Scant comfort for our sector in Australian election results
Australians went to the polls on Saturday, delivering an overwhelming victory to the incumbent Labor party and returning Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for a second term. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton capped a disastrous campaign by losing his own seat in the Queensland electorate of Dickson.
An unsurprising result to many given the lacklustre campaign from a dysfunctional opposition, the return of the Labor government will give little comfort to an under-siege international education sector.
Around two years ago, Labor party strategists identified growing unease with the scale of immigration as an area of weakness in the upcoming campaign. Jittery at an incoming election period scare campaign, they drafted a blunt-force political strategy disguised as policy reform, one that would throttle student visa approvals, drive down net overseas migration, and let them claim to be taking action on Australia’s housing crisis without ever laying down a brick.
It’s difficult to overstate the scale of the damage inflicted on Australia’s shell-shocked international education sector. What were initially described as ‘quality and integrity measures’ and sold as a sensible recalibration of post-COVID migration settings instead rapidly devolved into a political bidding war to the bottom. Providers were cast as convenient scapegoats and international students the villains of an entirely manufactured crisis.
The roll out of Ministerial Directions 106 and 107, followed by a farcical legislative attempt to cap student numbers under the banner of “integrity”, was sector sabotage dressed in bureaucratic doublespeak. Second-tier public universities were blindsided by the changes, and are now dealing with the first waves of the economic tsunami to come.
Private and regional providers, particularly in the vocational training sector, were harder hit. The ELICOS sector, the gateway that underpins much of Australia’s education pipeline, was left reeling.
It’s difficult to overstate the scale of the damage inflicted on Australia’s shell-shocked international education sector
Embarrassed by the rejection by the Senate of their centrepiece legislation, a petulant government circumvented legislative processes, introducing student caps under a slightly different name through Ministerial Direction 111.
In the end, international education barely rated a mention over the course of the election campaign. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, speaking at a press conference held in a field of under-construction suburban properties 90 minutes from Melbourne University, attempted to link housing prices in the area to international students there.
He proposed increases to visa fees and a brutal cap on GO8 ‘sandstone’ universities before barely raising the issue again. There was some mumbled thought-bubble commentary on increasing student work rights “from 2026”, which was lost in the noise of the last couple of days of campaigning.
The Labor government was even less forthcoming, studiously avoiding the topic until the final week of the campaign, when it announced that a further increase in the student visa fee would fund a “AUSD$760 million boost to revenues”, appearing to base its calculations on 465,000 applications a year rather that its own so-called target of 270,000 student visa grants. Called on by the Australian Financial Review newspaper to explain the discrepancy, it declined to comment and the issue of international education was not raised again.
Looking ahead, it’s difficult to see a catalyst for any easing of government policy. An emboldened education minister Jason Clare is likely to take advantage of a newly compliant Senate to re-introduce the deeply flawed ESOS Amendment Bill – the ‘capping legislation’ rejected in the previous term. Student visa fees, already the highest in the world, will rise to $2,000 in July, representing an 181% increase over the last 12 months.
Faced by a government with a huge electoral majority and very limited Senate impediments, industry peak bodies will have few levers to pull. Initial focus will be on promoting small, sensible reforms, and likely to involve a push for a lower-fee ‘short term’ student visa, catering for ELICOS and study abroad enrolments that do not generally contribute to net overseas migration figures. There is also likely to be a push for a more transparent visa assessment process and a sensible approach to capping. Whether the returning government will feel any need to engage more positively with the sector remains to be seen.
Faced by a government with a huge electoral majority and very limited Senate impediments, industry peak bodies will have few levers to pull
In the meantime, providers are preparing themselves for a challenging period. Following serious corporate failures in the sector, more schools are preparing to downsize, merge, or close altogether. For many, the pipeline of students has slowed to a trickle, not due to quality or demand, but because of a visa system that has become opaque, erratic, and prohibitively expensive.
These closures won’t just affect institutions, they will ripple through local economies, displace skilled staff, and tarnish Australia’s hard-won reputation as a world-class study destination. Without urgent recalibration, we risk overseeing the slow unravelling of one of Australia’s most successful export industries, and doing so with barely a word of debate.
The pull factors that have led to Australia’s success as an international student destination remain as compelling as ever; Australian schools offer a high quality learning experience in an absolutely unique study environment.
Student work opportunities abound and pathways into further training and residency opportunities are robust and highly attractive. A period of government support in promoting this to the world would be welcomed.
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