Education Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2025
Ms CAMPBELL (Moreton) (12:37): Growing up, education was always the absolutely highest priority in my household. Education is the great equaliser. Education is the key that opens the door to the world.
Education is something that can never be taken away from you once it is given, and education lights the pathway for whatever you choose to do in your future. For me education was particularly important because my mum was a primary school principal and my dad was a high school biology teacher. I know, like so many others in our community, teachers and those who are educators at all levels are an incredibly important part of our community—and, in my case, they're an important part of my family.
It's one of the reasons why I'm incredibly proud to be part of an Albanese Labor government that has education and investment in education running through its veins and in its DNA. We see that not just at one level of education but at the tertiary level, with 20 per cent off student debt, we see that at the school level, with the full funding of state schools, and we see that the early childhood education and care level, with cheaper child care and the removal of the activity test.
Today is a very special day in my family, because my little girl, Margaret, is undertaking her first day of child care at parliamentary child care, and I will report back with how she went later on this week. For me it has been a little while—quite some time, in fact—since I was a student. I was reminded of that this week with year 12 students across Queensland starting their final exams.
Despite it being a little while ago for me, I do remember the excitement of my friends who headed overseas afterwards to study as part of their degrees. It's easy to understand the allure. Being an international student gives you the opportunity to experience a new culture firsthand, and it gives you the chance to travel somewhere new, meet lots of new people and experience life as a local.
But for many reasons it is not always a wonderful experience. Maybe it's homesickness or maybe it's a language barrier. Sometimes it is caused by the activities of unscrupulous education agents, which can lead to the exploitation of overseas students.
The Education Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2025 takes aim at these practices. It's a wide-ranging bill that amends four acts that the Education portfolio oversees, and it addresses a range of important measures. The report of the Rapid Review into the Exploitation of Australia's Visa System, also known as the Nixon review, in March 2023 stated that approximately 75 per cent of international students entering Australia to study use an education agent.
These agents offer services such as assistance with applying for Australian visas as well as research and university enrolment aid. Of course, these are valid reasons to engage an education agent. After all, navigating the higher education system of a foreign country, particularly when you are new to that country, can be incredibly challenging.
However, currently, regulators have no supervisory powers over education agents. Education providers are instead responsible for ensuring the agents that they work with every day do not engage in deceptive or unethical behaviour. If an agent is found to be involved in dishonest recruitment practices, it is the education provider who is obliged to take appropriate action, which may include addressing the issue directly or ending the partnership altogether.
The problem of unethical education agents is not new. In fact, in 2015 Four Corners ran an investigation and found evidence of corruption in the practices of overseas education agents. The report stated, 'Australian universities were paying an estimated $250 million each year to unregulated education agents for the recruitment of international students, despite widespread acknowledgement that a number of these agents were corrupt and dealt in fraudulent documents.' While the problem may not be new, it suddenly came to a head after the growth in international education post the COVID years.
The increase in demand from students attracted unprincipled and deceitful operations to the sector, and that is simply unacceptable. This bill proposes to amend the Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2000 and responds to a range of recommendations from the Nixon review as well as the review of the migration system. It also takes into account the 2023 Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade report 'Quality and integrity—the quest for sustainable growth': interim report into international education.
It acknowledges the stakeholder feedback that was received for the Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Quality and Integrity) Bill 2024. You can see these reforms have been considered very thoroughly. At the heart of them is Labor's commitment to safeguard the integrity of our higher education system.
This bill clearly and comprehensively defines what an education agent is, ensuring that their roles and responsibilities are accurately captured. It also establishes a formal definition of 'education agent commission', paving the way for changes in the National Code of Practice for Providers of Education and Training to Overseas Students 2018. These changes will prohibit the payment of commissions to agents for facilitating onshore student transfers, a practice fundamentally linked to unethical recruitment and conduct.
The bill strengthens the 'fit and proper' test for education providers, allowing for increased scrutiny of those with shared ownership structures with agents or those under investigation for serious offences. The Department of Education will have extra authority to collect and share data on agent commissions and student referrals. This aims to help education providers identify trustworthy agents and eliminate those who pose risks to students.
That's what this bill is all about. It's about making sure that students from other countries who are vulnerable are protected. It's about making sure that those students are not exploited.
It's about making sure that the dream of coming to this country to learn and to unlock the door to the world and their future is not tainted by those who would seek to exploit them. The other aspect of these reforms focuses on the growing number of Australian education providers who are setting up satellite campuses in other countries. The Prime Minister just launched Monash University's campus in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.
