Australian Senate report recommends passage of ESOS amendments bill with national enrolment cap

Updates for 10 October:

Australia's Labor government has pushed back debate on the controversial ESOS amendment bill. It now appears that the bill will not appear on the legislative agenda until Parliament sits again in November. This means in turn that the bill may not be passed until mere weeks before the planned effective start of the cap in January 2025, a development that will only add to the confusion and uncertainty surrounding the timing and implementation of the foreign enrolment cap. Speaking to the Australian Financial Review, opposition education spokesperson Senator Sarah Henderson said, “Whether it’s major universities or small colleges, how can education providers plan for 2025 under such circumstances?"

Also today: sector leaders responded to the Senate report on the bill.

“The Senate Committee is clearly split – despite compelling evidence from across the spectrum that capping international students will be a disaster on all fronts, the Government seems determined to push on and ignore the expert advice," said Group of Eight Chief Executive Vicki Thomson. "Nothing the Committee has recommended by way of amendments will change the fact that a blunt cap on international students will destroy Australia’s AUD$50 billion international education sector and have long lasting impacts on the economy. To add to the chaotic and frenetic nature of this fundamentally flawed policy, the delay in the introduction of the legislation is creating even more confusion for the sector."

“There’s no doubt that this legislation will be disastrous for independent skills training and higher education providers, as well as Australia’s reputation as a welcoming destination for international students,” said Troy Williams, chief executive of the Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia (ITECA). “Despite the strong evidence provided to Senators by quality RTOs and higher education providers about the damage the proposed legislation will do to their institutions, the Australian Government looks set to proceed with a cavalier disregard for the employees in the sector that will lose their jobs.”

Universities Australia Chief Executive Luke Sheehy said, “Overseas students drove half of Australia’s economic growth last year and the Reserve Bank warned this week that a reduction in numbers will hurt our economy, confirming what we know. When we need to be growing the economy, the Government is walking the other way. Wilfully weakening a AUD$50 billion sector that supports around 250,000 jobs is economic vandalism without precedent. No other major export industry is treated in this way."

Our original report on the Senate Committee findings on the ESOS amendment bill follows.

Australia’s Labor government got the green light today from the Senate Standing Committees on Education and Employment to push through its highly controversial legislation to cap new international student numbers as soon as January 2025. The cap will allow Jason Clare, Labor’s Minister for Education, to cap foreign enrolment at the institutional and/or course level or cancel a class or course outright.

The Senate committee considered the testimony of independent experts and sector representatives who pointed out serious flaws in the bill, which is called the ESOS Amendment (Quality and Integrity) Bill 2024. Despite data that clearly showed an ill-considered methodology informing the way new study permits will be allocated, the Senate recommended only a few changes to the ESOS amendments bill, including:

• Scrapping course-level caps for universities and Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutions so that limits would only be imposed at the institutional level for those providers (this would still leave the Minister the ability to impose course-level restrictions on private colleges).
  
• Requiring the education minister to consult with ESOS agencies, the immigration minister, and providers before setting limits.
  
• Exemptions for “specific classes of students, including by citizenship, from enrolment limits in instruments and notices.”

Reaction to the bill

There is little disagreement among Australia’s international education community that measures were needed to improve the integrity of the sector. However, most feel that the ESOS amendments bill is not designed to do that, but rather is a thinly veiled tactic for strengthening Labor’s position on immigration ahead of an election.

The Labor party holds a majority in parliament, but by a very slim margin: it occupies 78 of 151 total seats in the House of Representatives. Three Coalition senators disagreed that only a few amendments are needed for the ESOS amendments bill, and senators representing the Green party offered a scathing indictment of the entire bill, within the larger Senate report.

The report included references to sectoral leaders’ opinions on the bill:

• “Luke Sheehy, CEO of Universities Australia, described the Bill as a ‘political smokescreen’ that is being used by the government to ‘gain an upper hand in the battle of migration ahead of the next election.’

• Group of Eight CEO Vicki Thomson similarly reported that ‘migration is shaping up as a key battlefront in the lead-up to the federal election, and the university sector is shaping up to be the fall guy, unfairly and unjustifiably.'

• Phil Honeywood, CEO of International Education Association of Australia, stated that the caps ‘have been designed as a politically blunt instrument to address a spurious narrative—that the international students are the principal cause of the current rent increase in Australia.'”

The review report also includes a quote from Felix Pirie, Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Policy and Research, from the Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia (ITECA), who had told the Senate committee:

“While perhaps well intentioned, the bill includes provisions that are, to be frank, a job-killer. They risk further damaging Australia's capacity and reputation, also straining Australia's strategic and international relationships. It's crucial that the government engages meaningfully with all sector participants before implementing any such reforms.”

The University of Monash submitted an objection that the planned 2025 implementation could “potentially have disastrous consequences due to the fact that many providers have already sent offers to prospective students for the coming academic year.”

Opposition Coalition comments in the report

Coalition senators Matt O'Sullivan, Slade Brockman, and Sarah Henderson provided additional comments in the report. In general, these senators support the aims of the bill and believe that in some institutions, the surge of international students is compromising Australian students’ education. They provided the example of a domestic student reporting how overwhelmed he was in a group project dominated by the use of Mandarin over English.

