Sarah Henderson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

It's my pleasure to rise and make a contribution to this debate, which of course is necessary because of Labor's opening of the floodgates, which has meant we are seeing record levels of international students in this country, fuelling the housing crisis and causing unprecedented chaos in the international education sector. Senator Pocock is correct in saying that the bill currently before the Senate has caused enormous distress and grief for the tertiary education sector. It is a bill which is riddled with incompetence, secrecy, unfairness and uncertainty because of Labor's botched student caps scheme. We have, in fact, endured some four public hearings looking into the ESOS bill to discover the many irregularities in proper decisions which have been made, as well as the blatant discrimination. It does reflect the government's sheer incompetence.

It is now October, and the government is asking Australia's higher education and VET sector to implement student caps by 1 January with so much uncertainty we don't even know whether or not the bill is going to be debated tomorrow. Really, as the sector is saying, it is absolutely insane.

I particularly want to raise concerns with the way the government, with its proposed student cap, has blatantly discriminated against smaller and regional universities and private higher education and VET providers. We've had myriad pieces of evidence in that regard. That is a shocking reflection on the government's focus on fairness and equity for all. For the Minister for Education, on the day that he announced the national planning level of 270,000, to declare that the regions and regional universities would be the winners is an absolute joke and of course not supported by the facts. We have seen that, at the Group of Eight universities, Australia's most prestigious universities, the proposed number of students there is very much on par with 2023, while the regions and small universities, particularly private providers, have taken a very big hit.

But let's not forget what this is all about. This is all about fixing Labor's immigration mess, fixing Labor's 'big Australia' policy. Labor, in fact, has run the biggest migration program in a generation, with more than one million migrants coming here under this government. At the same time, we've seen record-low construction and building approvals, and that is putting more and more pressure on the housing market. Even the government itself, in its assessment of rentals and the impact that international students are placing on the rental market, has conceded that the record number of international students is fuelling the housing crisis.

Very proudly, the opposition leader, Mr Dutton, announced in his budget reply that we will fix Labor's mess by reducing the excessive numbers of foreign students studying at metropolitan universities to relieve the stress on rental markets, and that's where the big problem is. That's where the big pressures are in Melbourne and Sydney in particular. We will also enhance the integrity of the student visa program by introducing a tiered approach to increasing the student visa application fee and applying it to foreign students who change providers.

The coalition also believes that, by rebalancing the Migration Program and taking decisive action on the housing crisis, we would free up almost 40,000 additional homes in the first year and well over 100,000 homes in the next five years. We will do this by implementing a two-year ban on foreign investors and temporary residents purchasing existing homes in Australia. Secondly, we will reduce the permanent Migration Program by 25 per cent, from 185,000 to 140,000 for the first two years in recognition of the urgency of this crisis. The program will then increase to 150,000 in year 3 and 160,000 in year 4. We are determined to fix Labor's mess, to fix Labor's big Australia policy. As I say, this is very much a mess of its own making.