Migration scheme in turmoil as Coalition, Greens torpedo overseas student caps

Labor’s controversial laws to cap the number of foreign students in Australia have been torpedoed by the Coalition and the Greens, who joined to defeat one of the federal government’s core policies for bringing down immigration levels.

The opposition on Monday announced it would block Labor’s legislation despite this year saying it supported student caps, leading Education Minister Jason Clare to label Coalition leader Peter Dutton a fraud and adding heat to a looming election fight over immigration.

Education Minister Jason Clare says Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is a “fraud” over his immigration stance.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Coalition sources said they would reveal their mechanism to drive down student numbers before the election after frontbenchers Sarah Henderson, James Paterson and Dan Tehan derided Labor’s plan as a piecemeal approach that would “only serve to compound this crisis of the government’s making”.

Their stance guarantees Labor’s proposal to limit the number of international students next year to 270,000 will fail, dealing a blow to the government’s efforts to bring down immigration levels by controlling the intake of Australia’s largest temporary migrant cohort. The Greens have also vowed to oppose the bill, calling it racist and saying it scapegoats international students for the housing crisis.

The Group of Eight universities welcomed the Coalition’s position. Chief executive Vicki Thompson said the sector now had time to have constructive conversations with the government and the opposition about how to manage numbers in the sector.

“[The discussion] got wrapped up into cost of living, housing and migration, and I think that’s where we’ve really lost our way,” she said. “It got hijacked by the politics. That’s not to say it won’t happen again, but what universities now have is certainty going into 2025.”

Universities face big cuts to student numbers under the proposed limits.Credit: Oscar Colman

Luke Sheehy, head of Universities Australia, which represents all institutions, said it meant “the war on the international education sector in this country will continue”.

“Both sides of politics need to ask themselves, do they want to invest in our universities for the future or do they want to continue this phoney war right through to an election,” he said.

The Coalition frontbenchers on Monday said only the opposition could deliver the “decisive action needed to reduce migration”.

“The government’s opening of the floodgates to record levels of international students is fuelling the housing crisis and causing unprecedented chaos in the international education sector,” they said. “The proposed cap in the education bill before parliament will not even touch the sides of this problem.”

Clare said Dutton was “destroying his credibility on immigration” given the opposition leader himself promised to work with universities to set a cap on foreign students in his budget reply speech in May.

“You can’t talk tough on immigration and then vote against putting a limit on the number of people that come to this country every year,” he said on Monday.

“Over the course of the next few months, Peter Dutton is going to wander around the country pretending to be a tough guy on immigration. But the truth is he’s a fraud, and this is the week that Australians will come to know that they can’t trust anything that Peter Dutton says.”

Credit: Matt Golding

Dutton, in his budget reply, said he would “reduce excessive numbers of foreign students studying at metropolitan universities to relieve stress on rental markets in our major cities”.

“We will work with universities to set a cap on foreign students,” he said.

Clare said that was what his bill would achieve. “It doesn’t set the numbers for individual institutions, it sets up a power to create a cap, and Peter Dutton is about to tell the Liberal Party to vote against what he said should happen back in May,” he said.

The Coalition has sparred with universities on fees, research grants and campus culture, but on the caps bill it has lined up with university heads who have warned of administrative chaos and a huge financial hit under legislation the sector said was rushed and poorly designed.

Universities said the caps would create uncertainty given how late in the year the legislation determining next year’s numbers was due to be voted on. Some have already taken the unprecedented step of blocking new applications for 2025.

The cap would have reduced the overseas student intake by 53,000 next year compared to 2023, a 16 per cent cut.

Universities have been a target of Labor’s plans to halve net migration from 520,000 in 2023 to 260,000 by June next year because international students form the largest portion of Australia’s temporary migrants and are the biggest feeder of permanent migration.

The bill’s defeat will intensify the political fight over immigration numbers heading into next year’s election as the federal government is already on track to overshoot next year’s immigration target, in part because international students are staying in the country when they finish their studies.

Phil Honeywood, of the International Education Association of Australia, said the Coalition’s move meant the unpopular Ministerial Direction 107 would remain in place.

Labor introduced the direction to slow visa processing and identify non-genuine students. However, universities opose it because fewer students from countries such as India, Nepal and Pakistan have been approved for visas, and regional institutions have lost enrolments.

“By just opposing the caps legislation, the Coalition is not providing our sector with any apparent alternative policy,” Honeywood said. “We are going to have a dog’s breakfast situation from now until the start of the academic year only a few months away.”

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