Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to speak on the Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment Bill 2013. This bill seeks to make amendments that will empower the Tuition Protection Services—the TPS—to better protect students. By protecting students we protect Australia's reputation as a country which can offer the highest quality vocational and tertiary education.

The bill makes two amendments. The first is to ensure that the Tuition Protection Service has the power to force the refund of prepaid fees where a provider fails or a course is cancelled. The second is to ensure that the Tuition Protection Service has the power to force a refund of prepaid fees where a visa is refused for a prospective student. Both of these amendments are important, given the economic value that the overseas student market has to Australia, and also because we want to protect our reputation as a quality provider of education.

The Tuition Protection Service—the TPS—is a signature reform of the former Labor government. It emerged from the crisis of international education brought about by the lax immigration rules of the former Howard government in relation to student visas. Certainly, profits were put before quality education. These lax rules lead to unsustainable volumes of international students. This failure of conservative policy-making saw the entrance into the market of operators, some of which can only be described as immigration scams dressed up as educational providers.

Indeed, at the time, we saw, night after night on our nightly news, the plight of overseas students who were not able to fulfil the course requirements and leave Australia with an educational qualification and who had lost all of the funds they had paid to these scam operators—funds which had, no doubt, been scraped together by family and through the students' work. Clearly, something needed to be done. Further, I think at the time Australia's reputation as a provider of quality education was well and truly tarnished as, night after night, scam after scam was uncovered. Students were just not getting the proper educational outcomes, and they were losing money. It was certainly an embarrassing time for us.

That forced us to ask ourselves some genuine questions about the quality of an Australian education and the soundness of training providers, some of whom were damaging the entire Australian education sector. International students looking at coming to Australia from overseas were seeing scam providers on the news. They had no way by which to judge the quality of Australian education. They could only see what was being broadcast and printed in international media. As I said, at the time it was very embarrassing. Writing in the Monthly, the journalist Margaret Simons, described the situation:

Most of our big export industries do their business out of sight of city dwellers. Mines are dug and ore extracted without stirring the dust on suburban streets. There is one such industry, though, whose major commodity is visible in our capitals. That commodity is human beings. They are the confused young people trying to serve us in low-rent fast food outlets. They are the lonely kids on city streets or sharing rooms—and even beds—in crowded houses in the suburbs. They are an underclass in the labour market, with working conditions that undermine those for all lower paid workers.

That was the reality as shown regularly through the media. It was the reality of our great international education industry under John Howard. Unfortunately, the reality was that there was exploitation.

Dodgy colleges—there is no other way to describe them—sprang up like mushrooms for the single purpose of providing students a piece of paper that was a pathway to residence. And often the students did not get to the dodgy piece of paper. It was a situation where the government of the time truly lost control of our borders, of our immigration program. Remember, 'We will decide who comes to this country'? John Howard and his immigration and education ministers certainly did not decide. Instead of delivering the skilled workers our country needed to compete, the policies of the Howard government had delivered a situation where Australia was about to gain a generation of migrants with dubious qualifications. This was a crisis of our immigration program, and it was a crisis in our education system.

And we needed to act. Labor acted to clean up the mess of the Howard government's overseas student program, which tarnished our overseas reputation, left students without formal qualifications, and certainly robbed them of their hard-won funding arrangements. So, we tightened up our rules. We cleaned out the migration agents, which is all on the public record. We cracked down on dodgy colleges. Leaving this situation untreated, with unsustainable growth, was not a viable option. Migration outcomes should have been linked with national or economic needs. Instead, education courses had become linked to migration outcomes—the wrong way around. Following the Baird review, Labor acted to improve regulation of the sector: higher entry standards for colleges, much more information, and more care for students.

And care for students is where the Tuition Protection Service comes in. I suspect that most members in this place have not heard of the Tuition Protection Service. Its establishment was one of the suite of measures to really restore that integrity and the quality that we had lost under the Howard government to the international education market. Its purpose: to act as a single point of placement for students affected by a provider default. Prior to this students had nowhere to go; they were just left high and dry. Students adversely affected are either placed in an alternative course or paid a refund from the Overseas Student Tuition Fund—a very good outcome—so that students are assured when they come to Australia that they have protections and that they will leave with a quality education and a proper qualification. The money for this comes from the annual Tuition Protection Service levy placed on all registered providers of international education. This includes vocational training providers and private and public higher educational institutions. In 2013-14 the levy collected was $6 million. The annual report of the Tuition Protection Service tells us that in 2012-13 nine providers closed, affecting nearly 1,000 students. Almost half of those students sought assistance from the TPS; 64 students were placed in alternative courses and 218 students received refunds. So, it is a process and a service that is well and truly working.

