Daniel Mulino (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to rise today to support the Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Quality and Integrity) Bill 2024. By way of introduction, there have been so many comments in this place over recent days, and rightly so, about how Australia was fourth on the medal tally at the Olympics and how we punched so high above our weight. Indeed, that's a common refrain in Australia, when it comes to sport, and I think it's something that all of us in this place celebrate, including myself. I was glued to the TV at some very unhealthy hours over the last fortnight.

Today we're talking about another area where Australia punches well above its weight, which is international education and research. These are critically important to our economy and our society, and we should celebrate them. What this bill today recognises is that we can only celebrate it if education is undertaken in a way where it's properly regulated and undertaken with integrity.

I'll start with a couple of statistics. Though statistics can be rather sterile, it's important to provide some context in that the international education sector in Australia is so massive. In 2022-23 the sector contributed over $35 billion to the economy. As previous speakers have indicated, it was the fourth largest export earner. There were many significant components to that, including higher education at over $24 billion and the VET sector at $8½ billion. Coming from Victoria, I know how important this is. For many years, education exports—the international education sector—have been Victoria's largest services export. When you look at the international ranking of countries with international students studying in them we're routinely in the top five. Depending on the measure that you use, Australia is sometimes ranked even higher than that. These are huge numbers, and they don't just represent dollars of exports. For me, they also represent something more substantial around the numbers of people being trained to support the vitality of our economy.

But, of course, there's also the human side to this. I raise that because I feel as though I have experienced almost every dimension of the international student experience. I was an international student 25-odd years ago over in the US, and I spent a number of years doing that. I was in a class where 21 of 28 students were foreign, and it wasn't always easy to navigate the system as a foreign student, particularly, of course for those with language issues or cultural issues. But those 21 students out of that cohort of 28 added a great deal of vitality. That brought together people from all around the world who then studied and researched with each other and added greatly not just to each other's experience but to each other's education and to the final outcome. Indeed, that strengthened the institution which we were studying in.

Before that, I'd studied a master's at the University of Sydney where half of my class was foreign. Roughly 10 out of the 20 master's students were foreign students. There I didn't just see the interaction between foreign students and domestic students; I got to see how the foreign students who graduated from that class went on to contribute, in many cases, to Australia. Some of those foreign students who completed the master's went back to their home countries or, indeed, went to other countries, but many of them stayed in Australia. Some went on to undertake PhDs in Australia. Some went on to work in Australia. Some went on to become permanent residents. Some went on to work for Australian institutions such as the Treasury, ASIC and the Reserve Bank. So I saw directly how these people added greatly to our economy and to our society.

Finally, I taught international students when I was at Monash University. I taught a number of undergraduate foreign students. I taught PhD students macroeconomics. Again, I saw the challenges they often had in navigating the system and navigating society, but then I saw them grow. I saw them complete their qualifications. As with my master's class, some of them went home, but many of them stayed in Australia. Some of them are still teaching at Monash to this day, and now they're teaching the next generation of students. They're undertaking research. They're contributing.

So I've seen how much foreign students can create and contribute. If we think about all the different ways that foreign students add, there's the creation of skills that are dedicated after the completion of the degree, both here and abroad. There are the personal connections, of course. The massive alumni network that has been generated over decades of people who have studied here and then either stayed or gone overseas has created an incredible asset for Australia—not an asset that is measured in dollars and cents but something very valuable and important.

There is also the research, of course, and research is an area that, as I have seen, has benefited greatly from a diverse range of skills, backgrounds and perspectives. I believe Australian research is all the better for having not just those foreign students who graduate and continue researching here but all of those connections that undoubtedly continue for many years after those students study here. Then, of course, there are all the financial benefits: the export dollars but also, of course, the fact that so many people who complete these degrees then fill skills gaps in Australia and contribute in those ways.

So there are so many benefits. But, of course, you get the benefits of that system not through volume but through the quality of the interaction, the quality of the training, the quality of the education, the quality of the skills that people come out with and the quality of the research. For that to be the focus, you need to have a system that is built on integrity.

