Australia’s international student enrolment cap debate is an ‘absolute mess’ that’s weighing heavily on universities and student housing providers, industry experts say.
The federal government had planned to reduce temporary migration numbers in a bid to alleviate the country’s housing crisis by limiting the number of international students able to start studying in Australia to 270,000 next year.
However, the move has been blocked by the Coalition, which wants greater cuts to overseas student numbers, and the Greens, which opposes the caps.
Higher education and student housing experts told a Student Accommodation Council (SAC) conference in Melbourne on Thursday that the debate had been a debacle for the sector.
Anouk Darling, chief executive officer of student housing provider Scape Australia, said capping overseas student numbers was poor policy.
“I used to have a saying, ‘preparedness over predictions,’ and unfortunately everything right now is so unpredictable that it’s impossible to prepare,” she said.
“I think while we’re in a campaign period for government, it will be part of the policy.
“I do think it’s campaign popularity rather than actual good policy, I mean any policy that looks to control demand rather than looking at improving supply is bad policy.
The federal government's international student enrolment cap plan has been blocked. Picture: Getty
Ms Darling said the international student sector was vital to the Australian economy, labour force and more.
Professor Michael Wesley, deputy vice chancellor global, culture and engagement at the University of Melbourne, said no one knew what was going on.
“The events of this year show, from a university perspective, yet another example in a long line of poor government understanding and poor policy making,” he said.
“Increasingly, what we’re finding is that government doesn’t understand the complexities of the sector and when I talk about that I talk about the university and its ecosystem.
“They don’t understand what the sector does for the Australian economy and society, and they are prey to cheap populist politics.”
“Out of that, we get an absolute mess and that’s exactly where we are at the moment.”
It comes as SAC research published earlier this month showed that only 6% of renters nationwide were international students.
The number of student accommodation beds has grown rapidly in the past decade, almost doubling in scale, according to new Urbis and SAC research.
It found that there were 132,700 student housing beds in Australia, up about 90% compared with a decade ago.
Victoria (43,982 beds) and New South Wales (34,069 beds) had the lion’s share of existing supply, followed by Queensland (23,353), ACT (10,226) and South Australia (9,133).
There were about 29,500 beds in the supply pipeline, focused along the east coast, and about 7,400 beds under construction.
SAC executive director Torie Brown said the supply of purpose-built student accommodation had risen in tandem with the increase in international students.
“Purpose-built student accommodation offers dedicated housing for students, eases demand on the wider rental market and plays a crucial role in supporting our education system,” Ms Brown said.
“Reducing burdensome international investor taxes, streamlining slow planning processes and addressing restrictive tenancy regulations would expand the pipeline.”
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