On Friday, the Senate Education and Employment Committee held an additional day of hearings for its inquiry into the Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Quality and Integrity) Bill 2024. This is what we learned from the government officials who appeared before the Committee. A list of those who appeared is at the end of this article.
There are no definitions yet
The new legislation will come into effect from 1 January 2025 (less than four months away), and yet we learned from the Department of Education (DoE) that it has not settled on definitions for:
- Twinning
- Key governments
DoE’s Ben Rimmer also confirmed that his department has no idea how many students this will involve, although they anticipate the number is small. However, a definition of the Pacific should be communicated soon.
Consultation
The Departments of Education and Home Affairs have both given evidence at the Senate Committee hearings of the ‘extensive’ consultation that they have done with providers, with Rimmer telling the Committee there had been “literally thousands of separate consultation engagements we’ve had over the past three or four months”. (Side note to the Departments, it’s not consultation if the messaging is one way). The list of who these “thousands” of consultations was with was taken as a question on notice.
Senator Faruqi pressed Rimmer on whether DoE had specifically consulted on the development of the methodology. The response to this was that the DoE did not see “huge value” in consulting with the sector, essentially because providers would be too self-interested in maximising their allocation.
The inconsistent, and in some cases devastating, impact of the current methodology could have been avoided if DoE had tapped into the combined intellect and experience of the leaders who have appeared before the Senate Committee. The sector has been pleading with government to work with it to determine the best way to ‘manage growth’ and to suggest that these leaders would only operate in self-interest is, frankly, insulting.
Ministerial Direction 107
As a reminder, Minister for Education, Jason Clare is on record as saying, “As part of these reforms, Ministerial Direction 107 will go”. (Yes, it’s the Minister for Home Affairs that would need to revoke MD107, not the Minister for Education). DHA told the Committee that the government would “consider” revoking MD107. There was no such qualification from Clare on the record.
We also learned that if a minister wants to change or vary or remove a Ministerial Direction, they need to do it through the issuing of a new MD. DHA confirmed, however, that it has not been asked to provide any proposals to the government about what that MD could contain.
DHA was also unhappy with Faruqi’s characterisation of MD107 throttling the sector, saying that MD107 had not reduced its capacity to finalise visas (the sector may disagree). However, DHA was forced to admit that it was aware of the concerns of the sector about MD107 when Faruqi quoted Clare that the “impact of that is hurting our universities”.
Rimmer told the Committee “I have not had a regional provider say to me that they think they can utilise a higher cap within 100 or 200 in 2025 than the one that’s been offered to them”. He neglected to tell the Committee that this is because of the ongoing impact of MD107.
In a question taken on notice, DHA will be providing the Committee with: the number of student visas granted to each education provider for each year over the past five years, and the number denied; the number of student visa applications received by month for 2023-24; number currently the subject of an appeal in a tribunal or court, including the breakdown of category of student visa dispute (refusal/cancellation etc); number of student visa cases that are subject of a protection visa application. This will make for fascinating reading for the Committee!
Timing of release of limits
We learned that the DoE received notice from the Minister’s office to send out letters to higher education providers at 10.10am the day after the second Senate Committee hearing (leading to the Committee strongly requesting a third hearing), in advance of the Minister’s 11am media conference.
In a move that will surely infuriate non-government Senators, DEWR commenced sending out letters to VET providers that day, with the excuse that the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) was under embargo until 9.30am that morning.
We now know that letters were sent out into late Friday evening and continued Saturday, and the news is very bad. It’s so bad that it prompted the CEO of English Australia, Ian Aird, to put up a LinkedIn post with details for Lifeline, saying “In the face of this government’s cavalier and reckless treatment of this sector’s business owners, workers, and students, we must stand together and support one another”. (ELICOS is exempt from provider limits, however EA has multisector members). (Will it lead to a fourth day of hearings? Unlikely, but you never know).
Reallocations
Senator Pocock explored the question of how reallocations of unused caps will occur. In summary, the answer was that they are likely to occur in April each year, although details are still not finalised (there’s a theme here). Pocock rightly questioned the practicality of the timing of this process.
Allocations
DoE confirmed that 20 higher education providers had received a provider limit of zero: providers who have a higher education CRICOS registration but predominantly deliver VET courses; dormant higher education providers; new entrants to the market.
