Joint media release
Shadow Minister for Education, Senator the Hon Sarah Henderson
Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Hon Dan Tehan MP
The Albanese government’s foreign student chaos is going from bad to worse, with new data revealing almost half a million international students have signed up to study in Australia in the past year.
This makes a mockery of Labor’s vow to reduce record numbers of international students which are fuelling Australia’s housing crisis.
Department of Education data just released shows there were a record 495,469 new international student commencements in the past year, up by another 19,000 since last year. For the first time, annual foreign student enrolments have skyrocketed to more than 1 million.*
“Updating a ministerial direction on visa processing will do nothing to fix Labor’s immigration mess,” Senator Henderson said.
“By tying the new Ministerial Direction 111 to Labor’s flawed student caps scheme, the government will continue to drive excessive numbers of foreign students to Australia’s elite, metropolitan universities.
“This open-slather approach places no limit on the number of foreign students who can come to Australia.
“The Coalition will impose a much tougher cap on foreign students at metropolitan universities which puts the needs of Australians first.”
Shadow Minister for Immigration, Dan Tehan, said more than one million migrants have arrived under Labor during a housing crisis and cost-of-living crisis.
“This Labor Government has overshot their migration targets two years running, with a hat-trick looking highly likely,” Mr Tehan said.
“This Labor government bragged about how many visas it was processing. They boasted about ramping up activity to “accelerate processing times.
“Australians have every right to be cynical about what this government says it is doing to reduce record immigration.
“Labor always makes a mess out of immigration.”