Education Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2025

Mr HILL (Bruce—Assistant Minister for Citizenship, Customs and Multicultural Affairs and Assistant Minister for International Education) (17:01): Deputy Speaker Aldred, you missed the first 4½ minutes of that previous contribution, when he called relevance on himself. Then I think it was at 5½ minutes when Deputy Speaker Haines proactively pulled him up for lack of relevance.

But, contrary to the impression people might get from that kind of bombastic waffle that had nothing to do with the Education Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Other Measures) Bill—I've known the member for Goldstein for about 25 years—he is actually very good company, remarkably. Member for Goldstein, you did talk about how you were invited to a lunch for new members at Monash University at length.

You did spare us the menu. Thank you for that. That was after you lost your seat.

You haven't come back new and improved. I would suggest that, if you just want to hear your own voice, there's an audio memo function on the phone. You could record yourself and then you could play it back.

That wasn't your most structured contribution, but you did make the point that universities need policy signals. Well, yes. I'm not quite sure what policy signal they took from the election policy that you took to the election, which would have actually decimated Monash University and other Go8 unis by reducing their revenue by literally billions of dollars a year.

Anyway, it's generous to call that a policy. That was a donor strategy wrapped up in a culture war. But that's for another time.

I want to focus my remarks on the international education parts of the bill. The context for this is that much of the bill is parts 1 to 6 of a previous bill that was blocked in the previous parliament by the Greens political party teaming up with the Liberal Party again, as well as a modified version of part 8 and, as the shadow minister rightly observed in his second reading speech contribution, a set of new provisions, which I'll address in relation to TEQSA and transnational education delivery.

I want to make a couple of contextual remarks as the Assistant Minister for International Education. International education is a great Australian success story. It's been growing over decades to become, as is often remarked, our fourth-biggest export sector.

It's worth $51 billion to our national economy now, supporting more than 250,000 Australian jobs. That's more direct jobs than mining or agriculture, which are oft talked about and also of great importance to the country. It's something that, I think, Australians can rightly be proud of.

And we want them to be proud of it. More than just the economic value, which often people get stuck on or hung up on, though, is the benefit that this sector has had for our country over generations now. Increasingly, we can see it as part of our national statecraft, as brand Australia.

We talk about our statecraft often, with defence, foreign affairs, aid and trade. International education both enables all of those pillars to varying degrees and is a value in its own right. It's something that we can and should be known for, now and in the coming decades.

Australia has educated more than 1½ million students from South-East Asia and China—and more globally. But, most importantly, perhaps at a human level, having those young people in Australia internationalises our classrooms, our universities, our TAFEs and the private providers across the country. It gives Australian students exposure to students from other cultures and to learn cross-cultural works.

And it means that those students who return home take that little bit of Australia with them—a lifelong set of connections and understanding about our values and our way of life. It enables trade. And of course many—not all, not most, but many—of those students become some of the most highly valued skilled migrants that our country can have.

To put it bluntly in economic terms, their home country pays for the expensive years of their primary and often secondary education and often their first degree. They pay and contribute significantly for their time in Australia, and then they go on and become taxpayers for 40 years, for those who do choose to stay and contribute to skill shortage areas. So this is a really important thing for Australia.

This bill is all about improving the quality, safety and integrity of our international education sector and preserving and enhancing its reputation. I worked in the public service in the Victorian government. I ran this sector in Victoria under a Liberal government, actually.

When I was appointed to this role—I don't know whether I told you this, Minister for Education—I got a lovely note from the former Liberal minister and deputy Liberal leader, who I'd worked with, congratulating me and saying that she hoped I would have as good public servants as she had had in her time. It was very generous and kind of her. It should be a bipartisan endeavour, and generally it has been.

But the truth is that when we came to government we inherited a sector in a total mess. Abbott was pretty good on this. Turnbull was really good.

But the previous Morrison regime was an utter debacle for our fourth-biggest export sector. He literally told the students to go home during COVID-19. The lobsters got their own plane, but the students got told to go home.

It was cruel. If our children were in another country, you would hope that they would have been treated better than that government treated those young people. Multiple independent reviews, coupled with the visa integrity data and regulator reports, revealed shocking misuse of the visa system.

