The Australian | 27 September 2013
Coalition plans to give more international students post-study work rights could spark an enrolment boom in hospitality and graphic-arts diplomas, with the graduates monopolising entry-level jobs at a time of rising unemployment, according to Monash University demographer Bob Birrell.
He said this would add to an already serious problem in a labour market with little growth.
Education minister Christopher Pyne said this week he would review post-study work rights to help “repair” the international education industrybecause Labor had damaged the industry “by shutting down the capacity of international students to remain here post-study”.
Birrell said 800,000 temporary visa holders already had work rights, and they are cornering the jobs needed by those most vulnerable to unemployment. Unskilled school-leavers, in particular, face “ferocious competition” from about 250,000 working holiday-makers each year.
They’re finding highly competitive temporary entrants competing for (what) are often casual hospitality, manufacturing and service jobs. That’s why we get such high unemployment in young people.
In 2011, then immigration minister Chris Bowen created a new visa allowing overseas higher-education graduates to work for up to four years in Australia. Vocational colleges want the same rights extended to their graduates, who can only work up to 18 months and then only if their qualifications are in recognised areas of skills shortage.
Birrell said this would open the door to people, particularly from the subcontinent, interested in working rather than studying. He said graphic arts and hospitality diplomas, which took a year or so, were “perfectly fitted to that”.
