Opinion: Big Australia immigration policy takes its toll on our cities

Mass immigration is impacting our liveability as Anthony Albanese unleashes his Big Australia vision, writes Mike O’Connor.

Foreign immigration would fill four-and-a-half MCGs a year.

A hundred thousand cricket fans will pack the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the nation’s largest stadium, to capacity on Boxing Day to watch Australia’s finest play India.

If you can imagine a stadium four and half times as big as The G, then you would have one capable of accommodating the number of net migrants who arrived in Australia in the 12 months to June 30.

Net migration in the last financial year was 446,000, compared with an average over the previous 20 years of 230,000 per annum.

The federal government had said that the 2023-24 figure would be 395,000, but managed to miscalculate this figure by 50,000 people.

How it managed to do this remains a mystery.

A recent survey showed 49 per cent of people interviewed said they believed immigration levels were too high, but in Canberra nobody is listening as the Big Australia agenda of the Albanese government rules.

The Opposition also seems determined to look the other way by voting against a proposal to cap foreign student numbers, and you’d have to wonder if lobbyists acting for business and property interests and the universities which have become addicted to the rivers of gold flowing from overseas student enrolments have been successful in protecting the interests of their clients.

Any visit to Melbourne illustrates the consequences of excessive population increase. The city is overcrowded and bursting at the seams. Sadly, it has lost much of its charm.

According to the federal Education Department, there are currently around 696,000 student visa holders in the country with around 50 per cent of them living in rental accommodation.

And there are a further 135,000 expected to go flat hunting next year.

Politicians profess sympathy with those affected by the ever rising cost of housing, ignoring the government’s own statistics which show that in inner Sydney and Melbourne international students occupy more than 20 per cent of available rental housing.

In Brisbane’s CBD they constitute 12.1 per cent of the population, and in the inner west in suburbs such as West End, Milton, Toowong and St Lucia the figure is 10.1 per cent, yet vested interests continue to insist that there is nothing to see here.

Foreign students are impacting housing availability in major cities like Brisbane.

Federal Education Department deputy secretary in charge of higher education Ben Rimmer was moved to challenge the “she’ll be right” mantra when he fronted a Senate hearing recently.

“I have no beef against the international students involved – I hope you understand that – but the idea that it has no impact on rents and on availability of rental supply is simply false,” he said.

Nor does the expiry of a student visa mean the student returns to their home country, for under the current system once your student visa application has been refused or your visa cancelled, it can be a signal to start gaming the system.

According to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, the number of international students who lodged reviews of their visa refusal or visa cancellation between September 1 last year and August 31 this year was 15,754. In the previous year, it was 2244.

In July and August alone this year there were 4863 appeals launched against student visa decisions, an increase in 12 months of more than 50 per cent with many of these applications for review coming from India and China.

According to former federal deputy immigration secretary Abul Rizvi, the average AAT appeal takes about 270 days and he estimates that there could be up to 100,000 student visa applications currently sitting with the department.

Those lodging appeals are issued a bridging visa which allows them to stay in the country.

There are various student visas and a refusal to grant one can lead to applicants applying for another one and being refused and then lodging an appeal against this decision and then reapplying and appealing again, thus extending the process by years.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott offered his thoughts in a recent speech in Washington, in which he said that mass migration created downward pressure on wages, upward pressure on housing costs and massive pressure on infrastructure of every type.

Legal migration, he said, has to be run much more obviously for the host country’s benefit, saying that if the social licence for immigration is to be preserved it cannot become a denial of our Australian nationhood.

It’s an issue that is simmering within the community, with next year’s federal election providing an opportunity for all parties to say just exactly where they stand.