Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Robertson for his question. There are skills shortages everywhere—in our schools, hospitals, aged care centres, childcare centres and companies big and small—and a lot of those skills are forged in our universities. That's why in addition to the extra TAFE places that we've already announced we've also announced the funding of an extra 20,000 university places. Universities have now just two weeks to put in their bids for these extra places. All 20,000 are for courses where we have a skills shortage—think about teachers, nurses, engineers and IT—and all 20,000 are for Australians that we don't see enough of in our universities at the moment: Australians from poorer backgrounds; Australians from the regions; Australians with a disability; Indigenous Australians; Australians who are the first in their family to ever set foot in a university.

I told the House a few weeks ago, when I was asked a question by the member for Clark, that I don't want us to be a country where your opportunity in life depends on who your parents are, your postcode or the colour of your skin—and I meant it. And that's what this announcement is about.

I was also asked about international students. International education is an incredible national asset. It's the biggest export that we don't dig or drill out of the ground. It got kneecapped by COVID—a $40 billion industry, basically cut in half. It's slowly coming back, but there's more work to do.

There are about 370,000 international students in Australia right now. When they finish up their studies, when they graduate, only about 16 per cent stay on and work here. It makes sense that, if you're doing a degree here in an area where we've got a chronic skills shortage, we should encourage those students, when they finish up, to help us to fill those gaps in our economy. We train them up; we should use those skills.

Other countries have cottoned on to this and made changes to their own schemes, and on Friday my friend the Minister for Home Affairs and I announced some important changes here. International students who get a degree in an area where we've got a verified skills shortage will be able to work here for an extra two years. Business has backed it, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry has backed it, the Australian Industry Group has backed it and the universities have backed it. It's a commonsense change that will help businesses to fill some of those chronic skills gaps and also help to get an important national asset back on its feet.

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