So there is clearly still a great need for this service. Its annual report reveals that the TPS fears that up to 22 providers with 4,400 students could close in the coming financial year. But, looking at the future: we know that our international education is our fourth largest export industry. It is very important to us. It sustains more than 100,000 jobs and generates some $15 billion in annual revenue.

Our reputation for quality education must be preserved. It is our most precious resource—our greatest competitive advantage. These amendments should act to help it operate more effectively in protecting international students and Australia's reputation. Thank you.

Lin Thorp (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to support the amendments to the Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2000. Whilst I note that this is non-controversial legislation, I am very pleased to be able to comment that the issue is supported by all sides of this house, because it is such an important area in terms of our economy and also in terms of our overseas reputation.

The Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment Bill 2013 that is before us today, as I said, amends the 2000 act. It is one of a series of amendment bills that have been through this place in response to, in May, the work of the Hon. Bruce Baird, who was asked by the then Deputy Prime Minister, the Hon. Julia Gillard—who was the minister for education at the same time—to review the regulatory framework in particular for the act and report back to the government with changes designed to ensure that Australia continues to offer world-class, quality education. He presented his findings in a report called Stronger, simpler, smarter ESOS: supporting international students. The review itself was recommended by the Bradley Review of Australian Higher Education, and it was recommended that that review take place before 2012. It was brought forward in the context of significant growth in the number of overseas students, the changing nature and composition of the international student body, and emerging issues in the sector, including attacks against international students, which received a lot of coverage in the media here in Australia and, significantly, in the country of origin of those particular students.

There was extraordinary growth in the sector from 228,119 students in 2002 to just under half a million students in 2009, resulting at that time in an industry worth $17.2 billion. It enhanced Australia's cultural richness, strengthened diplomatic ties and delivered great economic benefit to Australia, but it also put a number of pressures on the sector in terms of educational quality, regulatory capacity and infrastructure. So in undertaking the review Mr Baird considered the need for enhancements in the ESOS legislative framework in four key areas, which are set out in the terms of reference. They were: supporting the interests of students; delivering quality as the cornerstone of Australian education; effective regulation and sustainability of the international education sector; and issues related to the spate of provider closures that were occurring at that time.

Following the release of his issues paper in 2009, Mr Baird spoke to nearly 200 students and education providers from the tertiary, school and English-language sectors and other stakeholders at consultation forums. He also met with provider and student peak bodies, regulators, state and territory government officials, embassies, education industry bodies and members of parliament. Also around that time there was a lot of work done by different legislative bodies around the country. There was a review in Tasmania, of which I was a part at the time, because Tasmania per capita on paper did not seem to be receiving its percentage of the full number of international students in Australia.

The conclusion that we came to in Tasmania was that, rather than creating a boom in that sector, we were determined to make the provision of education in Tasmania of the highest quality. So while we may not have had the numbers that other jurisdictions were getting, we knew that the courses that were being provided were of the best quality and we also knew that the full educational experience of the students involved was good.

In our deliberations, we went around to different jurisdictions. I will not name them because I do not want to insult them. We found that there were some—I think my colleague said 'dodgy' in the course of her contribution—

Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, I did.

Lin Thorp (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And that is not a bad word, actually. Students were coming in and being housed in substandard accommodation and paying quite high course fees for no real discernible educational outcome at the end of it. That is not what it was all about. There was even some concern at the time that the kinds of courses that these students were doing did not even match the educational needs of their country of origin or what was happening here in Australia. So this review was significant and timely. The review received 150 formal submissions and more than 300 people registered with the online discussion forums. All of that input was considered, including recommendations from the International Student Roundtable, which was held in September 2009.

There were some very significant concerns raised during that consultation period. These included reports of false and misleading information being provided by some education agents. Members may or may not be aware that quite a lot of the work done in matching a student in China or India, for example, with a course in a country like Australia requires the services of an educational agent, and they have a big responsibility. There are large sums of money involved for a student to come from China, for example, to Australia to study any course, whether it be something at pre-tertiary level or right through to masters and high-level degrees like engineering. Usually—perhaps all the time—these are full-fee-paying students and that is a huge financial impost on their families. Not only that, they have to move from one side of the world to the other. Parents need to know that their children are going to be safe. It is not just what happens in the classroom that is important. It is important that they have a well-rounded educational experience, which also means being able to, in many cases, take on part-time work and join in community activities, which, as I said earlier, does a lot to enhance Australia's cultural richness.