DEWR ran the Senators through the methodology being use for the VET sector allocations, which is already publicly available so not repeated here. They reported, as we have now seen, that “we’re anticipating a reduction for those specialist international providers with 80% or more international students”.
Pathways
I, and others, have raised concerns about the impact of caps on the pathways sector and this was raised by Henderson. Rimmer’s response was, “we’re aware of the fact that pathway colleges want to have a conversation with government about how they’re managed in the system and the idea of embedded pathway colleges, and we’re continuing open discussions with the sector about that”.
There doesn’t appear to be any wriggle room in the methodology or approach by government to allocating provider limits, so it is entirely unclear what the point of these “open discussions” is, other than for it to appear to the Committee that there is some optimism for providers, when none exists.
Accommodation
Rimmer told the Committee that “50% of international students are in the private housing market” and that the 4 per cent figure that has been used was equivalent to “lies, damn lies and statistics”. He also took on notice a question of what modelling the DoE has of the impact of international students on the private rental market.
This was picked up by Pocock in the session with Treasury, with questions about the overall share of the housing stock that is taken up by international students. Treasury said it would provide “rental vacancy rates around a number of universities, which, like the rest of Australia, show pretty high stress numbers. So certainly it is only a factor, and we would not want to overplay that”.
PRISMS
The DoE has received $2.6m to upgrade PRISMS to manage enrolment caps.
What’s the point?
According to Rimmer there are “strong education policy reasons behind the bill and the approach”, although he was not asked to explain what these are.
Economic impact of provider limits
Treasury reported that it doesn’t anticipate the National Planning Level (270,000) to have a material effect on Australia’s economic growth as the NPL is consistent with net overseas migration forecast that is in the Budget.
As Alanis would say
The irony wasn’t lost on me when Senator Henderson came to the defence of the Universities of Melbourne and Sydney, telling Rimmer that she wouldn’t let him impugn their reputation after he previously gave evidence that they had provided incorrect data. This is the same Senator who has clearly been anti-Group of Eight until now, including accusing them of having “rivers of gold”.
Final word
The last thing that I learned for day three is that I’m glad that I no longer work for the public service. The role of the public service is to serve the government of the day, and you learn quickly that your key stakeholder is your Minister, not the public. I would opine that this is why some of the testimony from the officials felt like it was an episode of Utopia.
Finally, the opening session with the Department of Education made for some uncomfortable listening. Henderson came out of her corner swinging, telling Rimmer that she had asked for the Secretary of the Department to appear at the hearings because “frankly, Mr Rimmer, it appears to me that you are not up to the job”. (He’s also copped it in another media outlet). A long and heated exchange continued, which I haven’t bothered to reflect above, as we didn’t really learn anything that we didn’t already know.
It’s not a good day when government officials become the story.
List of officials appearing at the hearing:
Department of Education
Mr Ben Rimmer, Deputy Secretary, Higher Education, Research and International Group
Ms Karen Sandercock, First Assistant Secretary, International Division
Ms Vanessa Lapthorne, Assistant Secretary, Engagement Branch
Ms Alexandra Procailo, Assistant Secretary, International Quality Branch
Department of Employment and Workplace Relations
Ms Anna Faithfull, Deputy Secretary, Skills and Training
Ms Laura Angus, First Assistant Secretary, International, Defence and Assessment
Ms Katerina Lawler, Assistant Secretary, VET Quality and Regulation
Mr Daniel Langer, Assistant Secretary, International Policy and Defence
Department of Home Affairs
Ms Tara Cavanagh, Group Manager, Immigration Policy
Mr Damien Kilner, First Assistant Secretary, Immigration Programs
Department of the Treasury
Ms Sam Reinhardt, Deputy Secretary, Fiscal Group
Dr Adam Cagliarini, First Assistant Secretary, Macroeconomic Conditions and Population Division
Mr Brendan McKenna, A/g First Assistant Secretary, Labour Market, Environment, Infrastructure and Industry Division
Mr Nicholas Downie, Assistant Secretary, Housing Strategy Branch
Mr Nicholas Latimer, Assistant Secretary, Centre for Population
