PETER VAN ONSELEN: They loathe Peter Dutton. So, will this one group say thank you for what he just did?

So the Coalition is ganging up with the Greens to block Labors higher education changes.

Talk about an unholy alliance! That said, ensuring this poorly conceived policy never sees the light of day is a community service.

The government had hoped to cap international students across Australia at 270,000.

But their way of going about it was just about as poorly drafted as you could imagine.

The policy aimed to freeze enrolments at 2019-2023 averages, with carve outs to assist lowering ranking unis enrol more international students to help with their budget bottom lines.

The big losers in this policy would be top ranked universities and WA unis in particular.

Why?

Because top unis have become dependent on international students to cover budget shortfalls. 

Governments have been aiming to increase the number of domestic students funnelling through the system without matching funding increases. 

Peter Duttons Coalition has, ironically, saved academic jobs by blocking Labors higher education reforms

WA unis would be hardest hit because, unlike east coast institutions, they had not significantly upped their numbers of international students until well after the COVID era. That means that reducing intakes to the average across COVID years would see the west suffer a massive funding shortfall.

This shows that Albos policy was politically stupid as well as poorly designed.

Without the state of WA, Labor wouldnt have won majority government at the last election. To have any chance of keeping its majority Labor needs to poll well in the west at the next election.

Poking universities in the eye with this policy isnt likely to endear Labor to Australias far flung west, a point I suspect Dutton well knows as part of his decision to oppose this policy script.

But the sense of disillusionment with Labors policy is felt across all top tier unis across the country. 

Put simply, were Labors international student cap policy to come into effect, top unis would all face annual funding shortfalls in the hundreds of millions of dollars per institution.

What would that mean? Job losses for a start, but also poor student outcomes. And thats before you include the economic loss of reducing the international student contribution to the domestic economy.

So Peter Dutton has united with the Greens to prevent Labors policy stupidity from damaging our second largest export industry.

On cue the PMs office sent out talking points today designed to lure unthinking journalists into parroting their lines condemning any opposition to the governments policy.

Eminent economists pointed out that international student reforms would do nothing to help housing affordability either 

The loudest criticism was that, by blocking the policy, Dutton was allowing a flood of new migrants into the country.

And Labor likes to claim it is the Coalition that uses dogwhistle politics! Pot, kettle, black.

The other problem with this line of attack is that its not actually true anyway.

Labor wants you to believe that by capping international students at elite unis it is putting downward pressure on immigration.

But did you know that fewer than 10 percent of international students at elite unis use their visas to become permanent residents? 

The overwhelming majority pay their fees, inject significant resources into the Aussie economy, then return home with their qualification to build a life. Having no impact on the immigration rate.

But were Labors cap to come into effect, that economic injection would simply move to other parts of the developed world. Leaving Australia missing out.

It isnt an exaggeration to say that the economic loss could trigger a recession. Meanwhile the rankings of our top unis would slide.

Labors policy idiocy doesnt end there, however. By upping the capacity of lower end unis to increase international student numbers, the government will put upwards pressure on immigration - the exact opposite impact it is claiming the policy is designed to have.

Thats because poor quality institutions have much higher visa to permanent residency conversion rates. Because the type of students who choose to spend money on such low end degrees only do so to get into this country in the first place. As a pathway to migration, not to gain a quality qualification and return home with it.

All of which is why when Team Dutton sat down to examine Labors policy it couldnt support it.

The policy is arbitrary, it deals a savage blow to the research and innovation ecosystem within Australian universities and it severely damages our international reputation and rankings.

Importantly, eminent economists point out that it will do nothing to help housing affordability either, one of the touted benefits of the policy according to Labor.

You also have to love the irony of what we are witnessing. Universities - to generalise - lean left not right. Academics especially. 

Yet Labor was the major party about to critically damage the sector. 

The Liberals are now saving it, and saving academic jobs - not that too many academics will be able to bring themselves to thank Dutton for doing so.