Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are in the midst of a housing and rental crisis. It is not the fault of migrants, it is not the fault of people seeking asylum, it is not the fault of refugees and it is not the fault of international students. The housing crisis is the fault of governments captured by corporate interests and unwilling to make changes that address the root causes of this crisis. But, rather than invest in large-scale public housing and cap rents, the Albanese government would rather continue its racist dog whistling, engaging in a race to the bottom with the coalition on who can be more cruel and who can hurt migrants and people of colour more. Sean Kelly asked in a Sydney Morning Herald article recently:

What type of national discourse do we want? Are we really willing to make migration and migrants the focus of how we talk about Australia's problems? Have we considered who will suffer if we do?

Well, we know who will suffer. It is the people of colour. We know that, when politicians increase their racist rhetoric on migrants and refugees, it legitimises and normalises hate. It emboldens others to do the same, and this in turn increases the harm and racism inflicted on people who live here.

Not content with the Trump-style antirefugee attack, which will allow the government to ban people from certain countries from ever travelling to Australia, the most recent targets of this new attack are international students. After already proceeding with punitive and misguided changes to international student visas earlier this year, Labor is now continuing this attack on international students with the attempted introduction of international student caps. When I met with international students recently, they made it clear that they do not feel the government cares about them. These students are also struggling with the cost of living and the lack of affordable housing and, rather than having their concerns heard, their lives are being used as a political football to be tossed back and forth in a bid to win racist votes.

These are students who are already struggling with the stress and uncertainty of changes to student and graduate visas that will come into effect on 1 July this year and that also appear to have been introduced with zero regard for the students who have already commenced and, in some cases, nearly completed their studies in Australia. Realising this folly, the Albanese government has withdrawn part of this change, but not for coursework international students. The Labor government would be better off focusing on making our higher education system fairer and more equitable instead of repeatedly targeting international students and using them as scapegoats for the government's own policy failures.

The list of critics slamming the government for capping international student numbers is growing every single week. Just last week, the Group of Eight universities noted:

There is no evidence the approach will work—and significant evidence that it will fail.

Capping international student numbers under the guise of easing pressure on the rental market is not just dishonest dog-whistling conflation; it is bad policy that will do nothing to fix our broken housing system or our higher education system.

During the pandemic lockdowns, we saw international students neglected, abandoned and mistreated at every turn. They were excluded from critical schemes like JobSeeker and JobKeeper. In New South Wales and Queensland they were locked out of disaster payments after floods devastated these communities. Governments have not learnt their lessons at all and continue to treat international students as little more than economic opportunities to be exploited. International students must be supported and treated as full and valued members of our community.

So when will the Labor government stop its dog whistling and scapegoating and, instead, take some real action? Until it does, refugees, migrants, international students and all people of colour across this country will continue to suffer.