Tom Connell: The government wanted a bill, it’s doing this instead. What’s your reaction to it?
Senator Henderson: Well, Tom, good afternoon. Great to join you. Firstly, let me just correct you, we are very strongly committed to student caps but we will implement a cap that is much tougher than what Labor is doing. Because, frankly, this is more chaos oneducation minister Jason Clare’s watch. This latest ministerial direction is tied to Labor’s flawed student cap scheme, which will bring in around about 400,000 new international students next year, including the exempt categories. And of course, that continues to prioritise the big end of town, the sandstone G8 universities, the University of Sydney and Melbourne. And of course, we’ve been very critical of those universities, where at Sydney, for instance, more than 50 per cent of all students are international students, and last year Sydney made nearly $1.5 billion. The rivers of gold are flowing but of course, Australians are paying the price and that includes, of course, trying to access affordable housing in the inner cities, particularly in Melbourne and Sydney.
Tom Connell: It had to come up with something so in that introduction, if it wasn’t clear what I was intending to say as a Coalition didn’t support the Labor legislation, I know you want to cap students, so apologies if that was unclear. This still will havefewer students coming in, including fewer from the sandstone unis. So there might be claims that it favors them but there will be fewer coming in to those sandstone universities. That’s still the result of this, isn’t it?
Senator Henderson: Well no, that’s not correct Tom, because if you look at the 2019 numbers, so the pre-COVID numbers, and look at the cap that the government tried to put in place, the numbers for the sandstone universities are up 12 per cent but dramatically down for the regionals. And this year, we’ve just seen the latest numbers drop. Just over 5,000 student visas were processed for regional universities, and that’s a dramatic drop from 2019, 72 per cent. So the government hashit the regional unis very hard, which of course, causes enormous economic harm to regional communities and it’s still going to effectively implement this soft cap, which is open slather and that supports the sandstone universities, because their cap for next year was 60,000 and the regional unis only had a cap of some 14,000 so this is all about looking after the big end of town, the elite university.
Tom Connell: When you wouldn’t support the legislation, why wouldn’t you put up a specific alternative plan?
Senator Henderson: That’s exactly what we will be doing. We will be announcing a much tougher cap in due course, Tom, but we saw, as I say, an absolute immigration mess, chaos. And in fact, the proposed student cap of 270,000 did not include around about 130,000 foreign students who are actually exempt from the scheme. So on the numbers alone, and I’m just having a look at the student visas granted over the last couple of years, they were actually going to go up, not down, on Labor’s watch. So it’s just a complete mess and it looks like the Prime Minister has sacked the education minister, Jason Clare, from any responsibility with international students. Suddenly the assistant minister is out, he signed the latest ministerial direction and education minister, Jason Clare, is missing in action and for very good reason.
Tom Connell: Late December I suspect there might be a leave arrangement. I’m not across that but I’m not sure we’d throw the word sacked out there. I’m not sure that’s happened, unless you’ve got contrary information. Let me ask you this, so we’ll go to the bigger picture on immigration, you said you’ll you’ll have a plan, you’ll put it out there on students. Peter Dutton did have a plan on net migration for 160,000 a cap on that but he’s no longer saying that will be his number. Why not? What’s changed there?
Senator Henderson: Well, Tom, Peter Dutton announced in the budget reply last year a 25 per cent reduction in permanent migration from 185,000 to 140,000 for year one and two, and then that would increase to 150,000 in year three and 160,000 in year four. Peter has now made it clear that because of the absolute chaos with Labor’s forecasts on net overseas migration, we will now be looking at what we inherit and making a responsible economic decision accordingly.
Tom Connell: So that plan has gone then and there’ll be a new one?
Senator Henderson: I’m just making it clear what Peter Dutton has made, has actually said. So we’ve now seen net overseas migration blow out by another 80,000 migrants. In the budget, the forecast was 260,000 net overseas migration and it’s actually now 340,000. So we’ve also seen that blow out two years in a row, and we are expecting the hat trick for the third year. So it just goes to show, you,just cannot trust this government on migration. It’s an absolute mess and of course, as I say, Australians, particularly those trying to access affordable housing, are really paying the price.
Tom Connell: Got to leave it there for today and won’t speak to you again this year. So enjoy your break. We’ll talk next year.
Senator Henderson: Fantastic. Thanks Tom and Merry Christmas to you.