Peter Dutton’s ambition to get temporary migration down to 160,000 per year would mean one student would have to leave the country for every one that arrives, effectively smashing the $48 billion international education export sector, migration expert Abul Rizvi said.

International education specialists were among experts who lashed out at the opposition leader’s promised migration cuts in his budget reply speech, accusing him of stirring up racism and undermining Australia’s most successful non-mining export sector.