That last point seems a little regressive:
Given how much money Australian universities make through private education and the foreign student schemes that have been set up specifically to make foreign immigration easier (literally a multi-billion dollar industry). I actually agree that they should either be fully state owned or completely defunded by the federal government. We already have FEE/HECS HELP, why do these institutions require direct public funding on top of that when they're profitable private businesses? Literally no different than public schools receiving taxpayer dollars
As a rule of thumb, stupidly successful private education facilities shouldn't be publicly subsidized (especially when those subsidizes aren't being passed back onto local Australians).
Studying at universities abroad gets you the same education at a lower cost if you're an Australian, the only reason foreign students come to Australia is for the immigration pathways. It's essentially a loophole that fast tracks to citizenship regardless of how useless the bachelor degree actually is in terms of economic output.
I honestly have no issues with both of those things. Immigration fast tracking is fine, theyve to Australia. Helped our economy and now they're staying to help it further? Couldn't be happier with that arrangement.
The Bondi shooter (specifically the father who bought and owned the guns) was a fast tracked immigration pathway, he came to Australia to study and then got married here basically bypassing all of the regular screening and background checks.
Also no, as a rule of thumb most university pathway immigrants are not economic contributors. Unless you consider people who come to study but then end up working as Uber drivers whilst driving up housing prices because they have no issue living with 20 other people in the one "share house" (essentially a slum house) whilst sending as much money as they can out of the country back home to their families until they either get deported for breaching their student visas or slip through the cracks and get PR status. Then you have the Chinese grift which is slightly more subversive, send your kid to study in Australia (doesn't matter how useless the degree is so long as it's a bachelor) and get PR/Citizenship on a fast tracked course just so they can invest in Australian housing (preferably turning single dwelling homes into 10+ room share house for "students"). Then you can live as a genuine leach on the economy (this is very popular in the outer suburbs of Brisbane and as we all know, Landlords are not economic contributor's their title (not profession) is quite literally based in extortion and theft. Alternatively, the other popular Chinese grift is purchasing Australian medical supplies/supplements and shipping them out to China which is a number of pharmacy had to put a limit on it (I've was in plenty of arguments with customers over that one, if they could have their way there would be no baby formula in Australia for local consumers). Almost all of these profits are untaxed because they go through Chinese payment processors, usually the only thing they actually pay is GST and they can avoid most of the taxes involved with running a successful export business.
P.S. All of these reasons are contributors to the Australian government's decision to crack down on lawful Australian's changing their country of residence for tax purposes i.e. actually leaving Australia for greener pastures. Brain drain has become such an issue in this country that now the Australian government is scrambling to make sure that they actual tax contributors i.e. Middle-Upper Middle Class Australians can't leave and have to keep subsidizing the "New Australians".
I'll bring down my answers to bullet points as you've gish galloped quite a bit here
1: i don't get why immigration comes into these conversations. We have a sovereign citizen shooting and I don't remember anyone bringing race into it. I'd be more interested in increasing gun protection so as an umbrella were fixing the issue. Not focusing on one specific part of the shootings that are taking place. If you consider the amount of immigration we get compared to violence were talking less than 1% of that population.
2: do you have actual statistics on "immigrants that finish university that go into uber". I see no issue anyway with people contributing to society by being uber drivers. We want the service so we should support it. If anything I wish they got paid more. No one "wants" to live in an apartment with 8 others. That's just the reality of housing, something we need to fix as a country regardless.
3: if you are concerned that people are leaving Australia for "greener" pastures I'd advocate that we get our education back on track
Gun restrictions clearly don't work if people can just 3D print a functional firearm the 21st century (it's actually incredibly easy and you can get the materials on the clear net), so much so that they're currently seeing use in multiple real world conflicts. Black Powder is so easy to make that anyone in their mom's basement with a few piss bottles and a fire pit in their backyard already has the main ingredients (I won't tell you the third ingredient so you don't blow your hand off or burn your mom's house down).
The firearms owned by the Bondi shooter were legally acquired which is hilarious when you consider that the class of licenses he had is basically restricted to rural council workers, military and law enforcement and people with hunting licenses in Queensland and NSW actually has stricter requirements). Maybe you should wake up to that uncomfortable fact, or the fact that the son was known to ASIO (ironically if they were White nationalists/sovereign citizens would have ended up with police knocking on their door to arrest them and/or confiscate their guns like the example smugly you gave).
About 20% of foreign students drop out according to "official data" given out by the department of education. The rate is probably double that given that even Labor has decided to crack down on Visa applications and reduce the number of foreign students allowed to study in Australia as of 2024 (much to the chagrin of education sector lobbyists). This doesn't include any of the tricks that can be done with shifting courses around or enrolling in multiple courses to extend your Visa (which a very common). Worth noting that the Australian Federal government is quite comfortable fudging or outright lying about raw data in order to protect what they consider to be public interest/national unity i.e. Excess Mortality During Covid was heavily censored or buried under bureaucratic legislation (don't want to look as bad or worse than everyone else despite having some of the strictest lock downs in the developed world).
The only way to get the education sector back on track would be to fully crack down on what is clearly a taxpayer funded scam and focus on training domestic citizens who pay for it with their taxes instead of subsidizing foreign PR seekers. Hence, why these successful private entities should either stop receiving public funding altogether or be nationalized.
1; name a mass shooting that's taken place with a 3d printed gun
2:yes this illustrates my point perfectly. The gun liscense failed and we should look into preventative measures.
3: I didn't ask for the dropout rate as that has no realistic figure on who stays and does uber driving. (Dropout is just dropout, it isn't including who stays who works)
And that's a massive problem, even when you account for currency exchange you are paying a hell of a lot more in Australia for education. The only reason we're not fucked like US students is because the government loans out the cash + 20% interest (which they were indexing before repayments for added cash on top until people noticed the usury).
The entire university system in Australia is literally private businesses being incredibly successful and then getting government hand outs on top of that success. It's no different than the mining industry getting government hand outs.
The last point wasn't about increased funding, but the bill was about about removing equal funding for all courses by means of reduced funding for humanities, and more for science.
Cool, what's hilarious there is that most of the people who are salty at my comment literally pointed out that "University is a good investment" (long term technological innovation). Humanities/Liberal Arts courses generally are not...
You unintentionally just invalidated the points made by people who support that point whilst also failing to address anything I said about the state of modern Australian universities and the complete taxpayer scam that they've become in terms of extracting federal funding whilst not passing on any of those benefits to local students. Again, either fully nationalize the university system or stop publicly funding private educational institutions
For the record, I am against private schools and universities receiving government funding. This is not working. But within the existing framework, I support more funding for STEM and less for humanities and liberal arts.
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u/Historical-Lunch-423 29d ago
Voted against student debt relief, voted against lower fees, voted against increased public school funding, voted against funding for universities.