This week, Riya Kattady has been making coffee at home. With a reduction in working hours to come into effect for international students, takeaway has become a luxury she can’t afford.
“I have to think twice about my spending now,” she says. “I can’t just work extra hours … I have to save and plan things.”
Kattady, who is studying for a master’s in engineering at Western Sydney university, is one of nearly 600,000 international students in Australia who will be affected by a cap on working hours to be implemented from Saturday.
Temporary changes introduced during the pandemic allowed international students to work unrestricted hours, but they will now be restricted to 24 hours a week. To Kattady, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
“It means students will need to prioritise their studies,” she says. “They often got carried away by how much they could work and earn, and I think this cap enforces how important it is to have a balance.
“I’d normally agree to extra work when asked, when I could be studying, but now I just can’t.”
Kattady works as an adviser at Western Success, a support program for students. She says many will benefit from the cap.
“A majority of students will come to us during exam time, saying they’re struggling because they were picking up work hours,” she says. “While unrestricted hours gave them financial freedom, it’s also resulted in lots of stress.”
September’s announcement that the cap would be reimposed was broadly supported by the sector, after complaints about a lack of transparency when the former federal government announced it would be removed.
Student visa work restrictions were relaxed for tourism and hospitality workers at the beginning of 2021, and temporarily removed entirely the following January.
The chief executive of the International Education Association of Australia (IEAA), Phil Honeywood, says the Coalition’s 2021 decision, made to plug workforce shortages, involved “no consultation whatsoever with the international education sector”.
Before Covid border restrictions were imposed, international students were able to work 20 hours a week while completing their studies.
“I phoned [the former education minister] Alex Hawke the day it was announced and said ‘what’s the story, why didn’t you talk to us?’” Honeywood says.
“He said it came from elsewhere. Corporate Australia needed unskilled labour because there were no more people on working holiday visas. The easiest way to fund the labour force was with full-time students.”
Hawke’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Honeywood says it’s “absolutely necessary” the changes have been reversed to stop rampant malpractice in the international education sector, and required Labor to “resist pressure from the big end of town”.
Trojan horses
The new restrictions permit students to work three full days – still more than competitors such as Canada and the UK.
One exception to the cap is the aged care sector, where students will be allowed to work unlimited hours to cover workforce shortages.
Honeywood says under the eased restrictions, agents encouraged students to apply for courses they knew would get them a visa through quality public providers and then to move to cheaper private colleges after they arrived to maximise earnings.
“Public universities and quality private colleges are used as a Trojan horse to obtain a visa and make haste on uncapped work hours.”
Last week the Labor MP Julian Hill called for “nuclear” reforms to clean up poor-quality vocational educators, which he said were exploiting the system as a “low-rent work visa”.
He proposed suspending international student intakes for low-quality courses and preventing internal assessments to reverse the trend of student visa holders arriving with the intention to work, not study.
The Council of International Students Australia (Cisa) says its members who come to Australia for legitimate study reasons have been under severe mental health pressure to capitalise on the unrestricted working hours.
Cisa’s national public relations officer, Yeganeh Soltanpour, says there has been a “50/50 divide” as to the benefits of the changes, but she was “horrified” by cases of exploitation that unlimited working hours encouraged.
In the past five years, the fair work ombudsman has filed 126 litigations involving visa holders, with more than $13.4m charged in penalties.
“We saw a lot of students shoot themselves in the foot by the amount of hours they’d take on … we’d see workplaces roster students on five days a week when they were supposed to be part-time, give them bad shifts, and they don’t know where to seek help,” she says.
“Students weren’t fulfilling their courses, and their families knew they could physically work so were encouraging them to send a portion of money home.”
On the other hand, with the rising cost of living, Soltanpour says it is “almost impossible” for students to sustain themselves on education loans from their home governments, which accrue interest if they are not paid off instantly.
“We’re here to study and internships are unpaid, but you feel you have to forfeit real life experience for paid work,” she says. “I’ve seen students who feel their world is falling apart.”
Honeywood says the purpose of students coming to Australia – to study full-time – has been overlooked by industry bodies in cleaning, hospitality and retail who have argued against reinstating a cap.
“Being able to work 20 hours was more about giving course-related employment opportunities to bolster students’ CVs … not to be seen as just a group for labour hire,” he says.
The chief executive of Universities Australia, Catriona Jackson, says removing the cap on working hours for international students was “always intended” to be a temporary measure.
“Australia welcomes hundreds of thousands of international students to our world-class universities each year on the basis that, first and foremost, they come to study,” she says.
“The slightly increased working hours allowance, adding four hours a week from July [to the pre-pandemic rate], is a balanced change that will ensure international students can continue to support themselves while managing their studies and contributing to Australia’s workforce needs.”
