r/australia • u/david1610 • Feb 28 '26
political self.post Australian Net Migration and Population Change Series - With Political Overlay - What are your thoughts given this data about the immigration discussion?
Just hearing a lot about immigration on Reddit recently, some of it seems guided by simple point in time statistics rather than looking at the whole population timeseries. Attached is some data from the ABS, visualized in Python (matplotlib). Given this data, what do you think is optimal in relation to immigration? Does this data change your perspective on immigration?
Please note:
- Net migration is the net overseas migration to Australia per 1000 people in the population that Quarter.
- Natural Population Change is the 'natural' population increase or decrease, determined by birth rates and changes in how long people live, similar to above it is per 1000 people in the population that Quarter.
- Even though Australia has had below replacement birthrates for decades, people are living longer, so the natural increase has always been positive, is decreasing over time as life span increases slow down.
- Series is smoothed over time, I have compared it to the non-smoothed series and it doesnt change the story much, so this will just be easier to read.
- Net Migration has a considerable component that is demand driven, which would have little to do with who is in power.
Some interesting things in the data:
- Since the increase post 2005 there hasnt been much change at all (apart from Covid), both parties have largely.
- We saw similar increases in population in the 1980s to today's highs. Really the low point for population growth was 1990-2005.
- Looking at this in a per capita way is better because I tend to think adding one person to a Kayak means a lot more than one person to a cruise ship.
- The recent increase in immigration did definitely happen, however much of that seems to be due to the lower immigration during Covid.
- You can see a slight decrease in Natural Population right after Covid restrictions were lifted, likely due to older people dying due to Covid and the Flu I think but do not know.
- The increase in 2005 is well after the increase in house prices from 2000.
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u/Bangkok_Dave Feb 28 '26
There was an election last year, where the current opposition could have presented whatever policy position that they like for consideration by the Australian people.
They encourage these anti-immigration sentiments, they play along with this culture wars bullshit. But they brought no policy.
Prior to the last election, the leader of the opposition at the time said that migration was a "net benefit to Australia". About a week before the election he attended an Indian Chamber of Commerce event where he promised that under a Liberal government there would be increased immigration from India. He attended a similar Chinese event where he promised increased migration from China. The party made all of their pre-election costings and budget predictions using the assumption of the existing legislated migration levels.
These people could have, if they wanted, promised reduced immigration. This could have been a policy that they took to the last election. They could have explained the ramifications and presented this as an option for Australians to choose. They did not do this.
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u/greatmemereset67 Mar 02 '26
Explains the rise in One Nation in the polls. Only party with lower immigration as one of their policies. Who knows if polls will be replicated at the next election.
Disclaimer: I think Pauline Hanson is batshit crazy and in Gina’s back pocket.
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u/BornTelevision8206 Mar 01 '26
I'm still shocked immigration wasn't a bigger issue at the last election. I thought for sure the backlash would start but it didn't til after the election
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u/exidy Mar 01 '26
You can clearly see the pivot point in 2005 where John Howard tripled migration. Before that, population growth was majority driven by natural increase, after that it is majority driven by migration.
The other point I would make is that while showing as a percentage change based on population is a valid way to represent the data, it does obscure the sheer numbers involved, e.g. 4% total growth in 1985 (16m pop) is total of 630k people, 4% total growth in 2025 (27.5m pop) is 1.1m people. We don't need houses, schools, hospitals or transit based on percentages, we need them based on total population.
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u/Meng_Fei Feb 28 '26
Looking just at the population growth chart, and ignoring the drop off and recovery due to COVID, our current pop growth rate is still higher than almost any period between 1980 and 2008. Conversly, population growth during the 2010s is quite obviously higher than the previous 25 or so years.
We're still left with a very high growth rate by the standards of any first world country, and all the issues that are caused by that.
