‘Dodgy college’ reached out to ALP

Months before a VIP dinner with Anthony Albanese, a foreign student kingpin’s deregistered college was contacting ALP figures for help.

Australian-Indian businessman and entrepreneur Rupinder Brar with Anthony Albanese at the Toorak dinner in November.

A senior employee at a deregistered international college run by multi-millionaire entrepreneur Rupinder Brar contacted Victorian ALP figures four months ago seeking help to save the business and to raise concerns about the Albanese government’s plans to cap foreign student numbers.

The Australian can reveal the Barkly International College executive contacted Labor figures around September as the Brar-owned company was fighting to overturn a decision to deregister the company over “significant noncompliance”. Sources familiar with the contact said Barkly was keen to push its case that the decision by the Australian Skills Quality Authority was not justified and that the federal government’s ­proposed 270,000 cap on foreign students was a mistake.

The international college watchdog stripped Barkly of registration on May 20 last year after an audit uncovered what ASQA described as “significant noncompliance … in relation to training and assessment, enrolment and marketing and governance systems”.

The international college is based on Lonsdale Street in central Melbourne. It charges mostly Indian students between $7500 and $18,000 for courses that include marketing, mechanics, cookery and kitchen management.

Barkly has appealed the deregistration decision.

The college is owned and operated by Mr Brar, a 46-year-old Indian-Australian businessman, who has also made a fortune through commercial and residential property development.

The Australian revealed this week Mr Brar sat next to Anthony Albanese at a private dinner on November 12 that was also attended by the Prime Minister’s principal private secretary David Epstein and former Victorian Labor premier Daniel Andrews.

Mr Andrews has declined to answer questions from The Weekend Australian about why he attended the event and the ­nature of his association with Mr Brar.

The Indian banquet for about a dozen guests was hosted at the Toorak mansion of Mr Brar’s close friend and business associate Dushyant Khanna.

Mr Khanna and Mr Brar are partners in a company called Punvec Plaza, which is one of dozens of companies in which the Barkly owner is either a director, secretary or shareholder.

Mr Albanese has repeatedly refused to deny the event was a party fundraiser aimed at filling the ALP’s campaign war chest ahead for this year’s federal election.

Multiple Labor and Indian community sources believe the event – which one guest described on social media as “four hours of exquisite cuisine and hospitality” – raised tens of thousands of dollars for Labor.

Mr Albanese has chosen to duck direct questions about whether the meal raised campaign cash for Labor, describing it as “just a dinner”.

“My recollection is that it was a dinner and nowhere near as long as it was reported, I got to say … but I engaged with people,” he said on Thursday.

“I’m having a dinner tonight too and I’ll have lunch at some stage today … and I had breakfast this morning as well. It’s just a dinner, what do want me to say … what I had for dinner?”

Dinner guests have revealed in social media posts that among the issues discussed at the November 12 dinner were visas, tourism, the economy and the property and construction sectors.

Mr Dushyant’s wife, Ridhima, in a social media post the following day, said her family had the “privilege of hosting Mr Anthony Albanese, Hon. Prime Minister of Australia at our residence this week”.

“An incredible moment and milestone for the Indian business leaders who came forward to support this as well to mention the widespread community we represent,” she posted.