10/05/2024
It seems the Federal Governments of different persuasions don’t appear to have the foresight to tackle one of the contributors to the housing availability shortage, the International Student cohort. Again, this government like others before it has talked in terms of cutting numbers of students being taken into the country.
The reality is that the export of education currently is one of the biggest contributors to our economy. Yet they are now considering biting off this revenue source to our detriment. We also know that the student cohort is also the source of much of our part time and temporary employment that we so badly require here.
My suggestion to the Federal Government would be to go to the Governments of two of our major sources of students, India and China, and suggest to them that they build/purchase blocks of flats or Dormitories for the purposes of hiring out to the students from their countries. This will take a significant pressure off the rental market and release a lot of home space for use to deal with our own homeless communities.
This will in turn provide some certainty to the students themselves. We have seen a significant number of them fall prey to unscrupulous agents and landlords here in recent times. And continue to provide a steady stream of income to universities to allow them to subsidise the local students’ education fees.
I wonder if this could be given some thought in years to come.
Suresh Rajan
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