Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I continue to speak on the Education Services for Overseas Students (Registration Charges) Amendment Bill 2021 and related legislation. I would particularly point out that overseas students are our fourth biggest export. Not too long ago, before gas crept up, it was our third biggest. When you look at iron ore, coal and gas they're not value added in the way that educating overseas students is. So rather than the Morrison government helping protect an industry that was worth $40 billion just five minutes ago, the Morrison government has taken delight in attacking higher education providers at a time, during a pandemic, when they most need a helping hand.

Higher education providers have been snubbed, insulted and abandoned during this pandemic. Prime Minister Morrison very deliberately changed the JobKeeper rules three times to make sure universities could not get the support they needed. If that's not systemic bias motivated by short-term cultural wars or misguided political war games then I don't know what is. How short-sighted is that, to attack our fourth-largest export and neglect a $40 billion industry?

At least 17,300 university workers lost their jobs in 2020 because the Morrison government denied them JobKeeper: academics, tutors, cleaners, gardeners and cafeteria staff, many with families to support. It is expected that at least 7,000 researchers will lose their jobs over the course of this pandemic and, as I heard from university vice-chancellors over the last few weeks, we're in danger of losing our greatest research minds for good. Once they're gone, they may never return. In the middle of a crisis, the government cut support to universities that was meant to keep Australia's world-class research alive.

See this speech in context