One Nation’s proposed visa cap and threat to deport students would devastate international education, put tens of thousands of jobs at risk and leave universities facing financial crisis.
One Nation has confirmed that it will not only include student visas in its annual 130,000 cap but that it also wants to deport 100,000 students legally in Australia. This would kill Australia’s fourth largest export industry and lead to many thousands of Australians losing their jobs and many universities potentially going bankrupt. Yet there are Liberal MPs pressing for a Coalition with One Nation. Would they defend killing the International Education industry at such a huge cost?
In an article by Luke Kinsella for the Australian Financial Review, One Nation confirms that its annual visa cap of 130,000 will include:
• All permanent migration program visas – currently 185,000 per annum
• All permanent humanitarian program visas – currently 20,000 per annum
• All skilled temporary visas – in 2024-25, there were 130,571 skilled temporary visas granted
• All student visas – in 2024-25, there were 371,600 student visas granted.
As government cannot cap visas for partners and dependent children of Australian citizens and permanent residents under s85 of the Migration Act, just maintaining the current illegal limit of 45,000 for these visas would take up a large portion of One Nation’s overall 130,000 cap. It would still leave the partner visa application backlog of around 120,000 growing rapidly (and illegally). It would leave very little space for student visas, especially if One Nation wants to retain some visas for priority skilled occupations such as doctors, nurses, construction tradies and civil/mining/energy engineers.
In addition, One Nation’s Senator Malcolm Roberts, backed up by his leader Senator Pauline Hanson, has promised to ‘deport’ or ‘remigrate’ 100,000 students and 100,000 temporary residents. This is in addition to existing One Nation policy to deport 75,000 overstayers.
In addition to the 75,000 overstayers, Roberts says: “Then we’ve got about an estimated 100,000 international students who are here illegally. They’ve either graduated and not gone home or they’ve breached their legal visa. So we would send them home.”
Roberts provides no evidence of how these students are here ‘illegally’ or how they have breached their ‘legal visa’. He provides no explanation of how he would deport these people if they hold a legal visa. By definition, anyone in Australia who is on a visa and has not breached the conditions of that visa are here legally.
Leaving aside the legality or practicality of the policy Roberts’ has announced (it may be just dog whistling), removing 100,000 students as well as virtually ceasing to grant any new visas to students would mean the end of the International Education industry.
At $55 billion in 2025, the International Education industry is not just Australia’s fourth largest export industry ($24.4 billion in tuition fees and $30.4 billion in goods and services) behind iron ore, coal and gas, it is also a massive employer of Australians.
Australia has 42 recognised universities, including six private universities. In 2024, 27.3 per cent of all university revenues were from overseas students. Australia’s universities employed around 143,000 full time equivalent staff in 2024 with many larger universities employing over 10,000 people. Our biggest and most famous universities in metropolitan Australia would be most at risk although many regional universities would also be affected.
Without a huge taxpayer funded bailout, between 30,000 and 40,000 jobs at universities would be at risk (research, teaching and administrative jobs). In addition, there would also be a large number of jobs at VET and ELICOS colleges as well as at the large number of businesses that operate near universities and colleges and rely on overseas students as customers and/or workers.
The hit to the economies of our major cities would be massive. While One Nation may be comfortable with that, is the Liberal Party ready to embrace such a cost and defend it to Australians in metropolitan Australia?
Abul Rizvi PhD was a senior official in the Department of Immigration from the early 1990s to 2007 when he left as Deputy Secretary. He was awarded the Public Service Medal and the Centenary Medal for services to development and implementation of immigration policy, including the reshaping of Australia’s intake to focus on skilled migration, slow Australia’s rate of population ageing and boost Australia’s international education and tourism industries.