Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am calling on the Australian Bureau of Statistics and Treasury to stop misrepresenting the export value of international students. Foreign students pay $13 billion in tuition fees and are largely responsible for the $8.6 billion in remittances out of Australia, a net gain of $4.4 billion to Australia in terms of actual cross-border exchange, yet for some perverse reason the ABS report all expenditure incurred by students living in Australia as an export to derive a figure of $48 billion. This figure is patently false and masks the fact that foreign remittances sent from Australia have been rapidly increasing, from $3 billion in 2021 to $8.6 billion in 2024.

It's bad enough that, in a housing crisis, universities are allowed to import so many students, knowing it'll make it harder for Australians to find housing, but to pretend that universities are punching above their weight economically when they aren't is just deceptive. As a former accountant, if I was to engage in this type of misleading reporting, I would get sacked or sent to jail. It is time the ABS, Treasury, the media, the sector themselves and policymakers in both major parties acknowledged this inconvenient truth.