I wrote a damning article last week on how the Turnbull Government has opened a new immigration floodgate that allows international primary school students and their guardians to access Australian schools and purchase Australian property ahead of achieving permanent residency.
Today, The AFR has featured a new report from buyers agency, Secret Agent, predicting that the visa changes will significantly boost demand for properties in good primary school zones:
The new regime that makes it easier to send children as young as six to primary school in Australia will boost the demand for property from parents in cities such as Beijing for homes in Melbourne…
“The price of properties in good school zones will continue to accelerate,” the report says. “We could also see prime inner city properties start to become acquisition targets. Many of these period homes have been ‘off limits’ to the foreign purchaser. This may no longer be the case”…
“It opens up everything, not just to brand new or off-the-plan properties,” said Secret Agent founder Paul Osborne. “It’s going to change the composition a little bit of the types of properties that are required.”
Seriously, you could not dream of a worse policy than this.
As I noted last time, primary schools in “good school zones” are already bursting at the seams. Meanwhile, Australia’s biggest cities, which is where most migrants arrive, are already struggling to digest a decade of rampant population growth (immigration), which has clogged their roads, trains, and reduced residents’ overall amenity.
And yet the government wants to add more immigrant fuel to the fire, just so that it keeps a floor under Australia’s already ridiculously expensive house values.
Where is the additional federal investment in schools and infrastructure to keep up with the migrant influx? And where is the consideration of impacts on Australia’s existing residents – especially young families struggling to buy a home and put their children through schooling?
Is this what Australia has been reduced to: flogging land, houses and visas to wealthy Chinese? Is this what Turnbull really means by his “innovation agenda”? Surely we can do better.
If you care about this issue, Vote 1 Sustainable Australia Party in the Senate in the upcoming Federal Election.
