E&OE 

LAURA JAYES: Vice-Chancellors have issued a pretty strong warning … ‘take action, or else tens of thousands of jobs will go’. Joining me now is Universities Australia Chief Executive Luke Sheehy. He joins me here at the desk. Good to see you. This is something that I know universities have been trying to figure out how they can make work, but it just looks like what’s been proposed by the government and really backed in by the opposition is completely unworkable. Is that a fair assessment? 

LUKE SHEEHY: I’ve described this, Laura, as a fork in the road. Since December last year, we’ve had Ministerial Direction No.107 from the former Home Affairs Minister that has wreaked havoc with visa processing in our student visa processing system, which meant tens of thousands of students haven’t been able to get into Australia and get a position at one of our great universities. We’re saying that’s 60,000 fewer international student visas issued in the last year alone, and that’s how we’ve got to thousands of jobs, 14,000 jobs in the higher education sector, put at jeopardy. 

LAURA JAYES: You’re at step one going, ‘hang on, okay, the ones you’ve approved processed their visas because we’ve got a problem here and they’re a couple of years down the track saying, okay, we’re going to cut migrants’. So, you are dealing with dual problems here. 

LUKE SHEEHY: We absolutely want to scrap what we’ve got now. That’s why the government is proposing a new Bill. The worst thing that would happen is we get caps and the visa processing arrangements that we currently have. What we want to see is a good deal for universities, particularly regional universities and some of the universities we have in the outer suburban growth areas of Australia. They’re ready, willing and able to take students today. We want to make sure that we get a good deal from the government, and they absolutely scrap the current visa processes. 

LAURA JAYES: I mean, politically expedient to put this arbitrary cap on because people at the moment are really focused on cost-of-living housing being the big issue. But can you offer the government some solutions here? Could you, without the cap, house all of these international students without putting pressure on the housing markets, particularly in capital cities like the city of Melbourne? 

LUKE SHEEHY: We absolutely recognise that university students should have somewhere to live and there is absolutely a housing crisis in this country. What I won’t accept is that university students, particularly international students, are the only cause of the housing crisis. 

LAURA JAYES: They do exacerbate it in some suburbs in Sydney. 

LUKE SHEEHY: Our analysis shows at the moment, Laura, that actually in the inner-city areas, particularly around the big metropolitan universities, vacancy rates as of May this year are higher than the average. University students, particularly international students, only make up four per cent of the private rental market, so really the argument linking university students, international students for that matter, directly to the housing crisis is a bit of a furphy. 

LAURA JAYES: What’s going on here then? Because if that is a furphy, this could have serious repercussions for the university sector without actually alleviating the problem the government and the opposition says there is. 

LUKE SHEEHY: It will not only have serious repercussions for the university sector, but it’ll have serious repercussions for the Australian economy. We know that half of GDP growth last year was directly attributable to international education exports and it’s the most economically viable thing we do that isn’t in the mining industry. We have to nourish and nurture this industry that’s served Australia so well for four decades. 

LAURA JAYES: Is it slowly being killed by the policy? 

LUKE SHEEHY: Well, 60,000 fewer visas granted, and our prediction on that is a $4.3 billion economic hit. 

LAURA JAYES: So, these job losses aren’t just a threat? 

LUKE SHEEHY: It’s a potential, but what I would say is that our Vice-Chancellors work really hard every day to ensure there are good, well-paid jobs in higher education because a good teacher in higher education is going to deliver more skilled workers to the Australian economy. We need them. 

LAURA JAYES: Is it having this effect at the moment of a bit of a brain drain? Some of our best university professors, perhaps seeing the writing on the wall and going, ‘well, I don’t want to wait around until the market is squeezed where they look overseas to go elsewhere?’. 

LUKE SHEEHY: I think we’ve learned the lessons from the last government when Scott Morrison told international students to go home. We’ve seen what happens in the UK when they focus only on migration and their international student market. You’re right, a brain drain is a really important thing that we have to think about. Australia needs highly skilled workers to become a high knowledge economy, so we want to encourage a great higher education sector and international education is part of that. 

LAURA JAYES: We’ll keep talking about this, Luke, because surely it is not beyond us to figure this out. 

LUKE SHEEHY: I’m hopeful we’ll get a good deal, Laura, and we’ll continue to talk to the government and the opposition for that matter. The last thing we want to see is a bidding war in an election year on this sector. 

LAURA JAYES: That might just happen, I think. Thank you, Luke.