Over the past year or so, I have ridiculed the new found push by Coalition politicians towards decentralisation, noting that this is a pipe dream based on the settlement pattern of new migrants, which have overwhelmingly chosen to flood the major cities.
My view was initially based on data from the Productivity Commission’s 2016 Migrant Intake into Australia report, which revealed that 86% of immigrants lived in the major cities of Australia in 2011 (mostly Sydney and Melbourne), whereas only 65% of the Australian-born population did:
However, it was confirmed by the 2016 Census, which revealed identical results, with 86% of new migrants (1.11 million) in the five years to 2016 settling in Australia’s cities, versus just 14% (187,000) that settled in Australia regional areas over the same period.
As noted by the ABS:
In 2016, Sydney had the highest overseas-born population of all capital cities (1,773,496), followed by Melbourne (1,520,253) and Perth (702,545). The 2016 Census also reveals that those born overseas were more likely to live in a capital city (83%), a much higher percentage than people born in Australia.
The concentration of migrants into the cities has become even more extreme recently, with just 6% settling in Australia’s regions in 2017-18, according to the Department of Home Affairs, and 86% of skilled migrants settling in just Sydney and Melbourne alone.
One side effect of the relentless migrant flood is that it has forced incumbent residents to leave the cities for the regions. From The Australian:
More than 400,000 people moved from Australian capital cities to regional areas in the five years to 2016, a report shows.
This size of the migration shows the federal government doesn’t need to coax new Australians to move to regional areas, the Regional Australia Institute says.
Being the biggest magnet for migrants, as well as most crowded and expensive city in Australia, Sydney highlights the above phenomenon:
While around 85,000 net migrants settled in Sydney in 2016-17, around 18,000 incumbent residents left. Many of these residents would have been pushed out by Sydney’s ridiculously high cost of living (e.g. housing and tolls), as well as its degrading quality of life.
This process will continue as Sydney’s population expands to nearly 10 million people over the next half century on the back of relentless mass immigration:
