Albo’s hash bombed Indian labour deal collapses

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Australia’s former universities turned Third World corporate parasites are pulling a sharp u-turn:

Universities and private colleges have cancelled scores of international student enrolment offers as institutions rush to protect their risk ratings following the federal government’s visa crackdown.

Some education providers believe they’re being unfairly impacted by the government’s migration reforms which aim to slash intake by putting tougher tests on students.

The cancellations are predominantly affecting students from India, Nepal and Pakistan who are deemed a high risk of visa rejection.

In reality, this is Albo undoing his own blunder. He gave the unis the green light for greed when he visited India in March 2023, where he inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to make it simpler for Indians to work and study in Australia.

According to the Mechanism for Mutual Recognition of Qualifications, Australia must recognise Indian vocational and university graduates as “holding the comparable AQF qualification for the purposes of admission to higher education”.

The MoU also required Australia to recognise Indian vocational and university graduates as “to be holding comparable Australian qualifications for the purposes of general employment, where such qualifications are required”.

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This treasonous agreement risks turning the Australian labour market into a dumping ground for 1.4bn Indian workers earning three rupees per day.

It was clearly written by India, see the ham-fisted document below, and designed to suck billions in remittances from Australia.

Why Mad Albo signed is not so obvious. He can’t have been sober. I suspect he was high on Narendra Modi’s hash stash.

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That would at least make some perverse sense:

I have some sympathy for the Indian kids that have been screwed by Mad Albo’s backflip after the high has worn off.

But the agreement still stands, and too many will still come, preventing the stabilisation of the Australian labour market and wage growth.

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.