Ms SPENDER (Wentworth) (16:32): I rise to support the Education Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2025. I commend the government for its efforts to strengthen the regulation of international education providers and improve course quality throughout ESOS agencies. International education has been an incredibly important and successful export for Australia. It employs a great deal of people but also provides enormous positive exchange between Australians and other people from around the world, who take back their experience of Australia to their own countries. But there are also significant concerns within the community about the integrity of some of the educational providers. I regularly am approached about some of those concerns in my community. This is why I think this bill is so important, because I do think we need to address those integrity concerns so that international education continues to have widespread support from the Australian community. I also strongly welcome the introduction of demand driven Commonwealth supported places in medicine for eligible First Nations students, a long overdue step towards equity in our healthcare workforce.

While the bill does many good things, I do want to raise serious concern about new ministerial powers to cancel a class of courses or course registrations. These powers mark a departure from existing arrangements, where cancellations are overseen by independent regulators, like TEQSA and ASQA. Under the bill, the minister is no longer required to consult these bodies. Instead, the minister may only consult such persons or entities as the minister considers appropriate. This is a significant centralisation of power and one that carries risk. The minister may cancel courses due to systemic issues, but that threshold is vague. More worryingly, courses may simply be cancelled because they seem to offer limited value to Australia's current or future skill needs, a narrow test which is also open to interpretation. This overlooks the fact that more than 60 per cent of international students return home. As education expert Andrew Norton points out, why should their course choices be limited by the labour market needs of a foreign country?

I note that these decisions will be disallowable instruments, and I sincerely hope the powers are used sparingly and with clear safeguards. There is certainly the opportunity, with these discretions and the very limited guardrails that the bill provides, for the minister to make interventions for reasons that are not in the national interest, without the sort of oversight that one would expect from these sorts of interventions. I would like to put this concern on note, though I support the rest of the bill.