Universities across Australia are advertising an upcoming webinar hosted by the government’s own Department of Home Affairs that will coach foreign students on how to stay in Australia on working visas.
The online event is scheduled for March 26 and 27, and invites international students who are “curious about [their] visa options” and want to “remain in Australia and undertake paid work”.
The event has not been publicised on the Department of Home Affairs website, but is instead being promoted quietly by universities to students.
Despite the use of taxpayer money to flood the market with more foreign labour and therefore make it harder for locals to get jobs, the Home Affairs website provides almost no information on its Business, Industry and Regional Outreach program.
The Home Affairs website states that the program is only intended to give jobs to immigrants “where Australian workers are unavailable”.
But the upcoming presentation includes a section on Subclass 485 visas, which allow foreign graduate workers to bring their families to Australia and allows the visa-holder to work in any job.
The most recent Department of Education statistics show that in the year to November 2024 there were 1,081,300 international student enrolments, a 12.5% increase on the previous year.
The Home Affairs-funded workshop comes after it was recently revealed that $82 million in taxpayer funds were given to an anti-Australian aboriginal group, and a further $600 million recently committed to create a Papua New Guinean rugby team.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has also been under fire in recent weeks for handing out Australian citizenship to almost 13,000 people – 20% from India – during a pre-election blitz.
Header image: Mr Burke with fellow Labor MPs Andrew Charlton and Jerome Laxale at a citizenship ceremony last month (Facebook).
