Zoe Daniel (Goldstein, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

(1) Page 2 (after line 12), after clause 3, insert:

4 Sunsetting of Parts 7 and 8 of Schedule 1

(1) Despite item 53 of Schedule 1, the amendments made by Part 7 of Schedule 1 do not apply in relation to the 2027 calendar year and later calendar years.

(2) Despite item 56 of Schedule 1, the amendments made by Part 8 of Schedule 1 cease to apply after the end of the 2-year period starting at the commencement of that Part.

I am yet to be convinced that the volume of foreign students coming to Australia is the core of the problem that the government is trying to solve here, that they are the primary cause of the housing and rental crises currently besetting our country and causing so much hardship to so many. Nor am I convinced that, even if that is a major problem, this legislation is the way to solve it. Overseas student numbers collapsed during COVID, understandably, and now it seems to me that we're seeing a temporary spike as numbers recover. In the normal course of events, vice chancellors have suggested to me that it may well be numbers return to normal in a very short period. So if there is a perceived and temporary issue with the number of people entering the country, there's an easy fix, which is to make sure that the legislation operates only for a limited period. As I said in my second reading speech, I have been in discussions with the minister to add a sunset clause to the legislation to allow it to lapse once it has achieved the government's short-term goal. Unfortunately, the government has decided not to support this amendment despite support from the tertiary sector. The minister's advisers say they sympathise with the concept but it's too difficult to implement.

As it stands, the legislation grounds extraordinary powers to the minister—for example, to impose total enrolment limits by legislative instrument and to impose total enrolment limits by notice to the provider. Then there's the real sledgehammer—additional provisions to allow the minister to impose enrolment limits on individual courses by legislative instrument or by notice to the provider.

As it stands, the legislation grants extraordinary powers to the minister, for example, to impose total enrolment limits by legislative instrument and to impose total enrolment limits by notice to the provider. Then—the real sledgehammer—there are additional provisions to allow the minister to impose enrolment limits on individual courses by legislative instrument or by notice to the provider.

This is just too much power in the hands of one minister, and I wholeheartedly support the amendment just proposed by my colleague the member for North Syndey to remove that provision. Meanwhile, I'm offering a sunset clause of two years that would enable the government to get over what it sees as an immediate but one-off problem. It would also give the sector certainty that the extraordinary powers granted to the minister would not be used in unacceptable ways by a future incumbent. This parliament simply should not leave such overwhelming powers in the hands of one person given its potential impact on what has been an Australian success story.

Control over individual courses ought to be the responsibility of the individual institutions and not imposed by a minister. We have already seen the damage done by the previous government with its job-ready program, designed to make some university courses less attractive than others by, for instance, more than doubling student contributions to a three-year humanities degree, from $20,000 to more than $43,000—an increase of 113 per cent. Despite this price signal, Australia's largest universities earlier this year reported a jump in applications for arts degrees, leading to higher enrolments. It is this sort of meddling, therefore, that has already proved counterproductive.

The government acknowledged to me that it might have been a different story if the Australian tertiary education authority had already been up and running. I offered suggestions to address this conundrum. They were considered but rejected. Perhaps it would have been the case that, had the government seen its way clearly, the presence of my amendment might have given them cause to get a wriggle on and actually see the authority established. I do suspect that, if the minister had been the ultimate decision-maker, a sunset clause would have seen the light of day—to mix the metaphor.

I would say that not all universities are against this legislation. I acknowledge that, but vice-chancellors from the universities of Monash and Melbourne—many Goldstein students attend those—who I have met with personally entirely disagree with it. I certainly do not want to be involved in creating a situation where students in Goldstein cannot get a place at a university anywhere near where they live because of arbitrary caps imposed under this legislation. I commend the amendment to the House.

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