Regional colleges and universities should be treated separately from their metropolitan counterparts if international student numbers are capped in Australia, according to straight-talking Liberal Party backbencher Warren Entsch.

Mr Entsch said a “one cap fits all” approach could “destroy” tertiary institutions in his vast North Queensland electorate of Leichhardt, which includes the tourist magnet of Cairns.

He said international enrolments at local colleges were at about 30 per cent of their pre-pandemic levels, and the “bloody stupid” caps proposed by the Labor government would have restricted them to a fraction of those numbers. “Basically, they’d knock them out of the business.”

The proposed caps, purportedly designed to help ease housing shortages, took no account of colleges that had their own student accommodation. “You’ve also got to look at the value to the economy in these regional centres like in Cairns, for example, where we rely very heavily on these students in our hospitality industry,” Mr Entsch said.

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“The metropolitan areas [are] taking the overwhelming majority of the [student] numbers. In regional areas, you’ve got to be looking at other factors.”

Labor’s proposal appears doomed after the Liberal-led opposition resolved to vote against the underpinning legislation. However, Liberal leader Peter Dutton has committed to “deeper cuts” in an alternative capping mechanism to be outlined before the next federal election, which is due by May.

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Mr Dutton said international students in “schmick accommodation” were displacing Australian citizens. Universities earn up to A$1.4 billion (£721 million) a year from international tuition fees, he . “Students who are here under that money-making project are taking up rental accommodation.”

Mr Dutton has also associated overseas students with sexual assaults, domestic violence and drug dealing and described them as “”. But he said his main objection to the government’s proposal was that it “baked in” an advantage for the rich metropolitan universities, which already attract the lion’s share of international education revenue.

Mr Entsch said he would keep a close eye on his party’s policy. “I want to see where they’re going to go with it. It will come to us as a backbench to have a look at it, and then we have an opportunity to discuss it further,” he said.

While many private colleges would have suffered under Labor’s proposed caps, some regionally based universities potentially stood to benefit. All would have been allowed more foreign students than they admitted this year, although some would have been capped at well below their pre-pandemic levels.

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Assistant education minister Anthony Chisholm said James Cook University (JCU), which has a campus in Cairns, was among the regional institutions set to benefit from the government’s proposal. He said the opposition’s decision to block the legislation would leave regional institutions such as JCU “in the lurch”.

“This is a real hammer blow to the university, but also to the local economy,” he told ABC North Queensland.

However, the Regional Universities Network says its members are more worried about delays and rejections under current visa processing arrangements. “It is our students and universities that have been the worst hit by ministerial direction 107,” said chief executive Alec Webb.

Mr Entsch said the visa delays had been “particularly difficult” for local colleges. “That’s another problem – making sure they get the bloody things done in a timely fashion.”

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john.ross@timeshighereducation.com