Perth is Australia’s fastest growing metropolis, with tens of thousands of residents fleeing unaffordable Sydney every year as record high immigration pushes population growth in the capital to new record levels.
New data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics released on Tuesday shows capital cities added 517,200 people in the last financial year, for an overall population growth of 3 per cent.
Beidar Cho, the government’s head of demography, said record population growth in Australia’s biggest cities ‘largely driven by net overseas migration’.
In Melbourne, Adelaide and Canberra, overseas migrants accounted for nine-tenths of population growth.
Meanwhile, in Sydney, Hobart and Darwin, the number of foreigners settling exceeded the total net population growth, reflecting a massive exodus to other parts of Australia.
More than two-thirds or 67.5 percent of Australia’s population lives in a capital city – or 17.991 million people in a country of 26.6 million.
Perth is Australia’s fastest growing city, with tens of thousands of residents fleeing unaffordable Sydney every year as record high immigration pushes the capital’s population growth to a new record (pictured by Cottesloe Beach)
Hobart is in the extraordinary position of having a zero birth rate as more and more residents are also leaving Adelaide, Canberra and Darwin for another part of Australia.
While Sydney and Melbourne receive the largest share of foreign migrants, Perth was Australia’s fastest growing capital with a growth rate of 3.6 percent in 2022-2023.
This made it Australia’s fourth largest city, home to 2.309 million people.
The overseas migration of 59,331 people represented 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 average house price rising 18.6 per cent in the past year to a still relatively affordable $718,560, CoreLogic data shows.
Despite Melbourne being the most locked down city in the world during the pandemic, Australia had the second highest growth rate at 3.3 percent.
This happened 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 moving in, raising the population to 5.207 million people.
Sydney remains Australia’s most populous city with 5.451 million residents.
But the population growth of 2.8 percent was below the national average, reflecting an exodus of 38,425 residents before 28,511 births.
The scoreboard of resident departures outweighs the number of new babies, in a city where the median house price of $1.4 million is a third higher than the capital’s median of $949,410.
Sydney remains Australia’s most populous city with 5.451 million residents. But the population growth of 2.8 percent was below the national average, reflecting an exodus of 38,425 residents (pictured is Wynyard train station)
New data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics released on Tuesday shows capital cities added 517,200 people in the last financial year, representing a population growth of 3 per cent
The overseas migration of 156,616 people in Australia’s busiest city was higher than the total population growth of 146,702.
Brisbane was Australia’s third fastest growing city with a population increase of 3.1 percent, with 51,801 new foreigners accounting for 63.8 percent of the 81,220 increase in new residents – bringing the population to 2.707 million.
In Adelaide, with a smaller population growth of 2 per cent, the 26,471 overseas migrants made up 94 per cent of the increase from 28,057, bringing the total population to 1.446 million.
Immigration is also a major driver of population growth in less populated parts of Australia, where more residents are leaving than entering.
Hobart had Australia’s weakest population growth rate: 0.5 percent, in a city of just 253,654, with zero natural growth and 1,961 leaving.
But the 2,780 overseas migrants moving to Australia was still double the net population increase of 1,165, accounting for deaths and moves to another part of Australia.
In Darwin it was a similar story: the 2,591 migrants were double the net population increase of 1,582 in a city of 150,736 people.
In Canberra, the 8,541 new migrants made up 88.5 per cent of the 9,651 new residents in the national capital of 466,566 people.
