There is little common understanding across government agencies about the ideal contribution of students to levels of net migration in Australia, says Dr Abul Rizvi.
AMENDMENTS to the Education Services for Overseas Students (ESOS) legislation give the Government the power to cap the number of students at each of the approximately 1,400 registered providers. Recent Senate hearings into these changes saw government agencies struggle to provide a sensible rationale for current policy directions. Why?
Major policy responsibility in this area has always been split between Education and Home Affairs (formerly Immigration) with Education usually pushing for ever faster growth (until there is a crash) and Immigration trying to limit the level of non-compliance, fill key skill shortages and reduce the number of people in immigration limbo. That has been the case since the 1980s.
Since 2019, Treasury has assumed responsibility for forecasting net migration, which includes the student contribution to net migration. The Jobs and Skills agency, Foreign Affairs and Trade, Tourism, Agriculture, Regional Development, Health and Aged Care also take an interest in overseas student policy, but have little interest in the overall numbers or any negative consequences for administering immigration policy.
We may never know if the tardiness of the Government’s response to the blow out in the student contribution to net migration was due to a failure of agencies to alert their respective ministers to the blow out or the tardiness of ministers to agree to a response.
The blow out was certainly obvious by the end of 2022, with the Treasurer and the Minister for Home Affairs still arguing in early 2023 that the Government had no role in managing net migration and the Minister for Education still basking in the glory of the economic contribution of overseas students.
That all changed from mid-2023 when the Labor Government began (albeit slowly at first) to reverse many Coalition Government era policy settings and then add some new policy measures, including ramping up refusal rates, to slow growth in overseas student numbers.
At some stage in 2023, the Prime Minister became alarmed. That was naturally followed by a more rapid array of policy changes although we do not know which minister or ministers led those changes. Was it Minister for Education Jason Clare, Minister for Home Affairs Clare O’Neil, or their respective junior ministers?
Was there a clear long-term policy rationale for the changes or were the rapid fire changes simply a response to the increasing political pressure as data on the net migration blow out became more apparent?
Sadly, the evidence given at the recent Senate hearings suggests more uncoordinated panic than careful policy development, particularly in relation to the new powers to enable the Education Minister to cap overseas student numbers at each registered education provider.
Evidence given at the Senate hearing by Industry representatives was almost entirely negative on the use of caps. Linked here is a list of the 50 top quotes from the hearings (compiled by Simon Costain from NextEd group). It provides a good flavour of the understandable anger in the Industry although the Industry itself has failed to offer an alternative approach to caps or high refusal rates based on subjective criteria. It has focused almost entirely on the revenue it fears losing if the 2023 growth rate is not allowed to continue.
The evidence given at the Senate hearing by the representative from Home Affairs was revealing. Upon being asked what overall "target" Home Affairs was working towards, the Home Affairs representative referred the question to Treasury as the agency responsible for forecasting net migration.
In other words, there doesn’t seem to be a common understanding across government of an ideal contribution of students to future levels of net migration or the stock of students and temporary graduates in Australia. Yet slowing the student contribution to net migration has been the over-arching driver of the rapid policy changes to date and for the capping powers that the Education Minister is seeking.
The Home Affairs representative also claimed that Home Affairs has not been involved in drafting of the capping legislation or the consultation on it. That is extraordinary given the crucial interaction between Home Affairs administration of student visas and the Education Department’s administration of student caps.
When asked about how the Department would define sustainable growth of the overseas student industry, the Home Affairs representative said “growth in the sector where there are sufficient resources available in the Department of Home Affairs to process visas with rigor to ensure that only people who meet the criteria are granted visas”.
That is a very odd response, as it completely avoids the wider public policy issues as if those don’t matter to the Department and highlights how much resource pressure Home Affairs must be under.
Key agencies here – and hence ministers – are clearly not on the same page on overseas student policy. That cannot be allowed to continue. It’s time ministers provided a clear long term rationale for overseas student policy and its administration.
Dr Abul Rizvi is an Independent Australia columnist and a former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration. You can follow Abul on Twitter @RizviAbul.
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