Kate Chaney (Curtin, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—To continue my remarks on the Universities Accord (Australian Tertiary Education Commission) Bill 2025 from the last sitting day, I also want to address the issue of international student caps. This bill provides ATEC with the function to allocate international student caps for different universities and providers at the request of the minister. As I understand it from discussions with the minister's office, further legislation is required to provide the minister with the power to set enforceable caps for international students at individual universities and providers before ATEC can use this function. So this bill paves the way for future legislation that will allow for enforceable international student caps.

The government tried to introduce this power in 2024. I strongly opposed it at the time, and the bill failed to pass. I continue to oppose hard caps as a policy tool. Hard caps are often sold as a housing solution. They are not. Housing supply and structural reform are the real solutions for the housing crisis. International student caps risk damaging Australia's international reputation, undermining a major export industry and destabilising university funding without delivering meaningful relief for our cost-of-living problems. But if the government insists on moving in that direction then it is better that international student caps are set by an expert steward working with universities individually rather than by blunt command and control ministerial settings. For now, though, I maintain that setting hard caps is the wrong answer.

I won't make an amendment to remove this role for ATEC, because it's not a bad insurance policy in case future laws are passed to give the minister that power. The accord makes a powerful case for ATEC, and I agree with that case in principle. But I will not support a bill that creates an ATEC that's not independent, not adequately constituted and not equipped to do the job it was created to do. If ATEC is not meaningfully different from the department, if it cannot initiate and publish robust advice, if it cannot build its own capability and if it cannot credibly steward the system over time, then it will not solve the problems that the accord identified.

That's why I oppose this bill as drafted. I will move amendments to make ATEC independent, capable and fit for purpose, and if the government is serious about delivering the accord's vision then it should accept them.

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