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]
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