Quotes attributable to Chief Executive Vicki Thomson
Today the Federal Government announced that it intends recklessly to proceed with international student caps – introducing cuts to Go8 members who do the heavy lifting in research, education as well as underpinning Australia’s global reputation as a high-quality international education provider.
As such, the Group of Eight (Go8) remains implacably opposed to international student caps for the damage they will do to the sector and the nation.
We saw yesterday at the Senate inquiry that there is no economic modelling on the impact of caps, and this has not changed with today’s announcement of a National Planning Level target of 270,000 for international education. This policy was bad yesterday and it is bad today – the unexplained number gives us no comfort.
What has changed is the Government today trying to steamroll the sector into accepting detailed caps before a clearly sceptical Senate has passed judgement on the ill-conceived legislation that enables these enrolment limits.
In doing so, the Government has confused the issues even further and increased the distrust of the sector in its capability to manage this vital $48 billion export industry.
In defending the caps, the Minister Clare has engaged in a clumsy sleight of hand by conflating Ministerial Direction 107 – a visa processing capacity issue of the Government’s own making – with caps. Caps will not undo the damage of Ministerial Direction 107 as international students simply will not study where the Australian Government tells them to.
The Government has essentially responded to one reckless policy folly, Ministerial Direction 107, with another – punishing the Universities that have proven to be the most popular for the very best global students.
Tellingly, the Minister also confirmed that Ministerial Direction 107 has significantly damaged the global reputation of Australia’s international education sector. The introduction of caps will compound this damage.
To add insult to injury the Minister characterised institutions – including Go8 members – who as low-risk, high-quality providers in a global context have maintained international student numbers, despite the fiasco of Ministerial Direction 107, as “lucky”.
Unfortunately, with today’s announcement it seems that this “luck” has run out.
The Go8 encourages the Senate in the strongest possible terms to not allow the Government to bully it into passing legislation through the public announcement of caps and to amend the ESOS Amendment Bill to exclude public providers, universities and TAFE from Parts 7 and 8 of the Bill.