Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak in the cognate debate of the Education Services for Overseas Students Legislation Amendment (2006 Measures No. 1) Bill 2006 and the Education Services for Overseas Students Legislation Amendment (2006 Measures No. 2) Bill 2006. International education is Australia’s fourth largest export industry and is estimated to contribute $7.5 billion to our economy each year. Now more than ever we need to take the education services industry seriously in this country. Figures released today show a decline in commencements of international undergraduate students at Australian universities. It is only a small drop but it is a signal that we can no longer take for granted the enormous growth in international students coming to Australia that we have seen over the past decade.

Central to the industry’s success in that time has been the reputation of Australia’s education providers. The ESOS regime is designed to safeguard that good reputation by ensuring that providers meet certain standards of quality and overseas students are covered by adequate consumer protection measures. The focus of the original ESOS Act was on the regulation of providers of education services to overseas students. The act ensured that the providers of education services to overseas students had to: register with the Commonwealth Register of Institutions and Courses for Overseas Students, known as CRICOS; refrain from misleading or deceptive recruitment practices; in the case of closure, refund student fees; become a member of a tuition assurance scheme, which ensured access to alternative tuition in the event of provider closure; and be penalised through suspension or cancellation from CRICOS for any breaches.

The current regulatory regime for international education consists of the ESOS Act and complementary acts, the ESOS regulations and the National Code of Practice for Registration Authorities and Providers of Education and Training to Overseas Students, known as the national code. There is much in the government’s policies on education generally to disagree with. However, in this case, the added protections for overseas students and other measures to provide clarity for providers, provided for within these bills, are a positive step for an important industry and we support them. These bills amend the ESOS Act to: extend the requirements on provider registration, clarify provider obligations in certain circumstances, extend the consumer protection elements of the act, insert a sunset clause for claims against the assurance fund, extend the fit and proper test provisions, and other elements as well. Most of the amendments have resulted from the evaluation of the ESOS Act conducted in 2003.

The ESOS Act 2000 carried a requirement that an evaluation of the act be conducted within three years of commencement. The evaluation was conducted in 2004 and invited submissions from industry and other stakeholders. The key areas that the evaluation looked into included quality assurance, consumer protection, migration policy and administration. The evaluation comprehensively addressed the limitations of the current ESOS legislation and raised a number of valid points with regard to the administration of the act. It also acknowledged the massive growth in the international education industry and the manner in which the industry has evolved in such a short time frame.

The evaluation report contained 41 recommendations aimed at improving the ESOS legislation, and it is some of these recommendations that have been picked up within these two bills. I will start with the changes to registration. In order to offer education and training services to international students, providers must be registered with the Commonwealth Register of Institutions and Courses for Overseas Students. In order to register, providers have to show that they can satisfy state and territory legislation as well as the ESOS Act and demonstrate that they are fit and proper. The ESOS Act requires all providers of education and training to overseas students that are registered on CRICOS to pay a registration fee each year. This fee is based on the total enrolments of overseas students for the previous year.

Current provisions within the act enable enforcement action to be taken against any provider that fails to pay the registration fee. These bills amend the act to stipulate that failure to pay the annual charge will result in the automatic suspension of the provider’s registration. Previously DEST had complained that enforcement of the annual registration fee payment took up too much administrative effort. This particular amendment has troubled the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee. These concerns were raised in a letter received from the AVCC which states that:

Timely payment by universities or any other provider is contingent upon early receipt of notification from Department of Education, Science and Training ... regarding the rules and calculations of the ARC (Annual Registration Charge) for the period, which should include time to discuss any discrepancies between DEST and provider calculations.

The AVCC’s concern is that, as the annual registration charge is reliant upon an agreement between the provider and DEST on total enrolments from the previous year, the resolution of discrepancies can affect the amount to be paid. The amount charged by DEST may therefore be inaccurate, and this amendment does not allow enough time for the charge to be questioned. The AVCC believes that automatic suspension for nonpayment by the end of February when DEST is under no obligation to detail the extent of liability could be seen as unfair.

