Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Australians understand the importance and power of education. We value it and what it can do to open the doors of opportunities for Australians and for friends overseas. The power of education is that it changes lives, so we invest in it. You can see evidence of that in this year's budget, as we not only lift the education standards of Australians but export our world-class education to the world. Education is a big export—the biggest one that we don't dig out of the ground. It's our fourth largest export overall. In the last decade, we have helped to educate more than three million people from around the world. It's a $48 billion industry.

Our education sector doesn't just make us money; it also makes us friends. When a student comes to Australia to study they don't just get an education; a bit of Australia rubs off on them. They fall in love with the place, and when they go home they take that love and affection for us and that connectivity back home with them. They use the knowledge and qualifications they've gained in Australia to become leaders, scientists, teachers and entrepreneurs in our neighbouring countries. That makes this no ordinary export industry, because it's so important to our economy while students are here and also when they return home. It's important to Australia, and it's important to the people in my electorate of Darwin and Palmerston as well as other regional areas of Australia. It's particularly important because we want more, not fewer, international students. This bill matters because it ensures the integrity and quality of the overall system underpinning that social licence, and it provides long-term certainty for the sector and sustainable growth over time.

The pandemic kneecapped international education. Of course, it didn't help that the former government—those opposite—told students to go home, so of course they did. Almost overnight an industry worth $40 billion was effectively halved to $22 billion. The students are now back, but unfortunately so are the shonks and crooks looking to take advantage of students and make a quick buck at the expense of this critical national asset. These unscrupulous actors are a threat to our good name as a place where the best and brightest from around the world can come and get the best education in the world.

Since we were elected a little over two years ago we've been working hard on this. In September 2022, we announced the Parkinson review of the migration system, and, in January 2023, we announced the Rapid Review into the Exploitation of Australia's Visa System, also known as the Nixon review. These reviews brought urgent attention to integrity issues in international education.

We moved quickly on the recommendations of those reviews. In July last year, we got rid of unlimited work rights for international students by reintroducing a working hours cap of 24 hours per week. This allows students to support themselves but not at the expense of their studies, and it was a first step in reducing the lure of getting a student visa as a backdoor entry to work in Australia. In August last year, Minister Jason Clare, the member for Blaxland, closed the concurrent enrolment loophole that allowed agents and providers to shift international students who had been here for less than six months from one course to a cheaper one and from genuine study to no study at all—another backdoor way just to work here. In October last year, we boosted the capacity of the VET regulator ASQA through a $38 million investment and established an integrity unit. The same month we increased the amount of savings an international student now requires to get a student visa from $24,000 to almost $30,000. In March of this year, we increased the English language requirements for students, introduced a new genuine student requirement and increased the number of no-further-stay conditions on certain cohorts of visa students.

I want to emphasise that many of these measures are in response not only to the Parkinson and Nixon reviews but to feedback directly from the sector, because they know that dodgy education agents and providers create problems for the whole industry and they are a threat to the reputations of the universities and providers who are doing the right thing. It's very important that this important part of our economy maintains its social licence to operate.

Not only are the students back; they're back faster than anyone had expected here and in other countries. At the Universities Australia gala dinner in February last year, Minister Clare spoke about how the trajectory of the total number of international students enrolled in our universities wouldn't get back to pre-pandemic levels until the end of 2025. Well, they are back already, and that's a vote of confidence in our institutions, in our providers and in Australia as a place where the best and brightest come to study. But it's also something we need to manage carefully and protect from the bad actors that I mentioned, and that's what this bill does.

This legislation does a number of things to bolster the social licence as we manage the international education industry in a way that delivers the greatest benefit to Australia whilst maintaining the social licence that the Australian people provide to any Australian government. We will continue to use a responsible approach in setting enrolment limits, for example, that are appropriate. The Minister for Education will take into account the relevance of courses to Australia's skill needs, of course, and he is working through this in a very diligent and commonsense way.

It was fantastic to have Minister Clare in Darwin, and he visited some remote communities recently. He not only visited our university, Charles Darwin University; he visited schools, met with parents and talked with teachers and, of course, the students—the university students and other higher education students of the future. At the Australian International Education Conference in October last year, he said that the government wanted to work with the international education industry to make sure we get these reforms right. It was fantastic, as I said, to have him in Darwin recently.

We've done a number of consultations with the sector about the implementation of the powers set out in this bill. There has been broad and continued engagement with the Council for International Education and, of course, with stakeholders in the sector, including the Group of Eight and many others, such as regional universities like Charles Darwin University in my electorate. I note that the Chancellor of Charles Darwin University, Paul Henderson, has said that the Northern Territory faces a unique operating context, and it certainly does. The Vice-Chancellor of Charles Darwin University, Professor Scott Bowman, said:

International students bring a vibrancy to Darwin; are warmly welcomed into the community; and help fill skills gaps while studying and upon graduation. In the context of dire skills shortages, and lower than national average rental vacancies, the social licence for international education in the NT is distinct from that in major metropolitan cities.

That's something that I know honourable members representing regional electorates with universities will relate to. These consultations have been taking place for some time and will continue until the start date, 1 January 2025.

One thing that the framework makes clear is that international education is not a one-way street. In the last couple of years, we've made great strides in taking Australian education overseas, teaching in international branch campuses where students can get the benefit of an Australian education without having to leave home. We are a global leader in terms of international education and the education we provide to our own citizens. When it comes to the caps on enrolments, I know from speaking to the minister that we will be taking into account the vital role that international education plays in regional areas of Australia, such as with Charles Darwin University in my electorate. We will get the balance right.

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