Gavan O'Connor (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries) Share this | Hansard source

The bills we are debating here today, the Education Services for Overseas Students Legislation Amendment (2006 Measures No. 1) Bill 2006 and the Education Services for Overseas Students Legislation Amendment (2006 Measures No. 2) Bill 2006, seek to amend the Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2000 and follow a review in late 2003 and subsequent recommendations proposed to improve the operations of the act. This legislation that we are debating here today, which is complementary to the original act, is, according to the second reading speech by the Minister for Education, Science and Training, designed to:

... ensure the quality of education and training provision to overseas students, provide overseas students with consumer protection and maintain the integrity of the student visa system.

These are very important objectives which the opposition has no hesitation in supporting in this place.

Since the decision by the Hawke Labor government in 1986 to open up Australian education to full fee paying students, Australia has seen a dramatic growth in the export income from the provision of educational services. At this time the industry ranks fourth as an earner of export income. There were very sound economic reasons as well as other reasons for this decision, which has yielded enormous economic benefits and other benefits to this country. The Hawke government was a trade orientated government which had the foresight to see that Australia’s global future would need much more than a dependence on digging resources out of the ground or exporting agricultural commodities to secure future living standards of Australians. So it took an inward-looking economy that had been stagnating under years of Liberal-National coalition government and gave it an outward and global orientation. That had as a consequence an enormous growth in manufactured exports and service exports.

Educational services became a central factor in the enormous growth in the services sector. Educational institutions around Australia responded to the Hawke government’s economic leadership and its foresight, and the rest is really a matter of history. Where previous coalition governments had failed to capitalise on Australia’s economic strengths, Labor in government provided not only the leadership but the financial support to those institutions that had the will to get into the export ring. The Hawke Labor government recognised that the quality and the diversity of our education sector was an economic strength with obvious potential for earning export income, and also that it was a sector that had the potential to do much more for Australia’s position in the region and the world. Labor saw the educational experience for overseas students as a vehicle for elevating the understanding of Australians and their culture by others in the region.

And here we are 20 years later, where in our region many government ministers, high-ranking businessmen, public servants, educators and others fondly recall their educational experience in Australia. You simply cannot buy that goodwill, and any Australian government investment in this area of activity has borne economic and other advantage well beyond the value of the initial investment.

We on this side of the House cannot understand a government which in 10 long years in office has cut to pieces educational expenditure in this country. It makes no economic sense for Australia not to be at the top of the educational tree in this global trading environment. I would have given ministers in this government the benefit of the doubt, having come through the political ranks in their respective parties, that they would not engage in the politics of stupidity over the past 10 years and that they would see, as the Hawke government saw before them, the enormous advantages that could accrue to Australians and to this nation by enlarging and expanding our educational sector. But, as the member for Jagajaga outlined in her excellent contribution to this debate, the decline in quality that is now occurring in our tertiary sector and the enormous pressure that it is under are because of the actions of this government.

I cannot believe the crass stupidity of the Howard government in this area. This is a government that has failed Australians and now we are seeing reports like the OECD’s, which are shining the spotlight on the comparative disadvantage that Australia now experiences compared with other countries around the world of similar economic structure and economic development. This government has for 10 long years, with its ideological obsessions, been squandering the great advantage and legacy that were given to it by the Hawke and Keating Labor governments. That is a cause of great disappointment, because I would have thought the art of politics was not engaging in an orgy of stupidity in a particular sector but picking the eyes out of the strengths of a previous government and building on them in the interests of the Australian community. That would seem to me to be a logical policy proposition, but it is one which is lost on the tired and visionless government that we have in place.

I have always said that the Prime Minister’s great vision for this nation was a limited one—and, of course, it is. It was basically based around implementing a goods and services tax, selling Telstra and wrecking the lives of Australian working families, including those in the education sector, through a draconian industrial relations system. If that is all the Prime Minister has to show for his time in Australian political life, you would have to rate him as an abject failure. The government that he is leading—and which I am sure will shortly have its mandate terminated by the Australian community—similarly reflects the lack of vision that the Prime Minister has shown throughout his political career.

I would have thought the objective of putting Australia front and centre in the education of the world was something that we could all aspire to in a bipartisan way. To do that and to maintain it you would need to ensure that our educational institutions were properly funded, that we were world leaders in all the benchmarked areas in the tertiary sector, and that people were looking to Australia. I know the government will argue that per head of population, or whatever criteria it might employ, Australia leads the world and that we are the third-largest provider of export services in the English-speaking world behind the United States and the United Kingdom. So what’s new? The government was left a sector that was in an enormous pattern of growth and, thanks to the vision of the Hawke and Keating governments and the basis and the foundation that they laid in this particular sector, we have seen Australia’s educational exports grow.

