alt Hacker NewsInternational students make up about 5% of the total rental housing demand but their impact tends to be felt most in capital cities where the universities are.
Removing them won't improve things as much as you might think.
The housing crisis is a supply and demand problem so they've got to increase housing supply.
The problem there is these is a shortage of construction workers. So the workforce simply isn't there to build more houses. Current construction workforce is 110% maxxed out.
I reckon they should be handing out visas to qualified construction workers left and right to solve that problem, then get the homes built. Dubai and Singapore do this and have no such shortage of construction workers. I can't see why we can't do the same.
Removing international students will also have big flow on negative effects for the rest of the economy.
Replies
>> The housing crisis is a supply and demand problem so they've got to increase housing supply.
And now the government is creating "activity zones" around every train line where they will pack in super high density housing to pack more and more people in. Communities - the people who live in these "activity zones" hate it.
And new suburbs springing up many kilometers outside the cities - ugly wastelands without trees, without trains, without community. All to stuff in more people because more people is more money.
Why? Why do we want more people? Who voted for it? No-one because no government ever took it to the people because they all do it.
We should be allowed to protest against population growth without being called racists.
Population growth impacts community, environment, social services, quality of life.
Australia has massive droughts in which every drop of water counts but we've forgotten that because there's no drought right now.
>> Removing international students will also have big flow on negative effects for the rest of the economy.
I'm sorry I simply do not buy these old "accepted wisdoms" that get rolled out.
Just like the mining industry who try to convince us that without mining Australia's eocnomy would be ruined.
That's always the bottom line - "without this <thing that you want but I don't> then the economy will be ruined" I don't believe it.
> Removing international students will also have big flow on negative effects for the rest of the economy.
It will. Because guess what, these students are working jobs (mostly in hospitality) no one else wants to work. Businesses no longer able to find staff.
I agree. The solution isn't cutting overseas students. The solution is to build more houses. To build more houses get more construction workers (who can coincidentally also build houses for themselves).
> Removing international students will also have big flow on negative effects for the rest of the economy.
Damn right, it's big business for Australia; International education earned Australia $55 billion in 2025 from some ~ 844,000 students that year.
( ~ 850K students has been peak international student population per annum in Australia, its never exceeded a million )
These are temporary education visa's that may in a few cases lead to insecure work visa's in Australia and while some international students may get citizenship after 10 years of expensive and insecure stay in Australia .. the total number of permanent migrants accepted each year is (currently) capped at a modest 185,000 per annum (across the board, not just limited to former international students).