As Australia’s population nears 30 million, this is the story of how we got here and where we might be heading next
Earlier this year, Australia marked an historic milestone: in March the population ticked past 27 million.
Births, deaths and migration help explain 615,300 new additions over the previous year. ABS figures showed 509,800 of the increase, or 83 per cent, came from immigration and 105,500 were from what’s known as “natural increase”, represented by 289,700 births and 184,200 deaths.
The fastest-growing state was Western Australia, up 3.1 per cent, followed by Victoria (2.7 per cent) and Queensland (2.5 per cent).
Altogether these numbers contributed to a record-breaking increase of 1 million people in under two years.
Numbers can feel abstract, but every one of those statistics represents a person and the story of every life writes a new sentence in the story of us.
The shape of Australia’s demographics, that unique mix of who’s who in this country from age and gender to race and religion, emerges slowly.
Understanding demography can help us escape a raft of current crises, from economic downturn to conflict, international crises, pandemics, housing affordability, gender inequality, climate change and social change.
Plotting Australia’s population alongside historical turning points is the key to understanding where we’ve come from and creates a road map to the future.
What will Australia be like in the future?
To answer, it’s important to understand what the past can teach us.
So where does the story of modern Australia begin?
Terra nullius was a lie
Australia’s rich migrant history can be traced back to the original settlement of the continent when the ancestors of First Nations Australians navigated the harsh sea channels of the north.
Ancestors of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people used sophisticated and planned navigation systems to island hop to the Australian “mega-continent” more than 50,000 years ago. The region, known as Sahul, comprised a huge land mass made up of what is now New Guinea, mainland Australia, and Tasmania.
Voyaging through difficult terrain, the first peoples of Australia swiftly established a new population, about 1,000-strong. For many millennia, these communities flourished here. Farming and trade contributed to the livelihoods of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, growing a population that reached 800,000 prior to colonisation with some estimates suggesting even higher numbers.
Warning: this story contains details that may distress some readers
British colonisation after 1788 brought with it displacement, sexual violence, infectious diseases, and the massacre of First Nations people who had thrived here for tens of thousands of years.
For the first 60 years following colonisation the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population outnumbered the British colonisers. But by the 1840s the balance shifted. It’s estimated the coloniser population had swelled so much it was larger than that of First Nations people.
Academics have called it a population takeover, echoing the great replacement rhetoric in contemporary society.
Hooliganism and ‘decent’ women to ‘populate or perish’
As the population of colonisers grew, dominated by single military men, the culture of those early years of the British colony in Australia descended into drunkenness, hooliganism, and sexually transmitted infections.
However population growth among British expats was seen as the core to building a truly British colony in Australia. Equalising the ratio of men and women became an imperative for the colonising officials. Britain’s new colonial outpost needed women. “Decent” women from Britain were viewed as a civilising force for this growing new British outpost.
Population growth in pursuit of national security has featured throughout Australia’s history.
“[W]e must either people this continent or perish” was the call to arms from conservative Commonwealth Liberal Party leader Sir Joseph Cook in 1913. Immigration, he argued, was a tool for “maintaining the highest white standards”.
To achieve it, First Nations Australians endured ongoing harms in the name of the colonial project, generating adverse impacts that continue today.
Advertising containing emotional pleas to “keep Australia white” and to help “save the people from perishing…[so the]…lives of tiny tots are preserved” was published. This rhetoric was in effect an effort to promote an increase in the taxpayer base, and importantly, a recognition of the high rates of infant and maternal mortality.
Women and children suffered in the call for peopling and procreation.
In the early 1900s, 600 in every 100,000 women died as a result of childbirth. For comparison, maternal mortality was under 6 per 100,000 women in 2021.
Being a baby was risky too. In 1900, for every 1,000 live births, 103 infants died. Infant mortality had fallen to 3.2 deaths per 1,000 babies by 2022. Most of the gains in life expectancy are attributable to improvements in maternal and child health.
Following Federation in 1901 and continuing until after World War II ended in 1945, promotional material sent to Britain extolled the virtues of Australia as a land of plenty.
British men and women were sold on the new nation’s promise, encapsulated in catchphrases like “Men for the Land and Women for the Home” highlighting how citizens were valued: men for their economic contribution, women to safeguard the growing white population.
Good wages and guaranteed employment were emphasised for white migrants who travelled to this this land of opportunity, even as Indigenous communities were marginalised and murdered.
The goal was to grow the population by 2 per cent a year as part of a post-war reconstruction strategy. Half of the growth was planned to come from immigration, and half from births among the growing post-colonial population.
Australia was presented to the world as a cartoonish pastel landscape of the future. Australia: the land of tomorrow.
