"... we are restoring quality and integrity while ensuring that an Australian tertiary education remains synonymous with high quality and good value and continues to be one of our nation's most valuable exports."

Address to the House of Representatives, Bills

Monday 12 August 2024

I also rise to speak on the Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Quality and Integrity) Bill 2024. The Australian government is committed to lifting the quality and assuring the integrity of our international education sector. This legislation continues this critical work. Australia is known globally for its high-quality tertiary education, with well-respected institutions conducting vital research and offering students opportunities and experiences that they cannot get in their home countries.

You don't have to look far from this building to see evidence of this. Across the lake, Australia's national university continues to provide world-class education and world-leading research. Further west, the University of Canberra punches above its weight in global rankings, despite its relative youth as an institution. And the Australian Catholic University and the incoming University of New South Wales Reid campus will provide students with plenty of opportunities to study what they want to and to gain the skills they need to succeed. Down the road, in my electorate of Bean, the new CIT campus in Woden will offer a variety of courses and encourage more students to consider vocational education as an equal to university, not an alternative. An EV Centre of Excellence has been established in Fyshwick as well. It's easy to see why over 15,000 international students from more than 100 countries come here to study—and that's just in the ACT.

Overseas students contribute $30 billion to the Australian economy per annum, and international education is Australia's fourth largest export. The number of international student enrolments in the year to March has increased from 246,000 in 2005 to 741,000 in 2024. As other contributors to this debate have noted, the pandemic crippled international education. The former government told students to go home, and they did. Almost overnight, a multibillion-dollar industry was effectively halved. Those students are now back, but so are the dodgy operators, looking to take advantage of students and make a quick dollar at the expense of this critical national asset. They are unscrupulous actors who are a threat to our good name as a place where the best and brightest from around the world can come and get the best education in the world.

Since coming to government we have been working on this. The release of the Rapid Review into the Exploitation of Australia's Visa System, or the Nixon review, and the review of the migration system brought urgent attention to integrity issues in international education. In September 2022 we announced the Parkinson review of the migration system, which found that the migration system creates incentives for non-genuine students and unscrupulous profit-seeking education providers. That profit motive means that some institutions prioritise enrolment numbers over learning outcomes or that student visas are sold as a way to work in Australia. Additionally, the review found clear evidence of systemic exploitation and the risk of an emerging permanently temporary underclass, including both overseas students and graduates.

In January 2023 the Nixon Rapid Review into the Exploitation of Australia's Visa System revealed further weaknesses and failures. The review found systemic integrity issues within the international education sector, including collusive and unscrupulous business practices between education providers, their agents and non-genuine students. Additionally, the 2023 interim report of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade inquiry into international education, titled Quality and integrity: the quest for sustainable growth, found instances of active collusion between non-genuine students, agents and education providers, as well as instances of education agents directing genuine students to take up unsuitable courses that are profitable for the agent in terms of commissions and provider end recruitment numbers. The report also noted that providers were facing difficulty managing agents because the student recruitment market was hypercompetitive and that providers, sometimes in collusion with agents, were enrolling non-genuine students in courses that they did not attend and offering courses to overseas students only, which may be of poor quality.

These reviews did bring urgent attention to integrity issues in the international education sector, and this government moved quickly on the recommendations of those reviews. In July last year the Albanese government got rid of unlimited work rights for international students by reintroducing a working hours cap of 24 hours per week. This allowed students to support themselves but not at the expense of their studies. It was the first step in reducing the lure of getting a student visa as a backdoor to working here.

In August last year the Minister for Education closed the concurrent enrolment loophole that allowed agents and providers to shift international students who had been here for less than six months from one course to another—a cheaper one—and from genuine study to no study at all. It was another backdoor way to work here.

In October last year we boosted the capacity of the VET regulator, ASQA, through a $38 million investment and the establishment of an integrity unit. That very same month this government increased the amount of savings that international students are now required to have to get a student visa from $24,505 to $29,710.

