Higher education provider Navitas saw $100 million wiped from its shares listed on the stock exchange despite posting a strong increase in earnings. Investors sold-off of on warnings that  growth rates in the coming years may be slowing down due to several factors including the crackdown on student visa rorters.

Navitas has written off its Indian recruitment business Study Overseas and the Navitas Resources Institute in the second half of the year, according to a report in The Australian.

Other media reports indicate that a key factor for the write-down is tougher assessments of applicants from Nepal and India. Both universities and the department of immigration consider these countries high risk markets for visa rorts, said the group's chief executive Rod Jones.

"We initially had significant enrolments from countries like Nepal and India," Mr Jones told the AAP. "However, we made a deliberate decision four months ago to reduce those enrolments because we saw lot of the students were not genuine in that they were interested in migration rather than education."

He however said India, alongside China and Vietnam, continues to be one of its biggest markets.

Earlier, the Australian reported that there was increasing evidence that students were entering the country by enrolling in a government-approved university or college under the streamlined visa processing programme, and then jumping ship to a cheap private college to finish their qualification at a fraction of the cost while ­remaining eligible for post-study work rights.

The recent departure of numerous executives from the department of immigration is not a result of staff being sacked but rather voluntary departures, says the DIBP.

In a sharp response to an article in The Canberra Times – which reported the department was facing "the public service's greatest executive brain drain since the 1980s, with a quarter of its upper ranks either shown the door or turning their backs on the department since its takeover by customs" – the DIBP has told the paper that the story published on Friday contained "inaccuracies, incomplete information and speculation" regarding departures, and that "the secretary [Michael Pezzullo] has stated that a number of ... officers have [decided to move to other departments or] chosen to leave the organisation voluntarily".

The Canberra Times has confirmed the toll of departures, either already announced or coming up, has reached 30, from a senior executive cohort of 119 in June 2014. Four deputy secretaries, nine first assistant secretaries and 17 assistant secretaries have now confirmed their departures or are expected soon to do so. An unprecedented 10 of them have opted to follow their old boss Martin Bowles to the Health Department.

“Insiders have complained about the management style of the new regime and there has been unhappiness from veteran public servants forced to wear the military-style Australian Border Force uniform to work each day after a lifetime of civilian service.

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A survey of 3,000 Chinese international travellers by the Hotels.com accommodation booking website has found that more holidaymakers from China want to go to Australia over the next year than anywhere else.

This is important news for Tourism Australia. The number of Chinese tourists in Australia surged some 19% over the last year, and they spent about AU$6 billion during their stay making them one of the most important markets for tourism, says Tourism Australia (TA) managing director John O'Sullivan.

Tourism Australia’s aims is to attract over 1 million Chinese visitors and see them spend at least AU$13 billion each year, by 2020.

Given the latest figures, Mr O’Sullivan is confident it’s on track to do that.

"Over the last four years the Chinese market has been our fastest growing source of visitors to our country as well as the fastest growing in terms of value", O'Sullivan told a tourism trade show in Shanghai citing that Chinese market has been (growing) at 18 percent on average in terms of both number of visitors and how much they spend in Australia.

Gathering momentum recently is a petition in change.org to allow the holders of the now defunct retirement visa (sc410) to be considered for permanent resident visas.

Currently, the estimated 3000 holders of this retirement visa have no rights to a permanent resident visa in Australia, regardless of how long they have been in Australia.

A media release from BERIA, a voluntary organisation for retirement visa holders estimates that many of its members have lived here for a long time with at least 100 retirees having lived here for over 20 years.

David Humphries, Policy Adviser for BERIA, said that BERIA is mounting a direct campaign and petition asking that the Government to allow retirement visa holders who have lived in Australia for at least 10 years to apply for permanent residency.

‘We believe that that this is a reasonable request,’ he said, ‘and totally in keeping with the spirit of the Australian notion of “a fair go”. Mr Humphries added that BERIA has been campaigning for 8 years but has only received assurances from both sides of politics that retirement visa holders would be granted permanent residency. “But we’re no nearer achieving permanent residency than we were eight years ago. Politicians have been willing to give words of support, but unwilling to take action,” he said.

The main argument against permanent residency is the cost of health care to which most visa holders are not currently eligible.

We’ll start with a clue: it’s in Australia. A report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), studied and ranked the 362 regions of its 34 member nations according to nine measures of well-being.

The result had Australia at the top in the country-by-country rankings, followed by Norway, Canada, Sweden and the United States. However, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Turkey and Mexico were judged to be the hardest places to live among O.E.C.D. countries, and all 10 of the bottom regional rankings went to Mexican states.

The report states that there is a growing awareness that we must go beyond GDP and economic statistics to get a fuller understanding of how society is doing. But it is also crucial to zoom in on how life is lived.

“Where you live has an impact on your quality of life, and in return, you contribute to making your community a better place. Comparable measures of regional well-being offer a new way to gauge what policies work and can empower a community to act to achieve higher well-being for its citizens” noted the report.

Used in the report were nine measures: education, jobs, income (measured at purchasing power parity to correct for cost-of-living differences between countries), safety, health, environment, civic engagement, access to broadband and housing.