We on this side agree with the AVCC on this point and, subsequently, will be moving an amendment to the bill seeking to give providers 28 days notice of the specific amount they are required to pay as the annual registration charge under the act. Specifically the amendment that we will be moving is to repeal section 23 and substitute it with a new section 23 as follows:

(1)

The Secretary must give to each provider who is liable to pay an annual registration charge for a year a written notice stating the amount of the charge.

(2)

A notice under this section must be given to a provider by the last business day of January of the year.

(3)

Subject to subsection (4), a registered provider must pay the annual registration charge for which the provider is liable by the last business day of February of the year.

(4)

If the notice has not been given to a provider by the last business day of January, the annual registration charge for which the provider is liable must be paid within 28 days of the day on which the notice was given to the provider.

I submit that this is an entirely appropriate amendment and I would ask that the government support it. The Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee is the peak representational body of Australia’s 38 universities and deserves to be heard on matters in which it has considerable expertise. This amendment is simply commonsense as it is impossible for a provider to pay the annual charge when they are unsure as to what the amount is or there is uncertainty about the figures used to calculate the charge.

I turn now to the changes to the fit and proper test in this bill. The ESOS Act contains provisions relating to a fit and proper person test. This is designed to ensure that past behaviours which impact upon a provider or their associates’ suitability to be registered is identified. The independent evaluation identified disquiet amongst stakeholders at the fact that the test was only applied once, presently at the point of initial registration. These bills allow for that test to be applied at any stage in a provider’s registration and will allow for greater regulation over who the test applies to through an extension of the power. These bills extend the fit and proper test provision to include high managerial agents of the provider as a new category, along with providers and associates of providers.

Concerns have been raised at the amendment’s definition of ‘high managerial agent’ to include teachers, consultants and principals. This has raised several issues with regard to the onerous responsibility that this places on larger institutions with numerous staff. It has also been pointed out that this particular amendment could unfairly expose an individual’s private information. Other concerns include the potential impediment to service delivery due to the extended application of the test. Some providers are worried that the extra workload burden that they may shoulder under this amendment will divert resources away from the core business of providers: to deliver quality education. As the Minister for Education, Science and Training noted in her second reading speech for the Education Services for Overseas Students Legislation Amendment (2006 Measures No. 1) Bill 2006:

In introducing these amendments, my department has been mindful of the need to avoid unnecessary regulation, given the cost both to the industry and the Australian government. These amendments will have a minimal regulatory impact on providers and will streamline processes for the Australian government.

This would, however, appear to be at odds with the proposed requirements to do background checks on large numbers of employees, which clearly has the potential to become a regulatory burden on a number of providers. It should be pointed out though that similar tests do apply to people in the financial services sector whereby individuals are assessed prior to and continuously throughout their appointment by APRA. These tests have become commonplace in a number of sectors as consumer protection measures and will no doubt expand into a number of other areas. While we do share some concerns about this amendment we also believe that, on balance, the extension of the test is warranted.

In recent years we have seen a handful of educational facilities undertaking questionable actions with regard to their international students. Unfortunately there are always going to be unscrupulous people and organisations out there seeking to take advantage of others for a financial gain; the international education sector is no exception to this. Of course, the vast majority of organisations are above board and offer quality education and training to their students. However, there is always the danger that there will be that rogue element and the government’s intention should be to minimise the potential for that as much as possible. These bills therefore correctly attempt to strengthen the consumer protection elements of the ESOS Act.

Under the act, private providers are required to be members of a tuition assurance scheme which protects a student in the event that a provider is unable to meet its obligations. Amendments made within the bills before the House today clarify that providers must be a member of a tuition assurance scheme that covers each particular course on offer. Previously, providers could be members of any tuition assurance scheme even if it did not cover the specific courses offered. One event that has led to this change was the collapse of the Strathfield Regional Community College 12 months ago. When the college went under, students who were enrolled in its horticulture course were transferred into hospitality by the tuition assurance fund. As one media report noted at the time, the only similarity between horticulture and hospitality is that they both start with the letter H.

