This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
SYDNEY’s population has smashed the 5 million ceiling – the first Australian city to reach that milestone, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
ABS director of demography, Beidar Cho, said 5,005,400 people now live in the New South Wales capital – up 82,800 from the previous year.
“It took Sydney almost 30 years, from 1971 to 2000, to grow from 3 million to 4 million people, but only half that time to reach its next million,” she said.
Whilst Sydney is the leader, the ABS data shows Melbourne is Australia’s fastest growing capital city, increasing by 2.4%, well ahead of Sydney’s 1.7%.
Melbourne trails Sydney with a population total of 4,641,636 people – up 107,770 on the previous year.
Brisbane recorded growth of 1.8% with a population of 2,349,699; followed by Perth with 1.3% to 2,066,564 people; Canberra also with 1.3% to 396,294; Hobart by 0.8% to 222,802 and Darwin also by 0.8% to 143,629.
Adelaide was the slowest growing capital city, increasing by 9,371 people or 0.7% to 1,326,354 in the past year.
In total Australia’s population increased by 1.4% to 24,128,876.
The Top 10 largest growth by population was dominated by Melbourne with five suburbs.
- South Morang (Melbourne) 64,354, up 4.971
- Cranbourne East (Melbourne) 23,901, up 4,956
- Craigieburn – Mickleham 52,848 (Melbourne), up 4,491
- Yanchep (Perth) 18,904, up 4,289
- Point Cook (Melbourne) 50,774, up 3,512
- Baldivis (Perth) 32,817, up 3,389
- Cobbitty – Leppington (Sydney) 15,440, up 3,338
- Epping (Melbourne) 42,236, up 3,226
- Riverstone – Marsden Park (Sydney) 16,492, up 3,146
- Ellenbrook (Perth) 37,204, up 3,141.
Meanwhile the ABS found eight of the 10 areas that experienced the highest population decline were mining towns or service centres associated with mining. These included Mount Isa (-510 people) and Emerald (-260) in Queensland, Broken Hill (-310) in New South Wales, and Leinster – Leonora (-330), Boulder (-270), Kambalda – Coolgardie – Norseman and Meekatharra (both -210), all in Western Australia.
Leinster – Leonora, in the northern goldfields area of Western Australia also recorded the fastest decline in population, falling by 6.1% in 2015-16. This was followed by Meekatharra (-5.1%) in Western Australia’s mid-west, the outer Perth suburb of Cooloongup (-4.6%) and Kambalda – Coolgardie – Norseman (-3.8%) in Western Australia’s south-west.
Australian Property Journal
