Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

I thank members for their contribution to the debate on the Migration Legislation Amendment (Student Visas) Bill 2012. This bill amends the Migration Act and the Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2000 to cease the automatic cancellation regime for student visa holders who breach the academic progress or attendance requirements of their visa.

As several honourable members have pointed out, the international education sector is particularly important to Australia. It is our third largest export market now and one of which we can be justly proud. I am very pleased with the progress in implementing the recommendations of the Knight review, and I will come to that more in a few moments. This has been a very important area of reform for this government and it has been an important priority both for me and for Minister Evans.

This bill responds to the Knight review but also, importantly, to the concerns raised in the 2011 Australian National Audit Office report Management of student visas. Both the Knight review and the ANAO have recommended the abolition of the automatic cancellation regime. It has been criticised for giving extraordinary powers to education providers over international students. It is detrimental to genuine international students who are experiencing difficulty through no fault of their own and who require help and monitoring rather than having their visas automatically cancelled.

Importantly, this bill enhances the ability of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship to focus on those clear issues of integrity where there has been a breach of a student visa and it has been wilful or intentional and egregious. It removes the necessity for the department of immigration to process visa cancellations which are not warranted, for which they have no discretion, and which create uncertainty and complexity for student visa holders.

The bill does not represent a softening in the treatment of student visa holders who breach the conditions of their visas. Rather, it enables the government to prioritise and pursue more serious breaches of the student visa program, including not only nonattendance in class and failure to maintain progress but also where people—and this does happen—come to Australia on a student visa but never start their course and in all probability never intended to. It will send a much stronger message to all users of the student visa program about the government's commitment to program integrity, and I believe the approach will strengthen community and stakeholder confidence in the program. As the Hon. Michael Knight found in his report, the automatic cancellation regime is:

… patently not working as a compliance and integrity tool and is in fact hindering the effective use of available student compliance resources.

I noted that the member for Cook, the shadow minister, in his contribution was critical of the backlog and indicated it was a matter of the resourcing and competence of the government. I would point out that the matter of the backlog and compliance was first raised in 2001 and a significant backlog was noted by the Australian National Audit Office in 2006, when there were 80,000 non-compliance notices on the backlog. I think this shows that this is a systemic problem, not a problem of mismanagement. A rigid framework which is disproportionate to the seriousness of the issue and fails to prioritise the most egregious breaches of the student visa regime is one which will inevitably lead to backlogs, and of course, the more international students who are in the nation at any one time, the greater the backlogs will be. I am certainly not critical of the Howard government or accusing it of mismanagement in terms of the backlog of 80,000; I am pointing out that there is a systemic issue and it is not correct for the shadow minister to assert that this is a matter of incompetence on the part of the government or the department.

Further, the regime has attracted continued adverse commentary from the courts. The majority of automatic cancellations made between May 2001 and December 2009 were invalidated as a result of decisions by the Federal Court. In fact, the department's cancellations were only upheld for a five-month period in this time. This highlights the ineffectiveness of the regime. In other words, the result was not cancellation, but the department had to, because it has no discretion under the act, go through the process of cancelling the visas in the first place.

I will make a couple more comments about the contributions of honourable members. Firstly, the coalition has indicated that it reserves the right to respond to the Senate report. That is a perfectly appropriate approach to take. The approach I have always taken is to take sensible suggestions from a Senate committee or any other committee into consideration. If there are sensible suggestions made, the government will remain open-minded about those and will take a flexible approach. I point out, however, that this is an important reform and one that I think is overdue and should have happened several years ago—perhaps when it was first raised way back in 2001 or when it was raised in 2006. Nevertheless, we will continue to work with the Senate inquiry, will provide any information that the Senate committee calls for and will respond accordingly.

Some honourable members opposite have said that this is the first of the Knight recommendations to be implemented and have criticised the government for being too slow in implementing the Knight review. I hate to disappoint honourable members, but they appear uninformed. This is the first legislative response because it is the first reform which has needed a legislative response; the others have been implemented without the need to come to the parliament. For example, streamlined visa processing for universities and other institutions which offer bachelor or higher level qualifications has already been implemented. This is a very significant reform which has been welcomed by the university and higher education sector. Some honourable members opposite appear blissfully unaware that this has been implemented and is already in operation. I myself have seen it being implemented in overseas posts. It is working effectively and has been very much welcomed by the university sector. If honourable members opposite are going to say that implem­entation has been too slow, it would be better that they base that accusation on fact. They make a blanket assertion that not enough has happened, appearing unaware that this is the only reform so far which has required legislative amendment. The vast majority of the Knight review recommendations have been able to be implemented administratively or via regulation. I think that is important for the House to note.

I do thank all honourable members for their contributions. I think the debate has indicated a bipartisan recognition that the international education sector is very important for Australia. I think the Knight review recommendations have been broadly welcomed across all sectors of the international education industry. We are currently conducting a fundamental review of assessment levels for the non-university sector, as recommended by the Knight review. Progress on that is good, and I look forward to updating the community and, at an appropriate point, the House on the implementation of those recommendations as well. I commend this important bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

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