Obviously this was an unfortunate and clearly unacceptable situation but one which illustrates the importance of the protection measures of the act and the need for these provisions to be sound. Another amendment to the act will insert a sunset clause limiting the time frame in which a potential claim can be made on the ESOS assurance fund. The purpose of the ESOS assurance fund is to protect the interests of students by ensuring that students are provided with suitable alternative courses or have their fees refunded if the provider cannot provide the course that the student paid for. The sunset clause on the fund will be 12 months. Stakeholders had stated that the lack of a sunset clause exposed the fund to potential claims for an indefinite period. The inclusion of a sunset clause gives fund managers greater surety and enables better management of the fund.

I turn now to the important area of student visa conditions. These bills make changes so that provider obligations under the ESOS Act which support visa integrity are brought into line with current educational practice. Currently, students who breach visa conditions relating to attendance or satisfactory academic performance must be reported to DIMA. The reference in the act to the precise visa conditions for which this occurs will be removed from the act under these amendments and moved to the regulations made under the ESOS Act. These regulations will be mirrored by the migration regulations and will reflect the student visa conditions outlined in the national code.

The reporting requirements of providers were the subject of many submissions to the ESOS evaluation. Providers were obliged by the act to report students to DIMA when the students did not meet certain standards of attendance or academic performance; generally, these were triggers for the automatic cancellation of a student visa. The ESOS evaluation stated that the all-or-nothing nature of present requirements for providers to report students for breach of their visa conditions bring the full weight of DIMA’s compliance process into play too early in the educational processes that should be the responsibility of the provider. It is for these reasons that the evaluation recommended that the national code be amended to ensure that reporting conditions are clarified to better reflect current educational practices across the sector and that providers devise appropriate policies and procedures to monitor student progress and attendance. The national code will set out the appropriate educational practices to be followed by providers in assessing a student’s performance and then DIMA will amend the migration regulations and student visa conditions accordingly.

I understand that the question of how providers are expected to measure a student’s performance has become something of a sticking point in negotiations over the national code. The Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee has been successful, I understand, in negotiating for higher education providers to measure and report academic progress as opposed to attendance. Providers in the vocational education and training sector, however, are still concerned that they will be required to report on both attendance and academic progress. I trust that DEST will continue its consultation with this important sector to resolve those outstanding matters. DEST needs to consider the suggestions made by VET providers for sector-specific measures rather than insist on a one-size-fits-all approach.

These bills also tighten up and clarify the requirements for student refunds within the act. Previously, there was a perception that refunds were only provided for when a student actively withdrew from a course, either before or after the starting date. Consequently, the legislation expands the concept of student default. The new amendments clarify that a student default can occur when a student withdraws from a course and where a provider terminates the student’s enrolment due to their failure to pay course fees, breaches of visa conditions or student misbehaviour. It is now clear that students can access the consumer protection measures of the ESOS Act in those circumstances. However, the bills also make concessions for providers by inserting that a student’s refund amount can be reduced if it can be demonstrated that, upon enrolment with a new provider, a student has received academic credit or recognition of prior learning for completed study with the original provider.

A small number of providers have used the written agreement between the provider and the student regarding refunds to retain a significant proportion of the student’s prepaid course fees when a student is unable to commence a course due to a visa being refused. A new section inserted in the act will ensure that such written refund agreements cannot penalise a student for being unable to obtain a visa, although providers will be permitted to retain a small administrative fee in these circumstances.

The tightening and clarifying of refund provisions within the act is clearly something which we support wholeheartedly. The provisions clarify the obligations on providers and extend the protection for students and, as such, help to protect the integrity of our international education sector.

I want to speak now about the national code, which is another very important element of the ESOS regime. While the bills do make some technical amendments in relation to the code, they do not address its content. While these bills are important in safeguarding the reputation of Australia’s international education sector, it is the finalisation of the national code that is the most pressing issue for stakeholders in the sector.

In May this year, DEST issued a draft national code for industry consultation. Initially, the draft code was met with widespread criticism from stakeholders, especially relating to the proposed implementation date of 1 January 2007. This date was seen as being untenable to most providers as it did not provide adequate time to ensure that compliance measures under the new amendments were in place. Other issues that raised the ire of providers included the draft code’s impact on increasing compliance costs and administrative burdens, the cost of implementing the revised code and the fact that many of the proposed changes within the draft code had not been based upon quantifiable data.

