AUS-UNIVERSITIY 2

"We were disappointed that earlier warnings took the
unfortunate development of street assaults to lead to the
reforms that should have been in place already. We saw this
two years ago as an issue, tried to transmit it to government
and were meeting resistance," he told the newspaper.
Withers said Universities Australia expressed a desire to
work with the Coalition of Australian Governments to tackle
problems in the vocational training sector that were likely to
adversely affect the higher education sector but was not taken
seriously.
"We were told basically, 'This is not a matter for you,
you are a concern of the Commonwealth and have no place at our
table,'" he said.
"We were warning: 'Look it's a reputational issue, it's a
brand Australia issue, please let us work with you'. The
states weren't interested in listening. I think they thought
they could just ride this industry to their benefit without
worrying about their role in any serious way."
He said Universities Australia had also raised concerns
over the link between international education and immigration
with the Federal Government.
The Federal Government, was so "enamoured of short-term
labour market convenience [to] employers" that it did not
listen when Universities Australia said immigration should be
part of long-term national development, he said.
"Permanent migration should not have been skewed for
those purposes. They realised that and began to repair it, but
too late," he said. (More) PTI