David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of this disallowance motion moved by Senator Shoebridge. Education is the ACT's biggest export. It contributes $1 billion to our local economy annually, and international education was responsible for half of the national GDP growth in Australia last year. More importantly, these students enrich our community immeasurably. Our universities have done the right thing over the years in the ACT; they have built extra student accommodation.

As a result of the government changes which are subject to this disallowance, Australia now has the highest student visa fees in the world. I had a lot of feedback from universities, and we have five here in the ACT, about the risks and negative consequences from this fee hike, alongside other policy changes such as ministerial directive 107, which is frankly a disastrous way to deal with net overseas migration. What a sham of a policy. Of course, the proposed ESOS legislation currently seems to be rather friendless.

It seems a bit rich to increase almost all visa application fees at time when processing timelines have blown out in such an extraordinary way. Sure, if you're getting a better service, maybe you will pay a bit more. If you're getting it back quicker, most people might be willing to spend a little bit more, but to hike up the fees at the same time you are on this go-slow when it comes to processing means students who are doing all the right things—applying for their course, paying top-dollar to attend an Australian university—are sometimes arriving in week 2, 3, 4 or 5 and some are just giving up, saying, 'This is too hard. I will go somewhere else.'

We cannot take international students for granted and assume they will choose Australia for their study. Yes, our universities are some of the best in the world, but students obviously have other options. There are many competitors out there. I looked at some of the visa application fees of some of these other countries. In Canada, a student visa costs the equivalent of a whopping A$165. In France, it is exactly the same. New Zealand is a bit more, the equivalent of A$344; Hong Kong, A$190; and Germany, A$180. The most expensive fees I could find were in the US at about A$770 and in the United Kingdom at A$950.

These regulations increase the costs of applying for a student visa in Australia from a vaguely competitive $710 to $1,600—that is, a $1,600 non-refundable fee. It really doesn't make sense to me. The ABS says the value of international students in Australia was $48 billion last year. After a more than decade of underfunding by successive governments, our universities have made a plan. Many of them have decided, 'We're not getting funded for research, so we need to find funding elsewhere.' So they've gone to the international student market and developed courses, and we now have the international student market as it is today. But government policy has forced them to do that—to find money elsewhere, to cross subsidise research and to cross subsidise some courses for domestic students.

Now we're turning around—rather than saying: 'We've got a bit of a problem here. We're running into a problem with housing and potentially with social licence. Let's come up with a plan to turn this around.' You'd think that there'd be a sensible conversation about how, over the next five to 10 years, we work with universities when it comes to funding models, to research funding and to on-campus accommodation. Instead, we see this ministerial directive 107, which is basically just putting on the go-slow. Rather than having an upfront conversation with universities, you're just stopping them from getting students, because they can't even get a visa after paying an outrageous fee.

We should be recognising and celebrating the huge contribution to our economy and the value that international students bring to our learning environments. Instead, this government is launching a sustained attack on the financial sustainability of our universities and using international students as scapegoats, rather than having the hard conversations around migration. I have people raise these questions with me: As a country, how big do we want to get? What are the trade-offs? How is it impacting housing? What are the trade-offs in terms of ecological health of the landscape for cities to continue to grow? People have, I think, very legitimate concerns, but let's have that conversation as a country and as communities. Let's come up with a plan, rather than this reactive, almost farcical, approach and this focus on net overseas migration and this scapegoating of universities.

I don't think it is useful, and it's certainly not anywhere near a long-term sustainable approach that would allow Australian universities to maintain their reputation as world leading and as a place that is welcoming for international students. You can't force, through government policies from both sides, universities to go after the international student market and then suddenly pull the rug out from under them.

Surely we can do better, and I support this disallowance of these regulations.