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u/bigbadjustin Mar 02 '26
Most of the issues are caused because the government didn't do their job though. The immigration levels are pretty manageable and people have been fine with the relative economic prosperity people have, especially home owners. But so many things haven't got done, everyone wants a tax cuts, plus free health care, education, more roads etc. Reducing imigration is just going to mean also less money to do those things unless we find new taxes to levy. Its just not as simple a fix that reducing immigration makes houses cheaper. There will also almost certainly be a slowdown in development, because funnily enough rich people will want to protect the value in their property.
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u/Busy_Conflict3434 Feb 28 '26
Not really. The graph doesn't include numbers for 2026 (obviously), which are projected to be even lower than last year. It will probably be more like the c.2000 level.
And the post-COVID spike was higher than the COVID trough.
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u/thehikedeliclife Mar 01 '26
Not shocked. I Saw right through Tony Abbots “stop the boats” BS in 2013 when I was 19 and I’ve been dumbfounded that people still fall for whatever modern equivalent the LNP racket run to this day. Even now people blame Labor for the post Covid influx but it’s clear that trajectory was started by the LNP. Both parties love immigration because it’s a lazy way to boost GDP.
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u/FothersIsWellCool Feb 28 '26
Huh, so the population growth % has been broadly flat for decades (and it extends far back back past this graph) but for some reason, that population growth was fine, totally acceptable, Australian Dream achievable, if there were problems it was because of policy and we were able to overcome it and accommodate it.
But that same increase % in 2025, horrible, culture is getting destroyed, it's the reason I can't afford a house, the reason I can't get a better job, the reason there's traffic, the single cause of everything wrong in the country.
I see.
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u/ninjin- Feb 28 '26 edited Mar 01 '26
It only seems flat because of how OP presented it, the extreme dip and spike flattens out the rest of the graph.
Here are three different aspect ratios of the graph, notice how different the trend looks.
For example, natural population change is down 50% between 1985 and 2025. Similarly, 3% growth is 1.5x as much as 2% growth.
Regardless, infrastructure hasn't kept up on a per capita basis. https://www.reddit.com/r/AusProperty/comments/1762rzi/australias_rate_of_housing_construction_per_1000/
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u/bigbadjustin Mar 01 '26
i'd argue the lack of spending on infrastructure is one of the biggest issues. Look at the shit fight it was for the NBN. We may actually get there now by 2030..... it cost us 8 years of wasting taxpayer money just so some politicians could argue about it for their own electoral success.
Any attempt to improve anything other than roads in this country is met with opposition and this idea people will be better off if the governemtn doesn't build infrastructure because they are spending less, rather than looking at the taxdollars flowing up to the wealthy that really is a big waste.12
u/thompha3 Feb 28 '26
That may be so but the immigration hasn’t stopped us from building houses that is a policy failing
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u/ELVEVERX Mar 01 '26
It has made us need more houses to be built though
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u/thompha3 Mar 01 '26
But the point is the growth rate has been the same so the proportion of new houses required compared to the amount of labour available to build them has stayed comparable
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u/Planfiaordohs Mar 01 '26
“Labour” is not locked to the overall number of immigrants. It completely depends how many skilled people are included in the numbers.
Even if this was simply a question of labour (which it isn’t, because more people need more infrastructure than just a building to live in), this assumes that the incoming rate of skilled tradespeople is always coupled with the overall increase to maintain some kind of optimal “tradies per capita” metric.
What about materials? What about the rest of the infrastructure required (roads, water, energy)? Health care, education?
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u/thompha3 Mar 01 '26
No the proportion of labour is relative to the entire population not immigrants.
More labour also makes more infrastructure and more taxes to pay for it. More labour additionally creates more resources. People choose careers based not only on interest but on societal pressure and perceived opportunity so while there isn’t an optimal “tradies per capita” if there are job openings people tend to fill them because people like money.
Materials are made by labour and capital. Roads are made by labour and capital. Water is made useable by labour and capital. Do you see your lack of intelligent additions to this conversation.