Thankfully, it seems that the department listened to the majority of suggestions and these issues are now mostly resolved. However, it does point to an attitude of consultation avoidance within the department. It would seem to me that, had the providers been listened to earlier on in the process, a lot of time and angst would have been saved.

Another issue that the industry has with the revised code is the lack of inclusion of any evaluation or reporting time frames. Many within the industry fear that the code will be subject to continuous ad hoc amendments. For providers, every change means extra work, more cost and possible confusion. Providers want to meet their compliance obligations but they also have businesses to run and students to educate. To do that successfully, providers need certainty. We call on the minister to listen to the sector and work with providers to avoid non-stop changes that add to the compliance burden without necessarily adding to the quality of the education.

That brings me to the question of whether DEST itself is doing everything it can to enforce compliance with the ESOS regime. There have been numerous bills brought before this House to amend the ESOS Act, each one imposing stricter compliance regimes on providers. However, none stops to consider whether DEST itself is being proactive in identifying and preventing possible breaches of the scheme.

In June 2005, the Auditor-General presented a report to parliament on the International Education Group of the Department of Education, Science and Training. According to the ANAO report, the International Education Group undertakes a range of compliance and enforcement activities in relation to international education providers. But that audit report went on to note serious deficiencies in the way in which the International Education Group monitored performance and reporting. The report makes reference to the risk matrix model used by the IEG to assist in its compliance and enforcement role. The model assesses the risk of providers committing breaches of ESOS legislation and related policies and practices. The report notes:

This matrix is useful in directing IEG compliance and enforcement resources towards providers that are relatively likely not to comply with ESOS legislation and related policies and practices. However, the matrix does not contain standard risk management approaches ... nor does it feed into a clearly defined framework for controlling risks, determining residual risks, and monitoring and evaluating risk treatments. Further, the ANAO found that few risk assessments have been undertaken, and IEG Branch plans contain little reference to compliance and enforcement.

As I mentioned earlier, several submissions to the ESOS evaluation commented on this apparent unwillingness by government to use their monitoring and enforcement powers. This view was reiterated in submissions regarding the draft national code. A joint peak body response on the draft code made by a group consisting of the AVCC, the Australian Council for Private Education and Training, TAFE Directors Australia and English Australia states:

... DEST is not using the authority available to it in dealing with unscrupulous providers, but rather has imposed more regulation on all providers in an attempt to resolve an area of substandard performance. That is, to date, the government has not used the existing consumer protection measures available to it to protect the interests of international education.

That is a pretty strong statement from a peak body grouping with enormous experience in the provision of international education. It should be noted that those comments were made just a few short months ago, in late May. These are companies and institutions that have invested heavily in the area of international education. There is a lot at stake here for providers, so they need to know that the government is doing everything it can to monitor and enforce compliance with the ESOS regime so that rogue operators do not put the rest of the sector at risk.

The industry is calling for DEST to uphold its end of the bargain. The government keeps imposing more regulation on the sector, but there is little evidence, as highlighted by the Audit Office report, that DEST is using its enforcement powers proactively to protect students and the international education industry from unscrupulous operators. The government needs to take this industry seriously and DEST needs to show providers that the compliance burden that they have accepted for the good of the industry is matched by good administration of the regime within the department.

It is sad to say that, in the past, some institutions have treated international students as cash cows and have not provided them with the education or facilities that they have paid for. The purpose of the ESOS Act is to ensure that this does not occur. The aim is to ensure the integrity of the international education sector, thus protecting Australia’s reputation as a provider of quality education to international students. It is Australia’s reputation that attracts the majority of international students to study here. All it takes to ruin or permanently damage that reputation is a few rogue elements. It is the objective of the ESOS Act to prevent this from happening.

At the same time, though, there is one factor that is undermining Australia’s international education sector, and that is the voluntary student unionism bill that was rammed through parliament late last year. The AVCC have noted with respect to VSU:

... the economies of scale provided by universal service provision will be lost, reducing the breadth of services available to international students. This loss is becoming known internationally leading to questions from potential students and their families. One spin off from removing the requirements for Australian students to support services for themselves will be losses to the international income earned from international students. There is also considerable difficulty in justifying a charge that would apply only to one group of students.

