We need to get the international students back

Jackson Williams – Ticker News

Next week, we’re going to see the opening of the Trans-Tasman bubble. Are you excited about this prospect? I don’t think it’s going to be a panacea for business operators, but certainly this will be a welcome boost.

Bill Lang – Small Business Australia

Look, it’s a positive start. And so we can get this bubble started here, have some clear rules around, you know how much notice you’ll get if, in fact, they have to lockdown so that you can get back etc. so again it gets back to that clarity and certainty as required. But let’s get the first one going. It’s very positive.

Let’s look at the second one. And I think the really big one we need is we need to get the international students back and get them quarantined for a couple of weeks, we’ve got 10s of 1000s of them that want to come back. Not only the universities relying upon them, but the places that rent them places, of people to sell them food. So that’s the other one, let’s have an international student bubble back so that we can actually get them back to Australia where they want to be.

Jackson Williams 

As far as you’re aware, do you believe enough is being done enough is happening behind the scenes? Are these conversations taking place to get any international students back here living and studying?

Bill Lang 

Yeah, I think, you know, all of the universities are working very hard to try and influence that and they work with their state governments who then say they point the finger at the federal government and vice versa, and that the finger-pointing is not helpful for anybody.

So it’s a bit unclear right, if we don’t see what’s going on, if they can’t be clear about it, this raises, you know, the fear, the uncertainty and the doubt. So it’s unclear as to whether there’s enough going on. If enough is going on, we’d have a clear roadmap as to how it’s going to work.