Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker. It places our tertiary education sector at great risk of becoming an unwilling and unfortunate victim of the major parties' race to the bottom on the politics of immigration.

The bill proposes several measures which could damage the tertiary education sector, including the arbitrarily set enrolment caps for individual courses and providers. The bill gives the minister extraordinary powers to suspend or cancel courses for international students without consultation. There are limited accountability provisions and avenues for appeal. Institutions have no right to a merits review.

We're told that the minister will exercise these extraordinary powers only in extraordinary circumstances, and that may well be true of this minister, but we have no guarantees regarding his potential successors. I remind the House of the damage done by previous education ministers: the current member for Wannon and his colleagues Senator Birmingham, the former member for Bradfield Brendan Nelson and the former member for Fadden Stuart Robert when they were education ministers. The Sheil review of their political interference in the education sector found that the negative consequences of the perception—just the perception—of arbitrary intervention have been significant, both within Australia and with our international partners. This legislation could well be no different.

Australian universities have already experienced a long-term decline in government investment, particularly in infrastructure and in research and development. They are now reliant on tuition fees from full-fee-paying international students. Whether or not we like this, the responsibility for that fact has to be laid at the feet of governments, which have for decades underfunded student places as well as research and development.

Some of the members who've spoken to this bill in this House have demonstrated a disturbing degree of dislike or distaste for international students, and I would go so far as to say that some have verged upon xenophobia. My colleagues need to remember that these international students contribute very significantly to the cost of running our universities—the universities that Australian students attend. If we lose all those students, the cost of the universities will fall on Australian shoulders alone.

This legislation is a shameful negation of four decades of effort by successive Australian governments to develop our international education sector. Tertiary institutions are already experiencing negative impacts from the government's slowed visa processing and from decreased approval rates. Electorates like mine already have fewer students in our cafes and our shops. We can anticipate labour shortages for local businesses and for the care sector. The effects of this sudden policy shift will not be quickly undone.

So I have moved the amendment circulated in my name, which will legislate a review of the consequences of this bill. The review will commence in the first six months of 2026, and it will be conducted by an independent expert. It will consider the effect on providers of the proposed enrolment limits, their effect on net overseas migration and housing availability in Australia, and the impact of this bill on the quality of education offered to both international and local students. The review must report within six months of its inception, and the minister must share the report with both houses of parliament within 15 days of receiving it.

As a former senior academic, I believe that the first goal of our universities should be the education of Australians, but, when we can do that, we can also do that while including and educating the young people of other nations. We can do that to our mutual social and economic benefit. We should do that. And I hope that the government will accept the need for a critical review of this ill-conceived legislation at a reasonable time after it's implemented in the hope that we might limit the damage that it does.

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