Election 2025: Liberal bid to put foreign students to work

As both parties promise to cut immigration, the Coalition has offered to let international students work 60 hours a fortnight in a policy Labor branded ‘bizarre’.

Trainee nurses, midwives, teachers and social workers will have to borrow their $315 per week ‘prac payments’ under Coalition plans to convert the stipend to a loan. Picture: iStock

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Foreign students will be granted extra work rights under a ­Coalition plan to let them work 60 hours a fortnight, in a policy that has angered universities.

Coalition costings show that a Dutton government plans to milk more money out of international students, estimating it will collect $417m in additional taxes by ­letting them work 60 hours a fortnight, instead of the existing 45 hours.

The Coalition refused to ­explain its policy on Friday but International Education Association of Australia chief executive Phil Honeywood – a former Liberal Party minister in the Victorian government – lashed out at the policy. He warned that the work entitlement would lure more non-genuine students to use student visas as a backdoor entry to a job in Australia.

“Throughout the campaign the rhetoric from the opposition has been fewer international students will equate to better quality students,’’ he told The Australian.

“But permitting 30 hours per week paid work while supposedly studying full time will actually compromise quality outcomes.

“After all, it’s almost a full-time job entitlement now on offer. Ironically, this measure will also encourage more non-genuine students to apply to study here just to make money.’’

International Education Association Australia chief executive Phil Honeywood.

Both Labor and the Coalition have promised to slash the number of foreign students in Australia – with the Coalition cutting 80,000 a year. Both parties have also pledged to increase the non-refundable application fee for student visas, raising $750m under a Labor government and $3bn under the Coalition.

Universities Australia chief executive Luke Sheehy said that Australia’s world-class international education system benefited from students being able to work while they studied.

“The current hours provide a sensible balance and any increase risks upsetting this,’’ he said.

Education Minister Jason Clare said it was “truly bizarre’’ that the Coalition was planning to increase work rights for international students.

“This will only work to encourage more international students to work, not study,’’ he said.

The more generous work rights coincide with warnings from the Department of Home Affairs that too many international students are gaming the system.

Home Affairs raised concerns over “known quality and integrity issues’’ during a Senate inquiry into the Albanese government’s failed legislation to prevent course-hopping in the international education sector last year.

“The department has evidence that recent growth in international education has in part been driven by non-genuine students and unscrupulous providers who are subverting the current regulatory framework,’’ Home Affairs stated in its submission.

The Coalition also came under fire on Friday for its plan to make trainee teachers, nurses and social workers pay back their $315 per week “prac payment’’ for mandatory on-the-job training as part of their university degrees.

The taxpayer-funded payment was due to start from July 1 this year, but the Coalition said it would convert the stipend into a loan to be repaid through the Higher Education Help Program, saving taxpayers $556m over three years.

The National Union of Students is upset about changes to prac payments for nursing students who are required to spend months doing unpaid work in hospitals as part of their university degrees.

Mr Clare said Opposition Leader Peter Dutton “will leave our future nurses and teachers with even more student debt’’.

“This is a slap in the fact to some of the most important workers in the country and it’s been snuck out at the last minute before an election,’’ he said.

National Union of Students president Ashlyn Horton said students would be pushed into “placement poverty’’ because they have to quit their existing jobs to work for months at a time for free in schools and hospitals.

“This is the difference between students eating or going hungry, finishing their degree or dropping out,’’ she said.

“The commonwealth prac payment is the bare minimum support students need to complete mandatory training without going broke.

“Instead of axing it, we need to be expanding it to cover more students, more professions and provide better financial security.’’

National Tertiary Education Union president Alison Barnes said the Coalition was “taking money out of students’ pockets’’.

The Coalition plans to continue paying the stipend, but in the form of a HECS-style loan, after some universities complained that they “are not Centrelink offices’’ and did not have the administrative resources to administer the prac payment.