Angie Bell (Moncrieff, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Refunds of Charges and Other Measures) Bill 2020.

Educating overseas students is an important industry in Australia and it's very important in the seat of Moncrieff. Pre COVID it was worth $1.6 billion to our economy on the Gold Coast. And educating overseas students is about far more than education providers making money; the Australian experience is that it helps to attract international talent to Australian businesses. Also, when international borders reopen it will return to being a driver for tourism, which is worth $5 billion to the Gold Coast economy. Students themselves and their visiting families spend considerably with tourism operators and those small businesses which need that extra injection right now. Moncrieff is missing these very welcome visitors and we look forward to the day when we can welcome them back.

Significant challenges—or, indeed, a crisis like the pandemic—can understandably cause individuals, businesses and governments to focus on the large and most obvious problems. That's necessary, to an extent, but the Morrison government is being very disciplined by listening to industry stakeholders and applying their detailed insights to other addressable reforms. This is just such a bill. Stakeholders in Moncrieff tell me that these are achievable reforms which will benefit them now, and especially later, as our education exports recover as circumstances permit.

Shortly I'll go through some of the detail in this bill but, firstly, I will give a bit of an overview of the bill and what it will do. It will maintain quality without unintended disincentives to genuine short-course education providers who are seeking to address market demand. It will promote the competitiveness of the Australian education system by maximising the quality of the Australian experience for students. That's very important. By allowing students to pursue personal interests through short courses and permitting workplace components of their substantive study this bill will facilitate the growth of our education industry with all of the economic benefits which flow from that. Ultimately, through a more vibrant education sector this bill will promote better quality experiences and choices for Australian students too.

The first question that Australians might ask is: why do we need these amendments to the ESOS Act? Currently, all courses, including single units of competency, such as first aid courses, may only be offered to overseas students where the course and provider are registered on the Commonwealth Register of Institutions and Courses for Overseas Students—CRICOS. The requirement for CRICOS registration to offer courses to overseas students is constraining supply by placing a regulatory burden on providers of very short courses which they may judge as too arduous to be worthwhile.

Registration on the Commonwealth Register of Institutions and Courses for Overseas Students is deliberately onerous to create barriers to entry by low-quality providers. Genuine providers which specialise in short-course provision are being discouraged. For example, in the VET space, only 29 of the 1,070 RTOs with supplementary courses have sought and obtained CRICOS registration. These changes mean providers will be able to offer these short courses to the 450,000 overseas students currently in Australia and will not have to check a student's visa status before enrolling them in the course—a much simpler process. Finally, it will allow students to pursue their personal interests that complement their formal studies, enhance the quality of their Australian experience, as I mentioned before, and attend workplace components approved as part of a substantive qualification.

You might be asking: what are the changes? This bill removes regulatory barriers for education providers and enables overseas students to study some supplementary courses, such as first aid—which is something that everybody should do—responsible service of alcohol and construction white cards, which are all very important. Two changes to the ESOS Act are needed to achieve this. The first change refines the definition of 'course' in the ESOS Act. The new definition will refer to existing definitions for formal education qualifications in Australia and will have the effect of removing hobby or recreational courses from its scope. Only courses that lead to a substantive educational outcome will need to be registered. This enables providers to offer recreational or hobby courses, such as craft, cooking or scuba diving, without registering them on CRICOS, unless the courses are delivered by a higher education provider, in which case all courses will need to be registered with CRICOS. The second change is to provide a power for the minister to make a disallowable legislative instrument to include or exempt certain courses from the ESOS Act. This will specify skillsets, modules or the units of competency, such as first aid, responsible service of alcohol, construction white cards, hygienic food preparation, and infection control. International students will be able to undertake these supplementary courses in addition to their main course study.

The next question is: when and how will the legislative instrument be introduced? If this bill is passed in autumn this year, the minister for education will be able to create an instrument to exempt courses from the ESOS Act. As the instrument is disallowable, it is of course subject to parliamentary scrutiny. What else? Only a limited number of courses will be available for supplementary study. The ESOS legislative framework imposes stringent monitoring and reporting requirements on the student's primary course, and these will remain in place. All supplementary courses will remain covered by the same quality assurance mechanisms that apply to other domestic courses and students, including oversight by the Australian Skills Quality Authority, or ASQA, as it's known. The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, TEQSA, which a tongue twister, will identify and respond to any malpractice. Like domestic students, international students will be protected by Australian consumer law for supplementary courses, which is good news.

