2026 Annual Conference ‘Future Thinking’ International Education Association of Australia

Thank you to Hon. Phil Honeywood, CEO of the IEAA, for your leadership.

To all the Australian sector leaders present here, thank you for your work.

A special welcome to the many international guests from partner nations.

Most importantly, to any international students here today, thank you for choosing Australia. Our nation is better because you have chosen to spend some of your formative years here.

Pursuing a premium Australian education, and contributing to our country while you are here. Maybe through part-time work, or research, and by bringing your perspectives and cultural knowledge to your studies, enriching the classroom experience for your teachers and peers.

Our time is short, so I won’t mince words. Despite the naysayers and, frankly, a lot of ignorant rubbish being said and spread about the international education sector by most other political parties, my view and the government’s view is that it remains a great Australian success story.

Our fifth largest export sector, supporting 250,000 Australian jobs, building soft-power of incalculable value international education has matured over decades to become part of Australia’s statecraft. Bolstering and enabling the traditional pillars of foreign affairs, defence, trade and aid.

International students are valued members of our community. I want every student to feel welcome and appreciated as a guest in our country. Just as I would hope any other nation would make my own daughter and all young Australians feel welcome when they study overseas. As growing numbers are doing through the enhanced New Colombo Plan.

Most students return to their home countries, taking a little piece of Australia with them for a lifetime. With premium skills and smarts to advance careers and knowledge at home.

Some stay with us, pursuing research, or competing for skilled migration places, contributing in skills shortage areas as our population ages.

Rarely has international education been more topical than now. Due to all manner of nonsense tropes, and caught up in a migration debate.

To be clear though, the Government will not engage in a race to the bottom on migration as the Coalition and One Nation are doing. Our aim is not to tank Australia’s sector as other nations, like Canada, have done.

In 2026, student numbers are moderating, declining by 8% overall with 739,000 students having studied here at some point in 2026. Commencements are down by 12% and students new to Australia by 13%.

I welcome IDP’s comments this week, supporting Government measures to strengthen the quality and integrity of the sector, and agree we must guard against overcorrection and not drive away the high-quality students we want and need to attract to Australia.

International students do not ‘take our kids places at Unis’ – frankly, the surpluses that Universities and TAFEs make: subsidise the teaching of domestic students, keeping taxes and student debt lower; help build new classrooms and research labs; and fund world-class research that drives new discoveries, productivity and global rankings.

And, to bust another myth then, the public and private sectors are not the same or of equal value in international education, and it’s past time people stopped pretending that they’re equivalent. They are both of value, and both have shared obligations to deliver quality education and a great student experience supporting the national interest. But they are different.

Private providers can often innovate, partner with industry on training needs, and scale up and down more rapidly as markets and preferences change. Within the National Planning Level over 4,000 extra places were allocated to private higher education providers to better account for more recent market activity.

Yet private providers simply harvest private profit. Whereas a surplus made by a public provider is reinvested in the many public goods outlined above.

In a sector where overall customer numbers onshore have to be limited, then the highest value for Australia – as a nation and for taxpayers – comes from students at public institutions, studying with diverse cohorts of young Australians and international peers. This simply needs to be acknowledged in public debates, and valued in policy settings.

Despite all the positives and the fact that many providers and students continue to do brilliantly, I acknowledge it’s been a difficult year for many. As changes to policy, integrity rules, migration reforms, are impacting providers and students during this period of transition.

Alongside global market shifts in consumer preference and competitor behaviour, as well as global inflationary pressures curbing growth in demand for outbound study as families across the world are more sensitive to prices and cost of living pressures.

While not quite right in substance, talk of the shift from the ‘Big 4’ to the ‘Big 14’ is useful to illustrate the transition to a more competitive, multipolar sector internationally. China, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, Germany and others are all seeking to build their own sectors, in country and in some cases also through transnational delivery.

Above all else, the quest to attract the brightest students and top talent continues apace.

In this context I’ll make two points on visa policy settings.

Firstly, while I appreciate there are mixed views, and a series of transitional impacts, the recently announced policy changes relating to onshore visas are important and necessary.

They seek to address one of the biggest policy problems in the visa system – the growth in 'permanently temporary' migrants. People who hop from visa to visa, who may have spent most of their adult lives here, often with kids who are now Australian, but who are never likely to received skilled migration pathway, or who wait for years on bridging visas for a permanent visa.

The latest reforms continue the quest to wind back ‘permanently temporary’ visa holders. Tightening onshore pathways to restore the norm that when you come to Australia for a temporary purpose: we welcome you; you do the thing you're here for; and then you leave before your visa expires.

When Australians visit another country, they do not believe they have a right to hop from visa to visa for years or decades, and game other nations' appeals and courts systems. Neither should guests in our country.

Changes to onshore applications, packaging, and course progression rules are about curtailing misuse of the student visa system and ensuring that former students who have finished their time in Australia depart promptly.

