Australian Minister of Education Jason Clare tabled the in Parliament today. The Bill seeks to amend three pieces of legislation in order to "strengthen the quality, integrity and sustainability of the delivery of education in Australia."

The bulk of the proposed amendments apply to the Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2000 (ESOS Act). They closely reflect, with the exception of the then-controversial legislated mechanism for a foreign enrolment cap, the ESOS amendments proposed (and subsequently withdrawn) in 2024.

The ESOS amendments put forward by the Minister today provide for the following:

• Greater scrutiny of "cross-ownership arrangements" between providers and agents;

• Empowering the Department of Education to collect and share data from providers on their education agents, particularly with respect to the amount of commissions received and the number of students referred by each.

"Some collusive business practices between providers and agents are driven by agents seeking commissions through facilitating onshore transfers of students between providers, especially from the higher education sector to the VET sector," notes the accompanying memo. Speaking in Parliament today, Minister Clare said his proposed amendments provide for a definition of "education agent commission." This in turn, he said, "will allow for complementary amendments to be made to the National Code of Practice for Providers of Education and Training to Overseas Students 2018 to ban commissions from being paid to education agents for onshore student transfers."

The proposed ESOS amendments otherwise provide government with additional powers around the registration (or de-registration) of education providers.

"International education is an important national asset," said Minister Clare. He continued:

"In September 2022 we announced the Parkinson Review of the Migration System. And in January 2023 the Nixon Rapid Review into the Exploitation of Australia’s Visa System. These reviews identified integrity issues in international education, and we moved quickly on a number of recommendations of those reviews. This Bill is the next step."

That being the case, the next step after this – presuming that the legislative amendments are passed into law – will be the revisions they trigger in government regulation otherwise, perhaps especially with respect to the National Code. The amendments themselves are very much concerned with expanding government authority in specific ways. There will be more clarity about how those new oversight powers will be employed in the regulations that eventually arise from the amendments.

For additional background, please see:

• "Australia’s enrolment cap legislation is stalled. What happens next?"
• "Who decides about quality? Education agents and the question of increased regulation"