My kid's looking at colleges in a couple of years and we're looking at McGill in Montreal or Melbourne Uni. Typical college studios are 3x more expensive to rent in Australia than Canada.
We (Australia) gets a lot of Chinese and Asian students. I assume it's now inundated with Indian etc students too. That'd part of the problem with the Student accommodation market I assume. One prestigious University here was caught with links to the CCP.
There's also a huge number of houses sitting empty, there is no disincentives to change that. Especially near the beaches, holiday homes or second homes. Government here hate upsetting home owners as they'll lose votes.
Australians' college education is heavily subsidized by foreign students who pay full tuition. Universities have sales teams to entice Chinese and Indian students to study on their campus. In turn, it gives the Australian government a pool of college graduating students willing to settle in Australia. It's win win for the students, the universities and the government. It may not be very ethical but the model has been adopted around the world.
I see the massive influx of immigrants and hear the media complaining about rental shortages. The rich businesses I have a friend in NZ works for the USA equivalent of ICE. My opinion is shifting now, the amount of people vacationing and overstaying by years(starting business with grossly unfair competitive practices with Kiwis) sucks! Something is gonna break, I don’t know what. I have family who were pipe fitters-welders, electricians and construction management. One fun story my cousin told me was a job in San Francisco fixing one of the big bridges. Instead of using local labor some greedy firm had slaves from Asian welding living in a truck trailer. There’s plenty of construction jobs now, real estate is a different story. There’s a reason older construction workers bailed! They got screwed and left the field, now we have a shortage of talent. How could my uncle compete using citizens when GCs were using illegals to frame and roof? Edited: Oh, I’ve been studying Mandarin and Cantonese since 1999. I don’t hate Chinese or have ill will. It’s been almost 20 years since, time flies! https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-dec-08-me-thai8-story.html
Try to grasp this.... It took longer to decommission the old and build the new section of the Bay bridge than it took to build modern Shanghai, including the international airport, Maglev train to and from airport to downtown Shanghai, all freeways around the megalopolis, the entire subway network with over 50 stops, and over 100 new high-rises. There was so much special interest intervention in the Bay bridge saga that everything moved to a crawl. From environmentalists who didn't want the seagulls mating season disturbed, to those who worried about disturbing 100 years of military created pollutants settled on the Bay ground, to unions insisting every materials had to be American made and all workers had to be union labor... The whole thing was a shit show from the start and I assure you, none of those concerned parties gave two shits about the commuters who needed and paid for the bridge.
Australia has always used one constraint or another to justify limiting immigration, except from the UK. The country is essentially a mount of gold on which barely 22 million people live. Why would they care about growth when there's enough wealth in the ground to supply the world with? There's a thought... Nationalize mining, distribute shares of the Australian Mining Corp to all bonafide Australia born citizens and no one would really need to work, except to brew beer and build surfboards. G'Day Mate!
One million people in NSW living in poverty as inequality in Sydney deepens, research shows By Housnia Shams Posted 5h ago https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-12/one-million-in-poverty-nsw-gap-worsening-sydney/102206262 Pensioner Felicita Soriano is feeling the pinch as the cost of living spirals.(ABC News: Housnia Shams) Western Sydney resident Felicita Soriano is on the age pension, but amid the soaring cost of living it's barely enough to make ends meet. "It's hand to mouth, so when I receive it I have to divide the money," she said. "Prices have increased, all the vegetables and fruits … I have to wait until they go on sale." The 74-year-old rents a granny flat with a housemate in Doonside and has a casual retail job. She has moved five times since 2017 and would like to settle down in a permanent home. Ms Soriano said she has been on the public housing wait list for two years. "They told me that I have to wait for 10 years [on the wait list]," she said. "They should not [make] seniors wait long for [public] housing. "Even if they approve it after five years, I don't know if I'll still be alive." Ms Soriano has a casual job to try to make ends meet.(ABC News: Housnia Shams) Ms Soriano is one of many struggling to get by, with new research commissioned by the NSW Council of Social Service (NCOSS) showing 1 million people in NSW are living below the poverty line. The preliminary findings from the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM) drew on 2021 census data. It revealed another 100,000 people slipped into poverty since 2016 — and over half of them were aged over 65. "We know increased cost of living pressures and relentless rate and rental hikes over the past 18 months have compounded these issues — so the reality is likely far worse today," NCOSS CEO Joanna Quilty said. Geographic divides widening The report also found inequality between Sydney suburbs is deepening, Ms Quilty said. "We're seeing suburbs in Western Sydney that already had high rates of disadvantage going backwards," she said. "Meanwhile, suburbs closer to the coast, they're sitting comfortably … and poverty rates have reduced. "We are seeing that divide growing, we're seeing widening social inequality." The highest poverty rates were recorded in the south-western Sydney suburbs of Ashcroft, Busby and Miller, where nearly a third of the population were doing it tough. Greenwich and Riverview on Sydney's Lower North Shore recorded the city's lowest poverty rate of 3.67 per cent. The highest rates of children in poverty were also in Sydney's west, including 41 per cent in South Granville and 38 per cent in Auburn. More than 40 per cent of people in poverty are renters, with around half of tenants in the Western Sydney suburbs of Regents Park, Guildford and South Granville doing it tough. NCOSS CEO Joanna Quilty says an increase in social housing stock is needed to meet demand.(ABC News) Ms Quilty said more investment in social housing was needed to bridge the divide. "Social housing is completely out of reach for so many people … the amount of social housing stock has gone backwards," she said. "The stock available needs to keep pace with population growth, demand and with this rising rate of poverty." There are more than 57,000 individuals and families on the social housing waitlist in NSW and over 18,000 of them are in Western Sydney, according to the Community Housing Industry Association NSW. The NSW government pledged that 30 per cent of homes built on surplus public land will be set aside for social and affordable housing. "Housing is a key priority for the new NSW government — social housing can be a key way to address poverty, giving people in need a stable platform to continue their lives," a NSW government spokesperson said. Tom Nance says investment in social infrastructure can help address growing poverty.(ABC News: Housnia Shams) Centre for Western Sydney manager Tom Nance said there needed to be "targeted investment in people", not just infrastructure in Western Sydney. "It's about investing in programs that break the cycle when we're talking about a lack of educational attainment and unemployment," he said. "We also really need to look at targeted support around cost of living. "If we don't address the issues that are around the kitchen table, such as rising electricity prices, rental and mortgage prices, we're not going to see that gap decrease."
Cost-of-living pressures deepen mental health crisis Financial and crisis counsellors are reporting the highest rates of mental distress they have seen https://www.smh.com.au/healthcare/c...pen-mental-health-crisis-20230428-p5d3y4.html