Is Australia having the right debate about population growth?
Idea
Every few years Australia returns to its familiar refrain: population growth is “too fast”, immigration needs to be restricted, and pressure on housing, infrastructure and public services necessitates a slowdown.
The story is resurfacing amid concerns about rents, congestion and the cost of living.
Much of the anxiety is based on estimates that repeatedly underestimate how many people live here and how fast Australia is growing.
So what does “very fast” mean when talking about population growth?
There is no official threshold. There is no single trick.
In practice, growth is labeled as too rapid when housing supply lags demand, there are infrastructure delays, or planning systems cannot keep up.
When housing construction fails to match household formation, rents rise, prices accelerate, and pressure builds.
But population growth itself is rarely the problem; The question is whether we plan for it or not. And this is an important discussion.
Population growth shapes how we plan our cities, build our homes, invest in infrastructure and sustain our economy.
But before we discuss speed, we need to make sure we’ve measured speed correctly.
Most of the time, the real problem is not the argument, but the numbers that support it.
The government’s population estimates have been systematically wrong for years.
Not by chance, but constantly.
They have repeatedly underestimated how many people live in Australia, how fast the population is growing and how central immigration is to economic performance.
In the Commonwealth’s bottom five Population TablesAustralia’s post-COVID population growth has been underestimated by 15 times out of a possible 17.
These underestimations are important because policies built on inaccurate estimates lead to erroneous decisions.
Some differences were small, and the 2024 declaration was closest to target.
However, projection deficiencies tended to widen over time.
Part of the problem is the usual assumption that population growth has returned to its long-term trend and that stronger growth is temporary; something to visit rather than plan.
The 2025 Population Statement expects growth to be 1.3 percent by June 2026, slowing to 1.1 percent by the end of the decade; That’s nearly 100,000 fewer people than predicted a year ago.
This is a great hostage of fortune.
Governments can enforce this outcome by limiting skilled immigration.
So what will be the cost of economic growth?
Net overseas migration is the silent workhorse of the Australian economy, demand-driven and deeply tied to prosperity.
Over the past two decades, immigration has contributed to nearly half of total economic growth.
“We continually plan housing, infrastructure and services using projections that underestimate reality, while discussing migration as if it were optional or temporary.”
Not occasionally. Continuously.
It expanded labor supply, boosted productivity, and strengthened sectors in construction, resources, healthcare, education, and small business.
The OECD research aligns with the latest findings from the Bankwest Curtin Economic Centre: Immigration increases employment across skill levels, ages and genders, without negative wage effects.
Western Australia understands this very well.
Its capital-intensive, export-oriented and circular economy relies on migration to address labor shortages, stabilize growth and support regional development.
Without it, growth would be weaker, wages more volatile and productivity lower.
At the same time, Australia’s fertility rate continues to decline.
This is not cyclical. It is structural.
Australians are having fewer children later in life; Many either choose not to have children or want to but cannot.
Even well-designed family policies are unlikely to meaningfully reverse this trend.
The consequences for the future workforce, the tax base and the sustainability of essential services are profound and require a more serious national debate about fertility and family policy.
This is not nostalgia or moralizing, but practical economic policy.
Affordable childcare, high-quality reproductive health, safe housing, flexible working, modern parental leave and stronger support for women balancing careers and caregiving are no longer social extras.
These are economic needs.
Natural population growth no longer carries the heavy burden it once did.
Herein lies the disconnect.
We continually plan housing, infrastructure and services with projections that underestimate reality, and we discuss migration as if it were optional or temporary.
Neither.
Immigration is now a structural driver of economic growth.
None of this denies the real pressures on housing, transport and utilities, especially in fast-growing states such as Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia.
However, these pressures do not arise only from immigration.
They occur when population growth exceeds housing supply, infrastructure provision and the responsiveness of the planning system.
Just under 174,000 homes have been completed by June 2025; this fell well short of the National Housing Deal’s annual target of 240,000.
At the current rate, Australia will fall short of one million homes, about a third of the 1.2 million new builds promised under the Agreement by June 2029.
This is not an immigration problem, it is a housing supply problem.
Lower population estimates can act like a pressure valve, removing the scale of the challenge and the urgency needed to solve it.
If forecasts continue to underestimate reality, we will continue to build too little and build too late, and we will blame immigration for the consequences.
A more honest conversation is needed. An approach that regards fertility decline as a long-term constraint, migration as an economic necessity, and accurate population forecasting as essential economic infrastructure.
Getting the numbers right will not solve every difficulty.
But misunderstanding them is a guarantee that we will continue the wrong argument.
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Professor Alan Duncan has been director of the Bankwest Curtin Center for Economics at Curtin University since 2013 and previously directed the National Center for Social and Economic Modeling at the University of Canberra.
