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

I want to record a few words of concern around the government's sneaky change to allow international students to work unlimited hours not only in agriculture and aged care but now in hospitality and tourism. This is an appalling policy decision that they don't want to talk about.

The current limit of 40 hours per fortnight is already the most generous in the world, and removing this limit so broadly undermines the integrity of the visa system. Education must always be the primary purpose of a student visa, but the government is turning the student visa into a low-paid skilled work visa. They're seriously saying that students can work full time and study full time. In my view this undermines the skilled migration program and the evidence says over the long term the full-time work opportunities and wages for Australians. There are more than two million Australians seeking more hours, but, rather than putting pressure on these industries to improve wages and conditions and attract Australians, the government is ensuring that these industries can keep wages as low as possible.

This is the government that said low wages are a deliberate design feature of the economy. We saw it in the budget: $100 billion of new spending and $1 trillion of debt yet wages are going backwards. We should be proud of our international education sector. It's got a high-quality reputation. Turning the student visa into a work visa is disgraceful. Embarrassingly for the government, the chair of its own migration committee expressed public opposition to this change before it was announced, so it seemed they didn't even consult him.