Clearly, one of the big selling points for Australian universities to overseas students was the promotion of the types of services that were supplied by student organisations. This loss, combined with the federal government’s funding cuts, constitutes a clear threat to our place as a competitive option for potential international students. As we saw late last year, the government introduced legislation that allowed providers to charge a service fee to international students while they were negotiating with their own party about bringing the VSU legislation before the House. This blatant show of double standards attracted widespread criticism from numerous sources, not the least of whom were international students and members on this side of the House.

We now have a situation where it is compulsory for universities to charge a fee to provide services for international students but, at the same time, it is absolutely out of the question for the same universities to charge fees to provide the same services to domestic students. This does not sit well on campuses where the two student types are supposed to be sharing experiences, cultures and friendships. The last thing that international students want is to be singled out or seen as a distinct group on campus. This differentiation between students, created by the government’s ideological obsession with VSU, runs the risk of turning potential international students away from Australia as their education destination. With Australia recently posting its 52nd consecutive trade deficit, I would have thought it prudent for the government to be enhancing our successful export industries rather than trying to take away their shine.

As I mentioned previously, education services are Australia’s fourth largest export industry, behind coal, tourism and iron ore. The paramount objective of any government in relation to this industry is its protection. We must ensure the continued viability of international education through the regulation of providers. However, we must also be fair and flexible in our approach. The government also needs to acknowledge that the greatest risk to the education services industry in this country is the government’s failure to properly invest in education at all levels: universities, the VET sector and schools. The stock in trade for international education providers trying to attract overseas students is the quality of an Australian education and the status of an Australian qualification. In an increasingly competitive global market for education services, Australia needs to be branded as a quality destination. That is getting harder and harder as our universities, who are the standard-bearers in the market, are starved of funding and forced by government policies to compromise quality just to survive. This is not a risk that we would take with any other valuable export industry.

It is Labor’s intention, as I said at the outset, to support the passage of these bills along with the minor yet important amendment I referred to earlier, which I will table and move at the appropriate time. We support the bills as great believers in the aims and objectives of ESOS and through our desire to ensure that this important industry thrives.

Michael Ferguson (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in favour of the Education Services for Overseas Students Legislation Amendment (2006 Measures No. 1) Bill 2006 and the Education Services for Overseas Students Legislation Amendment (2006 Measures No. 2) Bill 2006 that have been put forward by the minister. These bills are not earth shattering in that they do not contain any major reforms. However, the importance of these bills today is, I think, in their demonstration of the ongoing commitment on the part of the Howard federal government to protecting this very valuable industry: the education of overseas students in Australian universities and other education providers, including schools and TAFEs, at no cost to the Australian taxpayer but, rather, at full market rates charged to the overseas students. Australia does have a reputation, and a well-earned one, of being a safe, progressive and dynamic place to study. We should, and do, maintain this reputation by providing quality education and consumer protection specifically developed for overseas students.

It is important, perhaps partly in response to the comments we have just heard from the member for Capricornia, that we do make a distinction between overseas students and Australian students. Clearly there are differences. First of all the Australian government has a special obligation to Australian students as taxpayers and as Australians. The same obligations do not necessarily always apply to overseas students who we need to protect, and we need to protect as much as anything because they do, as contributors, provide an enormous financial benefit to our education system here.

In addition to that, it is a globally competitive environment and it is very important that Australia be able to hold its head high and give a guarantee to overseas nations that the educational standard that their students receive when they are in Australia is of top quality, and that consumer protections are there. After all, they will be separated from their homes by many thousands of kilometres. That is not the case, of course, with Australian students who do not have language barriers, who do have family support and who do perhaps have a better cultural understanding of the country that they live in. They also have better access to choice, as they understand, through local knowledge, which university will provide them with the educational training opportunities that they need.

It is also worth pointing out that the Australian educational system in the main does not see Australian students as the cash cow that the member for Capricornia referred to. They see them not as an industry at all but rather as an investment in our own future as Australians for Australians. The international education export industry, as the member has said quite correctly, is our fourth largest export industry in this country. I feel that this will come as a surprise to many people. It is worth as much as $7½ billion per year to the Australian economy. If time permits me I will return to those remarks towards the end of my contribution.

