Last week, the Education Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2025 passed its second and third readings in the House of Representatives (TKN 291025) and has now been referred to the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee on the advice of the Selection of Bills Committee. The Committee is due to report by 24 November 2025.
Any opposition to the international education aspects of the Bill during the second reading debate, particularly the proposed changes to the Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2000 (ESOS Act), can only be described as lukewarm.
Next steps
As of writing, the Bill is not yet on the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee website, so there are no details about any public submission deadlines.
However, given last year’s extensive inquiry and the end of November timeframe for reporting, it’s almost certain that no public hearings will be held this time around. We also know from last year’s inquiry into the ESOS Amendment Bill that, despite overwhelming public opposition to the Bill during the inquiry, the Senate Committee still recommended that Parliament pass the Bill unamended.
It’s also worth noting that the Government had the opportunity to make changes to the wording of the 2024 ESOS Bill based on feedback from last year’s inquiry when it re-introduced it in the 2025 Bill and has chosen not to do so.
The Committee is scheduled to report on 24 November, the start of the final sitting week of Parliament for the year.
In his second reading debate speech, Assistant Minister for International Education, Julian Hill said “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”.
Second reading debate
As mentioned above, the second reading debate provided only lukewarm opposition to ESOS-related elements of the 2025 Bill. What was said during the second reading debate has been approached from a Party perspective.
Labor Party
Although appearing first in this summary, Hill was the final speaker on the Bill before Education Minister, Jason Clare, commended the bill to the House. Hill’s remarks focused on the international education elements and ticked off all the talking points that have been used by the Government about why the Bill is needed, including:
- The sector is a great success story: Australia’s fourth largest export sector worth $51bn, supporting 250,000 jobs, part of brand Australia, internationalises our education giving Australian students exposure etc.
- The ‘mess’ the Labor Party inherited from the previous government.
- That the Liberal Party and the Greens played politics by blocking the 2024 Bill, including “chasing the donors before the election and blocking good legislation in the Senate”.
- “The behaviour of unscrupulous agents onshore pursuing transfers has corrupted the market”.
It’s unsurprising that other Labor Party members speaking on the 2025 Bill stuck to the Party’s talking points, variously explaining elements of the Bill, its background etc. Rather than repeating these, one key message from each speech is summarised below:
- Julie-Ann Campbell: “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”.
- Jodie Belyea: “This is about cleaning up the system, not constraining quality providers. It’s worth remembering that similar reforms were blocked last year by the opposition, who chose to side with the dodgy providers over system integrity. But this government will not give up. We’re determined to rebuild a trusted, sustainable international education sector that remains a source of national pride”.
- Carol Berry: “The Nixon review, for example, identified that some education providers formed business relationships and worked with education agents to facilitate student movements for the purposes of profit only, rather than genuine education needs and the needs of the student. In response this bill inserts a new definition of ‘education agent’ which better captures their activities. Recent statistics show that 86 per cent of overseas students use an education agent to source study in Australia, so this change will have a widespread impact”.
- Tim Watts spent much of his speech on non-Bill related rhetoric, including on engagement with South-East Asia, student accommodation and the new overseas student commencements, focussed almost entirely on the university sector: “Our world-class international education sector is a great thing for Australia. It’s something that we can all be proud of. We encourage universities to keep rising to this challenge and protecting our reputation for excellence abroad”.
- Jo Briskey: “Let’s be clear. These changes are not about punishing good providers. Australia’s universities and reputable education providers have nothing to fear from stronger integrity measures. These reforms are about ensuring that everyone who wears the Australian education brand does so with integrity and quality at their core”.
On changes to the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act 2011, giving the regulator powers to approve transnational education delivery, providers should note Hill and Berry’s optimism (emphasis added):
- “Right now, TEQSA, as the regulator, simply doesn’t have the data-flow to know reliably 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,” said Hill.
- “Importantly, the changes are designed to provide adequate oversight of offshore arrangements while minimising the regulatory burden,” said Berry.
Liberal Party
Shadow Minister for Education and Early Learning, Julian Leeser spoke on the Bill, prior to its referral to the Federation Chamber and Koala covered this in our earlier story (TKN 291025).
Despite speaking for more than ten minutes, Tim Wilson focused largely on unrelated political commentary. By the end of his speech, it was still unclear what point Wilson was making.
National Party
When describing the ESOS-related aspects of the Bill, National Party MP, Michael McCormack spoke largely in favour of the Bill.
On Part 4 of the Bill, requiring new providers to deliver courses for two years to domestic students prior to delivering to international students, McCormack said “[Providers have] got to have form. They’ve got to have skin in the game. They’ve got to be able to show and demonstrate that they can do the job before they get the job”.
Independents
Western Australian Independent (Curtin), Kate Chaney thinks that the Bill “represents a significant improvement on the previous version”. However, she raised concerns about Part 7 of the Bill giving the Minister the power to cancel courses, although in the end, she is happy to trust the parliamentary process.
“It does not seem appropriate for the federal minister to intervene in this matter, and some stakeholders have raised concerns about this power. I am willing to trust that this intervention will be used rarely, if at all. Maintaining safeguards around this power is also vital. Currently, the minister ‘s suspension or cancellation of courses would occur through a disallowable legislative instrument allowing for parliamentary oversight and scrutiny. So while I have concerns about how this power could be used, I would assume good faith in the rare exercise of this power and trust in the parliamentary oversight process.”
Like Chaney, Allegra Spender, Independent for Wentworth, supported the Bill, but raised concerns about ministerial power to cancel courses. She picked up on Andrew Norton’s recent excellent analysis on why the education minister should not have the power to cancel ‘classes of courses’ (TKN 291025).
“I note that these decisions will be disallowable instruments, and I sincerely hope the powers are used sparingly and with clear safeguards. There is certainly the opportunity, with these discretions and the very limited guardrails that the bill provides, for the minister to make interventions for reasons that are not in the national interest, without the sort of oversight that one would expect from these sorts of interventions. I would like to put this concern on note, though I support the rest of the bill.”
Independent (Kooyong) Dr Monique Ryan concentrated her comments on amendments applying to Indigenous medical students.
With little resistance during the debate, it is this author’s view that no amendments will be made to the Bill. There is also no evident appetite for amendment by the Government and the Bill appears on track to pass before the end of the year.
For reference, my piece analysing the changes between the last iteration of ESOS changes and the current can be found here (TKN 14/10/25).
