Australians to vote with feet for crowded city life, Treasury predicts
Australia’s existing big-city population centres will cement their status over the coming decade as the nation’s busiest, densest places to live, growing at near twice the pace of regional and rural areas.
Despite hopes and sporadic political initiatives to encourage people to find alternatives to places such as Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney, officials forecasts predict the weight of population growth will fall on the usual suspects.
The trend — outlined in this year’s annual Treasury population statement — will do nothing to ease fears over housing shortages or critical infrastructure to encourage Australians to make their lives outside the traditional eastern seaboard agglomerations.
Population growth is set to ease from the pandemic-driven 2.5 per cent surge recorded in 2022-23, to 2.1 per cent this year and 1.2 per cent in 2026-27, when 28.4 million people will live in the country.
By 2064-5, the population will have topped 41.2 million from 27.3 million this year, according to a long-term assumption that annual growth will have slowed below 1 per cent. Historically, such forecasts have tended to be under-estimates.
Net overseas migration (NOM), which is the main driver of overall population growth, is forecast to moderate from its peak in 2022-23 at 537,000, which followed a sharp contraction in that number during the pandemic.
The NOM is predicted to average 225,000 through the second half of this decade.
The fertility rate, which has been on a steady decline since the early 1960s, is set to stabilise at 1.62 births per woman by 2031-32.
In a warning to big-city planners, the Treasury says the combined population of capital cities is projected to grow at nearly twice as fast as “rest-of-state areas” through 2034-35.
Sydney to stay ahead of Melbourne
In a blow to the ambition of some Melburnians to eclipse Sydney as Australia’s largest city, the Treasury population modelling team has also scrapped its forecast made last year that Greater Melbourne’s population will overtake Greater Sydney’s within a decade.
Still, Victoria, along with WA, will experience the fastest rates of state growth, while Tasmania and South Australia will be the slowest.
Greater Sydney will expand from 5.6 million 2023-24 to 6.5 million over the next ten years, followed by Greater Melbourne expanding to 5.4 million from 6.4 million, and Greater Brisbane going from 2.8 million to 3.3 million.
Alongside the economic impacts of these shifts, an ongoing big-city trend is likely to exacerbate political consequences.
For instance, the department believes Greater Brisbane will be home to more than half Queensland’s population from 2025-26 for the first time since 1978.
Perth will go from 2.4 million people this year — roughly 80 per cent of WA’s population — to 2.9 million in a decade from now.
Adelaide is forecast to shift from 1.5 million to 1.6 million, as ongoing net overseas migration is “largely offset” by migration of South Australians to other states.
Foreign arrivals are also expected to keep Greater Hobart from contracting, with a population of 270,000 in 2034-35 compared to today’s 254,000, which accounts for 44 per cent of Tasmania’s population.
Similar trends are at play in Darwin, which will get to 175,000 residents from the current 152,000.
The nation’s capital will expand from 474,000 to 541,000.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the government was “already managing the major population trends” Treasury has identified.
“Our Migration Strategy is ensuring our migration system works in the national interest. Net overseas migration has come down from its peak and is at its lowest level since the pandemic.
“While departures are taking longer to normalise than [previously expected], we’re already starting to see overseas arrivals come down to more manageable levels and they’ll fall further as more of our policies take effect.”
The government yesterday unveiled a workaround to impose effective caps on international students after it failed to pass a law to that effect. A new ministerial directive will see a “go slow” on visa applications for students beyond limits set for each university.