The Education Services for Overseas Students Act, more commonly known as the ESOS Act, and its complementary legislation regulate the international education and training services industry in this country. It is important to point out that this act is an innovation of the Howard government. It was, in fact, introduced in 2000 to address problems that were facing the industry at that time, which included the uncertain financial protections for students’ prepaid course fees, the emergence of a small minority of unscrupulous providers and an inconsistent quality assurance regime. Interestingly, after 13 years apparently Labor had not seen fit to introduce such legislation itself.

The purpose of the legislation was then, and is now, to ensure that overseas students who come to Australia to study on student visas receive the education and training for which they have paid. It aims to protect the reputation of Australia’s education and training export industry—and that is what it is: an export industry exporting an educational or training product for a financial return from overseas. It also aims to strengthen public confidence in the student visa program.

As the Parliamentary Library have very well informed me through their Bills Digest, the provision of education and training services to overseas students in Australia is a responsibility which we here in the Commonwealth share with our state and territory government colleagues. The states and territories have primary responsibility for the quality control of education providers and their courses, and exercise this through their own processes of approving, registering and monitoring providers and their courses. This, of course, is a subject all of its own but perhaps one in which we, as leaders in this place, should consider how we can better streamline those processes around Australia—perhaps not necessarily with a view to centralising them but certainly to make them as consistent as we can. The Commonwealth has an interest in protecting the reputation of this $7½ billion per year export industry in order to maintain the integrity of our own migration program and to protect the interests of overseas students as consumers. None of what we have been speaking about today can be seen in isolation from an orderly migration system which includes student visas.

The arrangements under the ESOS Act include the registration of education providers. That is done through CRICOS, the Commonwealth Register of Institutions and Courses for Overseas Students, and the ongoing role that has in ensuring: courses and their providers are of an appropriate standard; the compulsory membership by providers of a tuition assurance scheme; the contribution by those same providers to an assurance fund to ensure that there are funds to pay for student tuition in the case of a provider or its entity collapsing; the reporting obligations on providers; a compulsory national code, along with compulsory compliance with that national code; and sanctions for being in breach of both the act and the national code. Finally, one of the ESOS Act’s roles is to ensure that the Commonwealth does retain powers to be able to investigate providers and to impose sanctions on them, and to remove from the industry operators who are shown to be shonky. These are the main roles of the act.

In six years the act has proven its merit, because we have seen the overseas student education and training industry to be a growing industry. In coming months we will get an update of those figures and the common understanding is that those figures will, in fact, have grown. As the House has already been told, the ESOS Act required within it that it should be evaluated independently and that that should be commenced within three years of it having received royal assent. That evaluation commenced in May 2004 and its results were reported in June 2005, the report being released by the former Minister for Education, Science and Training, Dr Brendan Nelson. It is very important that I report to the House what the evaluation team found. It concluded:

... the architecture of the quality benchmarks represented by the ESOS framework is sound: standards for providers of education and training that are mandatory and operate nationally; a cooperative national regulatory model; the characterisation of the student-institution relationship in consumer terms; and the integration of export education and migration policy. 

The evaluation report found broad industry support for existing arrangements, so no major reforms to this act were considered in any way desirable. But it did make 41 recommendations for improvement, many of which are the subject of our debate today. The amendments we are considering do address the evaluation recommendations and are largely responsive to further consultations which have been had with the education and training industry as recently as this year. The amendments put forward by the government will do three main things: they will maintain Australia’s reputation for providing a quality education experience, they will enhance consumer protection for overseas students and they will improve national consistency in implementation and application of the ESOS legislative framework.