Other questions are: will these changes adversely affect international students' primary course of study, and how will the risk of course overload be monitored? I'm sure that, on the other side, that question is of interest. Existing mechanisms equip the primary course provider to oversee student progress and take action, as needed, with consequential effects on visa conditions. The amendments will not alter these mechanisms in any way. There will be communications and guidance material produced dealing with this particular concern. Members opposite will be pleased to hear that. The amendments will not make it easier for providers to poach students, as all the same transfer restrictions will apply if a student decides to change providers for their primary course. Will there be sufficient oversight of the minister's power to include or exempt courses through the legislative instrument? That is another very good question, which I will answer for the Federation Chamber.

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—Hear, hear! I'm glad you asked.

Angie Bell (Moncrieff, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Indeed. The instrument will list courses exempted from the ESOS Act through this instrument, which will be determined following consultation with the regulators, industry peak bodies and the international education sector. The Minister for Education and Youth's power to control which supplementary courses will be exempted from the ESOS framework will be exercised with a view to curbing sharp practice. The instrument will be disallowable, providing parliamentary scrutiny, of course.

The next question is: how will the oversight and quality be maintained? I'm sure again that members opposite will be talking about this question next up on the list. I assure them that the stringent monitoring and reporting requirements already in place in the ESOS Act will continue to apply to international students' primary course of study. Student will still need to meet existing requirements associated with their student visa, including progressing in their primary course. Domestic assurances including oversight by ASQA and TEQSA and coverage by the Australian Consumer Law will apply. These are peak bodies that can take compliance action against a provider for noncompliance, which is terrific. By making course exemptions through a legislative instrument, the government will be able to respond quickly to address exploitative practices as well as meeting the emerging needs of those overseas students.

The other question they may have—and I'm sure there's a member opposite I can see who's grinning with this question, no doubt—is: how did the department consult the sector? That is an absolute corker of a question—a very important question. A consultation paper on proposed arrangements for supplementary courses was released for public consultation on 25 September last year, 2020, with the closing date of 9 October 2020. The department received 44 submissions from education providers, education and student peak bodies, and industry bodies, and it held follow-up meetings with stakeholders to address key issues. These included ITICA, TDA, IHEA, TPS and the University of Melbourne. There was strong stakeholder support for the proposed changes and the flexibility for both providers and students. The Department of Home Affairs, TEQSA and AQSA have been consulted and support all of these measures.

How were providers refunded in 2020, you might ask? As part of the Australian government's economic response to the COVID-19 pandemic, registered providers are not required to pay annual registration charge or entry-to-market charges for the period from 1 January 2020 to 30 June 2021. Registered providers who already paid a 2020 ARC or EMC invoice from 1 January 2020 were refunded using the active grace provisions in the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013, which is known as the PGPA Act—lots of acronyms today—to a total of more than $10.9 million. These changes are necessary, and this amendment will enable a more effective and flexible response in the future from 1 July 2021 should further refunds be required, providing sector-wide support to registered providers in special circumstances such as the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Currently, the ESOS legislation does not contain the legislative authority required to enable or permit charges to be refunded to those providers. Without this amendment, only mistaken overpayments of charges are refundable.

I'd like to finish by saying that the amendments will allow for sector-wide support only in special circumstances. The secretary has limits in place on his or her power to make payments under the duties of the position in the PGPA Act.

Finally, these questions have all been addressed in the bill, and I commend it to the chamber.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to commend the member for Moncrieff on making a dry technical bill somewhat interesting and also acknowledge the fact that, like me, she genuinely cares about international education and wants the best for it. Like with me, it's very important to the economy in your community. And so I commend you on that. I think we're a rare breed at times in the House for such a significant export sector.

The bill is pretty technical, and I think the previous speaker has done a good job in outlining what is in essence a non-controversial piece of legislation. I won't go over that. I want to turn my remarks to the second reading amendment. The focus of my speech will be to call out the Australian government's failure; the lack of care for international education and international students during the pandemic; and in particular the Prime Minister's personal behaviour, his words, his lack of care and his lack of empathy for international students over the last 12 months.

I say at the outset that I am a big supporter of international education in this country. Students enrich all of our cities and our regions. They enrich our communities and our campuses and places of study. They make our places more vibrant. It's also our fourth biggest export sector—or it was before the pandemic—worth more than $40 billion a year in export revenue to this country. It's the biggest single export sector in my home state of Victoria.

The soft power, though, that we have accrued over decades to this nation as a result of international education is incalculable. We have educated onshore, in their formative years, more than one million people from South-East Asia and our region. You could not put a value on that if you tried. Then, of course, the human capital, the talent that Australia has retained over many decades from people who have come here, bright in their society, and decided to fall in love, stay and build a life in our country, has been a wonderful thing for our country.