However, the senators pointed out serious flaws with the bill and emphasised how much damage is being done to the sector by the Labor government:

• “We thank submitters which have worked so hard to raise legitimate concerns with the committee about this bill and regret the deep distress and uncertainty which some providers have suffered as a result of the government’s decision to put forward such a poorly drafted bill and indicative total enrolment limits about which there was no consultation.”

• “We hold deep concerns about the lack of adequate safeguards to ensure caps are allocated appropriately, fairly and in the national interest. The Coalition has consistently raised concerns that the Government’s student caps scheme is riddled with incompetence, secrecy, uncertainty and unfairness.”

• “It is clear the Government has looked after the big end of town. Despite the Government’s spin, the fact remains that the 2025 enrolment cap of 61,000 for the Group of Eight universities is almost exactly that same as international student enrolments for these universities in 2023. This represents a 12 per cent increase from 2019 … In contrast, regional universities have still been hit hard. After international student enrolments crashed to just 8,949 in 2024 principally as a result of Ministerial Direction 107, regional universities have received a total cap in 2025 of 15,900 ... a significant reduction of 16 per cent compared with 2019.”

• “We also learned about the appalling treatment of many private higher education and VET providers which some submitters argued was nothing more than an ideological attack on hard-working Australians who had built successful, reputable businesses and were providing highly valued education services to both domestic and international students.”

• “Coalition senators strongly echo the calls from stakeholders for the calculation methodology and data used to be made publicly available and published to ensure there is full transparency and accountability of the Government’s methodology.”

Opposition Greens’ reaction

Senators representing the Green Party offered a withering review. They begin by summarising objections made to the before the Senate ruling:

“The committee heard again and again that:

• This Bill is a migration policy disguised as an education Bill.
• It is a poorly thought through and chaotic plan to cap international student numbers.
• There was little or no consultation with the sector on the methodology.
• It scapegoats and harms international students for a housing crisis they did not create.
• It allows for unprecedented ministerial overreach and intervention.
• It damages Australia’s reputation as a destination for international students.
• It will result in significant job and financial losses.
• Capping international student numbers has little to do with quality and integrity."

Their own opinions include:

• “Of particular frustration throughout the inquiry process into this Bill has been the timing and lack of data provision, and the failure of the government to produce any modelling on the impact of capping international student numbers … had the Inquiry not been extended on two occasions, there would have been no opportunity to interrogate the data relied on, the formulas created, and the numbers themselves.”

• “In recommending that this Bill be passed, the government has completely ignored the overwhelming concerns highlighted by the sector that the Bill will cause major and long-lasting damage to Australia’s tertiary education sector.”

• “The government is crushing higher education in a bid to look tough on migration in the months before a federal election. International education, international students, and universities will become collateral damage as a result of this terrible policy.”

• “Ian Aird, CEO of English Australia, gave evidence that ‘this Bill has been drafted on the run, without meaningful consultation of those impacted, without consideration of its economic impact or the jobs it'll cost and without concern for students.’ He went on to say that the Bill ‘claims to be about quality and integrity, but it does nothing to require, encourage or incentivise quality.’ This is a problem in and of itself; however, in the absence of any additional government funding, the more immediate question is how universities will manage with such a significant drop in revenue."

• “Secondly, universities whose international student numbers will be capped quite drastically teach the courses which address the skills shortages, hence undermining the government’s own argument. For example, Western Sydney University’s states in its submission that ‘most of the 1,350 international students who studied nursing and midwifery with us last year have gone on to work in Western Sydney’s overburdened hospitals’. Yet, their international student numbers have been reduced by 18% from 2024 to 2025. Similarly, the Australian Catholic University is the largest educator of teachers and nurses in the country, and they are facing a 53% reduction in international students from 2024 to 2025.”

• “The level of ministerial overreach in this Bill is alarming. The Minister has unfettered power to set provider-level caps. The penalties for breaching these caps involve automatic suspension of registration, and the Minister also has the power to automatically cancel courses deemed not in the public interest. Lukey Sheehy, Universities Australia CEO, described this as ‘ministerial overreach to an extent we have never seen before.’”

Bill will go through

There is very little hope left for the education sector to see more revisions to the ESOS amendments bill before it passes. There is a clause in the bill that requires an independent review of Part 7, but not until 2026:

“This Clause … must consider:

• The impact on providers of the enrolment limits resulting from the amendments;
• The impact of those enrolment limits on net overseas migration to Australia and housing availability;
• The impact of those enrolment limits on the quality of education offered to international and local students.”

This clause suggests that universities and vocational providers will not see an independent expert assess and report on the damage to the sector – which has been ongoing due to previous restrictive Labor legislation – for more than a year from now.

For additional background, please see:

• “Criticism mounts as Australian Senate committee hears it is “wrong to go ahead” with ESOS amendments bill as is”
• “Australia: Peak bodies lobby strongly against pending legislation during Senate hearing”