That's just a fact. There were organised criminal syndicates, human trafficking, migration scams and cross-ownership patterns that were deeply unhealthy between training providers, migration agents, education agents, NDIS providers and so on—there's a link. But the single worst policy decision that the former government took was to uncap student work rights.

That was to allow international students to work as many hours as they liked. That corrupted the student visa pipeline, which we are still dealing with today. I heard the member for Goldstein's ranting contribution late the other night, most of which was obsessed with the member for Isaacs about the ART bill, but there you go.

What I can observe is that this is like the boa constrictor swallowing the elephant. The mess and the chokepoints in the ART that we're seeing with the student visa appeals are the students that the former government let in due to uncapped work rights. If the member for Goldstein had actually spoken to any part of the bill and knew anything about this sector, I think he would understand and accept that, once you let onshore a dodgy student who is here for the wrong reasons, it is exceptionally difficult to get that student to leave.

That's just the truth of it. And they're the students who are still working their way through the appeals pipeline. If you want a data point, in May 2022 Australia had more students apply to come to Australia from Nepal than we had from China.

That decision which we inherited completely corrupted the student visa pipeline, and that's what we are still winding back today. The growth that we'd seen post COVID-19 was completely unsustainable. Unscrupulous actors were exploiting the migration and education system, and the social licence of the sector was under real threat.

Australians were rightly looking at it and going, 'What on earth is going on here?' So, in the last term of parliament, under the leadership of the Minister for Education, we made a series of tough decisions to tighten the visa and the education policy settings, introducing a national planning level. Frankly, we'd be further down that track if the Liberal Party and the Greens political party had not played politics, chasing the little donors—we know of the fundraisers; we know where you went—before the election and blocking good legislation in the Senate.

I understand there was an issue and a debate about caps. I said my bit about that as a backbencher, but there was no willingness to actually engage seriously with the material and the integrity bits— Mr Tim Wilson interjecting— Mr HILL: Well, you weren't in the last parliament, as we know. The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Aldred ): The member for Goldstein?

Mr Tim Wilson: On a point of order, based on the precedent of the established commentary yesterday in the House, the member is imputing a motive on other members. The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I'll ask the assistant minister to keep to the point, please. Mr HILL: I'll absolutely keep to the point.

Mr Tim Wilson: I'm sorry, but the point of order is for him to withdraw those remarks about other members. Mr HILL: I'm not sure what I'm withdrawing. Mr Tim Wilson: He's imputing that people are making policy based on donations.

Yesterday in the House allegations were made by Labor members when such suggestions were made by others that that was unacceptable, and there was a demand by the Leader of the House that they withdraw. So the same standard should apply. Mr HILL: I will withdraw that comment.

If you want to read what I said, I said it on Sky News and in various speeches; you can read it there. Does that help? The DEPUTY SPEAKER: And I encourage you to keep to the point.

Mr Tim Wilson: Another point of order—there should be no qualification on withdrawal. Mr HILL: There was no qualification. I withdrew it, and I now point you to my remarks on Sky News and in speeches where I've made the same points, so you can be educated there.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I think the assistant minister has withdrawn the remark, and we'll continue. Mr HILL: Absolutely.

He's like one of those wind-up dolls, isn't he? You trigger him, and then he sort of gets up. At least I didn't say 'CFMEU' that time.

That's usually your go-to, but there you go. The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Please address through the chair. Mr HILL: Indeed.

Well, I said 'he', not 'you', but yes. You're clearly not 'he'. Anyway, the amendments in this bill, as I said, that were blocked are critically important to clean up the legacy mess in this sector.

They really are important. Most of them actually flowed from the trade subcommittee inquiry, which was unanimously adopted. I acknowledge the member for Riverina for his really constructive work through that inquiry right across the country last term.

The bill will strengthen the fit-and-proper test for education providers. That's really important; it flowed from the Nixon review and starts to deal with the very unhealthy, shady cross-ownership patterns which I referred to before. The bill will also improve transparency to help providers identify reputable agents.

Education agents, counsellors, consultants—whatever they're called in different countries—overall play a really important and constructive role. Students offshore are inherently vulnerable consumers in that there's an enormous information asymmetry between, usually, young people—it's usually their first time away from home and overseas. They're trying to work out where the right place for them to go is, what the right provider is, what the right course is, how they will be treated and what the laws are.

