More than 1.1 million immigrants arrived in Australia during the last year, and successive conservative governments are to blame, a finance expert says.
TV presenter and author Alan Kohler said in his weekly finance column for The New Daily on Monday that Australia’s housing affordability crisis was caused by years of mass immigration, which occurred due to quiet changes made by the Coalition.
Kohler highlighted Australian Bureau of Statistics figures released last week showing that in the 2023/24 financial year there were 1.1 million long-term arrivals, resulting in a net intake of 469,140 when departures are taken into account.
Over the same period the government handed out 820,000 temporary visas, including 375,000 to foreign students, 110,000 to graduates, and 100,000 to “skilled” migrants.
“Most of Australia’s migrant intake has been outsourced to universities and colleges, who see new arrivals as customers rather than migrants,” Kohler wrote.
“They use ‘education agents’ in other countries to recruit them, paying sales commissions to spur them on.
“And those agents are mainly selling visas, not education. They’re a bit like legal people smugglers.”
Kohler said two changes made by the Howard government in 2001 had laid the foundation for the current situation – allowing students from countries such as China and India, and creating a pathway to permanent residency.
Then the Abbott government brought in a swathe of new policies to ramp up international student numbers, including by shifting the risk rating from country to education provider.
The Morrison government in 2022 then removed working hour limits or foreign students and scrapped visa application fees.
Kohler said the result was a “dire housing crisis” and a situation where the government is trying to cap foreign student intake while also facing the impossible takes of trying to build enough houses for their own unlikely migration targets for next year.
The dependence of Australian universities on international students has been under the microscope in recent weeks, with revelations some classes are now being conducted almost entirely in Chinese, leaving locals excluded.
At the same time, students are graduating despite being unable to speak basic English, and academics have complained that foreign students are using AI to complete assignments, and being allowed to pass even if they get caught.
