Studying in Australia

Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment Bill 2024

VIDEO

I rise to speak on the Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Quality and Integrity) Bill 2024 and I do so as someone who represents a community where an enormous number of international students have gone through the processes of studying in Australia and now call Australia home as citizens, many of them parents of children, many of them owners of homes in my electorate.
I also come to this bill having visited having visited India last year and having spent a lot of time talking to people there about international students in Australia. Obviously, there are a lot of people in my community who want to talk to me about their experience as international students here and their wishes and hopes to have family members or other people from home come and join them here for that.

I have to say that we all know the power of the international education program for the Australian economy, but we must also be able to say, hand on heart, that what we are offering as a country to students from other parts of the world who wish to come here is absolute quality. When you put your hand up to say that you want to come to Australia to study, you do so expecting the Australian education experience, whether that be in the vocational education and training sector or in the higher education sector. I cannot, hand on heart, knowing people who have been educated in Australia through these programs, say that that is the case for everyone, and I would like to be able to do so. I think it is incumbent on everyone in this place to want to be able to say the same.

I want to be able to say that every student from overseas who comes here seeking an education, paying for an Australian education, receives the quality that we expect as parliamentarians and receives training of an international standard and that they're then able to apply for positions globally with an Australian qualification in their hand and have the world say that that's a quality certification that has met international standards. This legislation goes some way to ensuring that that is the case in the future. It goes some way to undoing some of the exploitation of those international students that we have seen in our suburbs and communities. I know firsthand of cases where, tragically, those things have occurred to people who have come here for an education. Similarly, some people can tell us that
they came for an education, paid for it, and received less than what we would all like to say was an Australian education. I support the bill.