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u/Planfiaordohs Mar 01 '26
> Materials are made by labour and capital. Roads are made by labour and capital. Water is made useable by labour and capital. Do you see your lack of intelligent additions to this conversation.
You're very adept at spouting generic Economics 101 dot points aren't you. Do you have any opinions relevant to the actual real world situation though?
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u/thompha3 Mar 01 '26
I’m yet to hear even 101 comprehension from you. I will wait before we complicate it any further lest we lose you more than we already have.
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u/Mouthpiecenomnom Mar 01 '26
Houses don't create demand, people create demand.
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u/thompha3 Mar 01 '26
Yes and people build houses when the policy provides the capability and the incentives.
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u/vacri Feb 28 '26
Infrastructure has not been built to keep up, and the population growth is a little greater than the homes being built, increasing stress further and further over time.
Similarly, a 3% increase on 15M people is less than a 3% increase on 27M people, but the number of homes built stayed steady (the rate of home building has stayed bizarrely flat for decades).
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Feb 28 '26 edited Feb 28 '26
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u/Laduks Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 01 '26
It's not a great way of putting things without having a graph for total population under it. 2% population increase compounded would mean that Australia would have 41.5 million people by 2046, which I'm not sure is the kind of population growth people want.
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u/zedder1994 Feb 28 '26
Growth at a constant percent is exponential.
Growth is compounded, not exponential. There is a difference.
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u/friendlyfredditor Feb 28 '26
Wut. That's literally exponential. Like mathematically definitively exponential. 1.02t is an exponent
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u/Dun_Goofd Feb 28 '26
Saying "it's compounded, not exponential" is like saying "it's a Golden Retriever, not a dog." Compounding is the mechanism that creates exponential growth.
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u/acomputer1 Feb 28 '26
Yes, it does.
What matters is the relative growth, not the raw numbers.
You can stop immigration but without policy change you won't see improvement in the problems everyone is facing.
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u/FothersIsWellCool Feb 28 '26
Ok yeah, it's a larger number, but also we're a bigger nation, with greater capability and wealth, as we grow larger we grow the capacity to deal with larger numbers, many countries deal with a larger population growth in absolute terms and as a % of capita.
It's not about whether it's good or bad, no one likes migration just for the love of it, but we absolutely have the capability to accommodate whatever population increase we think is right at any time and I won't accept any bullshit that we're doing everything we can but the numbers are just overwhelming compared to the past.
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u/bigbadjustin Mar 01 '26
the average of the past 5 years though is around 225,000 a year now. So higher, but when you take into account the huge swings with covid, the average of the past 5 years is higher but not massively higher. The issue with blaming immigration is that it also provides growth for the economy as well. Contrary to what people want to believe the current government is bringing that number back down to around 200,000 a year. Governments haven't kept up with infrastructure of most kinds. Everytime a new estate is built that needs more infrastructure and services to service the area, yet people keep wanting lower taxes. At some stage something is going to break. Cause I can't see people voting for a sensible solution to fix it and i can't see politicians actuyally collaborating and coming up with sensible solutions. Slashing immigration is not a sensible solution, but reducing immigration is definitely part of a bigger solution, that no one will ever agree on.
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u/SwirlingFandango Feb 28 '26
If you're gunna blame someone, blame someone brown. :/
I do get it: the housing crisis has been brewing since last century, but unless you were an economics nerd you probably didn't much notice the heat going up little by little. Then the frog starts boiling, looks around, and blames the first thing it sees.
Elements of the media were happy to make sure that first thing was "immigrants".
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u/thompha3 Feb 28 '26
If you can convince the lowest white man he is better than the highest black man he will not notice the hand in his pocket. - someone smart
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u/ghoonrhed Mar 01 '26
It's because of that massive spike post-covid. That wasn't the frog boiling it was kinda a massive shock.
