Following the slamming of the Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Quality and Integrity) Bill 2024 in parliament by senators, the committee has agreed to the additional public hearing, and will accept further submissions until September 26. The Senate has also greed to extend the committee’s reporting date to October 8.

Meanwhile, a Melbourne-based lawyer is gaining support as he builds a legal case which he said spotlights legal flaws of the ESOS Bill if passed, in particular in relation to the sections which outline the proposed cap on new international commencements for 2025 – also known as the government’s National Planning Level – as well as the granting of broad discretion to the minister.

Nick Galatas of Galatas Advisory represents the CRICOS Providers Justice Group, and he said its plans are “progressing with urgency”.

Galatas is preparing the group’s own joint provider submission to the Senate inquiry – a legally substantiated submission which he believes, as a collective action, could be “very powerful”.

According to Galatas, the caps legislation exposes providers to losses and damages, including claims from financiers, landlords, service providers and contractors. Critically, he said, it exposes providers to the unfair and unjust loss of their investment and the value in their business.

It also leaves many directors and guarantors of the providers personally exposed, often at risk of losing their homes, and in the case of directors, in danger of breaching their duties under the Corporations Act, explained Galatas.

“It traps them into the unknown. It steals the certainty which our laws provide and which encourage and support investment,” wrote Galatas in communications to interested providers.

The inherent and internal contradiction within the ESOS Act will be exposed

Nick Galatas, Galatas Advisory

If the bill passes, Galatas claims the commercial bargain into which providers willingly entered when they applied for registration will be fundamentally changed. Providers will be required to maintain compliance on different – perhaps impossible – terms, he explained, and be forced into massive job cuts in a desperate bid to stay afloat.

“The legal case will be based on the injustice of the caps legislation as exposed by these effects,” said Galatas.

“It will be aimed at preventing the legislation from coming into force and putting the government on notice that it will be challenged and that compensation claims will be brought.

“The inherent and internal contradiction within the ESOS Act, and the related TEQSA and NVR Acts, resulting from the caps amendments will be exposed and we’ll show how providers are placed in an impossible position.”

According to Galatas, some providers are choosing to contribute up to $3000 each towards the group’s “fighting fund” – to cover costs of building and presenting their case to parliament and publicly.