In March of this year we increased the English language requirement for students, introduced a new genuine student requirement and increased the number of no-further-stay conditions for certain cohorts of visa students. Many of these measures are in response to not only the Parkinson and Nixon reviews but to feedback from the sector. The higher education sector knows that these operators exist and that they are a real threat to quality and integrity. Stakeholders have told the government that we need to respond in stronger terms, and this legislation will do that.

The bill is comprised of one schedule with eight parts. Parts 1 and 2 introduce new considerations for education services for overseas students, or ESOS agencies, in determining whether a provider is fit and proper, such as if they control or own, or are controlled or owned by, an education agent or associate. The provisions in part 1 will also require providers to give information about education agent commissions upon request from the Secretary of the Department of Education, who, in turn, will have the power to give information to providers on student transfers by, and commissions made to, specific education agents.

Part 3 will provide the Minister for Education with the power to determine, via legislative instruments, how initial applications for the registration of providers and for registration of courses by registered providers are to be managed by ESOS agencies. It also allows the minister to pause the registration of new providers and new courses by registered providers.

Part 4 will require providers to deliver one or more courses exclusively to domestic students for two consecutive years to be eligible to apply for registration under the ESOS Act. Providers that are listed in table A of the Higher Education Support Act 2003 and providers that are seeking registration as standalone English language intensive courses for overseas students or standalone foundation programs will be exempt from the new registration requirement.

Part 5 will enable the automatic cancellation of a provider's registration under the ESOS Act where a course has not been delivered to overseas students in a period of 12 consecutive months. Part 6 provides for the automatic suspension of a provider's registration when an ESOS agency or designated state authority determines that a provider does not meet the fit and proper test because it is under investigation for a specified offence.

Parts 7 and 8 introduce new ministerial powers to regulate the provision of education to overseas students. They include allowing the minister, via legislative instrument and with the agreement of the minister responsible for vocational education and training, to: (1) limit the enrolments of overseas students by provider, course or location over a year; and (2) automatically suspend and cancel specified courses on the basis of systemic issues, their value to Australia's skills and training needs and priorities or if it's in the public interest.

This legislation is about restoring quality and integrity to the education services that overseas students come to Australia for, and it will support management of the sector for sustainable growth over time. The bill will support this by empowering the minister to determine limits on overseas student enrolments at a class, or classes of registered providers, for one or more years or on overseas student enrolments in individual courses, or classes of courses, at the provider. In addition, the bill allows the minister to give separate notice to individual providers to enable unique enrolment limits. The limit can be expressed as a specific number or worked out in accordance with the specified method.

The minister has the flexibility to exclude courses or providers from limits. The bill also enables the automatic suspension and cancellation of courses that the minister is satisfied have systemic quality issues in relation to the standard of delivery or have limited value to Australia's critical skill needs or where it is in the public interest to do so. Following consultation, the final international education and skills strategic framework will outline the government's approach to implementing these limits.

We cannot proudly promote our education sector to the world if it is undermined by poor integrity and poor quality. We cannot have students coming to Australia and being ripped off, and we cannot have operators in the shadows whose business model is based on providing low-quality courses at sandstone university prices trying to profit off the name and brand recognition of this high-quality sector.

We are a government focused on welcoming the world's students to share in and experience the Australian quality of education that is internationally recognised, but it must be sustainable so that only education providers that are committed to investing the time and resources to provide students with a genuine education are not undermined by scammers trying to get rich quick and take advantage of vulnerable students coming to Australia under the banner of providing an 'Australian education'.

Under this Albanese Labor government and the work of this Minister for Education, we are restoring quality and integrity while ensuring that an Australian tertiary education remains synonymous with high quality and good value and continues to be one of our nation's most valuable exports. The important measures in this bill are the next steps in strengthening our international education sector, shutting out the dodgy operators, giving our providers long-term certainty, whether they're in the bush or in the city, and setting this national asset up for future success. I commend this bill to the House.