Australian news and politics recap April 6: Labor extends lead after bumpy week for Peter Dutton

Anika Wells is an out and proud Queenslander and she takes a drive-by at Peter Dutton for seeking to abandon the State.

Earlier in the week, he told a Sydney FM station he would seek to live at Kirribilli House on Sydney Harbour – the secondary prime ministerial residence – rather than the Lodge next to Parliament House in Canberra.

“We love Sydney, we love the harbour,” he said.

Ms Wells was talking about Mr Dutton’s change of mind on the need for international studnet caps when she said people could see through someone “who’s not ready for the Lidge or Kirribilli”.

“Let me tell you, I think Queenslanders have been pretty stunned,” she says, speaking on Sky News.

“He may be the first ever Queenslander who’s voluntarily signed up to support New South Wales at State of Origin and to choose to live at Kirribilli.”

Peter Dutton’s focus on immigration is all about the only issue that matters to the voters - the cost of living.

Housing plays a massive part in that, and those Australians watching house prices get higher and their dreams of home ownership fading will be looking for someone to blame.

Will reducing international student numbers help reduce the amount these Australians need to save for a home deposit?

Only time will tell, but as Mr Dutton clarified, it’s part of the bigger picture.

A reporter asks Mr Dutton why he opposed the Albanese Government’s proposed cuts to international students last year.

“Because their plan was no plan at all. Every number that they’ve projected has blown out by hundreds of thousands,” he says.

“The net overseas migration figures, in relation to every component of the migration program, Australia’s Big Australia policy that wasn’t mentioned at the last election has led to pressure on infrastructure, housing and rents.

“The government had no plan at all to deal with this. The plan that we announce today is about getting young Aussies into homes more quickly and helping them afford that home. And that’s what a Coalition government will deliver.”

A reporter asks the Opposition Leader whether he can put a number on how much his gas plan will save Australians.

“Let’s have a look at the $275 the Prime Minister promised at the last election. He looked the Australian people in the eye and said our power bills will come down by $275. He hasn’t mentioned it since.

“Jim Chalmers, in this embarrassing comedy skit, will talk about anything but the $275 figure. Power prices have gone up by $1300. Australians know it by the power bills they get each month, each quarter.

“It’s not just your household power bill that has gone up - it’s also the local IGA store and the local butcher and the local corner store. That’s why grocery prices have gone up by 30 per cent.”

A reporter has told Mr Dutton that University of Australia modelling shows that cutting 80,000 international students could cost the economy more than $5 billion.

But the Opposition Leader says he wants to make sure we can get “young Australians into houses”.

“That’s really our main priority here. The international student market is a great and lucrative market for the universities. They’ve made literally billions of dollars over the last few years,” he says.

“(But) when you’ve got 42 international students to one new accommodation place being built, or unit being built, it doesn’t stack up.”

“Today we’re here to announce on top of our 25 per cent cut to migration in this country, which we have outlined previously, we are going to announce some changes in relation to international student numbers,” Mr Dutton says.

“Now, international student numbers are up by 65 per cent under this Government over the last 12 months. When you think about that, that is what has contributed to the driving up of rents, particularly within Sydney and Melbourne, but capital cities otherwise.

“We want to provide support to regional universities and we put in place a cap which will be 30,000 lower than what Labor has in place or 80,000 lower than what the numbers were just a couple of years ago.

“This is a very significant step that we’re taking. It is all about making sure that we do what we can to help young Australians get into home ownership more quickly and how we can help with the rental crisis that Labor’s created as well.”

“We also announced given the Government has brought in a million people over the last two years which is a 70 per cent increase than any other 2-year period in our country’s history, so there has been this explosion in the big Australia policy under Mr Albanese that he didn’t take to the last election,” the Opposition Leader says.

“Never mentioned it to anyone. Over a five-year period, the Government is predicting it will bring in 1.8 million people. The numbers have blown out.

“So that number is likely to go higher than 2 million people and these people of course all need homes and they want to either buy or rent and in that situation, Australians have been forced out of home ownership, and rents have been driven up and that’s the problem that we want to fix.”

The Oppposition Leader is homing in on housing and immigration today.

“People just can’t find accommodation, rental problems in capital cities, the housing situation in in country is a mess at the moment.

“I want to make sure that we can clean up Labor’s mess and one of the ways in which we’re going to do that is we’re going to provide $5 billion to create 500,000 homes so we’ll work with councils to create opportunities to help pay for critical infrastructure like water, like roads, like sewerage and that way we can bring those blocks of land online.

“We are going to introduce a ban on foreign buyers so we don’t have those foreign buyers competing with young Australians at auctions and that’s a very important part of our plan as well.

“We have also made it known that we’re going to deregister the CFMEU which is really doubled the cost of construction in this country and that’s just driven up the cost of housing as well.”

We’re told the Opposition Leader will hold a press conference at 7.50am AEST.

We’ll bring you all the latest from that appearance as it happens.

The Coalition has pledged to cap international student numbers in a bid to ease the housing crisis.

Releasing a joint statement this morning, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton - along with Liberal front benchers Sussan Ley, Michael Sukkar, Sarah Henderson and Dan Tehan - said a Dutton Coalition government would reduce the number of new international students starting at Australia universities by 30,000.

“Under our plan, there will be at most 115,000 overseas student commencements each year at publicly funded universities and at most 125,000 in the VET, private university and non-university higher education sectors.

“This will result in a reduction of:

• Over 80,000 in annual new overseas student commencements compared with 2023 levels (the latest year of publicly available data); and

• At least 30,000 new overseas student commencements each year compared to Labor’s botched 2025 allocation, which was designed to favour metropolitan universities.

“To achieve the reduction at public universities, a percentage cap will be applied from 2026 to the share of new foreign student commencements at these institutions.

“The cap is expected to be around 25 per cent but will be determined in government with access to the latest data and in consultation with the sector. Based on 2023 enrolments data, this is expected to overwhelmingly affect metropolitan, rather than regional universities, where pressure on housing and infrastructure is most acute.”