Australian International Education Conference 2026

G’day, I’m sorry I can’t be there in person today.

But thank you to Phil for the invitation to speak.

Phil, I feel fortunate to have the benefit of your knowledge and your experience. You care deeply about this sector and the people in it. And it shows.

And I also want to thank everyone here for the work you do.

Education is the most powerful force for good in this world.

It changes lives. And changes countries.

Our universities, all of our higher education institutions, do that every day.

Through the people you teach and the opportunities you create.

I got a reminder of that the other day.

I met a young woman from Melbourne.

She is originally from Afghanistan.

She made it out on the last flight out of Kabul when it fell to the Taliban a couple of years ago.

Her sister is still there.

Two girls. One there. One here.

The sister in Afghanistan is not even allowed to go to school.

The one here has just started a PhD.

How different are their lives going to be?

Because of where they live. Because of what people like you do.

International education employs a lot of Australians. It makes an important contribution to our economy.

But it does more than that.

It also connects us to the world.

And it’s not a one-way street.

It doesn’t just mean students coming here.

It can also mean us going there.

We have been doing that for a while.

In Malaysia and Vietnam. In Singapore and Indonesia. In the UAE.

And we are also now doing it in India.

Five Australian universities have just opened campuses there now - Deakin and Wollongong; UNSW; Victoria; and UWA in Mumbai and Chennai. 

And Western Sydney University is getting ready to open its campus in Greater Noida.

In Vietnam, the Government has also just approved an investment license for RMIT’s new campus in Hanoi.

And they want to see more Australian universities join them.

A lot of that makes sense.

Not everyone can come here to study.

Not everyone can afford it.

But we can come to them.

What we do here has a reputation that rings around the world.

It’s why we are invited to set up campuses around the world.

And we have got to protect it.

That’s why we’ve made the changes we have to strengthen integrity, tackle unscrupulous operators and better protect students.

I know there are big challenges.

And I appreciate the way you are working with us to set the whole sector on a more sustainable path.

My friend and colleague Julian Hill, the Minister for International Education, will have more to say on that later in the conference.

The next few days will be a chance for you to talk about the opportunities you create. The connections you build. And the lives you change.

Let me leave you with one more story.

When Phil, Julian and I were in India in December last year, we did the usual political meetings and the usual run around Delhi.

But we also went back to a slum I had visited before.

We met a lot of young people there, including a young woman who invited us into her home.

It was really small, not much bigger than the room I’m in now, that she shared with her mum and her dad and her two sisters.

And across the path, really more a ditch, her dad was cutting hair. He’s a barber.

This girl from the slum in Delhi finished school. She went to Delhi University. She got a degree.

A couple of months ago I got an email telling me she had been accepted into a master’s degree at the University of Sydney.

And she’s here now. Studying.

Her life is changing. It will never be the same again.

That’s what you make possible.

That’s the transformational power of education.

Thank you for what you do.

And have a great conference.