Mr. Keith Moynes:

That issue has been a matter of concern for some time. There are a couple of things to say. First, people are essentially here on study visas; they are here to study. Work is meant to be ancillary to that and to be able to help them to support them in their studies. The concern has been that for some parts of the sector, that has been flipped. It has effectively been a means to facilitate access to the labour market. The intent of the proposed regulatory environment is to drive up the overall quality of the system, to drive up the overall maturity of the sector and to ensure that the institutions within that regulated sector are competing on quality rather than low quality and low price and facilitating access to the labour market.

Our aim would be that once the sector is effectively ring-fenced, there would be much greater care and concern for the learners and much greater transparency for learners about what they are getting into. We would be concerned about people selling a false prospectus to international learners about the costs here, what it is like to work here, what it is like to study here, etc.

Large parts of the sector are high quality. We want to drive up that maturity so that the students who are here are only working to help support themselves. Their student visas stipulate that they are meant to have access to resources before that. That is part of it.

The other part of it is immigration enforcement and workplace enforcement through the WRC. Making sure people have access to information helps them understand their rights so they are not afraid to report bad behaviour.