I don't think the dropping international student enrolment will have any direct/immediate impact on local UAI cutoffs, because they are completely separate quota systems. The government/unis would need extra money if they are to fund more HECS places. In fact a drop in international enrolment implies that they need to find that extra money from somewhere else. I reckon they'll probably increase the number of full-fee places to cover that up. BTW, the demand from local enrolment is also dropping this year (down by over 2000), not that it'll have any impact on UAI cutoffs. In fact the cutoff depends on individual course programs. For some degrees they set a cutoff beforehand, and even if there are still vacancies after taking all applicants with the required UAI, they won't lower the cutoff mark so that they can take more ppl. So let's hope that your top preferences don't work that way