Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

The benefits are widely recognised. They are recognised not just by industry associations and organisations, as Senator Sinodinos indicated before, but also by training organisations, such as Navitas Australia, the largest ASX listed education provider, which said that all of these agreements will drive the 'deeper engagement' that is needed to deliver our target for increased growth in terms of international student numbers. They said:

You can’t attract students if you’re not engaged with the countries they are coming from, and this is one mechanism that will allow the industry to do that.

That engagement is under threat, and it is under threat from those opposite who want to talk down the benefits of these trade agreements at present, who want to run scare campaigns about these trade agreements, and who are running misleading campaigns in terms of the benefits stemming from the TPP, from the China, Japan and Korea FTAs. All of this gives us clear evidence that we can create more jobs and more opportunities in the future. Yet the Labor Party are driven by their union mates, by the Greens and by others into a scare campaign, it seems, rather than backing jobs and opportunity for Australia's educational institutions —(Time expired)