Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

He came in here decrying a shambolic mess and a crisis. The crisis in this sector of immigration was clearly created by the previous government. Peter Mares on Inside Story made this comment:

They—

that is, the previous government's actions—

led to an explosion of private colleges offering sometimes dubious vocational courses that promised the shortest route to permanent residency. They not only devalued the reputation of Australia's education system and distorted the migration intake, they also created a perception in the community that international students were manipulative and devious—despite the fact that the vast majority were simply playing the game by the rules drawn up by the the Australian government.

What the Howard government did was abandon the previous practice where people came to this country, sought qualifications and then got on a plane back to New Delhi or Beijing to apply with the rest of the world to come here as qualified skilled migrants. They said that if you had a degree from Australia you could remain here. They also liberalised very radically the number of courses where you could stay here, so we had a situation where every second hairdresser in the Beijing thought they had is to live in Australia and every second chef in Chittagong had the same privileges—they could live here in forever on the basis of courses conducted in many cases by private colleges that were very questionable.

People have talked about the growth, and we note that in 1997-98 there were 108,000 visas issued but by 2009-10 there were 269, 268. I do not for a moment criticise international education as a major industry for this country. The member for Canning talked about $4 billion. Deloitte, whose testimony I would prefer, put it at $10 billion. Either way, as the member for Throsby noted, it is the fourth biggest export earner in this country. Is it any wonder that we are successful? The nature of our country, the lifestyle it provides for people, the freedoms and the fact that eight of the top 100 universities in the world in the 2011 QS World University Ratings are in Australia and 25 of the top 700 demonstrate that we are at the top end of the market and that indisputably people gain a good education through this country. Of course it does have major flow-on effects with regard to employing people. Through alumni associations we have influence on future ministers and future leaders in other countries. There are many values that can be gained by international education.

However, when you undermine it in a total pursuit of the dollar, you have very big impacts on immigration. It is worth noting that in response to a question that I put on notice recently to the minister, we see these figures for rejections of people trying to come in on student visas, 570 to 575: from November to November 2010-11, in Dakar there were 512 rejections out of 1,974; in New Delhi there were 4,456 rejections out of 8,912 applications; in Colombo there were 199 rejections out of 1,489; in China there were 2,126 out of 2,802.

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