One final comment on this, and hope it helps clarifying things:...

One final comment on this, and hope it helps clarifying things:
APA (government-funded scholarships) for postgraduate research students is now called RTP (See note a).

Here are some government figures:

- Total RTP grant allocations to all universities (2018): $1,027,083,762 (See note b)
- Max 10% of RTP budget can be allocated to overseas students. 90% goes to domestic. (See note c)
- RTP allocation to domestic students: $924,375,386
- RTP payment per student per annum (2018): $27,082 (See note d)
- Resulting number of RTP spots available to domestic students: 34,132

Here are the student data:

- Number of enrolled postgrad research students: 66,010 (See note e)
- Domestic students: 73% of total enrolments (approx. extracted based on the data in note e)
- Resulting number of enrolled domestic postgrad research students: 48,187

So, there are 48K students and 34K government-funded scholarship spots. So out of every 4 students 3 get a government-sponsored scholarship; and you are wrong in saying only a handful will get this.
For those “handful” who don’t get it, most universities provide university-sponsored scholarships; and there are also other scholarships (industry-funded, etc).

I can only imagine somebody doing PhD for free if either they are not really qualified to do a PhD and want to do it for free no matter what; or it is a low-tier university where funding is very limited.

These are actual data. Although, working 20+ years in the sector, I could tell this even without the data.

a. Source: https://www.education.gov.au/research-training-program-frequently-asked-questions-students
b. Source: https://docs.education.gov.au/node/47821
c. Source: https://www.education.gov.au/resear...tly-asked-questions-university-administrators
d. Source: https://www.education.gov.au/research-training-program
e. Source: https://www.universitiesaustralia.edu.au/australias-universities/key-facts-and-data#.W2vpKvZuJZS