Introduction

The broader regulatory environment of international education in New Zealand seems more settled than that in Australia. Racism, at least in relation to discrimination against incoming students, is a different and currently less pressing problem there. Government is more sturdy in its regulatory role and the export challenge posed by significant currency appreciation on world financial markets is less problematic in New Zealand, although the ongoing global financial crisis has had a far lower impact in Australia. Educationally and administratively substandard vocational colleges have been a greater problem for Australia. As discussed in this chapter, this is partly due to the existence of the IEAA in New Zealand. The international education–migration nexus is also a more pressing issue for Australian authorities. New Zealand did not undergo the same sharp drop in prospective student applications as occurred in Australia in 2009 and 2010. Over the last decade the overall growth of the international education market has been greater in New Zealand, since recovering from the market downturn from China (see Chapter Four, this volume), although New Zealand started from a lower base than Australia.

What of the central instruments that directly regulate international education? Australia's ESOS Framework and New Zealand's Pastoral Care Code outwardly display divergent features, with the Australian programme being based on consumer protection and the New Zealand legislation using the language of pastoral care. Staff and policy interviewees largely agreed with this distinction in the letter of the law, although few spoke in detail of the substance and significance of the difference. Students had little basic knowledge in this domain. However, more importantly and on deeper comparative interrogation, in both regimes the higher up and more influential the staff informant, the less in touch they were with the realities of regulation and student welfare deficits in practice. As argued in this chapter, the gulf between legislative language on the one hand, and the realities of student lived experience of that language on the other, becomes key to understanding the need for a cross-jurisdictional comparative approach.

On the ground and in practice we find that the Australian and New Zealand programmes are characterised more by similarity than by difference.