Where are Australians from now? In many countries such a question is boring. In Australia the question of where we’re from is fascinating — because the answer keeps changing.
In 1891 three out of every 10 Australians were born overseas (and had arrived by ship!)
By 1947 the share of Australians born overseas had fallen enormously to one in every 10. But that was the low point. Today it has risen again to three in 10 Australians born abroad.
While migration changes slowly, the countries we come from change fast. Once upon a time the major countries migrants came from were England, then Italy, Greece, Vietnam. Now south and central Asia are the focus, with migrants from India and Sri Lanka currently making up a major share of Australian migration.
The most recent data on migration are especially fascinating as they capture the period July 2019 to June 2020, and so include the onset of the pandemic. This is therefore the first official look into how the pandemic has affected the make-up of Australia’s immigration.
The first thing you notice in the data? The big group of people migrating to Australia is Australians.
I’m always travelling, I love being free, so I keep leaving the sun and the sea, but I still call Australia home. And when the world gets scary, I want to come home.
As the next graph shows, Aussies were flowing out into the rest of the world at a steady pace for many years. Aussies were everywhere. For a long time you couldn’t venture into a rural backwater or a financial centre in any part of the globe without some friendly person giving you a hearty “G’day”. Oaxaca to Siberia, Oxford to Shibuya, there would always be someone there in a Kathmandu fleece jumper, be they tourist, English teacher or fugitive Bitcoin trader.
These days the data suggest those people have come back home (or are still trying to). Almost 20,000 more Aussies came to Australia than left last financial year.
The pandemic has upset many long-standing patterns.
For example, net migration from China has reversed, with more Chinese-born people leaving Australia than coming to Australia. Many of these returns are likely to be students. Students will hopefully come back to Australia if vaccinations ever let us beat the pandemic back. But given the way Sino-Australian relations seem to have deteriorated, such a resumption of usual service is not guaranteed. We might get students back but not necessarily Chinese students. It will be interesting to see if this metric ever flips back to the positive.
Where are we going?
As the world became unsettled, so did Australia. Our usual eddies of interstate migration were muddled. The biggest change was the reversal of the polarity of the magnet that is Victoria. The southern state had been the second most popular state to come to for years, with Aussies flocking to Melbourne.
But the allure of graffiti, football and superior baristas suddenly faded in 2019-20. Especially since you couldn’t leave your house to see the graffiti, the football was being played in Queensland and the baristas were all furloughed at home on JobKeeper. (Yes I exaggerate — but I have licence! I am Victorian, I love it here, I lived through the lockdown. Please don’t roast me in the comments!)
What is interesting to observe is that the pandemic made no difference to Australians’ proclivity for leaving New South Wales. Presumably, once people realised the pandemic was not going to make house prices more affordable, the allure was lost and they all moved to Queensland. About 21,000 people left NSW in 2019-20, down only slightly from 22,000 in the year before.
Queensland, though? Everybody wants in. As the next chart shows, Brisbane is far and away the state capital to which everyone wants to move. The chart shows net internal migration, i.e. movement inside Australia by people who already live here. That combo of warm weather and relatively affordable property was already attractive, but when you throw in success against COVID-19, Queensland looks even sunnier.
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Queensland is the destination of choice- The reason is that the government took decisive action regarding Covid – shut its borders – protected its population like WA [ look how the gratefulelectorate responded in WA] the same will happen in Queensland next election.
Victorians and Sydneysiders are flocking north in droves – due to incompetence in Victoria and the tepid nonchalance of NSW, which will have a horrendous outbreak if they don’t vaccinate the majority of Sydney siders.
The problem is the human termite mounds of the urban population where the houses are built on minimal allotments and one can pass a glass of water between house windows – that is where the pandemic smoulders. In the Sydney and Melbournian ghettos.
Nice. “Sydney and Melbourne ghettos” Me thinks the virus smoulders in your head more than anywhere else.
Interesting, but, data issue on definitions for past two decades since ‘population growth’, ‘immigration’ and ‘NOM net overseas migration’ became dog whistles in media, masquerading as an environmental issue.
