Why Pauline Hanson’s international student crackdown could see restaurants struggle for staff

Pauline Hanson’s plan to make international students return home before applying for another course would ease the rental crisis but could make it harder for Australians to get an Uber or book a restaurant, a higher education expert says.

The Administrative Review Tribunal is now dealing with more than 50,000 overseas students appealing rejections for another student visa, as the Federal Government struggles to crack down on corrupt vocational education providers selling courses as a pathway to work rights.

Many of these students are staying in Australia on a bridging visa during a housing crisis, and One Nation’s leader wants to stop this, with close to three million people in the country, or one in ten residents, now holding a temporary visa.

Professor Andrew Norton, a higher education policy expert from Monash University, said Senator Hanson’s plan to tackle international students gaming the visa system to stay in Australia could lead to severe staff shortages, even as the policy “reduced pressure on rental accommodation”.

“A whole range of industries rely on international students to staff themselves,” he told The Nightly.

“The population won’t like it when they can’t get an Uber anymore or restaurants start shutting several nights a week because they haven’t got staff which is what happened just after COVID lockdowns ended because we had too few international students in the country at the time.”

Ultimately, making international students return home before applying to switch courses would erode university revenue, along with that of vocational education providers.

“It would be very costly for the students to have to fly back home and apply offshore, that would reduce total demand,” Professor Norton said.

“The category is a mix of people who are gaming the system and people who are making genuine changes of educational choices.”

International students doing an undergraduate degree or diploma are allowed to work up to 48 hours a fortnight during the semester but can work full-time during the university holidays.

Those gaming the system have typically been granted a visa to study at a prestigious university with high fees, only to drop out of that course so they could study at lower-fee vocational education and training provider with the aim of exploiting their work rights.

These students, mainly from China and India, and developing Asian countries like Nepal, Vietnam and Bangladesh, had no intention of studying, instead coming to Australia to work and send money back home.

“That has been the core of the actual corrupt path of the sector where small providers set up, recruit international students who probably have no intention of studying, they just want to work in Australia and they’ve been various exposes over the years of journalists turning up to these provider addresses and finding no lights on, no students inside because the teaching isn’t actually happening,” Professor Norton said.

Agent commissions have now been banned if students leave a course without completing it, after evidence emerged of cheaper colleges paying agents a commission if they had convinced a student to switch from a university to their course.

The situation of students gaming the system is so bad the Federal Government last month announced the Australian Skills Quality Authority would, for the next 12 months, stop assessing new applications from vocational education and training providers to teach international students.

“The regulator has struggled and this is basically to give them some breathing room to concentrate on the problems they already have,” Professor Norton said.

This followed the Australian Skills Quality Authority cancelling the registration of 11 training organisations in 2024 and 2025.

The Administrative Review Tribunal last month upheld its deregistration of Sydney-based Gills College, whose customers included international students, agreeing that it did not have sufficient facilities or have a system in place to ensure all trainers were suitably qualified and experienced.

Overseas students are a major reason why Australia is expected to house 295,000 new migrants on a net basis this financial year, with departures numbers lower since working-right hours were briefly relaxed in 2022 after COVID.

The latest net overseas migration forecast in last month’s Budget papers was 35,000 higher than a Treasury prediction made just six months ago, based on permanent and long-term arrivals of at least 12 months minus the departures.

With many international students remaining in Australia, 10 per cent of residents hold a temporary visa, with the Australian Housing and Research Institute estimating that added up to 2.8 million people.

Education is Australia’s fourth biggest export behind iron ore, coal and liquefied natural gas.