Transport concessions: no olive branch for cash-ploughed students

Victoria and NSW are refusing to extend concession public transport fares to international students, despite calls from academics, students and business leaders for the two states to bring their practices in line with the rest of Australia.

The Committee for Melbourne, Universities Australia (UA) and a host of student and international groups have called for the change to cut costs for international students in Melbourne and Sydney, the two key destinations, and to overcome perceptions that authorities are discriminating against foreign students and treating them as cash cows.

Higher education figures had hoped last week’s COAG meeting in Darwin might have led to changes in the two states’ policies, with student transport understood to have been on the meeting’s agenda. Concession fares are seen as a relatively inexpensive way of shoring up goodwill in an industry that netted $4.5 billion to Victoria and $5.3 billion to NSW in 2007-08, and which has recently been jeopardised by global media coverage of attacks on international students in the two cities.

But the only practical measure to emerge from COAG’s discussion on international education was a $50,000 federal grant to a Melbourne council to pilot sporting matches and cultural exchanges between international students and the wider community. The COAG communiqué avoided any mention of public transport costs.

A spokesperson for NSW transport minister David Campbell told Campus Review the state had no plans to give overseas students half-fare concessions. “In order to obtain the relevant visa to study in Australia, they have indicated that they have sufficient funds to cover their living expenses for the duration of their stay. This includes their transportation costs,” she said.

“Approximately 75 per cent of the cost of providing public transport services is contributed by taxpayers, rather than passengers, so international students’ trips are still being heavily subsidised.”

Victoria’s transport department said concessions were available to foreign students on Australian Development Scholarships and approved exchange programs, and those with refugee status. And spokesperson Chris Veraa said full fee-paying international students weren’t eligible for Medicare, Centrelink benefits, rental assistance or most other taxpayer-subsidised social services. “The Victorian government’s policy on public transport discounts is consistent with this approach,” Veraa said.

But the National Union of Students said concession travel for foreign students was the norm overseas as well as interstate. And the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations recently rated Victoria’s policy as “embarrassing” because – unlike NSW – it also denies concession fares to postgraduate students.

Education figures privately concede that it was always going to be difficult to change the two states’ minds. After the NSW Administrative Decisions Tribunal (ADT) found in March 2006 that transport agencies were discriminating against international students by denying them concession fares, the state changed its anti-discrimination legislation. And NSW also recently decided to cut back its free school transport scheme, backing down only after a community backlash.

In Victoria, the Overseas Student Experience Taskforce’s December report made no recommendations on travel costs, despite noting that the denial of concession fares made international students feel unwelcome.

State bureaucrats cite cost as an obstacle. A 2006 Sydney Daily Telegraph article about the ADT decision estimated that international student concessions would cost NSW taxpayers at least $11 million a year.

“An international student studying medicine at Sydney University pays $40,000 a year to the federal government but wants the mums and dads of NSW to pay for their transport costs,” the then transport minister John Watkins was quoted as saying.

“I’m worried that this bid for cash by international students would impact on the money we can give to needy groups.”

In Sydney, a full-fare combined weekly ticket allowing bus, train and ferry travel throughout the metropolitan area currently costs $60. A similar ticket in Melbourne costs $49.60. AEI figures show there are around 171,000 international enrolments in NSW and 138,000 in Victoria – although some of these are multiple enrolments, some don’t stay for the whole year, some are in regional areas where public transport is generally cheaper, and some don’t use public transport.

But even if only a quarter of these enrolments are assumed to be students who regularly use urban public transport, the revenue lost through the introduction of half-price fares could be considerable – in the order of $65 million a year in NSW and $45 million in Victoria.

But UA CEO Dr Glenn Withers told CR the reform could be cost-neutral, with international students encouraged to use public transport much more if it only cost them half as much – often at off-peak times, when trains, buses, trams and ferries are half-empty and running anyway.

IDP Education external relations manager Tim Dodd said the reform could also improve safety, with international students less inclined to save money by walking home after late-night classes. And he said cheaper public transport would enable students to be more choosey about where they lived and to avoid unsafe neighbourhoods.

Withers said expensive transport had been a “lead negative” for international students until recently, when it was gazumped by safety issues. He pointed out that international students helped pay for state government services through the GST and often through income tax.

“That is very significant income to the states. Being seen symbolically by the students to not treat them as welcome guests could undermine the whole of that income flow.”