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

The coalition is opposing the Albanese Labor government's chaotic and confused international students bill because it will fail to fix the migration and housing crises of the government's own making. Since Labor was elected, the number of international students has almost doubled from 475,000 in May '22 to more than 800,000 today. The proposed cap of 270,000 new overseas student commencements will not go far enough to curb excessive numbers of foreign students coming to Australia. This cap will look after Australia's most prestigious universities, which are bringing in record levels of foreign students. At the University of Sydney, 50 per cent of all students are foreign—41,000 international students—which are delivering the rivers of gold to the university with $1.45 billion in revenue.

By basing their proposed cap for universities on the 2023 intake levels—a record-high of foreign students in Australia—Labor's notion of a cap bakes in a benefit to the most elite universities. Based on the 2019 numbers, foreign students under Labor's plan at the group of eight universities would go up by 11 per cent but the cap for regional universities would go down by 16 per cent.

By getting the migration policy settings right, the coalition will free up almost 40,000 additional homes in the first year and well over 100,000 homes in the first five years for Australians, reducing congestion on our roads and relieving pressure on existing services. We will go further than Labor; we will reduce student numbers further, specifically at the major metropolitan universities, to relieve stress on rental markets in our major cities. That is why we are opposing this. (Time expired)