I acknowledge of course there are some desirable onshore pathways in Australia’s national interests. For example, Temporary Graduate Visas, which allow Australian-qualified graduates to work in Australia for a time and have a crack at skilled migration if they wish in areas of shortage. It is also in Australia’s national interest to ‘try before we buy’ in the labour market, and have a chance to retain the cream of the crop.

Adjustments to rules relating to family members are targeted, and aim to moderate overall numbers, while appreciating there will be small and unavoidable impacts in some markets.

We have had productive conversations, listening to students, providers and agents with suggestions regarding transition and communications, while being clear that the intent of the changes will not be watered down.

For those genuine students who need to apply offshore to complete their studies, a triage function has been established and I have instructed the Department:

• to give the highest priority for offshore applications to students seeking a visa to complete their studies, aiming for a processing time of 5 days for complete, straight forward applications, and that
• the primary focus in assessing higher education applications will be whether the student is genuinely progressing with their new provider, so clear evidence of their progression will be an important part of any complete application.

Ultimately, all of these changes are critical to creating space overall to continue to welcome students and researchers.

Which leads to the second point on visas: I am very concerned about the ongoing high rate of offshore refusals in South Asia.

To bust another myth, the increase in integrity measures and assessment of financial capacity has not been driven by migration targets. 

The spike in visa refusals has been driven by genuine concerns about integrity and that the jump in applications from some of the poorest countries and regions was by students who could not afford to study in Australia without seeking or gaining a longer-term migration outcome.

Frankly, I would have preferred Universities to put forward more students who meet visa requirements. New overseas student commencements for public universities are projected to end this year down by around 18% on last year, wiping around $2 billion over the next three years from university revenues, hurting domestic students, staff and research. Highlighting what an utter disaster One Nation and the Liberals’ policies would be to slash university revenue and therefore research.

While the Government will not compromise on integrity, IDP and Navitas data and market feedback make clear that the rate of refusals is now impacting key markets and actively deterring the very students we most want to come to Australia, as they are terrified of a visa refusal that hurts their chances of studying elsewhere.

To this end, Home Affairs and Education have been working with the student visa Technical Reference Group to develop options for updated financial standards for South Asia to underpin a new legislative instrument, and a draft new Ministerial Direction to replace MD106.

Before finalising changes, I have asked the Departments to consult in and consider feedback from providers and agents in November.

Other countries have alternative methods for students to prove financial capacity. In New Zealand, for example, students deposit funds to cover their tuition and living costs. I am interested in this and will seek feedback, while understanding such a system would be a longer-term initiative if Government ultimately decided to develop something similar.

The aim in all of this is to be as clear as possible to prospective students on the financial capacity requirements and ensure the published rules remain aligned with the Department’s internal processing approach. Even if this means raising the financial standards and a smaller pool of prospective students, I want grant rates to improve and greater certainty for everyone.

Now that the new policy measures have been announced, we are working with the Council for International Education to finalise the International Education and Skills Strategic Framework.

The framework will outline a positive vision for international education as a national asset, with an ongoing focus on quality, integrity and a great student experience including employability. Each part of the sector must be valued, including higher education, VET, schools and ELICOS.

On the question of numbers, the Government will not back off from the need to manage the size and the shape of the onshore student market. 

The Government will seek to provide stability and certainty for providers and prospective students through continued managed growth within the National Planning Level.

Last year I observed on Australia’s peculiar market structure, with higher education characterised by many elephants, a few medium sized cats and dogs, and not many mice, while VET is comprised of many mice, with only a few cats and dogs and not much else.

While that broadly remains true, we have acted to stop the mice from breeding, by suspending the ability of the many new providers curiously seeking to enter the shrinking onshore VET market to do so.

The impact of visa policies on the VET sector will be monitored, to inform ongoing consideration of how international VET can best meet domestic skills needs, and seize opportunities for offshore delivery.

On the question of quality, you have seen how deadly serious this Government is on ensuring high standards across the sector. Commission payments for onshore student transfers have been banned; course cancellation powers used for the first time and I don’t rule out further use; I am actively considering use of Section 97 of the ESOS Act for the first time ever; and better regulation of onshore student transfers is coming.

Most providers and agents do a great job. We want to back them, and weed out the few who diminish Australia’s quality reputation.

The Framework will also highlight the opportunities to continue to grow transnational delivery, taking Australian education to the world.

In July it was really wonderful to open UNSW’s new campus in Bengaluru, now the top ranked global university in India.

Visiting Monash Malaysia in KL in August was a joy, mixing with incredibly bright, motivated students studying Australian degrees in a fast-growing campus bursting at the seams.

My last words now are on social licence. A much used but ill-defined term, simply put it means ensuring there is and remains broad support in the Australian community for the international education sector.

That Australians accept the legitimacy and importance of what you do, trust in its integrity and see the benefits.

Trust of course is hard to win but easy to lose, so it falls to all of us to continue to explain the enormous benefits that international students bring to Australia and how this vibrant sector, when well managed and focussed on quality, overwhelmingly remains in our national interest.

I love what you do, I love what students bring to our nation, and look forward to continuing to work together.

Now, let’s hear from the students who are up next. Ultimately the future is all about them.