Topics: Newspoll, Jim Chalmers attack on the Reserve Bank, international student caps
Stephen Cenatiempo: We’ve been talking quite a bit over the last week or so about these caps on international students. The Coalition is demanding a hearing be held into the government’s proposed cap on foreign university students claiming that it was announced after officials deceived a Senate inquiry – to talk to us about this we’re joined by the shadow education minister, Senator Sarah Henderson. Sarah, good morning.
Senator Henderson: Steve, a very good morning to you.
Stephen Cenatiempo: Before I get on to this cap thing, I want to touch on the Newspoll results from this morning, which obviously, you know, spell doom and gloom for the government, but it’s not particularly great for the Coalition, either, particularly when it comes to economic management. And I made the comment this morning that all of our politicians, Labor, Liberal, National – everybody – should be talking about cost-of-living, first, cost-of-living, second, cost-of-living, third. Everything else that comes after that. And I know things like international student caps are important, and the refugee visas for people coming out of Gaza. All these are important issues, but they should be four, five and six.
Senator Henderson: Steve, good morning, and absolutely, and that’s what we have been doing as a Coalition. You’ll remember for the for the first 18 months of the Albanese government, all it spoke about was The Voice, the divisive voice, which cost Australia nearly half a billion dollars. And we are seeing Australians really suffering with Labor’s cost-of-living crisis, and it’s only getting worse, and some of these price increases are just shocking under Labor. Gas is up 33 per cent, electricity 14 per cent, rents are up 16 per cent across the country. We have a weak and unprincipled Labor government, which is driving our economy off a cliff.
Stephen Cenatiempo: I found it extraordinary this morning, and I refer to Jim Chalmers as the federal passenger, rather than the federal treasurer, because he doesn’t seem to think that he’s driving the economy. His latest lash out at the Reserve Bank is quite extraordinary. The Reserve Bank only does what it does because it’s trying to get inflation down because the government seems to have abrogated its responsibility.
Senator Henderson: That’s absolutely right. Then we saw Jim Chalmers go on a rant, a desperate rant against Peter Dutton. Now he’s on that rant again about the Reserve Bank. He really needs to look at his own economic performance, which is, frankly, woeful, one of the worst, of comparable countries in the world. And of course, Australians know it’s only getting worse. So just have a look at this shocking record – 12 interest rates hikes, small businesses barely able to open their doors. Homeowners with a typical mortgage of $750,000 are nearly $35,000 a year worse off. I mean, I think people are noticing in the streets – the streets are quiet because people can’t even afford to go out and get a meal. That’s how bad things have got under this government. And under Peter Dutton and the Coalition, we are prosecuting the important back-to-basics economic agenda to get Australians back on track, and that means cutting red tape, Steve, securing our energy future, reforming the tax system, restoring sensible workplace laws, backing small business, encouraging enterprise, encouraging small businesses to grow and prosper, and supporting a strong financial sector. So, we are very focused on getting back-to-basics, whereas this treasurer and this weak Prime Minister are only interested in blaming everyone else for their own mistakes.
Stephen Cenatiempo: Let’s talk about this issue of international student caps. Look, in principle, I agree with where the government’s going here because we do need to cap this. I think it’s a bit of a Ponzi scheme. But are we putting the cart before the horse? Because the real issue I see with our university sector is it has now become a money-making scheme for international students, rather than producing a quality education and providing an education for Australian students. Shouldn’t we be discussing that, a complete overhaul of our university sector so that it actually goes back-to-basics and does what it’s supposed to do?
Senator Henderson: Well, that’s what I’ve been calling for, a back-to-basics approach – not just for our economy, of course – but for our universities, because some of them have been going off the rails Steve. Firstly, let me say, the student caps are only necessary because of Labor’s immigration chaos. We have seen immigration out-of-control under this government, there are now more than 800,000 students in Australia, and of course, that’s having an enormous impact on housing, on services, even trying to find a doctor and trying to find a place to rent in inner Melbourne or in inner Sydney is an absolute nightmare for not just students, of course, but for everyone. And so frankly, this just really ran off the rails under this government and it’s made worse because under Ministerial Direction 107 – and this is the hapless former minister for home affairs – they were attacking the regional and smaller universities, so their visas were going through the floor as well as the private higher education providers, while the Group of Eight visas were going sky high, so it’s a real mess. It’s a mess of Labor’s own making and you’re right – we do need to get back-to-basics, and we do need to focus on the fundamental job of public universities, and that is to educate Australians.