There have been a number of reviews into this sector. The Nixon review is one of the more recent reviews. It found systemic integrity issues within the international education sector, including collusive and unscrupulous business practices between education providers, their agents and non-genuine students. That involves agents and sometimes providers ripping off students. Sometimes, perhaps, students are coming here without any intention to study. It can be all sorts of different situations. But what was most pertinent out of the Nixon review was that there was something systemic at play—not everywhere, of course, because I think the vast majority of the sector has high integrity and adds a great deal to our education system, to our research and to our society, but it did find that there were systemic integrity issues that needed to be addressed. In relation to the VET sector, the Nixon review looked at recent operations and investigations that had exposed the fact that non-genuine providers were colluding with disreputable agents to facilitate student visas. It's in that context that we need to strengthen the system, and that's why the bill that has been brought forward is so important. The international education sector is adding greatly to our economy, greatly to our education system and greatly to our society, but we need to make sure that we strengthen it, and we need to make sure that it continues to do so.

One of the key elements in this bill is that the bill will strengthen the fit-and-proper-provider test applied to providers to limit cross-ownership and collusive behaviours behind providers and education agents. As I just mentioned, that was an issue which had been identified by the Nixon review. It had also been identified by other reviews, including reviews of the parliament. So that's a very important step that this bill will put into place.

There are also a number of measures in relation to agents. One is that the Secretary of the Department of Education will be given the power to collect education agent commission information. This is critical because we know that effective regulation relies upon effective data. It is not possible, in almost all cases, to effectively regulate a sector if you don't have clear visibility of what's going on. There will also be an expansion of the ability of the Secretary of the Department of Education or the relevant regulator to provide information to registered providers about education agents. That's another critical element of not just collecting critically important information and data but making sure that it goes to those members of the education ecosystem that need it in order to protect student interests and protect the overall integrity of the scheme. It will also permit the Minister for Education to direct, via legislative instrument, how ESOS agencies manage initial applications for the registration of providers and applications for the registration of courses by registered providers by directing the suspension of lodgement or processing of applications and/or that an ESOS agency is not required or is not permitted to process existing applications for a period of up to 12 months. So those three elements of this bill all go to the way in which the role of agents will be regulated more effectively.

There are also measures which go to providers. That's the other key element of this system when it comes to student interaction. The bill will require providers to deliver a course to domestic students for two years before applying to register to deliver courses for overseas students, and this is obviously to reflect the fact that we want bona fide courses and that we want courses that have been offered to domestic students for a reasonable period of time. We don't want courses that are set up entirely for foreign students in a way that isn't rigorous and isn't for the right purposes. In a related sense, the bill will allow for the automatic cancellation of a provider's registration where they have not delivered a course to overseas students for 12 consecutive months, so it will require continuity in the provision of services to foreign students.

The bill will also permit the automatic cancellation of a provider's registration where they are deemed not to be fit and proper as a result of being under investigation for serious offences. Of course, this will relate to the very first element that I talked about, which is a strengthening of the fit-and-proper test itself. And it will provide additional powers to the Minister for Education in relation to limiting or cancelling providers' ability to deliver courses that have systemic quality or standard-of-delivery issues and to set limits on enrolments at a provider level. It's critical that the minister has those additional powers in order to ensure integrity of the system.

So we have a raft of integrity measures. Importantly, underpinning this is strengthening the fit-and-proper provider test. But, as I mentioned, there are a series of measures that relate to agents and their role in the system, and it is absolutely critical that the regulation in relation to agents is strengthened, because in so many instances it's possible for vulnerable international students to fall prey to an unscrupulous agent. Then of course it's also critical that providers are subject to stronger regulation. This is going to be achieved through strengthening the framework, through providing additional powers to the secretary of the Department of Education and through providing additional powers to the Minister for Education to act in that central role.

I started with a summary of the significant economic contribution of international education to Australia—the fact that this reflects not just dollars and cents, in terms of exports, but a huge provision of services, training and education to so many thousands of people; that those people gain massively; that our students gain from learning and researching with the international students; and that Australia benefits from so many of those students staying here and researching or working after they've finished. It contributes so much, and I've seen that firsthand. But a system as big and as complex as our international education sector can work only if it's not about volume but about quality. That's why integrity has to be at the heart of the way in which this sector sees services provided to international students and also the way in which the government provides oversight and regulation. So I'm very pleased to support this bill.

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