The minute the Australian Bureau of Statistics released its latest report on population growth last week, the usual offenders got worked up, hand-wringing over immigrants and claiming Australia is “full”.
The report recorded an addition of 1.3 million people in the 12 months between September 2022 and 2023, of which 659,800 people were due to net overseas migration. In percentage terms, it was the biggest one year increase since Robert Menzies was prime minister in 1952.
There has been a surge in the number of deaths over the past four years, while births are falling. This is Australia’s demographic destiny.Credit: Peter Rae
But what those decrying the report ignored is the homegrown demographic trouble facing this nation. Australians are dying at record levels while the number of babies being born is sliding down a cliff.
Population growth is determined by three elements: immigration, births and deaths. The difference between births and deaths is called the “natural” increase (or decrease). The ABS figures, which showed a surge in net overseas migration, also revealed a further collapse in the natural increase. Over the 12-month period within the report, Australia’s natural population increase was 111,000. For the same time period between September 2018-19 the natural increase was 139,000. That’s a 20 per cent drop driven by a 3 per cent fall in births and an 11.3 per cent increase in deaths in just four years. If you go back to 2013, the fall in the natural increase is roughly a third.
Over the past year, NSW and Tasmania would have depopulated if not for immigration.
Only one state, Victoria, recorded more births over the past year when compared to the 2018–19 figures. The number of births in NSW, by contrast, fell by more than 6 per cent while they dropped almost 9 per cent in the ACT.
That the number of births is falling, even with roughly 1.3 million more people in the country is significant.
On the other side of this story is deaths.
Forget sky-high migration, Australia’s got bigger population problems
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27.03.2024
The minute the Australian Bureau of Statistics released its latest report on population growth last week, the usual offenders got worked up, hand-wringing over immigrants and claiming Australia is “full”.
The report recorded an addition of 1.3 million people in the 12 months between September 2022 and 2023, of which 659,800 people were due to net overseas migration. In percentage terms, it was the biggest one year increase since Robert Menzies was prime minister in 1952.
There has been a........
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