According to The AFR, “the international education sector is surging back to life with a huge turnaround in just one year in the number of students who intend to study in Australia”.
This is based on a new global survey of 14,000 students, which showed a large increase in the number of students that intend to live in Australia.
As expected, it is the Albanese Government’s immigration and work incentives that are responsible, including the uncapping of work hours and the two-year extension of post-study work rights, “with 36% [of students now choosing Australia] saying they changed their mind because of better job opportunities”.
13% also said there were better migration opportunities in Australia following the Albanese Government’s “decision to increase skilled migration intakes”, alongside “comments by Education Minister Jason Clare that he wanted to see more international students stay on to work here and possibly move into a migration pathway”.
Phil Honeywood, executive director of the International Education Association of Australia, noted that regional migration pathways – which perversely includes cities such as Adelaide, Hobart, Canberra and the Gold Coast – had been boosted. “Add to that the additional two-year post-study work and visa entitlements for certain courses, then all the messaging from the Albanese government is that we want international students and we’re willing to provide the flexible policy settings to encourage them to choose us competitor countries”.
Ashton Reid provided the below charts at LiveWire showing the extraordinary bounce-back in international students, which has dwarfed pre-COVID levels:
Record student visa arrivals.
And this boom in international students is driving permanent and long-term net arrivals – a proxy for net overseas migration – to record levels:
Record net overseas migration incoming.
All of which is disastrous for Australia’s rental market, which is already experiencing record low vacancies and double-digit rental growth:
Australia’s rental market already in crisis.
Where are the hundreds of thousands of students and other visa holders going to live when there is already a dire shortage of accommodation for the incumbent population?
The Albanese Government’s record immigration drive is a disaster in the making that will inevitably plunge thousands more Australians into homelessness and rental poverty.
