In this interview, Saxon Davidson appeared on Weekends with Luke Grant 2GB to discuss the IPA’s research on immigration and international students.
All media appearances posted onto the IPA website are directly related to the promotion and dissemination of IPA research.
Below is a transcript of the interview.
Luke Grant:
We talk a lot about the issue of big Australia on this show, recent ABS data, it’s confirmed that an average of around 4,000 net permanent and long-term migrants were allowed into Australia every day in February. I’m told that’s the highest number on record, including a record number of international student arrivals. This comes amidst revelations of nearly half, nearly half of all foreign students at Queensland’s University of Technology dropped out in their first year. And the allegation is that they are here with working rights, they just do a little bit of study, then they move on to the next thing which is working because that’s part of their visa. So what’s the go there?
They’re calling it phantom students. I don’t know how you stop it because people are entitled to apply and they get permission to come here and study and with that work to assist their living costs, I assume and other things. And just by accident is it that half of them say, “You know what? I don’t want to study anymore, I’ve always wanted to be a brain surgeon, but I’ll just go and work at the local wherever.” I don’t know what you do about it. But there’s some work being done at the Institute of Public Affairs around the numbers of foreign students and this has been a policy announced by the opposition to rein those numbers in a bit. Let’s have a chat to Saxon Davidson, a research fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs who’s been part of the team that’s done this work. He’s on the line. Good day, Saxon.
Saxon Davidson:
Good morning. Thank you for having me.
Luke Grant:
Thank you for jumping on the phone, mate. Appreciate it. First off, I’ve got to ask you about this phantom student trend. Is this a new thing? If it happens at one university in Brisbane, you would imagine it would happen at plenty of other institutions around the land or is that not right?
Saxon Davidson:
Well, I’m not sure if this is a new phenomenon or if it’s been going on for a long time. What we’ve actually seen in our research is that the amounts of international students is actually dwarfing the amount of domestic students and actually causing a lot of domestic students to drop out at a higher rate. But what I will say is that there are all the incentives in the world for university institutions to bring in more and more international students, obviously because it gives them a lot of money, millions of millions of dollars in money, but it doesn’t suit the Australian public to have basically an uncontrolled amount of international students coming into the country for a variety of reasons. One major one is that the export value that is allegedly brought in from these international students is by and large a myth and is overstated by about $17 billion because a lot of what counts as an export is money that they spend here, which is by definition not an export.
Luke Grant:
No. And Saxon, it’s right to say that if a foreign student buys a roll of toilet paper in Australia, that’s counted as export income, isn’t it?
Saxon Davidson:
Yes. Expenditure that they do here in Australia is counted as an export, which is completely ludicrous to count that as an export.
Luke Grant:
Yes. Are the numbers going down or are they going up? Just walk me through what you found because I think a lot of people are under the impression, given what government said, that in fact the numbers are headed backwards. Is that right?
Saxon Davidson:
No, that’s not true. The 2024 financial year, they were about 608,000 international students visa holders, which was the highest financial year on record and February 2025, so just two months ago, was the highest net monthly arrival of international students on record. So the numbers are not going behind, they’re simply going up. And it’s a major reason why the government can’t control immigration at the moment, even though there’s sort of a bipartisan approach or allegedly a bipartisan approach to reducing net migration numbers. The continued rise in international students is a major reason why migration numbers can’t be controlled and why they are simply and forever underestimated in our budget papers.
Luke Grant:
Well, when you say they can’t be controlled, surely they can be controlled. If government says, “The limit is this,” and then we get to the limit, there’s no more approvals given. I mean listeners would say, that’s how you control them, surely.
Saxon Davidson:
Yeah, I mean they can theoretically be controlled, but there is at the moment within our political class, either an unwillingness or an incapability to do so. And this has been a long-running trend. So since 2000 there has been a 370% increase international students at our universities compared to an 84% increase in domestic students. It’s a long-running trend and I don’t see it reversing anytime soon.
Luke Grant:
See, I find that extraordinary. It’s almost not quite gaslighting but, “oh no, we’re getting the numbers down, there’s nothing to see here.” And then all of a sudden you come up with research like this. Is either of the two parties likely to do something to bring the numbers down? Because if you tell me that this is a trend that’s not been reversed for many, many years, it seems likely that whoever’s coming to power will have any impact on this.
Saxon Davidson:
Well, because it’s been such a long-running trend, there is an opportunity for both parties to really take the mantle on this and make it their issue. The Coalition have for a couple of years now said that they will tackle this issue and the Labour Party tried to while in government last year I believe, but it didn’t get past Parliament. But there is a real opportunity for both parties as we’re entering an election in two weeks for them to really grasp this issue and really take control of it and own it.
Luke Grant:
Yeah. Is it as simple as counting the heads? How do you get a proper glimpse and understanding, giving these numbers proper weight? Is it simply that, that you go to the Government Department, or I guess Home Affairs and look at what they’ve published? Is that how you work it out?
Saxon Davidson:
So we look at the Australian Bureau of Statistics’s data on overseas arrivals and departures, which have separate classifications as to why people are in Australia, but also the Department of Home Affairs and also Department of Education data.
Luke Grant:
Yeah, okay. Good on you. Great to talk to you Saxon. Thanks so much for your time. It’s important that we cover these issues. They seem to get glossed over way too often, but thank you for your work on this.
Saxon Davidson:
Thank you for having me, Happy Easter.
Luke Grant:
Yeah, you too. Saxon Davidson, research Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs.
This transcript with Saxon Davidson talking on Weekends with Luke Grant 2GB from19 April 2025 has been edited for clarity.
