The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released its Regional Population report for the 2016-17 financial year, which revealed that Melbourne remains the king of the population ponzi, adding an insane 125,424 people to its population in 2016-17, representing growth of 2.7%. Sydney’s population also surged by 101,558 people in 2016-17, representing growth of 2% (see below table).
As shown above, net overseas migration (NOM) into Melbourne (79,974) directly accounted for 64% of the city’s population growth, whereas NOM into Sydney (84,684) accounted for 83% of that city’s growth.
Looking at the time series chart, you can see that Melbourne has dominated the nation’s population growth, leading the way in each and every year since 2004:
In the 13 years to 2017, Melbourne added just over 1.2 million people, whereas Sydney added just under 950,000 people:
Not surprisingly, then, Melbourne’s population is fast catching up with Sydney’s, with the population gap with the other capitals also widening:
No wonder there is such strong public support for reducing immigration, as evidenced by recent opinion polls from the Australian Population Research Institute (54% want lower immigration), Newspoll (56% want lower immigration), and Essential (54% believe Australia’s population is growing too fast and 64% believe immigration is too high).
The problem is two-fold: the sheer immigration intake is far too high, as well as too concentrated into just Sydney and Melbourne, which received 79% of Australia’s capital city NOM in 2016-17.
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