Perth is Australia’s fastest-growing metropolis, with tens of thousands of residents fleeing unaffordable Sydney each year as record immigration pushes the capital’s population growth to a new all-time high.
New Australian Bureau of Statistics data released on Tuesday showed capital cities added 517,200 people over the last financial year, for an overall population growth rate of 3 per cent.
Beidar Cho, the government’s head of demography, said the record population growth in Australia’s largest cities was “largely driven by net overseas migration.”
In Melbourne, Adelaide and Canberra, foreign migrants accounted for nine-tenths of population growth.
Meanwhile, in Sydney, Hobart and Darwin, the number of foreign arrivals was greater than the overall net population growth number due to a huge exodus to other parts of Australia.
More than two-thirds or 67.5 per cent of Australia’s population lives in a capital city, or 17.991 million people in a nation of 26.6 million.
Perth is Australia’s fastest growing city, with tens of thousands of residents fleeing unaffordable Sydney each year as record immigration pushes the capital’s population growth to a new all-time high (pictured, Cottesloe Beach )
Hobart is in the extraordinary position of having a zero birth rate, as more residents also leave Adelaide, Canberra and Darwin for another part of Australia.
While Sydney and Melbourne receive the highest proportion of foreign migrants, Perth was Australia’s fastest growing capital, growing at a rate of 3.6 per cent in 2022-23.
This made it the fourth largest city in Australia, with 2.309 million inhabitants.
Overseas migration of 59,331 people accounted for 73 per cent of the Western Australian capital’s annual population increase of 81,318 new residents, including 11,329 net births.
Perth is also Australia’s hottest property market, with the median house price soaring 18.6 per cent over the past year to a still relatively affordable $718,560, CoreLogic data showed.
Melbourne, despite being the most locked down city in the world during the pandemic, had the second highest growth rate in Australia, at 3.3 per cent.
This occurred when 6,678 people moved and 27,390 babies were born.
Overseas migration accounted for 87.6 percent of the city’s 167,484 new residents, with 146,772 foreigners arriving, increasing the population to 5.207 million people.
Sydney remains Australia’s most populous city with 5.451 million inhabitants.
But its population growth of 2.8 percent was lower than the national average, due to an exodus of 38,425 residents, ahead of 28,511 births.
The marker of departing residents exceeds the number of new babies, in a city where the median house price of $1.4 million is a third higher than the capital city’s median price of $949,410.
Sydney remains Australia’s most populous city with 5.451 million inhabitants. But its population growth of 2.8 per cent was below the national average, due to an exodus of 38,425 residents (pictured, Wynyard railway station).
New data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics released on Tuesday showed capital cities added 517,200 people over the last financial year, representing a population growth rate of 3 per cent.
Overseas migration of 156,616 people in Australia’s most populous city was greater than overall population growth of 146,702.
Brisbane was Australia’s third fastest growing city with a population increase of 3.1 per cent, with 51,801 new foreigners accounting for 63.8 per cent of the increase of 81,220 new residents, bringing the population to 2.707 million.
In Adelaide, with a population growth rate of less than 2 per cent, the 26,471 foreign migrants accounted for 94 per cent of the increase of 28,057, bringing the total population to 1.446 million.
Immigration is also a major driver of population growth in less populated areas of Australia, where more residents move out than enter.
Hobart had the weakest population growth rate in Australia, at 0.5 per cent, in a city of just 253,654 people, with no natural increase and 1,961 people moving.
But the 2,780 foreign migrants who arrived still represented double the net population increase of 1,165, accounting for deaths and relocations to another part of Australia.
It was a similar story in Darwin, where the 2,591 immigrants doubled the net population increase of 1,582 in a city of 150,736 people.
In Canberra, the 8,541 new immigrants represented 88.5 per cent of the 9,651 new residents in the national capital of 466,566 people.