Australia is now the most "studentified" nation on earth. As of November 2025, one in every 31 people living in this country is either a current or recently expired international student – 3.2 % of the entire population and still climbing. That is higher than Canada (2.4 %), higher than the UK (1.3 %), higher than the United States (0.6 %). We are world champions at turning lecture theatres into visa factories.
And the Albanese government just quietly jammed its foot on the accelerator.
The "Caps" That Aren't Caps
In 2025 Labor proudly announced a "cap" of 295,000 new international-student places for 2026 – a 25,000 increase on the year before. Sounds responsible, right? Wrong.
Ministerial Direction 115 lets every provider breach their allocation by 15 % with zero real penalty – only slower visa processing if they go further.
The national 295,000 figure itself is a "planning level," not a hard ceiling.
A dozen big universities (the usual sandstone suspects plus a few private giants) have just been handed "low-risk" status, meaning their students from India, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka now sail through with minimal paperwork.
Translation: the caps are made of tissue paper and the tap is wide open.
The Numbers Are Already Insane
Pre-COVID peak (2019): ~720,000 international students Q3 2025: ~1,050,000 current + hundreds of thousands more on bridging visas, graduate visas, or "pending further applications." That is a 45 % increase in six years while the domestic population grew less than 8 %.
Greater Sydney now has more than 400,000 international students. Melbourne is not far behind. In some inner-city postcodes (Haymarket, Carlton, Clayton) the ratio is approaching one international student for every two permanent residents.
The Consequences Nobody in Canberra Wants to Talk About
1.Housing: Every landlord with a spare bedroom knows the game: rent to six international students at $300 a week each instead of one Aussie family. Result: skyrocketing rents, record-low vacancy rates, and young Australians locked out of the cities their parents built.
2.Wages & Working Conditions: A limitless supply of post-study work-rights graduates happy to work cash-in-hand for $15 an hour has gutted hospitality, cleaning, rideshare, and delivery. Indian and Nepalese students openly advertise on WhatsApp groups: "Will work any job, any hours, below award." That is not "vibrancy"; that is state-sanctioned wage suppression.
3.Universities Turned into Migration Mills: The list of "low-risk" recruiters reads like a who's-who of diploma factories. Courses with 80–90 % international enrolments, 70 % failure/drop-out rates, and zero academic rigour exist for one reason: each student is worth $40–60 k a year in fees plus a multi-year pathway to permanent residency.
4.Infrastructure Meltdown: Trains, hospitals, GPs, roads – all built for a population of 25 million – are now serving the equivalent of 28 million and growing by another Sydney every three years. The Productivity Commission itself warned in 2023 that mass immigration at this scale is delivering negative per-capita GDP growth. Treasury's own forecasts now assume permanent net overseas migration of 300,000+ a year forever – because the evil education lobby won't let the government turn off the tap.
The Political Sleight of Hand
Albanese and Clare O'Neil stand up and swear black and blue they are "bringing migration down." They point to the nominal cap and hope voters don't notice the fine print. They quietly downgraded India and Nepal from "Level 2" to "Level 1" risk (i.e., fast-track visas) while telling the cameras they are cracking down on "dodgy colleges." It's theatre.
The End Game Everyone Sees but Won't Say
Every extra 100,000 international students = roughly 60–70,000 eventual permanent residents (through employer-sponsored, partner, or skilled-independent pathways). At current settings we are locking in 180,000–200,000 permanent additions per year from the student pipeline alone, before we even count skilled, family, or humanitarian streams.
That is not immigration policy. That is population replacement on autopilot, paid for by suppressed wages and unaffordable housing for the existing population.
The Fix Is Simple – And Politically Radioactive
1.Hard cap at 2019 levels (~720,000 total enrolments, or less).
2.Remove post-study work rights for all but genuine PhD and high-end STEM masters.
3.Tie permanent residency points explicitly to regional study and regional work (not inner-city Melbourne diploma mills).
4.Make universities co-fund the housing and infrastructure their cash-cow students demand.
None of this will happen while the Group of Eight and the private colleges keep writing six-figure cheques to both major parties.
Australia is being swamped – deliberately, cynically, and with the full knowledge of the people who keep promising to "fix it." The floodgates are not broken. They were opened on purpose.
And until someone finds the courage to slam them shut, every Australian under 35 will keep paying the price in rent, wages, and a future that no longer feels like home.
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2025/11/labor-opens-international-student-floodgates/