For many women, the poor and First Nations Australians, this “land of tomorrow” rhetoric would have felt very remote from the reality of their daily lives.
Yet while British migrants were prioritised, even leading to the “Ten Pound Pom” scheme whereby British citizens received a cheap passage to Australia, interest in moving to Australia from the other side of the world was still considered too low.
The enormous number of displaced people in the aftermath of Hitler forced Australia’s hand and migrants from countries other than the British white ideal were accepted.
In the shadow of war, Australia went on to welcome over 170,000 displaced people from European refugee camps.
Inclusion of people from south-western and eastern Europe began soon after.
It changed the face of Australia forever.
1924 was a lot like 2024
While efforts to boost immigration were continuing, the high cost of raising children made it harder for Australian families in the 1920s. Many of the problems facing Australians in the 1920s echoed contemporary concerns as cost-of-living pressures arrived soon after the Spanish flu pandemic of 1919.
But unlike 2024, women had less choice about their fertility in the 1920s, with less accessible and effective contraception.
Social expectations were also high. Following World War I and World War II, the pressure on women to assist post-war reconstruction by giving birth remained high.
But by the early 1920s, declining fertility rates had come to the attention of the government. In 1921, the total fertility rate was an average of 3.1 births per woman. The government was so keen to boost it further that the cost associated with raising children was brought to the attention of the Basic Wage Commissioner in NSW that same year.
Australia’s first child endowment scheme was established in NSW, largely as a result of findings that families were “right up against it” having “a rotten bad time of it”.
Alongside financial strain, the Royal Commission into Health, held in 1925, examined sexually transmitted infections, declining birth rates, and high maternal and infant mortality.
One outcome was an increase in the medicalisation of childbirth, a move that offered a double benefit: reduce the number of women and babies dying as a result of childbirth, and increase the birthrate.
The commissioner reportedly said: “Male concern at the falling birth rate made politicians more willing to pay for health services for mothers and babies.”
It would be another two decades until women were asked for their opinion.
The baby boom was short lived
The 1925 royal commission into falling birth rates was not the first inquiry of its kind in Australia. The first, known as the Royal Commission on the Decline of the Birth-rate, was in 1904 when it was decided that surgical interventions — involving removal or curetting of the ovaries — was one reason for putting “a great many women out of the race who would have been capable of bearing children if they had been left alone”.
But there was also another reason.
Much of the narrative around falling birth rates focused on women as hedonistic gatekeepers of humanity. Lower fertility rates were seen as a social ill and continued to decline well into the 1930s. During the height of the Great Depression the birth rate averaged just 2.1 children per woman.
But putting the blame on selfish women was not the real story.
Australian couples were taking increasing control of their family size. Delayed marriages, abortions and the large numbers of men working away from home, were perfect ingredients for a declining birth rate.
In the closing years of World War II, the birth rate began to shift again. By 1944 it had increased to 2.3 births per woman. But Australia’s leaders remained concerned. A further royal commission was held. This time, women were welcome to contribute and 1400 submissions were received from around the country.
Australian women overwhelmingly delivered the same message: emphasising the immense economic and social pressures they felt.
One woman wrote: “You men in easy chairs say ‘populate or perish’. Well. I have populated and I have perished — with no blankets.”
After the war ended in 1945, marriage rates began to climb. Australian women stepped up to their patriotic duty and by 1946 the average birthrate was 3.0, peaking at 3.6 in 1961, before dropping back to 3.0 births per woman by the end of the baby boom.
But it wasn’t to last.
By 1976 the birthrate dropped again, to below the rate of replacement, where it has remained ever since.
The lowered birthrate, alongside improving life expectancy, led to another significant demographic change: an aging population.
And with it came a new economic challenge to solve: Australia’s shrinking taxpayer base left governments needing to do more with less money.
Where is Gen C?
During COVID-19, when thousands of couples were locked at home together for days on end, the question of fertility came up again. Could lockdowns lead to a pandemic baby boom?
Trouble is, a baby boom requires more than partners couped up indoors with nothing better to do than have sex. The recipe for a baby boom requires increasing the numbers of couples, just like what occurred in the post-war baby boom as those who fought in the war returned home, alongside more couples choosing to have children, for a substantial bump in births. But during COVID lockdown opportunities to meet were reduced.
Fertility rates declined at the beginning of COVID only to rebound slightly in 2021 and then fall again in 2022. Data released this week confirmed the fertility rate in 2023 reached a record low, of 1.5 babies per woman. There has been no “Gen-C” COVID-19 baby boom some have suggested we call Coronials.
Not only were Australians not getting pregnant during the COVID-19 lockdowns but there was another problem that deeply impacted population numbers: overseas migration recorded a massive fall.
