Blame is cheaper than building

Every few months, Australia’s housing debate finds its way back to the same front door. Rents are up, vacancies are scarce, and somewhere near a university an international student is unpacking a suitcase. The conclusion gets drawn before the evidence arrives.

The evidence is not hard to find. International students make up about 6 per cent of Australia’s renters, according to Mandala Partners’ modelling for the Student Accommodation Council, and roughly 40 per cent of them live outside the private rental market, a quarter with family or friends and another 14 per cent in purpose-built student accommodation. The Reserve Bank has done the arithmetic on their post-pandemic return: an extra 50,000 renters lifts rents by about half a per cent. University of South Australia researchers examined 76 time points between 2017 and 2024 and found no statistically significant correlation between international student numbers and rents in the capital cities.

Meanwhile, the numbers that should embarrass the country sit in plain view. Australia completed about 173,000 homes in 2025, against a National Housing Accord pace of 240,000 a year. None of that was caused by a nursing student from Kochi.

Yet the student cap was sold, in part, as rent relief. Mandala priced that relief at about five dollars a week. For five dollars a week, Australia put a $50 billion export industry through two years of turbulence and told its students, India’s sons and daughters among them, that they were the problem.

We understand the temptation. A visible newcomer is easier to blame than an invisible planning system. A visa setting can be changed with a press release; a housing pipeline takes a decade to fix. Blame is cheaper than building. It is also useless.

Our readers live on both sides of this ledger. Indian-Australian families rent in the same tight suburbs, bid at the same inspections, and welcome the students who fill the same lecture halls. They do not need the queue explained to them. They need homes built.

So here is a modest proposal for the next housing debate: spend one week arguing about cranes with the energy currently spent arguing about students. The day that happens, the crisis will finally have met its match.