about the minister's caps on international students and the arbitrary ability to change it. They're more than worried; they think it threatens their viability.

The government says this is somehow a bad model for universities to have, but it's the model worldwide now. We're in a global competition for the international student. We know of the volumes that come from China, India and Nepal. Most students come here for an education, and the vast bulk of students return to their home country educated. They have a good experience in Australia, and we have a good experience with them.

It is a profitable industry for Australia. It makes a lot of money. It also provides a workforce where we couldn't provide those workers, and our universities are able to fund themselves. When you look at the gap, if they get their student numbers caps in funding for universities, the government has no intention of replacing that money. The government couldn't possibly afford to replace that money, and it couldn't possibly, in 100 years of trying, raise enough tax to replace the revenues that would be lost by just our major universities. Why is the government embarking on this path? They're being warned not by shonky operators and not even by private sector colleges that have been around a long time but by all the major universities about this. Surely, that would give the education minister food for thought.

Some of the changes that do come in here about education agents can make some sense. We don't disagree with many of the changes in definition, and tightening is always welcome. Most of this can be tightened through the immigration side function rather than the education side function. I want to also allude to some of the other changes in the bill that the coalition finds could be very useful. However, the false narrative about shonks and crooks really sets the sector up, when most of the sector is internationally renowned, doing a great job and providing that great cultural and diplomatic function for Australia in educating our region. It's been an objective of multiple governments many times.

Happily, I'm old enough to remember the last time Labor was in government. This tends to happen in Labor governments. The last time was when Minister Kim Carr was in place. They had the VET FEE-HELP scheme, one of the most disastrous Commonwealth policies in terms of wasted money, where there were shonks and cowboys who took advantage of the government and made a fortune. Then the government cracked down so hard on the sector that they virtually crippled the international education sector because of their own policy, which opened up a wild west cabinet of funding under VET FEE-HELP.

I see that situation emerging again where, because of the Labor government's ineptitude in managing migration, managing the student sector, understanding the intersection of both and understanding how to manage them properly, they are now pulling the lever as hard as they can on the sector, rejecting all visa applications—so many rejections coming through now, you don't have to be too smart to work out that every private sector and public sector internationally exposed college is getting mostly rejections—so hard they threaten the viability of the sector, again cruelling a big industry for Australia. Does the government have any replacement income or industry for this fourth-largest export sector? It's fourth in our entire economy. The answer is, of course, that they don't.

That's why Western Sydney University's letter intrigued me as well. They already have a system in place where every student they bring has accommodation, and they're prepared to guarantee and sustain it. The government hasn't even looked at allowing universities to make their own use of housing and share housing, to build more housing fast on their campuses, to have more student accommodation. There is no attempt to actually deal with the fundamental driver of this bill, which is their incompetence in relation to the migration portfolio and their mismanagement of the volumes of people. Western Sydney University is right that they can do this sustainably and in that they promise they could get it all done in a way that wouldn't put pressure on rents and housing. Indeed, they do that pretty well at the moment.

We are looking forward to the Senate inquiry and the review. There is much more that I could say about this bill, but I will certainly be watching it with interest. I want to signal to the sector that this is not the first time this has happened—the last time Labor was in government they crippled international education, and here we are again. I believe that a few years of this regime and this reduction in student numbers will be so bad for our economy it will add further pressure to an already difficult economic environment—a shortage of labour, inflationary pressures and no replacement income from the international education sector for our universities. This could really be very damaging for the sector. If this is brought in, in the way the government is intending, I believe it will cause some very significant issues in this sector that may lead to further economic harm to our economy at a time when we should be doing no harm to the economy in general. It couldn't be worse timed.

I suppose the silver lining is, just like last time, a new government, if elected, would have to come in and look at fixing this fairly quickly, establishing certainty for the sector and certainty for our universities to continue to operate at the peak level they operate at, and getting those revenues back. I know it would be a priority—restoring confidence to the sector, regardless of what this government's able to do.

I've expressed my concerns. I endorse all our major universities' concerns—and they have grave concerns. Any capable minister, any responsible government—we're not dealing with shonks or crooks when we're talking about our major universities in our country. They are the ones saying: 'Government, listen to us: this will not work. This will damage our operation, this will damage our revenue and this will damage our international reputation for no benefit.' I think that's a sober warning. I think the government should really rethink this bill and I look forward to the Senate inquiry.