Thursday 9 May 2002

Submissions to the Education and Science Select Committee today revealed that educators believe the new tax on international students being proposed by the government is ill-advised, hasty and unnecessary, said Dr Muriel Newman, ACT spokesman on Tertiary Education.

"Submitter after submitter explained how outrageous it was that the new levy was being proposed without any consultation with industry operators. They complained that not only was it sprung on them, but they had only a few days to prepare their formal responses.

"International education, worth over $1 billion a year, is a complex and highly tuned business. Educational providers invest tens of thousands of dollars in marketing New Zealand, and in ensuring that international students are well satisfied with the quality of the courses they enrol in.

"Universities and private training providers are unanimous in their call for the government to ditch their ill-advised levy. Instead they believed the government should engage in a process of consultation to see if there really is a problem with the quality of international education, rather than imposing costly new regulatory structures that simply is not necessary," Dr Newman said.

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