Amongst those concerns were reports of false and misleading information being provided by education agents and poor quality education and training. During our review we noted that students were sometimes arriving at the wrong time in our educational school calendar. For example, the school year here in Australia, whether it be for high school, pre-tertiary college level or a tertiary institution, usually goes from January or February through to before Christmas, but that does not naturally match up with the school times in other countries. So we sometimes had students arriving in September when the school year was nearly at an end and moving into the assessment period, often having January and February unoccupied and then they only having a couple of months to go before their school year was up. It did not fit the cycle, so they were not being treated as well as they should have been.

Lack of appropriate educational facilities was another concern. We all expect high-quality education facilities in Australia. When they are provided through state-owned institutions, or even independent private schools, they are usually of a high standard, but some of the ones I saw during the review conducted by the Legislative Council of Tasmania were far from adequate in my opinion and in the opinion of my colleagues at the time.

Providers paying exorbitant fees and commissions to these education agents was another concern. It is not a culture we are used to in Australia, but in other cultures it is very commonplace. For even something as simple as going to register your car, you do not go directly to the department or institution involved, you employ an intermediary or an agent. If that intermediary or agent does not have the highest of ethical standards, one can well imagine the potential corruption that could occur.

Low English language entry requirements were another concern. Whilst there may be education language requirements going into, say, a first year university degree in any of our universities, that kind of requirement does not necessarily apply elsewhere. We can have a situation where a student with very poor English goes into a course and, if the institution they are enrolled in does not take sufficient care to make sure those English language skills are raised to a sufficient level, that poor student has absolutely no possibility of being able to interpret and access the course materials.

As I also mentioned earlier, there is poor social inclusion of students in their institutions and the broader community. How lonely could that be—to come to a foreign country to be enrolled in a course and then find that not only is the course poor but your accommodation is poor and you are socially isolated, with no access to part-time work or other activities? That is a very negative experience for that student whilst it is happening and they will take that back to their home country. It is certainly not a great advertisement for one of the best and biggest economic industries we have in this country.

There were other issues raised during the review that were not necessarily part of its scope. They included alleged workplace exploitation, migration and visa issues, deficient and expensive student accommodation, lack of transport concessions and health matters. Concerns around student safety and racism were rarely raised in the student forums. That might come as a bit of a surprise to us who were around when some issues were raised in the media but, even though that was not raised in the student forums, that was of concern amongst the participants.

Mr Baird noted that support for international education in Australia has been and remains strong. There was an acknowledgement of Australia's longstanding reputation for quality education and training; that the majority of the providers were doing the right thing; that ESOS had sound regulatory frameworks; and that international students are, by and large, satisfied with their Australian educational experience. Of the contributors to that review, individuals and organisations alike offered valuable practical suggestions to deal with the issues facing the sector. These included how to improve educational quality; tighten registration; create stronger, simpler and smarter regulation; inform and support student choices; and enhance the whole student experience. ESOS can and does play a major role in achieving these objectives.

He made specific recommendations within the report about how the legislative framework could be amended. Of course the legislation in front of us today represents yet another of the recommendations that came from the Baird review. The recommendations themselves are of considerable interest, I am sure, to all who are present. However, the recommendations we are looking at today in the Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment Bill come back to quite a specific area, and that is what can happen when a student has paid their tuition fees and there is a problem and they need to have those moneys refunded in some shape or form. This bill amends division 2 of the current act, prepaid fees, particularly sections 27, 28 and 29. It will change the headings, subtitles and definitions of 'fees' and 'tuition fees' so that it becomes possible for the student to be fully recompensed should any untoward act occur. On that level I am very pleased to be able to support the legislation in front of us today.

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will just make a brief point on the Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment Bill 2013. Without wasting any more of the Senate's time in this non-controversial legislation period, I want to say that the government profoundly rejects the assertions put by the previous two speakers about the conduct and the impact of the previous coalition government's policies.

Lin Thorp (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I did not say any such thing!

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was in fact the policies of the Labor Party that did so much damage, particularly in Melbourne in my home state of Victoria.

Lin Thorp (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I did not say any such thing! I am being verballed!

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My apologies. Senator Lines did make those accusations. If that is correct I will correct the record. What I will say, however, is that the damage that was done to the international education sector, which hit my home state of Victoria particularly hard, was a direct result of Labor's policies. I thank senators for their contributions and I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.