Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Community Safety, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Colombian, sorry; my apologies—who had been ripped off, which was very sad to see.

To make it very clear for people who may not know: when it comes to immigration agents and giving immigration advice, that can only be done by a practising lawyer and also an immigration qualified agent who is registered in Australia under OMARA, the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority. When it comes to education agents, that is separate. They cannot give immigration advice.

The bill amends the Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2000, the ESOS Act, to make changes that the government says will improve the quality and integrity of the international student sector. It is important to note so Australians are not misled about the primary purpose of this bill. Sadly, it's to hide the government's mess when it comes to immigration. We've seen that the government's mismanagement of the immigration system has led to a more than doubling of the number of international students in Australia from 336,845 in March 2022 to a peak of 713,144 in February 2024. When it comes to this huge increase, I must admit immigration agents, who are also looking after the education sector and the education of international students, were very excited about what the government was doing, because they were basically increasing all these numbers and letting more people in. They were very excited about it until they started receiving notices—I know 700 went out to immigration agents—to 'please explain why you've allowed this person to come to the country with false documentation,' or, where education agencies were running schools, Home Affairs would walk in and tell them to remove students midclass.

This has all come about now—this is what the immigration agents and education agents have told me—because, under the previous coalition government, we had very strict controls when it came to the security checks of people coming to this country. We weren't putting the burden onto education agencies or immigration agents to make sure all the documents were bona fide; we did that as Home Affairs. That's why we had this kind of open-door policy. This has put huge pressure on universities around Australia. Several top universities in Australia are getting concerned about the repercussions for them when it comes to allowing students in who may have false documentation, so they have decided to place restrictions on applications such as those from Punjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, and Jammu and Kashmir. Instead of scrutiny and doing due diligence, the universities have basically now had to put a blanket ban in. I must say too, though, that it's not the universities' responsibility to have the know-how to check and do all the due diligence when it comes to the scrutiny of false documentation.

Under Labor there are 80,000 student visa holders who are now on their third student visa or more—some are on an eighth, ninth or 10th student visa—as a backdoor way of staying in Australia. This huge increase is obviously putting on great pressure when it comes to rentals. I know this firsthand in my own electorate of La Trobe, where I visited the Casey Hospital and talked to the nurses. They were saying that, when it comes to bringing nurses into the country, they actually find it most difficult to find accommodation for them. We're finding right across not only Victoria but Australia that international students who have come in these huge numbers—and we love the international students, but this policy of having an open door where anyone can come in without being scrutinised has put huge pressure on immigration agents, education agents, universities and also rentals.

The government has a deeply offensive and divisive false narrative that the growth in international students is basically driven by shonks or crooks. It is not that at all. Yes, there are people in that industry, like all industries, who take advantage of innocent people, and they must be and should be punished. One thing I've pushed for for a long time—I know it was one of our recommendations, Deputy Speaker—is giving the Australian Border Force more when it comes to search-and-seizure provisions. They don't have those search-and-seizure provisions when it comes to these issues. They need to call in the Australian Federal Police. The Australian Federal Police have the search warrants and basically go in there, search for the evidence and put the case together even though the Australian Border Force have the necessary skills.

While we acknowledge this bill contains some integrity measures, and I recognise those, the government's amendments to the Education Services for Overseas Students Act are primarily concerned with the imposition of a cap on the number of foreigners who can study in Australia. We're now having a big cap put in place simply because the doors have been opened.

Sadly, as I was saying, there are immigration agents and education agents who've come to me who have been put under great stress and have even threatened to have their business closed down. It's proposed that the methodology for the minister's decision will be set out in legislation to be detailed in parliament by 31 December 2024, supposedly after consultation with stakeholders. However, the sector will be required to put in place the new caps from 1 January 2025. So if the government moves very slowly, which I assume it will, and its decision is made in December, it's going to put an awful lot of pressure on education agents' forward planning, when it comes to staff and university, because it has to be turned around so quickly.

The international student market is a huge market in Australia. With $36.4 billion in revenue, it was Australia's fourth largest export in 2022-23. I congratulate Senator Sarah Henderson, the shadow education minister, who went in really hard to back students from India, Nepal and Pakistan who've unfortunately been targeted by the decisions made by this Labor government. On 22 April, in an article in the SydneyMorning Herald entitled 'Unis ban Indian student applications as visa rejections hit record highs' it said:

Universities are blocking applications from students from entire countries as the federal government's latest stage in its migration crackdown makes it even tougher for some institutions to recruit foreign pupils. Some universities, include at least one prestigious Group of Eight institution, have taken the drastic step of banning or limiting applications from countries deemed at high risk of visa refusal, including India and Nepal.

When it comes to international students, Nepal and India are fantastic overall international students and they should not be targeted. Vice chancellors from small universities say that processing visas has been highly unpredictable and has targeted them unfairly. This is interesting too, because it flies in the face of the Prime Minister's joint commitment with Prime Minister Modi made at the first Australian-Indian annual summit in March 2023 that 'the efficient and timely processing of student visa applications for Indian nationals' will be facilitated. It says nothing about banning them altogether. It actually says they will be made in an efficient and timely manner. That hasn't been the case.

At the same event, I know Prime Minister Modi put pressure on Prime Minister Albanese to change the situation when it came to safer community funding for Hindu temples and other temples, because, sadly, they had been targeted. We didn't have a reverse face when it came to that position. Also, when these international students come here, many of them go to places of worship, and it was sad that they were targeted in such a way.

In 2023, there were around 5,800 education agencies and more than 23,000 individual education agents facilitating overseas student enrolments with Australian providers, reflecting the sheer size of this market. With 23,000 people, can you imagine how many jobs there are in this sector? Providers typically pay a commission to these agents per student. The exact amount is not disclosed, but it could be up to 15 per cent. It's a very important message for Australia to let countries know overseas, and this is something we put in place in the previous government when it came to those applying, that you get these unscrupulous—I won't call them agents, because they weren't agents—people lodging international students or visa applications and putting them through the system. Under OMARA, we make sure that if the person is putting through the one computer they must be registered with OMARA, unless it's an individual. They can't get group applications going, which is something we put in place.

While the coalition government made quite sensible and constructive improvements to the quality and integrity of the education of international students, we are disappointed with the minister's false narratives which, as I said, characterise this industry as shonks and crooks. It is just not the case. Yes, like any industry, they have some criminal elements in there. There always are when there's some money to be made. But most education agents I've met and dealt with are very hardworking and very dedicated and just want to see people come to Australia, get a great education and enjoy the Australian lifestyle as they stay here. After two years, the Minister for Home Affairs only issued letters to 34 providers just a few weeks ago. No providers have been shut down. So, if they're all shonks and crooks, it sounds like they are getting away with it. Those colleges which are providing a back door for foreigners to come to Australia and work should be weeded out. We await the outcome of a Senate inquiry into this. I am looking forward to that. Again, Madam Deputy Speaker, congratulations for— (Time expired)

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