It's important that these institutions uphold our reputation for educational excellence, a reputation that is held across the globe. To ensure this, the bill also amends the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act 2011. The bill strengthens the regulation of Australian education institutions in other countries.
Providers will be required to obtain authorisation from the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency to operate overseas. This means that students enrolled with Australian education providers overseas can trust that the quality of their qualifications matches those delivered within Australia. To support this, authorised providers will be required to inform the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency of any new or updated offshore delivery arrangements and submit annual reports.
This reporting framework equips regulators with the necessary data to monitor standards and identify potential risks early. The proposed amendments aim to strike that balance between effective oversight of offshore education and reducing unnecessary regulatory pressure on Australian institutions. By enhancing transparency without overburdening providers, the reforms help maintain the integrity of Australian qualifications globally and uphold our reputation in the world.
This bill ensures the quality and integrity of the courses offered to overseas students in Australia. Prospective providers will now be required to deliver courses to domestic students for two years before applying to teach international students, demonstrating that important commitment to quality education. It also gives the Minister for Education the power to pause new provider or course registrations for up to 12 months, allowing regulatory bodies to concentrate on integrity issues.
Providers who fail to deliver courses to students for 12 consecutive months will have their registration cancelled, targeting the issue of phoenixing operations. Finally, with the agreement of the Minister for Skills and Training, the Minister for Education can suspend or cancel courses where there are ongoing quality issues or limited skills value. These amendments will apply to higher education providers, VET providers, English language intensive courses for overseas students and foundation program providers.
Collectively, these reforms aim to tighten oversight, to promote transparency and to protect students while supporting reputable providers in maintaining the highest of standards. The next component of this bill makes amendments to the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to uncap the number of Commonwealth supported places for First Nations students studying medicine.
Every Indigenous student who qualifies for entry into medicine will have a Commonwealth supported place. This is a positive move that will lead to numerous benefits. Looking firstly at the numbers, currently First Nations Australians are underrepresented as medical practitioners.
In 2023, roughly 0.6 per cent of doctors identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, despite being 3.8 per cent of the population as a whole. Uncapping Commonwealth supported places for Indigenous medical student was a recommendation of the Universities Accord and we expect it to grow the numbers of First Nations doctors. What this means in practice is an increase in culturally safe care.
Dr Peter O'Mara, a First Nations GP, describes his work this way: GPs hear of struggles of illness, but they also hear of great resilience, the love for and practice of culture and of seemingly small, but significant triumphs. We also hear about how things outside of our consultations affect health. The devastating consequences of racism; the effects of poor housing, or lack of transport.
It is a reminder that as GPs, we can also act together to improve health outside of our consulting rooms. Evidence indicates that better health outcomes are achieved for First Nations people when they receive health care from First Nations healthcare practitioners. More Indigenous doctors also means more services in rural and remote areas and First Nations healthcare providers are more likely to work in Aboriginal community controlled health services.
The final part of this bill introduces key reforms to strengthen integrity, transparency and data governance in early childhood education and care. The government's investment in the Child Care Subsidy is significant—more than $16 billion each and every year. This bill contains measures which will assist in the analysis of that investment.
It begins by amending the family assistance administration act to empower the Secretary of the Department of Education to request cost related data from providers that are constitutional corporations. Of course, we hope providers will voluntarily provide this information, but, to gain a complete and accurate overview of the sector, it is necessary to ensure that a full set of data is collected.
This change supports last year's MYEFO commitment of $10.4 million over two years for the Early Education Service Delivery Price initiative. The project aims to improve our understanding of the costs involved in delivering early childhood education and care services nationwide. It's all part of Labor's commitment to provide universal early childhood education and care in a system that is built on evidence and accessible for every single family.
The bill also makes further changes to the education and care framework by expanding the use and disclosure of protected information. It also fixes an inconsistency that has been affecting the system since 2018, by aligning the date of the effect of the Child Care Subsidy reconciliation decision with the date in the system. This bill covers many things, but, at its heart, it's about education.
At its heart, it's about making sure that, whether you are like Margaret in day care or those students going through their year 12 exams or whether you are at university or coming to this place to study, no matter where you are in our education system, we invest in it, it is fair, and it creates fantastic outcomes for everyone who chooses to study in this great place.