A Foreign Despair

Australia's lucrative international education market is looking a little threadbare, like an expensive ball gown that hasn't been cared for properly, faded and worn, with loose strings in need of mending.

And who can possibly be surprised given we bought it off the rack, stuffed too many people in it, and then washed it in our old top loader and hung it out to dry? It never really dawned on us that we might need more space for this addition to the nation's multicultural collection, nor that it would require greater efficiency and accountability out of our old systems. So where's Australia's International Fairy Godmother to wave her wand over the embattled international education sector and turn it back from a stained and torn work dress to a fashionable frock of prosperity and cosmopolitanism?

Aside from the obvious offence of referring to Australia's diverse international student population as cash cows, there is also the fact that the metaphor misses the mark - it's more a case of the goose that laid the golden egg, as I once heard a certain faculty Dean say. Her point is valid, and one the sector and broader community need to carefully consider. It is in nobody's interest, clearly not the goose's, but also not universities' or private colleges', to allow the goose to starve to death or run off to more enchanting islands. Just as Australia has benefited for half a century from relatively high levels of immigration, which has led to a dynamic and diverse cosmopolitan society, so the constant flux of international students enriches our understanding of the world more broadly and our small place in it, as well as presenting daily challenges of how to live 'together-in-difference'.

And yet our ever-growing population, with addition of the temporary transnational population of international students, is stretching our most basic infrastructure to breaking point. Australia has an accommodation crisis, and the solution is not in furthering urban sprawl. In 2008, Melbourne's rental vacancy rate dropped as low as 0.3%, when a 'healthy' vacancy rate is said to be between 3 and 5%. People are offering above advertised rental prices to secure housing - never mind the legality of the practice. In the inner suburbs, a rental open house can attract as many as 100 interested potential tenants, and international students who arrive with no references, rental history or employment history in Australia are at the bottom of the priority list for landlords. But what can be done, we wonder, when locals are also facing cases of severe housing stress, as highlighted by the 2008-9 Student Housing Action Collective campaign in Melbourne, which saw a group of university students occupy four Melbourne University-owned terrace houses for 5 months in protest?

Monash University appears to be getting serious about assisting these students, who have kept the sector afloat in the wake of years of government under-funding of higher education, with a recent commitment to build housing for all first-year international students (and, presumably, also regional domestic students). But will others follow suit or will they simply continue to cry poor and blame the government? The constant blame-shifting is at the root of many of the issues facing international students, who meanwhile fall through the cracks in the system while those in positions to enact real change are too busy dodging responsibility. And housing is just the tip of the iceberg.

Exploitation of international students in Australia's workplaces is rife. The 20-hour work restriction is one of a number of complicated factors in what is a systemic problem. By refusing international students the right that domestic students have to work however many hours they require to survive, the government is exposing them to high levels of risk when they are forced to either find more work or starve or go homeless. Unprincipled employers prey on this vulnerable underclass, who have no mechanism to complain or defend their rights without jeopardising their visas.

The argument is frequently made that these students are here to study, not to work, and that lifting the restrictions would open the pathway to opportunists who are not genuine about their intentions to study in Australia. This claim elides the academic structures in place, and currently being strengthened via the Baird Review of the Educational Services for Overseas Students (ESOS) Act, to ensure that students' academic progress is on track, with support and/or penalties in place for those who aren't 'making the grade', so to speak. This is an appropriate framework to deal with alleged abuse of student visas, not restricting a person's right to support him or herself if necessary.

Even those who work within their 20-hour allowance are all too frequently exploited in the workplace, where they cite employers' refusal to pay penalty rates for night and weekend shifts, and under award pay rates in the hospitality and retail sectors, with little understanding of the systems in place to protect their rights at work, or an unwillingness to seek such help. As one member said at a recent meeting convened by the Global Reconciliation Group to discuss the issues facing international students in Australia, unethical treatment of workers has been fundamental to supporting the suburbs through the global financial crisis. Where is Australia's collective belief in the 'fair go' in the face of these inequities?

The high costs of the capital cities' struggling public transport systems are another burden on students who come, often with a skewed idea of the cost of living here. Bad information from unscrupulous offshore education agents means international students all too frequently end up fitting double the number of permitted occupants into expensive rental properties, or living miles away from campus with a long commute exacerbated by full fare ticket prices. Additionally, their work, which is commonly piecemeal or shift work, exposes them to more night-time travel in higher risk suburbs than is usual for locals. That, combined with ever-present if minority racist elements of our society, is a dangerous cocktail, making international students much more likely targets for random street violence.

And so the Department of Immigration and Citizenship remains adamant that the 20-hour work restriction on student visas will not be lifted, while universities say they cannot afford to provide housing, which they argue is a 'non-core' service, and NSW and Victorian state governments refuse to offer concession travel to international (or postgraduate, in the case of Victoria) students. Meanwhile, NSW brings in some $7bn and Victoria some $5bn in revenue from international student fees, which the state governments claim they see none of, as it all goes to the universities, who say it's only fair since the federal government demonstrably underfunds the sector. Gillard's office is cited as 'deeply concerned' about the welfare of international students and awaits important reports on solutions to the plethora of issues, many of which will include very little in terms of a real mandate for improvement.

Strengthening the regulatory frameworks already in place to protect unknowing students from unscrupulous offshore agents, housing providers, and employers is essential, but is just one mechanism for transformation. Policing compliance is critical, and to date, has been conspicuously lacking. While the police are quick to issue fines to international students travelling without tram tickets, they are slow to pursue the perpetrators of harassment and discrimination in our cities. And while service providers allege innocence when their commission-based agents give misleading information to potential students, somebody must take responsibility for such wilful deception. The Residential Tenancies Act provides for some measure of protection for renters, but the burden is on tenants to be informed and willing and able to take action against a plenitude of suburban slumlords.

The final missing piece of this unravelling tapestry is national representation of Australia's 500,000+ international students. After the disgraceful takeover of the once highly effective National Liaison Committee for International Students in Australia (NLC) by an unscrupulous cadre of self-appointed officers, this vulnerable cohort has been left without an independent, representative voice. Whilst the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA) and the National Union of Students (NUS) have been working with international students across the country to design and create a new independent body, government has progressed its many reviews with limited forms of student consultation, primarily with individual students such as those who applied for last year's Roundtable with the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) and were hand selected by DEEWR, rather than elected by their peers, and only later with CAPA and NUS's elected International Student Officers and Presidents.

If this is the brave new world of so-called Voluntary Student Unionism (VSU), then one must suppose that the Opposition's preferred model for stakeholder consultation is to choose those it would most like to hear from, which typically means those who will create the least fuss when things go wrong. I would respectfully suggest that too many of the nation's elected representatives of government have forgotten the very principles of taxation and representation. And while they pat themselves on the back for ridding the country of its so-called young Marxists and militant unionists, all the while claiming the frock is not really so tattered, we the people can see that the emperor wears no clothes.