On top of that, temporary residents were told to “go home”. And leave they did.
Australia prematurely farewelled students, holiday makers and workers on visas leaving a 90,000-person dent in net overseas migration at the peak exodus.
Immigration quickly bounced back following border reopening. And that record-breaking population rise noted at the beginning of this story can be partly explained by an imbalance of people leaving the country because so many left prematurely during the height of COVID.
The expectation is that high immigration numbers seen in the past two years will start slowing down over the next few years. Any future government that takes credit for the slowdown in high immigration numbers will be spinning the facts: they can’t take credit. It was numerically happening anyway.
Nation (re)building
The pandemic impacted fertility and the cost-of-living, but that’s not all. The COVID years saw a rise in the numbers of people moving from cities to country areas.
As cities grow, regional areas have long been seen as the solution for Australia’s population concerns and for a while it was suspected COVID may have sped up that process. However the heralded population regionalisation during COVID-19 has not continued.
Preparedness is crucial to wellbeing, especially when it comes to population movement and many people choose to live in cities in order to maximise education and job prospects.
But attempts to predict Australia’s population future — one recent example being the 2010 national population inquiry that considered population distribution — have had mixed success in influencing long-term infrastructure development, especially that which extends beyond a political cycle. Sydney’s WestConnex is one successful example.
A 1975 population inquiry — dubbed the Borrie Report after demographer WD Borrie — concluded Australia should anticipate and respond to demographic challenges, rather than seek to influence them. Similarly, the 1990s population report led by Barry Jones found Australia needed to be proactive in responding to population changes, ensuring infrastructure matched people’s needs, for example.
Yet none of these reports suggest an optimal size for Australia’s population. Back in the 1990s, premier of NSW, Bob Carr offered only that “Sydney is full”.
Australia lacks a population policy. Instead, the migration program acts as an indirect population strategy. But an effective population policy would set out the needs for the future, particularly concerning infrastructure, and chart a course to maximise the wellbeing of the nation in key areas such as housing, education, employment and health.
Australia has proven it has the ability to respond with bold policies when history demands it: Protests against forced evictions during the 1930s housing crisis and schemes to solve inadequate housing in the 1940s suggest a housing shortage in Australia isn’t new. The Snowy Hydro project, as a feature of Australia’s nation building, also acted as a magnet to attract migrants from Europe.
Even COVID-19 showed the power of policy: the temporary boost in welfare for Australians on income support and in precarious employment turned hundreds of thousands of lives around, overnight. While the strengthened welfare provisions cost the government billions more, the stronger safety net elevated the most vulnerable out of poverty, arguably saving the government longer term.
It’s worth pointing out here that some experts have blamed the high cost of housing for Australia reaching its lowest birth rate on record in 2023.
Perhaps subsequent governments are to blame for lacklustre solutions.
But the second lesson from COVID-19’s closed Aussie borders was that migrants aren’t to blame for Australia’s multiple crises. Instead, the message was that the only way Australia can escape its policy messes, is to innovate.
The profile of Australia’s modern migrants is different again. There has been a changing of the guard as India, China, the Philippines and Nepal now round out the top four countries of birth for the newly migrated. Australia is more and more looking to the region. Global demography has caused a reset in Australia’s outlook in the world. Now’s the time for a local reset to help weather the demographic headwinds of our time.
What kind of nation will we become?
Since the earliest origins of Australia, immigration has been viewed as a social and economic lifeline — boosting our population when we most needed it.
It has also been viewed as a social and economic disaster — blamed in recent years for everything from the housing crisis and cost-of-living pressures, to environmental pressure.
It’s no wonder immigration is used by politics both to encourage migrants in times of need or espouse falsehoods when it’s politically favourable to do so.
But what will Australia look like in the future? As we pass a population of 27 million, what will kind of nation will we be at 30 million, and beyond?
We can be sure that capital cities will reign supreme. And the steady increase in the average age means Australia will comprise of mostly middle-aged people by 2065. It leaves income tax as an unsustainable method to fill government coffers and business, currently benefiting from tax incentives, must step up.
By 2054 it’s anticipated that deaths will out-number births and immigration will continue to feature in supporting the socio-economic wellbeing of the country.
Women will increasingly be called on to participate in the paid workforce and there is little doubt gender inequality needs to be revisited. Encouraging women to give birth will remain crucial.
Yet history doesn’t start the day we are born. The lessons of the past must inform the path ahead. And that means the only limit is our appetite for innovation.
Credits
Words: Liz Allen
Illustrations: Lindsay Dunbar, Wikimedia Commons
Editor: Catherine Taylor