We should be so proud of this sector. We should celebrate the success we have achieved over decades through universities and TAFEs but also, sometimes overlooked, the many reputable and innovative private providers in the sector—English language providers—which are important in their own right but who often are a feeder for people who come as tourists or backpackers and decide to stay. It's a pathway.

In the context of such a wonderful thing for our country that is the international education sector, it is perplexing to see the government's lack of response for 12 months, to see the Prime Minister's personal behaviour, or misbehaviour. At times it has made me ashamed. The Prime Minister's lack of care, which I will get to, is bad enough, but his blatant and overt hostility to international education and international students is outrageous. It's bad enough that there has been no national support provided. It's the only one of Australia's top 10 export sectors that the government has done nothing for. Waiving a few fees, as this bill may allow it to do, is 5c off the table—it's a crumb off the government table—as a tidal wave of economic devastation has been wrought over this sector.

The tourism sector received $240 million of support in the previous budget, and yet 60 per cent of the tourists in this country are international students or their visiting friends, family and relatives. What has been done for the international sector? What has been done for student accommodation providers that are facing insolvency after July as the pipeline of students dries up? Nothing—no engagement, no support. All we hear from the government is, 'Blame the states'. Somehow it's the states' fault. Well, it's not. It's our fourth biggest export sector.

The cabinet won't admit it, but we know from sources that the cabinet has rejected proposals brought by ministers last year to support this sector because of the Prime Minister's and the Treasurer's personal hostility to doing anything. Unbelievably, doing nothing would have been better, but the Prime Minister went out on national television, as this emergency took hold, and said to students: 'If you don't like it, go home.' Go home! I don't think he understands the damage, the harm, that that has done to our reputation and to the emotional wellbeing of students.

I spoke to the CEO of a large accommodation provider, who said that, literally the day after the Prime Minister said 'Go home', he had a queue of students at the front desk thinking they actually had to go home. They were paying fees. They were part of the community. They had invested in their future. We should be so privileged that young people in their formative years decide to invest what, in many cases, is a fortune for their families. It's an investment in their future, their entire life, to pay tens of thousands of dollars to come and be kept safe in our community, to be cared for by our community, to spend their formative years in Australia. We should value this. But the Prime Minister told them to go home.

It's no surprise. Remember when he was in trouble for his own government's failure to invest in infrastructure? He said: 'If you can't get a seat on the train, or you can't drive down the road because of congestion, don't blame me for not investing in new infrastructure; blame the international students; they're taking your seat'. What nonsense! This guy has got form.

We are a high-cost, high-quality provider in a very competitive market. We have hundreds of thousands of students offshore right now, unable to come into this country, who are still paying those fees, studying offshore and online. I want to say very clearly to those students and to the international students who are here right now, paying top dollar: Thank you. Australians are a better people than the way we've been represented by our Prime Minister, who has not shown any care, any empathy, any recognition of the plight that you have suffered, the destitution that you have faced, seeing, potentially, the life savings of your families threatened, being chucked out of work, being unable to pay rent, literally starving and relying on food vouchers.

There has been not one word of care from the Prime Minister, just a dismissive, arrogant, narcissistic 'Go home!'

That embarrassed me and I was ashamed as an Australian at his lack of care. International students deserved a lot, lot better than they have had from this mean, miserable government. It does not represent the views of Australians. You are welcome here and we look forward to the day where students are able to come back onshore and study in our communities.

In the last few days we have seen—in the most tragic, the most vile of circumstances—the Prime Minister's lack of empathy, his lack of human compassion, his narcissistic response. If, as we've been told—as we've witnessed, as the nation has witnessed—the Prime Minister can only understand the plight of others through thinking about his own children, then I ask how would the Prime Minister feel if one of his children was stranded in a foreign country during a global pandemic, starving, kicked out of their place of employment, unable to support themselves? Would he like the host country to show a little care, a little compassion? I would hope so—just as other countries that aren't Australia have shown, like the UK, Canada and all our competitors and peers. That's bad enough but it has also damaged our national interest. As I said, this is a $40 billion export sector. Can anyone really imagine this government pouring scorn on the coal industry or the iron ore industry or the gas industry or the agriculture industry or the tourism industry? For some reason it's only international education that has their back turned on them—overt hostility from this government. I do not get it. I have never understood it. His predecessors didn't have this view. There is something wrong with this Prime Minister. There is something not right about him. It is just a bizarre hostility and it should stop. Seriously, lobsters got their own planes to be flown overseas and students got nothing.

