The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has today released its annual migration report, which reveals that the proportion of Australians born overseas hit the highest level in more than 120 years at 28.5% (6.9 million people) – a level not seen since the gold rushes of the late-1880s. A decade ago, 24.6% of the population was born overseas.
The biggest increase has been from those born in India and China, which have both more than doubled over the past decade:
Over the last 10 years, the proportion of the Australian population who were born in the United Kingdom decreased from 5.5% in 2006 to 5.0% in 2016. Conversely, the proportions increased for people born in New Zealand (from 2.1% to 2.5%), China (from 1.2% to 2.2%) and India (from 0.8% to 1.9%).
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In Victoria, there were higher proportions of residents born in India (2.3%), Italy (1.5%), Vietnam (1.4%), Greece (1.1%) and Sri Lanka (0.9%) than any other state or territory. New South Wales had the highest proportion of people born in China (2.6%) and Lebanon (0.9%). The Northern Territory had the highest proportion of people born in the Philippines (1.9%), while Western Australia recorded the highest proportion of people born in South Africa (1.7%) and Malaysia (1.2%). The proportion of residents born in Germany, the Netherlands and the United States of America were fairly evenly spread across all states and territories:
As expected, most overseas migrants have been driven into our major centres, with New South Wales gaining 71,200, Victoria 65,000, and Queensland 20,000:
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The below table shows a breakdown of the types of visa groups which have contributed to final net overseas migration. As you can see, so-called ‘temporary’ visa holders were the main contributors to NOM in the 2015 financial year:
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For years, Australia’s NOM has been driven by so-called ‘temporary’ migration. But if immigration was genuinely ‘temporary’, then we would have seen a short-term spike in net migration before levels fell back down to long-run norms as departures matched arrivals.
The fact that net migration flows have been high for 12 years suggests that this notion of ‘temporary’ is a furphy. The Government’s own projections for strong immigration for the next 40 years also blows away this ‘temporary’ claim.
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How can population grow remain at historically high levels for 40 years if immigration is mostly “temporary”?
Australia’s immigration intake can hardly be classified as ‘temporary’ if the migrants never leave.
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness.
Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.