NOM has little to do with status e.g. ‘immigration’ vs. ‘migration’ in the NOM which is simply a linguistic (but wilful) coincidence i.e. NOM is a barometer measuring all border movements, not new permanent migrants (many onshore anyway).
Further, even the ABS, in turn media too, misrepresents the NOM on graphical presentations by not highlighting the expansion of the NOM definition in 2006 spiking population (to 12/16+ months sweeping up more temporary students) by the UNPD, leading to inflated headline data (presented as media headlines for increased existential angst) and also blaming for environmental degradation vs. fossil fuels).
The NOM merely represents ‘churn over’ on top of the population base and often does not account well for residents in Australia having a part time presence e.g. retirees, grey nomads, students et al.
The longer term issue or importance of ‘churn over’ is that they are overwhelmingly ‘net financial contributors’ helping to support budgets through GST, PAYE, private Medicare etc., as our working age population declines in proportion to the increasing numbers of low/no tax paying retirees and pensioners, with neither crashing budgets nor increasing taxes (this is changing elsewhere, increased taxes being mooted)
I can smell a pro-growth type a mile away.
Using the term dog whistle is a dog whistle in and of itself.
“Shut down all debate, we don’t want it”.
I beg to differ.
Population growth is a big deal.
And yeah it does impact on the environment.
Moreover our glorious political leaders have been meticulously excluding the rest of us from any say-any knowledge really-of the plans for the nation population wise.
Wherever you stand on the issue indefinite growth isn’t an option.
Too easy for Australians to take the white nationalist view of the nation and blame other people… spare me the cliches or meaningless barbs of ‘pro-growth’ as if nobody benefits while GDP growth is mostly services, not smokestack industries, e.g. includes digital real estate transaction transfers via keyboards, green industries….
Beware the libertarian trap e.g. Brexit, take a hit economically to avoid immigration but no impact on the top 1-10%….
This astro turfing or greenwashing of racism has its roots in the eugenics movement (joined at hip with radical right libertarian socioeconomics), was encouraged by the fossil fuel supported ZPG in ’70s with Paul ‘population bomb’ Ehlrich and white nationalist (now deceased) John ‘passive eugenics’ supported by Rockefeller Bros. (Exxon), Ford and Carnegie Foundations; in Australia ZPG became SPA with support of Ehrlich and Tanton; very useful to counter climate change and global warming to deflect from fossil fuels and need for constraints.
John Tanton has his own extremist file at SPLC in the US, he admired the white Oz policy and his network including FAIR and CIS which informed Trump White House policy and of course related to groups on Capitol Hill.
People should not have growth in their well being e.g. having access to public services, clean air etc. because some people decided they have had enough growth and falsely correlate it with fossil fuel/industrial type degradation then blame ‘immigrants’; doing the dirty work of the top 1%.
Hmm- there are ghettos in Qld too. QLD Marketing has sucked many into poorness in apparent paradise. Remember the song “living in qld is not ok – can’t find the money to pay the rent – trying to touch the sun”. Amalgamated councils will take what you can no longer afford. There is more afoot than the OECD push from Qld and Morrison’s “come to qld with cheap flights”.
The coalition is doing coalition things in a labour state. Covert things happen under an overt government. Alp overt. Coalition covert. It works very well just quietly. Deflects focus away from workings while in opposition.
yes there are ghettos and Gold coast and Brisbane are only 5 to 10 years behind Sydney -every time I visit they seem to be replicating the southern states they appear not to have town planning departments.- just like the southern states, who have compliance departments but no planning departments.
As a Brisbanite for 50 years plus all I can say is…you can have it.
We’re it not for my kids I’d be gone in a shot.
Relentless heat that worsens year in year out (last summer was a happy exception), God awful traffic 24/7 and the obligatory developer monoliths now encroaching on the suburbs all play their part.
It ain’t the place to be.
Net internal migration: it looks like the capital cities have lost 31,735 people to the regions, including all the islands, Antarctic stations etc. This seems a bit unbelievable. Where did these nearly 32,000 go, if this data is actually limited to internal migration. If o/s departures snuck in, the negative number should be much greater.