Peter Dutton has pledged to cap the number of international students able to start study in Australia each year at 240,000, after blocking Labor’s attempts to introduce legislation to limit enrolments last year.
If elected, the Coalition would also mandate that no more than a quarter of students at public universities are enrolled from overseas from next year.
Both major parties have so far focused on international students as their main mechanism to drive down temporary migration rates to pre-pandemic levels.
Under the Coalition’s cap, public universities will be able to enrol no more than 115,000 international students a year, while private and non-university higher education facilities will be permitted to enrol up to 125,000.
The total cap is 30,000 less than the figure Labor proposed when it tried to pass legislation that would grant the education minister the power to limit student numbers during the last term of parliament.
In November the Coalition joined with the Greens to block the bill, describing it as “chaotic and confused”.
The opposition said its policy would primarily impact the Group of Eight universities, which are some of Australia’s largest and most prestigious institutions.
International students currently make up more than 25 per cent of the student bodies of most Group of Eight universities — which includes the University of Sydney, the University of Melbourne, and the Australian National University.
Under the proposed plan, the student visa application fee will also be increased to $5,000 for overseas students at Group of Eight institutions, while all other students would be charged half that.
In addition, a new $2,500 fee would be imposed on students who seek to change education providers.
“Our lower cap … will be very much focused on driving a housing availability and affordability particularly in Melbourne and Sydney,” Coalition education spokesperson Sarah Henderson told reporters at a housing development.
“That’s where the excessive numbers of students are and that is where we are focused.”
Mr Dutton told reporters it was necessary to reduce the number of international students coming into the country to free up housing for young Australians.
“When you look at the price of the cost of rents over the last couple of years, they’ve skyrocketed under this government,” he said.
“I want to make sure that we can get young Australians into houses. That’s really our main priority here.”
More to come