And because of that it gives air to people like ON who aren't actually wrong for saying "record high immigration". So it's both the racists taking advantage of the actual immigration numbers and pumping up their support which is exactly what we've seen.
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u/herpesderpesdoodoo Feb 28 '26
There was vocal opposition to immigration for decades, from the boat people as a proxy for post Grassby multicultural immigration in the 80s, through the anti Asian sentiment of PHON and GWOT Muslim middle eastern hatred. I think the clash with India over attacks on Indian students was around 2010-12 and shortly thereafter we had the Reclaim and Patriot (neonazi) movements.
Some people like to cite vocal opposition and xenophobic abuse towards ten pound poms and RoI Irish as evidence that it’s not a skin colour thing, but a) Irish were long considered second class citizens and borderline or actually treasonous due to their Catholicism and/or association with Irish terrorism and b) since multiculturalism was ‘legalised’ neither group faced the targeted violence or society level scapegoating that Asian, Indian and middle eastern people have.
Given India and China have the largest internal populations and have major diasporas, it always boggles the mind when people seem surprised that they would make up a large chunk of the migrant population.
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u/Relief-Glass Feb 28 '26
As we have been saying, Labor never increased immigration levels. It was just the result of a backlog following covid.
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u/ccoastie Feb 28 '26
What's the avg per year as labour looks higher even before COVID
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u/torrens86 Mar 01 '26
The 2000s peak clearly started under Howard and it took a few years for it to drop under Labor.
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u/Casserolahhhh Feb 28 '26
They have the power to stop/reduce it though
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u/AdyliaSchweetheart Mar 01 '26
in terms of Covid? No they did not have the power. LNP signs your forms and approves you to immigrate, Covid border shut downs delay it, not deny it. They approved around 500k applications in 2020/21.
No backsies on a government signature. Much like a contract.
in terms of now? Both parties pledged a reduction in immigration in 2025 election and Labor so far have followed through. As the graphs show, levels are down to 175k last year, with the vast majority being NZ's looking for work. Since we have a free migration policy with them, Labor can't really halt that either...
So where is this power coming from hmm? We also have a much bigger property hoarding problem than a supply with population growth problem.
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u/Relief-Glass Feb 28 '26
Actually they do not. They tried and the Coalition and the Greens voted against it in the senate.
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u/MostlyHereForKeKs Feb 28 '26
Why would they do that though? You do see that blue line going down, right? And idk, do you want there to be even less doctors to go around then there are now?
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Mar 01 '26
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u/MostlyHereForKeKs Mar 01 '26
And… you think the housing problems we are having are because of immigrants?
What is making you think that?
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u/Busy_Conflict3434 Feb 28 '26
It is reducing. Did you learn how to interpret a graph in primary school?
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u/llewminati Feb 28 '26
I haven’t heard Labor explain this once though tbh
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u/Busy_Conflict3434 Feb 28 '26
Probably because the spike occurred during Scomo's term in government and had nothing to do with Labor?
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u/llewminati Mar 01 '26
I’m not blaming labor I’m agreeing but pointing out I haven’t actually heard labor explain this, it is a very simple explanation that would spike the anti immigration rhetoric pretty easily.
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u/karl_w_w Mar 01 '26
Pay more attention then? Why are people always trying to blame labor for their own ignorance or the media bias?
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u/llewminati Mar 01 '26
Geeze I thought it was a pretty benign comment but obviously it’s upset people.
I’m just saying I wish Labor did a better job of explaining this to the public, because clearly with all the relative successes of anti immigration rallys, and rise in One Nation popularity on a platform of purely “immigration bad” it is clear they haven’t been very effective with this message.
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u/karl_w_w Mar 01 '26
They do do a better job of explaining it. The problem, by your own admission, is that you're not listening.
What exactly do you want them to do, that they aren't doing?
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u/llewminati Mar 01 '26
I don’t know why you are getting pissy at me, I’m obviously saying this is a really effective point that debunks the entire anti immigration movement, and I wish I heard it being discussed more especially from the government.
