“It’s Australians coming home first,” Morrison announces

Pilot programmes to bring international students to Adelaide, Canberra and Darwin appear off for an indefinite future, following Friday’s National Cabinet meeting.

“The challenges we have in getting Australians home means that the ability to move and take international students back at this time through quarantine arrangements does not present itself. It’s Australians coming home first. That is the Commonwealth policy,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.

Mr Morrison said increasing numbers of Australians who want to come home will take-up all quarantine capacity.

And the PM gave no indication when the situation could change, saying “it is very difficult” to say when international students will be allowed in. “There is a queue and Australians are in the front of the queue.”

Mr Morrison also demonstrated why it will be difficult for the international education industry to criticise the Australians-first policy.

“At the end of the day, our universities are there to ensure that they’re providing quality university education to Australians and where there’s the opportunity to do that for international students as part of that business model, that’s fine,” he said.

And then “a gradual return” of internationals next year

Yesterday Education Minister Dan Tehan said the federal government had asked the states and territories for plans by the end of November on how international students can return. “We will continue to work with those governments to see what we can do, particularly, once we get those Australians home safely before Christmas, “ he told Tom Connell on Sky News. Mr Tehan added the Budget injection of $1bn in research funding was because the government knew “the pickup in international students was only going to be gradual into the first half of next year.”

“We understood that it was going to be difficult and very much dependent on what happened with COVID-19, especially internationally,” he said.

Internationals have message already, warns Dirk Mulder

The Bangkok Post and Straits Times were quick to report Mr Morrison’s announcement and it is bad news for the sector.

Australia has worked very hard at placing itself in the top tier of health outcomes countries globally and many in the sector believe this should be a competitive advantage against other countries. An advantage that clearly the feds are not taking advantage and it is being noticed.

The Darwin pilot return of 70 odd students was due to take place in two weeks-time. Whilst this is a step in the right direction much more is required for the sector to respond to global demand, something CMM reported on 22 October. UTS Deputy Vice Chancellor Iain Watt appears to agree with CMM’s assertion going on record last week, saying “a series of small scale pilots to return a few thousand students across the country would not make a dent in the loss of 300,000.”

So… it seems the sector still has a lot in front of it if it is indeed going to start opening up and reversing the headlines of last week.

Dirk Mulder is CMM’s international education correspondent