Month: October 2025

The education minister should not have the power to cancel ‘classes of courses’ for international students

Andrew NortonLeave a comment

Update 28/11/2025: Last night the Senate passed the ESOS amendment bill with Coalition amendments. While I still believe this provision counts as very poor public policy – for reasons exanded up in my Senate inquiry submission – the Coalition changes do improve things somewhat. These are noted in the text below.

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The government is having another go at its 2024 Education Services for Overseas Students (ESOS) legislation, reintroducing it earlier this month minus the enrolment caps that saw it blocked in the Senate last November.

This post draws on and adds to things I wrote last year about proposed ministerial powers to suspend and cancel ‘classes of courses’.

The amendments discussed in this post were partly why I regarded the 2024 ESOS amendment bill as the single worst piece of higher education related legislation to come before the Parliament in my career.

What took it beyond standard bad policy was its use of broad ministerial discretion with minimal constraints on how it is exercised. That creates rule of law problems, making it hard to know in advance what the rules are. If passed, the amendments could lead to some education providers being arbitrarily punished for the actions of others.

Legislative references are to the section numbers of the ESOS Act 2000, as they are or as they would be if the bill passes unamended.

A mass course cancellation power

The bill gives the education minister power to simultaneously suspend or cancel multiple ESOS course registrations at multiple providers: division 1AB. It does this by making the unit of regulation a ‘class of courses’ – the definition of which is discussed below.

This mass cancellation power differs from existing laws that give the ‘ESOS agency’ (TEQSA in higher ed, ASQA in VET) power to suspend or cancel the registration of specific courses or specific providers: sections 83 to 92. It also differs from the current power of the immigration minister to issue a ‘suspension certificate’ to a provider. This can be done in specified circumstances such as fraud in visa applications, students breaching visa conditions, and other visa issues: sections 97 to 103.

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Student income support and the labour market

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For the first time in years higher education student income support recipient numbers have increased. On a late June count, in 2025 147,490 students were receiving payments, up 10,575 or 7.8% on the same time in 2024. All three benefit programs – Youth Allowance, Austudy and Abstudy – increased numbers but 70% of growth came from the dependent Youth Allowance category, so people aged 21 years or less subject to a parental income test.*

Trends in total numbers

Although the 2025 upward trend is noteworthy given the recent history of decline, 147,490 recipients is still lower than any year in the 2009-2022 period. It’s nearly 73,000 below the 2014 peak, despite an increase in enrolments since then.

Policy decisions influence student income support numbers, but cannot fully explain these trends. The most significant negative policy change since 2014 was the 2016 conversion of the Start-up Scholarship to a loan, effectively reducing the non-repayable grant value of student income support by $2000 a year. But a downward trend started before then. Subsequent policy changes were small positives for students without, until 2025, stopping the decline in recipient numbers.

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Demand driven funding for Indigenous medical students – is it a good idea?

Andrew Norton3 Comments

In line with a 2025-26 Budget commitment, the government has introduced legislation for demand driven funding of Indigenous medical students from 2026.

While well-intentioned, this policy is unlikely to make any significant difference to Indigenous medical student numbers and could accidentally reduce the number of non-Indigenous medical students.

Is there a problem that demand driven funding can solve?

In his second reading speech, the minister noted the current low number of Indigenous doctors and the benefits for Indigenous patients of Indigenous health care workers.

As with the earlier demand driven system for Indigenous bachelor degree students, however, it’s not clear that a shortfall in Indigenous doctor numbers is a problem that demand driven funding will solve.

Universities already try hard to recruit Indigenous medical students, with special entry schemes and quotas in some cases. On the available data (below) they are having some success, a source of pride for the medical deans association. 3% of domestic medical students are Indigenous, compared to 2.3% of the overall domestic student population.

The main obstacle to further enrolment increases is unlikely to be funding rather than the difficulties in finding potential students who meet the entry requirements and are not being set up to fail.

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