So the agents are critical intermediaries in that market, to use market terminology. But the evidence is overwhelming, from universities but also from the reputable private providers in the higher education sector and the vocational training sector, that the behaviour of unscrupulous agents onshore pursuing transfers has corrupted the market. To stretch the market analogy further, we've seen this before in other markets.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, it was drug company pharmaceutical reps—secret holidays and TVs to doctors to get them to prescribe certain drugs. Government stepped in and cleaned it up. Then we saw, with mortgage brokers and with financial advisers, that the intermediaries were corrupting the market with hidden commissions and outrageous behaviours.

Governments eventually stepped in and cleaned it up. Unfortunately, that's exactly what we've seen for years. Overwhelmingly, it's actually—I say this very genuinely to the other side.

I absolutely understand there are some in the sector who don't like this part of the bill, but, overwhelmingly, the feedback which I've received, over years now, from the reputable private providers in VET and higher education is to please do something about the behaviour of the agent commissions, because they are buying and selling students. To put it in business terms, if you're a good private provider—I'll use the member for Wide Bay; I imagine you as a good private provider—and you're trying to run a good-quality product and you've got an agent saying, 'I'm not giving you a student unless you give me 40 per cent commission,' then what are your choices?

Lower your quality, go out of business or cashflow the loss by paying the outrageous commission. That's what we're seeing in the market. This bill properly broadens the definition of 'agent' and properly inserts the definition of 'commission' to enable what most in the sector and the good providers—not some of the voices that we'll all have in our ears saying, 'Don't do this'—are saying government needs to do.

It was supported in the trade subcommittee report unanimously, it was supported in the Senate committee last parliament, and it is critically important for the healthy functioning of the market. The bill will also enable the pausing of the processing of applications for registration to deliver education to international students. You do have to wonder in parts of the sector if you've got a shrinking number of students because we've moderated growth.

Applications were down about 26 per cent, year on year, last year because of the integrity measures. Therefore, our growth has moderated, and sustainable growth is enabled. But, if you've got a shrinking number of students in parts of the sector and providers are flooding to enter the market, your alarm bells should be ringing—'why are they entering the market?'—particularly when you look at the cross-ownership patterns.

The case has been made for years that we need to get this legislation through. The regulators have an overwhelming case for some of these powers to deal with the bad actors in the sector. These powers will protect the good actors in the sector.

That case is very clear. Existing providers who haven't delivered education to overseas students for 12 consecutive months will lose their registration. That's a good thing, because the dodgy providers make sure that they or their brother or their cousin or someone has a dormant provider so that, when the regulator comes and closes them down, they just phoenix the students into the dodgy provider the next week, and on they go.

These measures have all been carefully thought out and I can't stress enough how important it is that we pass them by the end of the year so the regulators can get on and do what they need to do. I'll just address, in the last minute or so, the TEQSA TNE part of it—and the Minister for Education has made that case, I think, in his second reading speech introducing the bill.

All that this part of the bill is doing is making sure that TEQSA, as the regulator, has a line of sight to what providers are doing offshore. That's all. That's because Australians and all of the reputable providers and universities delivering transnationally guarantee to the world that, when one of our Australian providers delivers a course offshore, that course is delivered to exactly the same quality standard as if the student were in Australia.

That's our promise to the world. Right now, TEQSA, as the regulator, simply doesn't have the data flow to reliably know which providers are delivering in which markets. That's all.

There's no more power. There's no more red tape. It's simply saying, 'You need to get authorisation.' It's straightforward.

Everyone who is currently delivering automatically gets authorised. But then they just have to tell the regulator, so that they can run their normal risk based regulation. We are seeing an expansion of TNE.

That's great for our economy. It's great for soft power. It's great for South-East Asia.

But, if one of our providers does the wrong thing in a given market, it wrecks our reputation for everyone. I saw the shadow minister's second reading speech. I understand the queries are genuine.

I hope that explanation assists somewhat. This is just a sensible power so the regulator can actually do their job to protect our reputation and all providers. I commend the bill to the House.