I turn now to the fit and proper test, which is the first major aspect we are debating today. All providers who deliver education and training to overseas students must be registered on CRICOS—the Commonwealth register. It is a requirement of registration that providers demonstrate they are ‘fit and proper’ to be registered. Unfortunately, currently the fit and proper test is applied on registration only and applies to providers and their associates. The amendments will allow for the fit and proper test to be applied not only on registration but at any time during a provider’s registration. Importantly, the government has seen fit to broaden to whom the fit and proper test can be applied. To prevent former providers with a bad history in the industry from taking up positions of influence with other providers, the application of the fit and proper test will now be extended from just providers and their associates to employees, agents and officers of the provider—that is, any person who works in a role with that provider and who is in a position to have an influence on the students or the quality of the course experience. Furthermore, the act will allow for the suspension of their registration from CRICOS, which will put to an end any concerns that overseas students or their families may have with a suspect person. These amendments provide further guarantee of the credentials of CRICOS registered providers.

The second aspect I will address is the tuition assistance schemes and access to student information. The ESOS Act ensures protection for overseas students by placing the main responsibility with the registered provider. Tuition assurance schemes and the ESOS Assurance Fund provide further certainty where the provider is unable to meet their obligations. The amendments will clarify a provider’s obligations to the receipt of course money and the provision of refunds. Allowing tuition assurance schemes access to student information is going to be an important feature of the reforms so far as it concerns students who have attended a provider that has collapsed. It will allow a faster placement of students in alternative courses where a provider is unable to meet their own obligations.

There is a fairly minor amendment of the annual registration charge. Providers contribute to the cost of regulation of the ESOS Act and that is appropriate, being an industry and not a government service. They do this by payment of the annual registration charge, or ARC. This is the legislated charge. I am advised that it is quite a small charge—only in the hundreds of dollars—and that it is payable on the last business day of February of any calendar year. The automatic suspension of a provider’s registration for failure to pay the ARC by the due date will streamline the enforcement action taken against providers who breach this legislative requirement. I also believe it will reduce the time spent by the Department of Education, Science and Training pursuing providers, who are, after all, collecting significant fees and paying fees back to the department which amount only to hundreds of dollars.

There are other amendments which provide for: the fund manager to have discretion to adjust refunds according to a student’s recognition of prior learning status; a sunset clause to be introduced for eligibility to make claims on the fund; and streamlining provisions to provide obligations with respect to migration rules. These amendments will have a minimal effect on the red-tape burden on providers. The consultations have taken place with providers and I am advised that they are broadly supportive of the reforms and accept them as necessary. It will also streamline the processes for the Australian government.

Protection and enhancement of Australia’s reputation for providing reliable and high-quality education is crucial to achieving sustainable growth of this important export industry, which, as I have already said, is Australia’s fourth largest export industry, bringing in over $7.5 billion every year. These amendments will strengthen the regulatory framework and consumer protection provisions of the legislation.

In the last moments that I have I will refer to comments by the member for Jagajaga reported in the press. They begin with the ABC announcing that a federal education department report shows the total number of students at Australian universities in 2005 grew by about 12,000 on the previous year, which is the smallest increase in five years. The report also shows 90 per cent of the additional 12,000 places were for international students. I think that anybody with an ounce of knowledge of this area would see that university placements in this country have not diminished at all. The member for Jagajaga says that degrees are becoming unaffordable. She says:

The real issue is the massive increase in HECS ... when you see the numbers going up as much as they have, they’ve more than doubled.

She says:

... it’s, of course, just going to flow on to very high levels of debt.

The member for Jagajaga went on to say that university graduates and students have debt growing by $2 billion a year. She fails to acknowledge that the HECS system was introduced not by the coalition but by her party, the Labor government, in 1989. It stands to reason that you would see debt increasing. What does that tell us? It tells us that there are more students in Australia studying at university than ever before; that there are more students studying at university than during any of the years of the Hawke or Keating governments; and certainly more students studying at university than was ever the case under the leadership of Mr Kim Beazley when he was the education minister. The government’s record on education in this country is stronger than ever.

Every one of the reforms that has taken place under Brendan Nelson was opposed by the Labor Party—every reform and every major initiative that saw an increase in funding and an increase in the number of places. In my home state of Tasmania that amounted to more than 1,500 new places at the University of Tasmania. Every one of those places was opposed by the Labor Party. Every dollar of the $11 billion in extra investment was opposed by the Labor Party. As recently as yesterday they had the temerity to try to pour shame on the government when they themselves have the poorest record on education in this country.

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! It being 2 pm, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 97. The debate may be resumed at a later hour and the member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.