By Salvatore Babones, Associate Professor at Sydney University and author of the book, “Australia’s Universities, Can They Reform?”. Australia needs an honest debate on international students. Peter Dutton can make that happen. Australia’s 2025 election campaign kicked off this week with the Treasurer’s budget speech and the opposition leader’s reply. And both parties put international Source

In last week’s federal budget reply speech, Liberal Opposition leader Peter Dutton promised to reduce the number of permanent visas from 185,000 planned for this financial year to 140,000 for two years, 150,000 in year three, and 160,000 in year four. If achieved, Dutton would effectively lower the permanent intake to 2006 levels, as illustrated Source

Fair warning…: Dear staff at the CBC, Radio-Canada and federal public service: I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your salad days are over. If the polls are correct, Justin Trudeau is destined for the glue factory, with Pierre Poilievre coming in to be your new lord and master. If you’re feeling… Source

In an earlier post I criticised the government’s plans to cap international students by education provider and course. This post goes through the capping legal detail of the Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Quality and Integrity) Bill 2024, which if passed would amend the Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2000. The amending bill… Source

The government wants universities to cut their reliance on this market. It’s also a country with one of the highest visa approval rates. Source

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No doubt at all that the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) Rapid Review of the Graduate Route and its recommendation of “retaining the Graduate route in its current form” is good news for the UK h… Source

Ahead of last autumn’s appalling migration figures, Number 10 had decided that however bad the numbers were, they wouldn’t announce any policy measures in response. But when the numbers came out and it emerged that migration was running at such a pace that 1 in 60 people in the country had arrived in the last twelve months alone, and that net migration was adding a city the size of Birmingham to the population every two years… the government reluctantly allowed Robert Jenrick to develop a package of measures. Source

The Koala was contacted by an English provider who received a visa refusal which was perplexing. The Koala investigated and it appears inconsistent Source