Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I want to read out something from the vice-chancellor of the University of New England. He says:

We've always had a very deep and extensive assessment of bona fide students. The genuine student test is something we've spent a lot of time and energy on.

We haven't ever had a default of a single [international] student in any degree in our history, not one.

This is from the University of New England. We don't have a problem with international students, and we don't want the government to create one. It's vitally important for the financial viability of regional universities that a problem happening in the cities does not manifestly become an infliction on regional universities.

The University of New England is in an area where the varsity experience has been very recent. It's one of the oldest universities in Australia. It was a college of the University of Sydney and was formed in, I think, 1937. It's been a fight all the way through to maintain it as a university. I continue to fight for it to this day with funding and programs. I must say that I struggle with the vote there, but, nonetheless, I'm a part of that alumni. When I saw this, I had real concerns. When I went to university, I was in financial administration, which was the accounting faculty, and in some of my tutorials, I was very much in the minority. The vast majority were overseas students. I acknowledge that that's how it works and how we want it to continue. If Armidale lost the university, then Armidale would be decimated. Armidale would have no reason to be any bigger than Glen Innes or Uralla. So we have to keep that university running. Anything that even smells like a threat to it, we have to get in front of it straight away.

I welcome that this is going to be considered further in the Senate, which reports on 15 August, but I'm worried that there won't be enough time for places such as Armidale to be properly heard on their issues. I don't know whether the Senate is going to go to Armidale and talk to the people, not only to people in the university but to people in the town, to clearly understand the ramifications of rash or misplaced views that might be very pertinent to another market but are completely different in a regional market. One of the issues we have in regional areas is the low number of people with tertiary qualifications, such as in the city of Tamworth. We're currently extending the university to Tamworth. We don't want anything to happen that will threaten that. It was very hard work to get the extra funding by reason of Commonwealth-funded positions so that we could get the viability of that campus started and approved. The process of disassembling the old velodrome has started. That is where the campus is going to be.

This has come in at the last moment and is creating real concerns for us, so it's important for me to make sure that those concerns are noted and to say to the people of New England that I'm very much across this. We'll be corresponding very closely with the chancellor and vice-chancellor of the University of New England to make sure that their concerns are properly heard in this chamber and in this parliament in such a form so as not to put undue risk on the University of New England. I have no doubt that this is probably the case for Charles Sturt University and for other regional campuses that rely on international students. Those students are overwhelmingly bona fide. They're not looking for a job on Botany Road if they're going to Armidale for their degree; they're there for the proper reason. There might be some confusion, especially in its assessment of Nepalese students, that students needing to be present is not an issue for the University of New England. This is a brief contribution, but I want to clearly put on the record for the people of New England that this is an issue for us, and I'll be following it very closely.

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