Stephen Cenatiempo: You know I’ve said this for years, that the problem with our education system at the moment stems from reforms that were made when (John) Dawkins was the education minister under the Hawke government, where we effectively told everybody, `If you don’t go to university, you’re a failure’. So, we put all these people into universities to get arts degrees that qualified them for nothing, and now we stare down the barrel of a shortage of tradies across the country. We’ve been reaping what we’ve been sowing for the last 30 years. But getting back to these numbers here, you’re claiming that officials have deceived a Senate inquiry – how?
Senator Henderson: Well, this is the minister’s doing. So, let’s be very straight here. We had a public hearing last week in Sydney examining the bill before the parliament, and we effectively had no data, and we were even told, `Oh no, everything’s fine’. You know, `The systems are in place to manage these student caps’. The very next morning, of course – after the Senate inquiry, which is all about scrutinising the bill and calling witnesses to ask how is it going to work in practice, how will it impact your university – the very next morning, the minister announced the student caps. So, we had no opportunity to examine the practical impact of the caps and how they would work in practice. And that’s a shocking transparency fail by the Albanese government.
This education minister, Jason Clare – he’s got a school funding war, so he’s at war with Labor education ministers – can you believe the Victorian education minister is even saying the Liberals did a better job with school funding than this government is doing? So, he’s got chaos with the school funding. He’s also now got chaos in the university sector, and he’s trying to sort of deal with this through smoke and mirrors and it’s simply not good enough.
Stephen Cenatiempo: So how should we approach this? Should we, when we talk about international student caps, we’re saying no more than 145,000 will be allowed to study at Australia universities in 2025 – do the caps need to be individually applied to each university and educational institution instead. I mean, do we say that you know, UNE up in Armidale, for instance, should be allowed to take this many students, whereas Melbourne University should only be allowed to take this many. Is that what you’re talking about?
Senator Henderson: Well, that is the government’s proposal, is that every single university, private higher education provider and vocational and education training provider, would receive their own cap. Now there’s some big problems with that. Number one, we don’t know what the caps are because they have not been announced. Secondly, the minister said this is a win for the regions. Now we know the regions were absolutely smashed by Ministerial Direction 107. So just to give you the raw numbers this year, the Group of Eight – the prestigious universities, Melbourne and Sydney, ANU and the like – they had 83,000 student visas this year. Regional and smaller unis had 8,900. So you can imagine the economic pain the government caused the smaller and regional unis. And so, while the minister is saying this is a win for regions, we’ve now learned that, in fact, universities like Federation University at Ballarat have had their numbers halved. So, there’s no transparency. We’ve got no idea about what’s going on. And while the numbers for the universities in total have gone back by 1 per cent – that is the number of new students, new foreign students who are allowed to commence next year, private higher education providers who, frankly, do a really good job providing education to both domestic and international students – their numbers have gone back by 28 per cent. And I’ve even been contacted Steve by a couple of providers who’ve have said to me, `Look, I’ve just set up shop. It’s taken me three years to open the door to get my registration, and I’ve got no allocation for next year’. So, it’s a dog’s breakfast for want of a better word, and it’s, frankly, a disgrace this is happening on Jason Clare’s watch.
Stephen Cenatiempo: So, Sarah, going back to the initial point that I made, do we have to look at a broader overhaul of the funding situation with universities, because if they now find themselves in a position where they can’t survive without thousands and thousands of international students, there’s clearly a broader problem.
Senator Henderson: Well, look, I’m not sure about that, Steve. So, if you look at the University of Sydney – 50 per cent of all its students are foreign students. That university made $1.5 billion last year. We’re hearing different stories. So, on one hand, we’re hearing that that money is being used as a reserve, and then we’re also hearing that it’s been used to cross-subsidise or fund research. And no doubt that money, or part of it, is being used to fund a whole range of things. But you’ve got to ask the question and what we are concerned about is the social license of our universities to bring in such large numbers of foreign students without having regard for the impact on the learning of all students. So, we are hearing many, many stories where Australian students, their learning is really impacted. One young man doing first year commerce at Melbourne University left his course because his tutorial was full of foreign students. They were all speaking in Mandarin. He couldn’t learn, and now he’s wondering what he’s going to do. So, we’re hearing many stories. I mentioned yesterday in another interview that foreign students are holding their Google Translate devices to the lecturer to literally translate what is being said because their English is so poor. Now when students have got to work together in group assignments, or when they’ve got to be working in all sorts of different respects, whether it’s learning or in conversation, you cannot learn in that sort of environment. So, I do think that some universities have lost sight of their core mission, and that is, fundamentally, to educate, Australian students, and that’s why they receive billions of dollars of taxpayers’ funding to do so.
Stephen Cenatiempo: Sarah, I appreciate your time, thanks for joining us this morning.
Senator Henderson: Thank you, Stephen.