One of the more surprising program inclusions at yesterday’s Senate Committee public hearings on the Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Quality and Integrity) Bill 2024 [Provisions] was an appearance by officials from the Department of Home Affairs (DHA). The surprising part was not their appearance, given the impact of visa policy changes on the sector, but rather that priority was given on the first day of hearings to DHA over the Department of Education, the custodians of ESOS and authors of the Bill.
The officials from DHA who drew the short straw to appear at the hearing were from DHA’s Immigration Group; Tara Cavanagh, Group Manager, Immigration Policy, and Damien Kilner, First Assistant Secretary, Immigration Programs Division.
For those who have been involved in a Senate Estimates process, the DHA session had Estimates vibes (thanks largely to Senator Sarah Henderson), with Cavanagh’s exasperation with some of the questions asked by the Senators palpable. (As a side note, Vicki Thomson also copped a spray earlier in the day, with Henderson perhaps forgetting it was not an Estimates’ session).
Ministerial Direction 107
In the sessions leading up to DHA’s appearance, Senators had been left with no doubt about the negative impact of visa policies on the sector, and particularly Ministerial Direction 107 introduced in December 2023, which guides DHA about the order for considering offshore Subclass 500 (Student) visa applications.
Professor Scott Bowman, Vice-Chancellor, Charles Darwin University (CDU) reported that prior to the last twelve months, CDU’s visa acceptances were “up in the very high 90s” which he attributed to having good methods of vetting students. This has dropped by 67% in the last year, “a real disaster” for CDU, said Professor Bowman. These figures are not unique to CDU, with the same story playing out across the country, except for a handful of providers (mostly Group of Eight universities).
Luke Sheehy, Chief Executive Officer, Universities Australia also attributed Ministerial Direction 107 for visa processing slowing to a trickle, accusing it of “undermining our efforts as a sector to diversify our international student base and is creating significant financial anxiety and pain for universities, particularly those in regional Australia and outer suburban areas”.
Henderson was just one of the Senators to address the sectors concerns about the impact of Ministerial Direction 107, accusing DHA of unfairly targeting students from countries such as India, Nepal and Pakistan, and unfairly targeting universities with populations of students from these countries, resulting in “gross discrimination”.
Integrity concerns
While Senators displayed a good depth of knowledge about the sector’s concerns over visa grant practices, they missed an opportunity to interrogate DHA’s claims that provider risk ratings, the simplified student visa framework and Ministerial Direction 107 were entirely about integrity.
There are two issues that the Committee could have explored:
- With the sudden increase in visa refusals in the last year, by DHA’s logic, either the quality of students has dropped so suddenly to warrant the refusal rate across many institutions, or DHA was granting visas to students prior to this drastic decline that should not have been granted.
- There is a circular argument in using provider risk ratings as a way of demonstrating integrity in a provider, with the methodology driven by visa grant rates. High grant rates are interpreted as ‘students are low risk’, so visas get granted, meaning the risk rating stays low.
To be fair to Henderson (words I never thought I’d write!), she took DHA to task on several issues, not least of which included accusing it and the government of using “so-called integrity as a cover to target unfairly, to discriminate against, smaller and regional universities and private higher education providers”.
Targets, what targets?
The Senators also pursued a line of questions about what targets have been set by government, with Pocock asking what total reduction the government was targeting with the proposed caps and whether there was any target given under Ministerial Direction 107 (it’s a government decision, and no, the respective responses). Pocock and Henderson asked about net overseas migration, with Henderson seeking the modelling that DHA has or hasn’t done on the impact of the current and/or proposed measures on the NOM (you’ll have to ask Treasury). Pocock appeared bemused at one point that DHA is not working towards any specified target.
Sustainable growth
Senator Pocock wondered how sustainable growth is defined, given it is discussed in the legislation but not defined. Cavanagh responded that sustainable growth is “growth in the sector where there are sufficient resources available in the Department of Home Affairs to process visas with rigor to ensure that only people who meet the criteria are granted visas”. She also went on to discuss quality and integrity noting that “we’ve seen historically where the international education system has grown at a pace that the regulatory framework has been unable to keep up that some really serious damage can be done”.
Referencing the 1.4 million places that exist through CRICOS registration she confirmed that DHA does not have capacity to process that many student visas “with rigor”. This left me wondering if DHA’s capacity is how we will be defining ‘sustainable growth’ going forward? Surely a government that is now receiving $1600 per visa application could put some of this to providing DHA with adequate resources.
Lack of consultation between agencies
In clarifying that the Bill is an education bill, not a migration bill, Cavanagh confirmed that DHA was not involved in the drafting of this legislation or the consultation on it, to which Senator Faruqui responded, “I guess the question would be, why are you here”.
The disconnect between DHA and the Department of Education was starkly illustrated with Cavanagh telling the Committee that it was her understanding that it would be up to providers to determine how they would use numbers allocated to them. This is not what is currently proposed by Education, with its submission to the Committee proposing that caps will be managed through Confirmation of Enrolments; that is, on a first come/first served basis, once the number of CoEs are issued to the level of the cap, no further CoEs will be able to be issued.
Professor Andrew Norton picks up on the lack of consultation in his paper released at the start of this week, International students: A government changes its mind, noting that “consultation with other government agencies was so unsatisfactory that [agencies], via their Senate inquiry submissions, [have] gone public with their concerns”.
Pocock also expressed his concerns with, “what I’m hearing is you don’t have a strategic or policy advice or development role in this legislation”, going on to say that “I’m really concerned about the lack of strategy between [DHA] and Education,” suggesting that the two agencies needed to work much more closely.
IT Systems
Henderson also put a series of questions to DHA about the IT systems that will be required to manage enrolment caps, including what the cost of a systems upgrade would be and whether it had been budgeted. She didn’t take kindly to being told by Cavanagh that this information would not normally be provided in a public forum, telling her that “you’re required to because it’s a question from this Committee”.
In what will send shivers done the spines of providers, not the good kind, Kilner confirmed that any IT systems changes would occur in DHA’s November 2024 release cycle, with a 1 January 2025 implementation date. IT issues were also covered in the submissions by other government agencies.
Final word
Giving Senator Henderson the final word for a second time (I’m as shocked as anyone), “I’m not saying that there are no integrity claims, but the government is using integrity as a cover to completely smash a wide range of higher education providers which are on their knees as a result of the discrimination and inequity as to how these policies have been applied.”