Like any industry sector that has undergone a rapid expansion, it is not always, and not on every occasion, plain sailing for those institutions or for overseas students. That is the reason for the legislative framework we are debating here today and the reason why Labor will be supporting the thrust of this legislation. As I have mentioned, Australia is now the third-largest English-speaking provider of educational services, and we hold seven per cent of the market behind the United States of America, with 32 per cent, and the UK, with 15 per cent. Per head of population, we are the largest provider. It is therefore very important that everything is done by government and educational providers in this market to secure and expand our market share—and so the necessity for this legislation to ensure that students get the education for which they have paid and that students comply with their student visa conditions.

There are many technical aspects to this legislation which are outlined in the explanatory memorandum that has been provided to members of this House by the minister. I note her presence in the chamber at this point in time and I thank her for that explanatory memorandum. It goes to a whole host of technical provisions that I will not be discussing in detail today. Suffice to say that the measures that have been included in this bill are a positive refinement that the opposition will support because we support educational institutions that are cutting the mustard in this increasingly competitive market, and we want to see and ensure that the legislative framework that governs their operations and sets out the immigration and responsibilities of overseas students is of the highest quality and standard.

The Geelong region is blessed in that it is served by two educational institutions that have very high international reputations—the Gordon Institute of TAFE and Deakin University. Both were early players in the provision of educational services to overseas students and both are active participants today in offering courses to overseas students. The Gordon currently, in 2006, offers education across a variety of courses to 113 inbound students. Traditional inbound student markets for the Gordon have been Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Thailand, and we are seeing now some expansion in developing markets in China, India, Indonesia and South America. I note that around 65 per cent of those 113 students come from Korea, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Taiwan. That is a very significant number of inbound students from our region.

Some 70 courses are offered by the Gordon to international students. Not only does it offer these courses; it also hosts delegations and offers training in specific areas. I note in the 2005 annual report the involvement of the Gordon in providing training to Vietnam Airlines Corporation and Vietnam Steel Corporation. It has also provided training and support to the Toba Pulp Timber Mill in Sumatra, Indonesia. The Gordon continues to promote its educational services and project itself into our immediate region.

Current enrolees at the Geelong campus of the Deakin University number 616. The main sources of these students are India, 16 per cent; Zimbabwe, 14 per cent; and China, 13 per cent. The students participate in a range of courses, including commerce, engineering, arts, construction, management, public relations, education and information technology. Deakin has projected that these student enrolments will grow at around 10 per cent in coming years.

Both institutions take their responsibilities to overseas students who choose to study in Geelong very seriously indeed and offer them a range of support services on their arrival and while they are studying. They assist them in their search for housing and to get a better command of the English language to help them in their studies. In addition, they assist them in a host of other areas related to their personal needs.

I note that the range of support services offered by Deakin University is quite extensive. It offers exchange/study abroad orientation programs to introduce new students to the university and to Australian life and culture, and it offers an international enrolment and orientation program, which certainly goes deeply into the demands of university life and various other matters related to studying in Australia. It provides reception service and post-arrival support, which involves airport reception and first-needs support to assist the student in settling in. That includes peer support programs for friendship, links and networking. Also provided are shared experiences and support in banking, first-meal shopping, campus familiarity, city orientation, off-campus housing appointments and other support materials. It provides a community links program to connect the student with local service organisations, sporting clubs, community radio stations, churches et cetera, and an international student orientation camp which is run out of the faculty of education. The university provides academic monitoring, networking and life skills seminars, and an international students program is run by the faculty of the arts.

I mention these because I think there has been a tendency in the past for some educational institutions that have entered the export services arena not to meticulously plan and prepare to support students who choose to undertake courses with them, and I am very pleased that Deakin University is providing these sorts of support services. I was recently part of an Australian parliamentary delegation that visited Malaysia and Japan, and the provision of educational services to those countries by Australia was the focus of our discussions with senior ministers and others in the business communities. Some quarter of a million Malaysians have been trained in Australia and that can only be a good thing for Australia.

In conclusion, Australians now live and work in a global village and, across the globe, students are seeking to be educated in environments other than their own. It is estimated that the world demand for higher education could increase from around two million to eight million students by 2025. We now have a global education market which is rapidly expanding, with enormous growth being generated by demand from Asian countries—particularly emerging economic giants such as China and India and established developing economies such as Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and other Asian countries. It is a simple fact that economic growth generates a strong demand for education and alters a country’s demand profile for educational services. It is very important that Australia maintain its pole position in the provision of educational services.—(Time expired)

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