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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-06-20 Daily Xml
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International Students

The Hon. T.T. NGO (15:22): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment on international students.

Leave granted.

The Hon. T.T. NGO: Recently, the Premier was quoted in the media as saying that the existing intake of 35,000 international students per annum, which is 4.7 per cent of Australia's international student intake, was 'hopeless'. The Premier stated that South Australia has 7.1 per cent of the nation's population, therefore we should be aiming to have at least 7.1 per cent of the nation's international students, which I worked out to be about 53,000 international students per year. The Premier also stated that South Australia 'should have 10 per cent of the international students', which equates to about 74,000 to 75,000 international students per annum.

My question to the minister is: what time frame is the government setting in order to reach the stated goal of 7.1 per cent? What is the time frame for the government to reach 10 per cent of Australia's international students residing in South Australia?

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment) (15:24): I thank the honourable member for his ongoing interest in international education. I think it was interesting to note yesterday that our two leading universities have announced they are investigating amalgamation. I spoke to one of the vice-chancellors this morning about that. He was keen to ring me; in fact, he called me yesterday to let me know that the announcement was coming, but I was unable to take the call.

In particular, that will give us a huge opportunity because if it comes off and the new university goes up the ladder, up the ranking of national universities, it will be a huge marketing advantage for us to have one of the largest universities in Australia based in South Australia—if that comes off, which I expect it will. They have done a reasonable amount of work on it, and I wish them well in the future of their negotiations.

It is clear to everybody that we haven't kept pace with the rest of the nation. As you outlined in your question, the statistics with the rest of the nation in the growth of international student numbers, I think we are around about 35,000 at the present. Clearly, that's an opportunity for us. It's soon to go past wine as one of our largest exports for South Australia. There's huge opportunity.

Even recently, members would be interested and probably did see in the paper, in The Advertiser, that I recently was fortunate to have lunch with Zaheer Khan, the former Indian opening bowler. The members opposite laugh, and that's the sort of thing they always do. They laugh without actually understanding the facts. This gentleman has retired from international cricket. He is opening up a range of gymnasiums and pro sports facilities in India, which is an emerging industry.

He spoke to me about how he needed to get some high quality people into his organisation and wanted to know how he could engage with South Australia so that education and training could happen in South Australia. I do hope he comes back for the Australia-India test match that we will see here at the end of the year—I'm starting the introduction to study in Adelaide with Mr Khan—because it's a great opportunity just for a very simple meeting over a small bite to eat; a very simple meeting. How important these interactions are to grow our student numbers.

The honourable member opposite talks about the targets. We have an ambitious target. We want to grow our number of international students. We have committed extra funds to it because we see it as important. It grows our economy. It grows our education economy. We have all the families and friends that come to visit. So many of these young students go away and, as we would know, through life some people are more successful than others. Some will grow great businesses and will want to come back here. Some will come back with family and friends.

In terms of the actual question, we are not putting a time line on when we are going to achieve these targets, but we will strive to achieve them because we see it as a huge opportunity to grow our economy. Unlike under the previous government—there was a negative sentiment towards growing international student numbers—we will now have a positive approach. We're open for business, we're open for education and we want the world to come here and be trained.

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