Category: Migrants and migration

Young people were less likely to enter higher education in the years after Whitlam than before. Demography and deficits were against them.

Andrew Norton3 Comments

The three politicians with the greatest impact on higher education participation were Robert Menzies, John Dawkins and Julia Gillard. Yet I never hear anyone say, depending on their age, that “I only went to university because of Menzies/Dawkins/Gillard”.

Yet for Gough Whitlam the story is different. Last week USQ VC Geraldine Mackenzie was reported in the Australian saying “I was very fortunate to go to university after the Whitlam years when it was all free. Otherwise I may not have had that same opportunity.” And in February shadow education minister Tanya Plibersek told the Universities Australia conference that “it feels like every week, I meet someone in their 60s or 70s who reminds me about how Gough Whitlam was responsible for them going to university.”

I have argued before that Whitlam, Prime Minister 1972-1975, was very significant in the history of Australian higher education and has some lasting legacies. But I think the lesson from Whitlam’s time for now is that the biggest drivers of participation are supply-side policies on student places, and in particular how they interact with demography and fiscal policy. Because both these factors were significant in the free education era, the long-term trend towards increased higher education participation was interrupted.

Free education lasted from 1974 to 1986 (there were small charges in 1987 and 1988, before HECS started in 1989). The chart below shows that 19-year-old participation rates went up in 1976 but then fell and did not return to the previous peak until 1986. At the low point in 1982, the 19-year old higher education participation rate was 2 percentage points lower than it had been in 1975 (unfortunately, my data source starts in 1975).

19 year old participation

Read More »

Should international students lose political rights?

Andrew Norton1 Comment

One of the biggest changes to Australia migration this century, and through it to Australian society, has been the rise of long-term residents without the rights created by permanent residence or citizenship.

International students make up a large proportion of these restricted-rights residents, with more than half a million in Australia this year. While most international students go home after finishing their studies or convert to permanent residence, some stay on successive temporary visas for ten or more years. Other large categories of restricted-rights residents include New Zealanders and people on temporary work visas.

The total number of residents with limited rights varies depending on which visa categories are counted, but more than 1.8 million people are in this category.

As well as having no or limited access to social security benefits, often insecure tenure in Australia, and no right to vote in elections, restricted-rights residents are caught up in recent moves against ‘foreign’ political donors.

In Victoria, the current campaign finance bill links the right to make a political donation to eligibility under Commonwealth social security legislation, adding to the disadvantages that legislation already creates. (There is a loophole, as entities with an ABN can donate, and you don’t need to be a permanent resident or citizen to get an ABN. So ‘foreigners’ can donate via their business interests but not otherwise.)

With a very low donations caps in the Victoria bill – only $4000 over the four year electoral cycle to a political party – nobody could have much influence via donations.  Even if ‘foreigners’ are a bad influence the problem would be already solved another way.

The Victorian legislation’s one redeeming feature is that it only applies in a limited context.  It covers donations for political expenditure with the dominant purpose of attempting to influence votes in Victorian elections. So other donations to political parties, and donations to third parties campaigning on issues rather than directly advocating a vote, would not be covered.

In practical terms, that means that international students could donate to campaigns on state issues that are important to them, such as crime and public transport concessions.

By contrast, the federal bill that would ban ‘foreign’ donations of $250 or more covers a very wide range of political activity. It covers any public expression of views on a political party or candidate, and any public expression of views on an issue that is, or could be, an election issue. As it is hard to know what could be an election issue, a cautious approach would read this as covering any potential political issue.Read More »

Should permanent residents lose their higher education tuition subsidies?

Andrew Norton1 Comment

Under current law, access to the HELP loan scheme is a rare government financial benefit linked to citizenship rather than permanent residence. It may be the only benefit in this category.

Under the government’s proposed higher education reforms, permanent residents would become entitled to HELP.* But access to tuition subsidies under the Commonwealth Grant Scheme would instead be restricted to citizens, and permanent residents put in full-fee places. For undergraduates especially, this could cost them tens of thousands of dollars.

No universally applied rules govern who is entitled to what in Australia. But there are patterns of eligibility that suggest some broad principles. Generally speaking, longer and stronger connections to Australia lead to wider eligibility for government-financed benefits. Underlying this is the idea of a reciprocal welfare state; paying tax and receiving benefits are linked over a lifetime. People who aren’t committed to Australia, and who probably won’t finance as well as receive government benefits, have restricted entitlements.

The clearest example of this idea in practice is the distinction between temporary and permanent migrants. Temporaries are eligible for few benefits, while permanents get almost all. It would be unreasonable to require people to make long-term taxation contributions to Australia without making them eligible for the benefits those taxes finance. But people present in Australia for only short periods should not receive benefits they haven’t financed. The temporary/permanent distinction is not as robust as it once was because of the rise of long-term but legally temporary migrants. But that is a problem with the visa categories more than the underlying principle.

The Australian welfare state also makes sharp distinctions between residents and non-residents. Regardless of citizenship status, Australians living overseas generally aren’t entitled to social security benefits (or any higher education benefits; Australian citizens studying at the overseas campuses of Australian universities generally don’t get subsidies or loans). The main exception is the aged pension, but that is linked to past residence. Again, full legal membership of the Australian community through citizenship isn’t counting for much; being within reach of the Australian taxation system matters more.

Why are citizenship and higher education benefits linked in an unusual way?Read More »

Should New Zealanders be entitled to Australian student loans?