Let's have a look at the jobs impact. More than 250,000 jobs in Australia rested on this sector last financial year—250,000 jobs! That is more than the entire mining sector. It's more than the entire agricultural sector. It is a service sector. It is jobs intensive. As I said, 60 per cent of tourists to this country are international students or they're visiting friends and relatives. It is bad enough we have seen the job losses of tens of thousands in universities, but reputable private providers and accommodation providers are facing insolvency. These are businesses that won't come back. We're about to see the end of JobKeeper. There are, quite rightly, calls for sectoral recognition for the tourism sector. Sectors that rely on the borders being open for the businesses to survive warrant particular attention. I say very clearly to the government: put the international education sector on that list of sectors that deserve some support. They're worthy of support. They need help for the next six to 12 months—until we can get through this crisis.

A few suggestions have been messaged to the Prime Minister by the peak bodies, falling on deaf ears. Letters have been sent recently again to the Prime Minister, the national cabinet, all the chief ministers. The states and territories performance has been better than the national government but still at times a bit slow and a bit patchy.

The first thing that we need from the government is positive messaging, not telling students to go home. That ricocheted around social media. It destroys our future pipeline, our marketing and recruitment pipeline. If nothing else, if you just want to be mercenary about it and not human and empathetic, what do you think that does to a word-of-mouth sector? As a leading education CEO told me a few months ago:

We are trying to work with the government. But the major negative is the messaging from Morrison, rolling out the unwelcome mat and highlighting a lack of support for students. If we can get things right though we are in the box seat, Australia has huge potential advantages from this crisis—

because the states and territories have managed the health response so well.'

The second thing we need is some kind of indicative return date. The UK and Canada have kept their borders open. I understand, of course, that being an island continent we're in a different context, and we treasure that. It was the government's failure, the Prime Minister's failure, to take responsibility for quarantine months ago. As his own report that he asked for said, 'it's a national responsibility', but he just wants to blame the states. If he had done that months ago when he had that report we would not have this impossible choice between 41,000 stranded Australians on whom the Prime Minister has turned his back. Turn back the boats—at that point he is responsible for borders and quarantine. You wouldn't find a politician in this place who has banged on more about borders and quarantine, but when it comes to 41,000 stranded Australians he turns his back on them. It's the same with international students. If he hadn't created this mess over the last 12 months, we would be able to be bringing students in safely and securely and save tens of thousands of jobs. We shouldn't be in this choice. As I said, we also need some targeted industry assistance to this sector, which is more than warranted. Zero dollars for international education but $240 million for tourism says it all.

The final thing I will say is: please, a little more empathy for the plight. I know we can't bring students back right now. We could have before we saw these contagious strains emerge; we could have done that safely if the Prime Minister had brought citizens home and done his job, as it says in the Constitution, and stepped up to manage quarantine, but we are where we are. Have some empathy. I've had emails because students understand I care about this sector, because I have spoken about it. You get terrible stories. Imagine the plight of a fourth- or fifth-year dental student who has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars—more than their entire family's wealth—in their future. It is their last year, and they're unable to come back and complete it onshore. They're distraught. Students have told us this. We have seen cases of students attempting suicide because they feel they have no future left. Have a little empathy—a little hope, at least—to help people get through these circumstances. People like that are in limbo. The truth is that Australia has relied on some of these medical and dental students actually staying, because they're the ones that go to regional areas and provide desperately needed medical specialists in regional areas. This is a selfish national interest, not just a moment of human empathy.

I will finish with a quote from a very simple email from one of the student advocates, who loves Australia. Their palpable love for Australia and Australians shines through, despite the way that, I believe, they have been profoundly mistreated by this heartless, cruel Liberal government—not that all members of the government are evil, nasty and cruel, but culture comes from the top. The Prime Minister's lack of human compassion and lack of empathy that was on display for the nation this week has driven this lack of care, attention and response. He owns it. This email said: 'Many students have had a tough year. They've had many significant issues—educational, financial and personal—due to the uncertain situation. But most of them are very disappointed about the Australian government and give up. Some are happy to learn online at home. Therefore, only students who have partners in Australia are craving to come back ASAP. I suggest if the government could open the border, even to those few students with compassionate reasons.' Imagine a student who has never met their child because they have had to go home, and their Australian partner is here with the baby they've never met? We've spoken to these people. Show some compassion. Students have been anxious and isolated, and they face destitution. They just want some help or at least the government to stop the harm and show some care and empathy.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Corio has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The immediate question is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question.

Question agreed to.

Original question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Ordered that this bill be reported to the House without amendment.