Australian Universities to smuggle international students

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When the COVID-19 pandemic hit we witnessed disgraceful behaviour from Australia’s universities and their lobbyists, which behaved more like people smugglers than institutions of enlightenment.

First they sided with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in vigorously opposing the travel ban:

China has slammed Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s decision to extend the travel ban on all non-Australians arriving from China, urging the government to “respect” the World Health Organization’s recommendations…

Chief executive of the International Education Association of Australia and chair of the task force aimed at managing the effects of the ban on the education sector, Phil Honeywood [said]… “China is very much our number one student source country… Unfortunately, we’ve got Canada and the United Kingdom very much competitors as study destination countries and they are still very happily taking Chinese students.”

Once that failed, the university sector then helped spread COVID-19 by providing cash grants of up to $7,500 to Chinese students to help them circumvent the travel ban – a move described as “morally indefensible” by Associate Professor Salvatore Babones.

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…it was “morally indefensible to encourage thousands of Chinese youngsters to travel at this difficult time, especially when they would be transiting through poor, vulnerable countries like Thailand”.

“It is thoroughly unethical for a university to encourage students to undertake risky, refugee-style travel in order to slip into Australia through a third country backdoor.”

Now history is repeating, with Australia’s universities set to charter plane loads of international students into Australia while our international borders remain closed:

Universities may be allowed to charter flights to bring in overseas students – worth billions of dollars to the economy – in the coming months even as a broader travel ban on international visitors remains…

National COVID-19 co-ordination Commission chair Nev Power has stressed the importance of rebooting education, which is Australia’s third largest export.

“There’s an opportunity here for the universities to work with government to provide safe processes to get those students either in a holding pattern overseas, but then to expedite those visas, get those international students back here as quickly as we can,” he told the AFR…

Mr Power said Australia had a competitive advantage over other destinations for international students, such as the US, due to its comparative success suppressing COVID-19.”

There’s an opportunity for us to say ‘how do we market our product out there much more strongly and use this as an opportunity’,’’ he said.

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This comes despite a 192-page research report from Australia’s Group of Eight (Go8) universities urging the federal government to keep Australia’s international border closed:

A “Roadmap to Recovery” report from the Group of Eight (Go8) universities urges the federal government to maintain border restrictions for at least another six months…

“Maintaining restrictions on incoming and outgoing travellers gives the Australian government flexibility to pursue either a full elimination strategy or suppression strategy.”

The report says Australians should be barred from travelling overseas for another six months, other than for sanctioned “essential” travel. It says foreigners should only be allowed to enter if their countries have been free from Covid-19 infections for at least four weeks and have border controls that are “identical to Australia’s and stringently enforced” ones – which would in effect rule out incoming travellers for at least six months.

Meanwhile, the Migration Council of Australia (MCA) has warned that migrants with poor English-language skills are at high risk of spreading COVID-19:

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“The biggest risks for breakouts may be in communities that are socially isolated and where English-language messages do not penetrate,” Mr Willox said. “With two million temporary visa holders and millions more recently settled new migrants, Australia’s diversity could also present risks.”

The MCA said the recent outbreak in the Victorian meat works highlighted that one of the vulnerabilities in the battle against COVID-19 might be large non-English-speaking communities.

It is a shame that the universities’ administrators won’t take the advice of their own experts.

They are behaving like people smugglers, too willing to risk the health of the Australian public to protect their sacred international student ‘cash cow’.

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About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.