Senator Mehreen Faruqi, Deputy Greens Leader and spokesperson for Higher Education, has condemned the Labor Government's decision to charge ahead with its disastrous student caps, following the release of the Senate Inquiry report into the Education Services for Overseas Students (Quality and Integrity) Amendment Bill 2024.
In a dissenting report, Senator Faruqi calls on the Government to withdraw this Bill, go back to the drawing board.
Senator Faruqi's dissenting report can be found here.
As stated by Senator Mehreen Faruqi:
"Despite overwhelming opposition, Labor is charging ahead with their politically-motivated international student caps that will devastate the tertiary education sector.
"The government is crushing higher education in a bid to look tough on migration before a federal election. International education, international students and universities will become collateral damage as a result of their mess of a policy.
"We know these caps will lead to job losses, we know these caps will trash Australia's international education reputation, we know these caps will lead to dire consequences, and yet Labor is still persisting with this wrecking-ball of a policy.
"Labor needs to stop demonising international students for their own housing policy failures. They've been long used as cash cows to make up for funding cuts to universities, and now they are disgracefully being scapegoated too.
"The decline in university rankings is another dire warning in the long list of warnings of the terrible consequences of these caps. If Labor has any sense they would heed these warnings and scrap the caps.
"The international student caps just show that Labor is willing to strangle an entire sector and throw international students under the bus to win a racist dog-whistling competition with Peter Dutton. That's how low the standard of governance is in this country."
