Interview with Peter Fegan, 4BC Breakfast

20 November 2024

PETER FEGAN: I had to rub my eyes as well when I read the headline Labor says it's the students, in part, responsible for the rental crisis in Australia. I agree. Education Minister Jason Clare was the first to attack Peter Dutton, saying “I think Australians are waking up this morning thinking, What the hell is going on in the Liberal Party? What's going on in Peter Dutton's brain?” and if you think back to earlier this year, the Coalition was originally on board with the idea, but it has kind of changed its mind and while they are still in favor of a cap, it says it wants to deal directly with the education providers, rather than ban them all together. So I thought I'd invite on Liberal Senator Jane Hume, who has been, in part, very involved in this conversation, and I'm pleased to say she joins me on the line. Senator, a very good morning to you.

JANE HUME: Good to be with you, Peter.

PETER FEGAN: I think, like many Australians, I woke up this morning and I had to rub my eyes a little bit to see the headline that suggests that the Coalition is in bed with the Greens over this decision to block Labor. This isn't just politics, is it?

JANE HUME: Well, this is about not necessarily blocking student caps. We actually think that student caps, international student caps, are a good idea, but the legislation that the government has put forward, we think could actually make the problem worse. If you put caps on one part of the system, then problems will just pop up in another because the system itself is chaotic and confused. In fact, there are now double the number of international students studying Australia than there were only two years ago, that's crazy. But more importantly, the visa system that sits underneath it is a myth. So there's about 100,000 bridging visa holders that are awaiting a student visa decision. There's about 230,000 temporary graduate visa holders. There's about 30,000 Covid work visa holders. There's another few 100,000 of people that are secondary student visa holders, are people that are accompanying the students. They might be partners or children, or whoever they might be. And it's this that's grown out of control. Of course, the most important thing here is that the burgeoning number of this, you know, ever growing number of students, is putting pressure on our housing, and it's putting pressure on our services. So we've said that we want to see the permanent migration levels come back in Australia. In fact, we want to cut them by about 25% over the first two years of a Dutton led Coalition Government and student caps will be part of that. But it can't be just a piecemeal approach. You have to look at the system as a whole and deal specifically with the universities too. So, it's not just the big universities. You know, Sydney University, for instance, cries poor. It takes in around 41,000 international students in a year, but it makes about $1.45 billion in revenue from those international student fees. That's an enormous amount of money. It's not just about the universities. It's also about the private providers of education and also the regional and rural universities and making sure they get a better spread of students across the system.

PETER FEGAN: Well, Senator, I don't for one moment suggest that Labor is on the front foot when it comes to immigration in this country. I agree with him on this instance, on having a cap, because we're talking about high rent levels here, and particularly in Brisbane, I don't know about the rest of the country. I assume Brisbane is very similar to our other major cities. I mean, there's people here, Senator, the cold, hard facts are that their rents are going up 300, 400, 500 dollars. We're not talking about $25 and $50 which used to be the fair system and I would say that now that one in 33 people in this country are an international student, that goes a long way to suggest that that's pushing up the price. So if we, if we had a cap, Senator, wouldn't that reduce that from happening?

JANE HUME: Yes, it absolutely would. But it can't just be a cap for big universities. It has to be organised between the private providers and also the regional universities.

PETER FEGAN (INTERRUPTS): Do you trust them though?

JANE HUME: To make sure that you negotiate with each of them individually, to make sure that the number that is negotiated is fair and reasonable. Because look, you know, we're a proud migrant nation. We want to see the best and the brightest come to Australia to study, but we also want to make sure that there is an appropriate pathway home for those people and look, it's more than just the university system that's at stake. As you said, the project on housing is extraordinary, and I've experienced this myself. You know, I've got a son that's at a university that was looking for a rental accommodation.

PETER FEGAN (INTERRUPTS): Yeah, it's expensive.

JANE HUME: He asked me to come with him to inspect one property, because he said it might help to have, in inverted commas, a grown up with him and I ended up in a queue at 9am on a Saturday morning that spanned down the street. There would have been 40 or 50 groups of people going through this pretty ordinary looking rental property, and a lot of them, undoubtedly, were international students. So that's in Melbourne, but it's happening right across the country. As you said, Brisbane certainly is not immune.

PETER FEGAN: Senator, I know you're limited on time, so I'll just throw one more question at you. How about this and this may be a proposal that you guys might take to the next Federal Election, I don't know, or it could be one food for thought, for Labor, and I'll answer I'll get you to answer it very quickly. If we don't have a cap on international students. Okay, fair enough. We're looking at $50, $60 billion for our economy, which is great. Is there a need then to put harsher penalties or harsher restrictions in place for real estate agents that pump the rent up $400 or $500? That's food for thought, isn't it?

JANE HUME: I don't want to blame real estate agents. Indeed, I don't want to blame landlords. They're simply responding to the demand.

PETER FEGAN (INTERRUPTS): But $400 or $500, is that demand, or is that being a little bit greedy?

JANE HUME: Well, that demand is being driven by poor policy settings by government. So we've said we're going to reduce permanent migration by 25% from 185,000 a year, 140,000 a year, in the first two years, and we're also going to get the migration policy settings right. Free up around 40,000 additional homes in the first year, and well over 100,000 homes over the next five years, so that we can make sure that Australians have somewhere to live, but also reduce congestion on our road and relieve pressure on our services, which are really stretched right now because Labor has allowed these to run out of control.

PETER FEGAN: Parliament is sitting, you go get em Senator. Thanks for your time this morning.

JANE HUME: Thanks, Peter.