International student benchmarking surveys done during this time rated our nation poorly for the support we provided. A megaphone statement by our then prime minister Scott Morrison that overseas students should “just go home” only added to this reputational damage.
As was so often the case, when the Morrison government finally decided to reopen the borders to international students, its motivation was soon brought into question. Without any consultation with international education stakeholders, it decreed that students coming back here on full-time study visas would be permitted to work unlimited hours. For obvious reasons, corporate Australia welcomed the announcement. With working holiday visa holders not able to afford prohibitive airfares to get here, overseas students were seen as the best alternative labour force on hand.
Short-sighted policy
Unfortunately, our nation will have to live with the consequences of this short-sighted policy for years to come. On the one hand, it sent a clear message that Australia was going to pay lip service to the ideal of coming here primarily to study hard and gain a world-class qualification.
On the other hand, it led to the wrong motivation for young people from certain countries to apply for a student visa in the first place. Those who genuinely wanted to focus on their studies even came under pressure from family members back in their home country to work as many hours as possible in order to send Australia dollars back to support other struggling family members.
For all the right reasons, from July 1 the Albanese government has reinstated a cap on work hours for student visa holders. In doing so, with the exception of the aged care industry, it has so far resisted pressure from business lobby groups to use overseas students merely for labour-hire purposes.
It can look to other study destination countries such as Canada, the UK and New Zealand, which have maintained a consistent cap of 20 hours per week of paid work for any student visa holder. As with these countries, our corporate sector should again focus on the increasing numbers of working holidaymakers and temporary skill visa holders now coming back here to meet their labour supply requirements.
However, there is now another potential hit on our reputation as a study destination country that should primarily be motivated to provide outstanding education to young people from around the world as a social good.
Few can refute that successive Australian governments have not provided sufficient financial resourcing of public education institutions. OECD benchmarks have made this abundantly clear. As a consequence, public universities have long resorted to cross-subsidising funding shortfalls from what many regard as already excessively high tuition fee imposts on overseas students.
To now potentially add to the financial burden on our neighbouring countries’ young people by imposing a new levy or tax should be absolutely resisted. Such a measure will surely send all the wrong messages about the type of neighbour that we aspire to be.
For more than four decades Australia has reaped enormous benefits by opening up our world-class education institutions to aspirational young people from around the globe. These benefits should never be measured just in dollars but also in the incredible research outputs and soft power diplomacy that have accrued.
At every opportunity, the international education sector needs to push back against our overseas students being looked upon just as a source of labour hire or a convenient group on which to impose another tax. We must be a better nation than this.
Phil Honeywood is the chief executive officer of the International Education Association of Australia.
