Figures show Australia’s population passing 27 million
There are now officially more than 27 million people living in Australia. This is well ahead of all predictions with the country seeing its largest ever annual population growth.
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00:00 I think it's good for us to have these milestones, to have a bit of a conversation about population,
00:06 about demographics. Certainly me and my colleagues were crowded around the monitor to watch it
00:10 tick over. A bit of an exciting moment for demographers.
00:12 The nerds!
00:13 That's right, we were there.
00:15 And here is this moment, there it is again. And so it's really interesting to dig into
00:20 this now. So, and we've got a few graphs to illustrate this as you talk through it. So
00:25 explain for us the pace at which this is happening.
00:30 Well it's record population increase at the moment, Joe. You can see that spike. The post-COVID
00:35 recovery, we had a couple of years there where we had closed borders and so we actually ended
00:39 up with negative growth from migration. But since then we've more than made up for it.
00:45 In fact in the last 12 months we've added to our population 624,000 people. And so that's
00:51 not only a record, it's a new record by about 41% over the past record. So rapid population
00:57 increase in the last year.
00:58 Is that going to come off pretty quickly though?
01:01 Well the government is, the Federal Government is easing back on the numbers. 83% of this
01:06 growth is overseas migration. The smallest part is natural increase. So it's entirely
01:10 policy settings and there was the decision made to ramp it up and have a bit of catch-up.
01:15 Now that catch-up post-COVID was recovered, that little dip in about four months. So we've
01:20 more than made up for the losses there and we're at a whole new record now.
01:24 And so is this being managed appropriately in terms of the provision of infrastructure,
01:30 education, health?
01:32 Not if you ask people trying to buy a home, people struggling to find rental availability.
01:37 You know the fact is that this record population increase and record migration increase is
01:41 coming right at the time that there are infrastructure bottlenecks. People are struggling around
01:46 education and health supply and people trying to afford a home, they're really up against
01:51 it even though there's government policies around new home construction.
01:55 And what about the environment, which is something that obviously comes up whenever we're talking
01:59 about population growth. But Australia is a huge country. There are a lot more small
02:06 places in the world with a lot more people on them.
02:09 Well you know that's right and certainly you know Australia can cope with some level of
02:14 growth but we are very urbanised as well. Most of our population around our existing
02:19 cities and there's a trend towards densification of course. But you know for any couples that
02:24 are saying oh maybe we'll hold off on having children and there are a number that think
02:28 about that because of sustainability reasons and we do have the lowest birth rate ever
02:32 recorded right now. That's more than made up for in these record population increases
02:37 through migration.
02:38 But there are pressures on the environment as well?
02:41 Yeah well there are and the fact is that record growth requires record home construction,
02:47 rezoning, land release, infrastructure development and the challenge is that if we've got numbers
02:52 now that are way beyond any of the previous population modelling and as you said this
02:57 has hit a lot earlier than was predicted, then suddenly you've got a lot of catch up
03:01 there and it can be hard to suddenly ramp up that infrastructure provision and obviously
03:06 there's environmental and other costs that come with that just to deal with the current
03:11 arrivals let alone existing demand that was already in the system.
03:14 And so what can be done to better manage this?
03:16 Well I think getting back to more of the long term averages in terms of our growth, the
03:21 more sustainable footing is advised. The long term average annual migration intake was about
03:27 $240,000. We've just hit $520,000 so way beyond what has been the near term average. Probably
03:36 also trying to get the balance between natural increase as well as migration and natural
03:41 increase is a very small proportion so we need both. We need new births, we need the
03:47 young people in our population and the stimulation that provides long term as well as of course
03:52 plugging skills gaps through migration.
03:55 And so what do you see happening with the Australian population over the coming decades
03:59 in terms of getting to $30 and $40 million?
04:02 Well you know it used to take about three to four years to add a new million. This last
04:06 one we've done in less than two years, the next one will hit next year, next August we'll
04:10 be at $28 million. So that's how quickly they're coming around these days and I think getting
04:14 a bit more moderation around that will be helpful, particularly just to deal with already
04:19 the shortfalls in housing supply relative to the demand. I think that's probably sensible
04:25 and there certainly is a government focus on paring down this, getting to a little bit
04:29 more of a sustainability number with the growth but the fact is that whether it be universities
04:35 bringing in overseas students or the big end of town that's looking for skills shortages
04:39 through migration, we've got an economy tooled up for these sorts of numbers and it can be
04:44 hard to suddenly get back to what has been more average numbers.
04:48 [BLANK_AUDIO]