International student numbers to be limited using legal workaround

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The government is imposing a de-facto cap on international students by slowing down visa processing. The direction comes after labor failed to pass legislation to cap student numbers.

Transcript

00:00They're using a ministerial direction, which is something that a minister can do quite

00:06easily and quite quickly and doesn't require the passing of any legislation.

00:11And the reason they're doing this is because the government tried and failed to pass legislation

00:16earlier this year that would have capped international student numbers into Australia at 270,000.

00:24Now because they didn't manage to pass that legislation, there was a direction that remained

00:28in place called Ministerial Direction 107 and that asked immigration officials to prioritise

00:35visa applications from overseas students to universities that were low risk.

00:41Now the university sector didn't like that because what was being considered low risk

00:46was primarily metropolitan universities, big universities and the regional universities

00:52and some of the smaller providers said it was unfair.

00:55They weren't getting the international student numbers, which of course means international

00:59student revenue.

01:01What has happened instead is the government has now put in a new ministerial direction

01:05called Ministerial Direction 111.

01:09That asks the Home Affairs Department to treat student visa applications as a high priority

01:15until they get to a certain threshold.

01:19That threshold is at 80% of what student caps the government was trying to impose on

01:26each university and at that 80% point then visa processing becomes a slower process and

01:32so that is how the government says it's going to rein in those student numbers.

01:37We heard earlier from Labor Minister Katie, sorry Labor Senator Katie Gallagher who said

01:43that this is an issue that the government needs to address.

01:46Being pretty up front about it, it will prioritise visas for students going to those regional

01:52and smaller universities which is something that we had wanted to do through that legislation

01:57and it will just help us manage that international student numbers which as we've said have contributed

02:05to quite substantial growth in numbers of people coming to Australia.

02:09The universities as I said have been really critical of how this has been handled so far.

02:13They don't like the fact that students are being capped to deal with a migration issue.

02:19They say that students bring in a huge amount of revenue to Australia and to universities

02:25individually.

02:26They've released a statement, Universities Australia has released a statement today in

02:30response to this new ministerial direction.

02:33They say it's a common sense decision and it was desperately needed to deliver some

02:37certainty and stability to the sector.

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