The Australian National Audit Office has tabled a report in parliament into the processing and compliance of student visas. The report, Management of Student Visas, details the poor working relationship between the Department of Immigration and Citizenship and the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations.
Migration Institute of Australia CEO, Maurene Horder, told Neos Kosmos that this is part of a “bigger picture of Australia needing to get it’s processing, administration, it’s management and all of it’s educational services in a structure and an arrangement that is serving the students well, and is looking after Australia’s interests”.
“The whole thing really got off the rails for a while,” said Horder. “It was so badly managed and unregulated by governments, and that is at both state and federal level, and we are seeing this latest report as just another peg in the whole board of things that need to be fixed up.”
The report looks at how Australia manages the total program not what Australia is delivering and what the students are getting from their education. “One needs to remember that this is a really significant economic issue for Australia because it’s worth something like $18 billion a year ,and outside of mining it’s the next biggest export earner for us. You have to look at international education and how we manage it being an important issue for the whole community.”
Horder said that the government needs to get smarter with the administration of the program to remain competitive with other countries. “The government really needs to get their systems to be well coordinated and easily understood by anyone who has an aspiration to come into Australia. We are saying stop arguing with each other from a Commonwealth level and just get on with the job.”
She said a lot of students were misinformed by the student visa and said in this case, we “were letting them down”. “We need to make it easier and clear what your visa will enable you to do. We want to encourage people to come and we will best do that by giving them good courses to participate with.”