MEDIA SHAME FILE
Outlet: ABC News
Headline: International students not to blame for rising rents, Australian study finds
Summary: It’s obvious to anyone who isn’t a complete idiot that enrolling more than 1 million international students at Australian universities in a single year, 200,000 of whom arrived in February, is going to affect rents.
But of course this kind of fact can hurt the feelings of international students, who seem to think that not only do they have the right to study in our country as long as they pay up, but that they should be able to do so without criticism or pushback from the general population, who never wanted them in the first place.
So here we have a gaslighting ABC News article presenting a uncritical report on a poorly written study by two left-wing Asian academics (who appear to be immigrants from China and Singapore) who make the ridiculous claim that international student numbers do not contribute AT ALL to rising rents.
The conflicts of interest are glaring, but these are either not addressed (the researchers’ personal backgrounds and obviously leftist political views, their previous study on how hard it is to be an international student, and the study itself which states the motivation for the research is to rebut the “scapegoating” of international students), or shrugged off by the ABC.
Worried that the university sector (which, after all, does control immigration policy along with the property and business lobbies) might be biased? Relax, lead researcher Michael Mu says “all we are looking for is data and evidence”. Nothing to see here.
Then we have the most ridiculous part of the article, where the journalist tells us the study’s “findings are supported by a report from the Property Council of Australia”.
No mention of the agenda of the PCA, or of the fact that the Education Department previously pointed out that their Student Accommodation Council was cherrypicking data – using figures from mid-Covid when enrolments were at record lows to claim international students were only 4% of renters.
The article goes on to quote a Chinese international student (!) who thinks it’s unfair to link foreign students to housing because she is rich enough to pay tuition, she pays taxes, and is “here on legal visa”.
In other words, you have to accept a million international students a year because pointing out the negative effects hurts their feelings.
We had a look at the study, which is hard to read because of the poor English of the authors, but also because the methodology is poorly explained, the raw data is not available, and it’s crammed with sociology jargon.
They address the aforementioned Education Department’s complaints about the PCA figures and the connection between international student numbers and rental prices in inner city locations, but say it didn’t take into account the broader housing market.
The authors also refer again the same property lobby report to make the absurd claim that international students actually alleviate pressure on the housing market – because many of them live in purpose-built student accommodation or shared housing.
Do they really think that if foreign students stopped coming that student accommodation units wouldn’t be rented out to Australians? Or that the buildings are not taking up space that could be used for regular housing? Do they not think the increased demand for shared housing will increase the amount landlords and subletting tenants can charge?
It’s truly brainless analysis.
But all that aside, the article really should have been scrapped as soon as this quote from Senator Sarah Henderson was received:
“Even the Department of Education has stated that there are ‘significant housing pressures in inner-city locations with a higher concentration of international students’, noting that in five local government areas, international students exceeded 15 per cent of the total renting population,” she told the ABC.
“An estimated 500,000 international students have been pushed into the private rental market, occupying some 120,000 rental homes.”
That’s it, story over. You simply cannot introduce that much demand and not have prices go up. Everything else is propaganda and gaslighting, and you should disregard it instantly.
Key quote: “The findings are supported by a report from the Property Council of Australia released last year that concluded international students had ‘unfairly worn the blame’ for Australia’s rental crisis”
Subtext: “Men can be women, all humans are the same, supply and demand is a myth – disregard common sense, don’t believe your eyes, swallow leftist lies”
