Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment Bill 2013. Firstly, I would like to note that this bill makes a few technical amendments to the Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2000. However, before I go on to the specifics of the bill, I think it is very important to emphasise how important our educational exports are to our nation and how they grew under the previous coalition government.

If we go back to 1996, when the previous coalition government was first elected, our educational exports were a little over $2 billion per annum. By the year 1999-2000, we had been able to double it to $4 billion. In fact, by 2007-08, when the coalition left office, this sector was worth $14 billion of exports. Of course, the trajectory that it was on under those years of the coalition government saw it, by 2009, reach close to $19 billion worth of exports. To put that in context, that makes educational exports our third-largest export industry, only behind coal and iron ore. In fact, we have more people coming to this country and our nation derives more export income from education than it does from tourism. Although we have our natural wonders of Bondi Beach, Ayers Rock and the Great Barrier Reef and we have places like Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House which attract overseas tourism and build wealth and create jobs in this country, our educational sector surpasses that. Our universities, our TAFEs and our schools actually return more to this nation in exports than do our natural resources, our beaches and the other wonderful things we have for overseas tourists to come and see.

The wealth to this country is even beyond that measured dollar value. We see that where we have students from overseas it strengthens our global network of connections. Who knows how many future leaders of Asian countries will be among those many students that come to Australia to study and receive their formative education and experiences here in Australia? This helps them be leaders of Asian countries in the future and means a lot to our nation through the friendships that will develop. However, even though we were able to get close to that $19 billion figure in 2009, unfortunately, and contrary to what the previous speaker was saying, we have seen a decline in those export revenues under the previous Labor government. It depends how you measure it, whether you take the financial year or the calendar year, but we have seen our educational export sector shrink to be something like 20 to 25 per cent smaller. It is a common theme that we see. The coalition continually improves things and then when Labor came to office back in 2007 they headed on a downward trend. This government is determined to reverse that downward trend and get our educational exports headed back in the right direction.

One of the main reasons our educational exports declined is because of some of the changes the previous Labor government made. To give them some sympathy, they were not totally to blame, but the changes they made to the visa system, the increases in fees, had a detrimental effect and harmed our exports. In fact, when we say a 20 to 25 per cent decline, this was something like $3 billion to $3.5 billion wiped off our educational export sector. That is more than if our entire wool industry was wiped out for one year. That is what we have lost in our educational exports.

On the specifics of the bill, it ensures that overseas students can receive appropriate refunds for unexpended fees in the case of an education provider or student default. It addresses the unintended consequences of amendments made in the ESOS Act 2012 which meant that some students were not able to receive refunds as originally intended. The problem only became evident after amendments were applied in practice. The bill proposes an amendment to ensure that the refund is for the full amount of tuition paid for or by the student, minus the amount calculated as having been delivered by the provider. The bill also gives the minister power to make a legislative instrument that will set out the method of calculation for refunds and in the case of different circumstances of visa refusal. This will streamline the requirements of the ESOS Act for users.

We have a great potential in this nation to increase our exports in our educational sector. We look across the board and we see where our jobs are going to come from in the future. Our educational sector is one of the keys to our economy. It is one of the areas where we have a competitive advantage. It is one of our nation's strengths. This is where government should be giving its support. UNESCO estimates that over this decade the number of internationally mobile students will almost double from four million to seven million. There is potential for us to increase our exports by multibillion dollars in future if we get the policy settings right, if we get our educational sector right. It is also important for several of our states. In New South Wales our educational exports are our second largest export sector. In Victoria it is actually the largest export sector for the whole state.

However, there are some risks and some concerns. Some of those concerns that threaten this potential export bonanza we can have are what is in our cross-curriculum priorities, our new national curriculum. We do have those three cross-curriculum embedded priorities of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history and cultures, Asia and Australia's engagement with Asia, and sustainability. The concept of sustainability under the new national curriculum will be embedded in all areas of the curriculum, including mathematics. I quote from the national curriculum:

In the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics, the priority of sustainability provides rich, engaging and authentic contexts for developing students’ abilities in number and algebra, measurement and geometry, and statistics and probability.

It goes on:

The Australian Curriculum: Mathematics provides opportunities for students to develop the proficiencies of problem solving and reasoning essential for the exploration of sustainability issues and their solutions.

If the definition of sustainability was about economic sustainability, how governments must run a sustainable budget, this would be a welcome change, something that is welcome in our curriculum. We could actually take those concepts and we could use them in mathematics. We could look at basic addition and use the theory of economic sustainability to teach it to our children. For example, we could actually add up the last five budget deficits of this Labor government—$27.1 billion, $54.8 billion, $47.7 billion, $43.7 billion and $19.4 billion—to work out $192 billion of accumulated deficits. This would obviously help our children learn about mathematics and addition.

We can also project forward. Again, we could teach children about addition in mathematics as a concept and look at the MYEFO over the last four years—for 2013-14, 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2016-17. If we add up those projected deficits that the previous government has locked in with our policies, we get over $120 billion of combined deficits. We could also teach our children the principles of simple interest in mathematics, as the current unsustainable debt that was racked up by the previous Labor government now costs the economy $10 billion annually. This is a way we can teach children percentages.

We could also teach them probability. We could quote to children the budget speech of the former Treasurer back in 2012, when he said:

The four years of surpluses I announce tonight are a powerful endorsement of the strength of our economy, resilience of our people, and success of our policies. This Budget delivers a surplus this coming year, on time, as promised, and surpluses each year after that, strengthening over time.

He continued:

The surplus years are here.

We could teach the concept of probability to students, because they could learn that the probability of that occurring would be absolutely zero.

If that is what our children were being taught about sustainability, we would not have too much objection, but what is the definition of sustainability? I quote directly from our new national education curriculum which defines it as follows:

The Sustainability priority is futures-oriented, focusing on protecting environments and creating a more ecologically and socially just world through informed action.

This is not a Greenpeace brochure; this is the concept that is embedded in everything Australian students learn under our national curriculum. Gone is the notion that our progress is defined as the exercise of mankind's ability to overcome our natural barriers. Gone is the inspiration and positive vision for the future that was instilled in my public school education back in the seventies. Gone is the need to strive to make our society wealthier and to grow the pie. Instead, we are replacing it with the idea of cutting the pie into smaller pieces in a so-called 'more socially just world'.

This is not what we want to have in our education system. If we want our education system to be a world best, something we hold up to attract exports and that students from overseas want to come and learn in, we need to be teaching in our education system. We need to place importance on independence and self-confidence. We need to be teaching our kids about fierce determination and willingness so that they are not afraid to make mistakes. We need to teach them critical thinking and to question common dogma. But most of all, we need to teach our kids optimism.

But instead, the definition of sustainability we have embedded in our national curriculum is simply a corrosive, green doctrine. It is at odds with progress. It teaches restraint and low growth, social conformity, a mistrust of society and a pessimistic fear of the future. This is not what we want. Rather than indoctrinate children about sustainability, the limits to growth and the limits to our resources, we should be teaching our kids that the greatest resource they have is human ingenuity and that it is something that has no limits. Instead, our curriculum has been hijacked by green ideology.

For such an important industry for our country, something that we are going to rely upon to drive growth and to create those future jobs, we must address these issues so that we have overseas students who want to come to Australia, who see our education system as a world best and to enable kids to have a positive outlook for the future. The current national curriculum does not do that and it needs to be addressed. I congratulate the Minister for Education on his work and on this bill and also on addressing the issues in the national curriculum. I commend this bill to the House.

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