- Labor vows to halve immigration
Labor promises to halve immigration levels within a year and tackle the rental crisis by forcing universities to build more accommodation for international students.
A record 548,800 net migrants moved to Australia in the year to September and Treasurer Jim Chalmers has admitted the huge influx of international students has led to a serious housing shortage.
With an election due in a year’s time, the Treasury now expects the 2023/24 migrant intake to fall to 395,000.
By the end of 2024/25, foreign entry was expected to halve, to just 260,000, down from 528,000 in 2022/23.
But in the five years to 2027/28, 1.38 million net migrants are still expected to move to Australia.
Labor promises to halve immigration levels within a year and tackle the rental crisis by forcing universities to build more accommodation for international students.
A huge influx of international students since Australia reopened after the Covid pandemic in late 2021 has sparked a housing crisis, with rental vacancy rates in the capital now below one per cent, leading to increases double-digit annual rents on weekly rentals.
Dr Chalmers used his third Budget speech on Tuesday night to admit that the huge influx of international students under Labor has worsened the housing crisis.
‘Australia’s international education sector is a national asset. But for too long, enrollments have increased without being accompanied by an increase in the supply of student housing,” he said.
‘This puts pressure on prices and rents, especially in our cities and suburbs.
‘It makes finding housing more difficult for everyone. “We have a more substantial and more sustainable approach.”
Dr Chalmers announced that universities would need to build more housing for international students if they wanted to continue to rely on their initial fees for a lucrative income stream.
With a shortage of construction workers, forcing universities to build more accommodation is expected to make it harder for the higher education sector to accept so many enrolments.
International students make up the majority of long-term arrivals in immigration figures, capped at 190,000 permanent people.
“If universities want to accept more international students, they need to build more student accommodation,” Dr Chalmers said.
“We will limit the number of international students each university can enroll based on a formula, including the number of homes they build.”
Starting in July, Labor wants 1.2 million homes to be built over five years, but only 168,690 new homes were built last year, well below the 240,000 a year needed to house the population of fastest growth since the early 1950s.
A record 548,800 net migrants moved to Australia in the year to September and Treasurer Jim Chalmers admitted the huge influx of international students has led to a serious housing shortage.
The government is also cracking down on the quality standards of vocational education providers by ensuring that 70 per cent of graduating international students are employed after graduating in 2024/25.
Education is Australia’s largest services export and third overall after coal, iron ore and natural gas.
Labor is also scrapping the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, which has seen asylum seekers use the court system to gain permanent residency.
It is establishing a new Administrative Review Tribunal to replace the AAT “to address judicial delays associated with large numbers of applications for judicial review of immigration decisions”.
But this has a cost: one billion dollars that will be reserved for five years, between 2023 and 2024, to finance this new Administrative Review Court.