Premier Steven Marshall says South Australia should have 10 per cent of Australia’s international students

LAST year South Australia attracted just 35,000 of the 800,000 foreign students in Australia. Premier Steven Marshall wants to boost this to at least 10 per cent of the national total — but how?

Premier Steven Marshall has termed the existing foreign student intake number as “hopeless”.

• Gonski school plan will turn kids into robots

SOUTH Australia should push to attract 10 per cent of the country’s international students, Premier Steven Marshall says while labelling the existing intake number as “hopeless”.

Mr Marshall also said SA needed a preferential migration status, something for which he would lobby the Federal Government to boost flagging population numbers.

SA had more than 35,000 international students last year compared to the national intake of just under 800,000.

“You can’t get away from the truth … you can’t get away from the fundamental truth from this stat that South Australia gets just 4.7 per cent of Australia’s international students,” he said during a provocative speech at an Urban Development Institute of SA Premier’s luncheon.

“This is hopeless, absolutely hopeless and we need to move away from governments saying ‘aren’t we doing well here and aren’t we doing well over there’.

“We have 7.1 per cent of the nation’s population, so at the very minimum we should have 7.1 per cent of the Australian international students.”

However, Mr Marshall said the state could do even better when it came to attracting international students and the aim should be to double the number.

“I would argue that we should have 10 per cent of the international students because we have three excellent universities.” he said.

“We have a safe, attractive, navigable city with lower costs … this is a fantastic place for internationals students to come.

Mr Marshall also said SA needed to accelerate overall population growth, comparing country Queensland growing its population by 30,000 last year to this state’s 10,000,