Andrew Norton4 Comments

Although tough measures against refugee boat arrivals sometimes give the opposite impression, Australian migration rules overall are about as liberal as they have been since federation. We have multiple uncapped long-term although often temporary visa categories including New Zealanders, 457 work visa holders, international students, and working holiday visas. At the end of 2014, there were nearly 1.4 million people in the country on these visas. Only a small number of people seem to be really thinking through the implications of such a large number, although ad hoc issues come up regularly.

One of these is the status of long-term New Zealand residents of Australia in Australian higher education institutions, a subject mentioned in today’s Australian. Contrary to what the article says, New Zealanders are entitled to subsidised places in Australian public universities, as Australians are in New Zealand universities. However, New Zealanders are not entitled to the HELP student loan schemes, and therefore must pay their student contributions or fees up-front. Australians can borrow in New Zealand if they have lived there for at least three years.

The available statistics don’t tell us exactly the scale of the issue, but in 2013 there were 16,400 New Zealand-born people enrolled as ‘domestic’ students and 16,400 full-time equivalent students paying undergraduate student contributions up-front because they were not entitled to HECS-HELP. There is a bit of coincidence in the numbers as the latter figure includes permanent residents from other countries, while the former number includes postgraduates. But many New Zealanders who have been in Australia for much of their lives, went to Australian schools, talk with Australian accents, and consider themselves Australian for most purposes will nevertheless be paying upfront.

The policy intent behind this rule is reasonable enough. It’s one of several measures designed to ensure that people unlikely to be paying taxes in Australia, and therefore unlikely to repay HELP loans, don’t get to borrow (although it raises the question of if they are not going to stay, why give them any support at all?). But it is out of alignment with the social reality of many of the people it affects.

This has been recognised by the government, and they have an amendment that would allow New Zealanders who have been here ten years or more to be eligible for HELP loans. Unfortunately it is embedded in the ill-fated Pyne higher education reform package bill, and so unlikely to pass the Senate. It’s another reason why we need a three bills strategy to get higher education policy moving again, with this amendment going in a Budget measures bill.

It’s also worth noting that this would have been much less of an issue in the first place if we had measures to collect HELP debt from people living overseas. There are already signs that Australia and New Zealand are moving to assist each other in getting student debt repaid. If international repayment mechanisms were in place, we could have a more integrated Australia-New Zealand higher education market with short waiting times on student eligibility.

Overseas student reforms bad for higher ed market design

Andrew Norton2 Comments

Declining international student numbers prompted the government to commission a report from former NSW politician Michael Knight, and his report was released today. The government has accepted his recommendations.

Most of Knight’s recommendations are sensible. But his report would also lead to a visa system that is biased in favour of universities at both ends of the course of study: in a easier process for getting a student visa, and for a new two-year work right after completing the course. This would put non-university providers at a significant disadvantage.

Coming on top of the government’s decision to uncap Commonwealth-supported places for public universities, letting them compete more strongly against private providers and TAFEs offering degrees, and to lift the FEE-HELP debt surcharge from 20% to 25% for undergraduate courses, I could see why the non-university higher education sector could come to the conclusion that the government is trying to put them out of business.

I don’t think the government is trying to wipe out the non-university higher education sector; rather this situation is the result of an ad hoc approach to policymaking, with decisions made without adequate consideration of their systemic consequences.

Though Knight correctly observes that there have been more migration-related problems in the vocational sector than in the universities, I could not find any evidence that the non-university higher education institutions were particularly prone to taking students who broke visa conditions (especially compared to the universities at the cheap end of the market, attracting students from poor countries with the strongest reasons to want to stay in Australia). There was a discussion of the difficulties in setting rules institution by institution, but not for different classes of institution.

An effectively functioning higher education market in Australia requires – to use the now cliched metaphor – a more level playing field. International students are important to building economies of scale in the non-university sector, and making those institutions more able to take on the universities in the domestic market. So Knight’s recommendations, and the government’s apparent acceptance of them, are a setback to good market design in both domestic and international markets.

According to the polls, the public both supports and opposes offshore refugee processing

Andrew Norton3 Comments

The Australian public don’t want refugee boats to keep coming, but other than that it’s pretty hard to work out what they think. Earlier this week, new polling from both Nielsen and Essential Research was published on what to do with boat arrivals.

The questions were slightly different, but the results were opposite: Nielsen find a majority for onshore ‘assessment’, while Essential find a majority for offshore ‘processing’. I would have thought the questions were getting at the same thing, but perhaps respondents did not think so, or there was some other issue with the polls.

But to me this looks like at least a very significant minority of people have no clear opinion on the policy details.


Essential question: Thinking about the issue of asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat – do you think they should be processed in Australia or should they be sent to another country for processing?
Nielsen question (inferred from table in Age print edition): Asylum seekers arriving by boat should be … allowed to land in Australia to be assessed/sent to another country to be assessed/sent back out to sea/other or don’t know.

Does the public support sending refugees to third countries?

Andrew NortonLeave a comment

If asked whether asylum seekers arriving by boat should be turned away, most Australians have always said yes (Murray Goot and Ian Watson have a useful summary of the polling here, from p.28). But in another example of the hard to follow public opinion on the issue, if the choice is between processing asylum seekers in Australia and sending them to another country, their choice seems to be processing in Australia.

A Nielsen poll published in the Fairfax papers yesterday found a small majority in favour of processing here, and only 28% in favour of sending refugees to a third country.



Earlier polls found a similar pattern of opinion, if the costs of the Malaysia deal were explained.

I can’t recall any polling directly on the Howard government’s ‘Pacific solution’, but politically it was generally seen as a success. Or maybe questions about the means of stopping the boats don’t matter much. If the goal is achieved, discomfort at the means will be overlooked.