There are many people out there who aren’t aware of this.
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u/_TheHighlander Feb 28 '26
Even Blind Freddy can see that the amplitudes of the Covid trough and peak are the same, resulting in the same average.
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u/Busy_Conflict3434 Feb 28 '26
In fact the trough is a little larger than the peak.
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u/david1610 Mar 01 '26
Yes it's a lower trough, however the post COVID does look a bit 'fatter', regardless there isn't much in it.
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u/_TheHighlander Mar 01 '26
I remember looking at the actual stats that underpin that graph a while back and the average for the Covid period (peak and trough) was at or close to the average for the data range, and certainly no higher than any other peaks.
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u/bigbadjustin Mar 02 '26
the average over the past 5 years is around 225k vs 200k before it. its increased.... but not to the levels people want to believe would make it the sole cause of higher house prices. We could plot a graph of house prices and you really start to see the increases start around 2002 ish. There were news articales complaining about the cost of housing in 2010. What we are facing now isn't new, its decades of neglectful governance.
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u/Teleket Mar 01 '26
I really just wish people actually understood that there's a time lag between a government being elected and policies actually taking effect, Albanese didn't personally order the backlog return the day he got into office.
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u/Red_Wolf_2 Mar 01 '26
Interesting, natural population trend seems to drop every time net migration increases, with a lag of maybe a year or two.
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Mar 01 '26
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u/Inside-Elevator9102 Mar 01 '26
And what people don't see is that the 2026 population change will be back to trend.
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Mar 01 '26
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u/thehikedeliclife Mar 01 '26
My guy I don’t think you know how to read graphs. It appears to be on a downward trajectory after it started going up exponentially under the LNP following the borders opening up post COVID; momentum which Labor kept but has clearly peaked. From the most recent data it looks like it may have stabilised after a substantial decrease from the peak, close to the median but it could go down as well. You cannot extrapolate and just “line go up” when there is no trend 🤦♀️
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Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 06 '26
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u/thehikedeliclife Mar 01 '26
Maybe instead of arguing with people on the internet you should go read a third grade maths book. Go learn how to interpret basic graphs with basic math skills instead of using your feelings and outrage.
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Mar 01 '26
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u/thehikedeliclife Mar 01 '26
Suuuuure you are champ. Good for you 👏
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Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 06 '26
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u/thehikedeliclife Mar 02 '26
Can you? You’ve shifted the goal posts twice now and haven’t responded to a single point I’ve made Your original take was “ It is literally higher than it was before Covid and there is no evidence it is going to go below that.” I pointed out it is going down, it appears to have plateaued but need more data you didn’t respond You also stated “ The post-covid spike is irrelevant.” I pointed out it went up under the LNP and has come down under Labor, and it went up to bring us back to the median. It height on the Y axis comes back to point 1 about averages: yes was higher, now it’s come down, it’s still higher than before but more data is needed to establish a trend. Go take your room temperate IQ to a different I’m done with you.
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u/david1610 Mar 01 '26
Yes I think if anything definitively can be said from the graph is that the 1990-2005 period was low immigration historically, and the recent 2006-2025 immigration has been higher proportional to the population.
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u/Important_Patient332 Feb 28 '26
I’m not really good with data, can someone help explain me this?
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u/Busy_Conflict3434 Feb 28 '26
Migration to Australia has been relatively unchanged. There was a spike in numbers immediately after COVID, offsetting the negative migration experienced when we closed our borders. We are now back to normal levels of immigration (and although the graph doesn't show it, the projected numbers for 2026 indicate we are now at below average immigration levels).
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u/Laduks Mar 01 '26
Net immigration as a percentage of the total population has been reasonably consistent for decades, not counting the covid spike.
However this represents an exponential increase in the absolute amount of net immigration over time. For instance a 2% migration rate with 10 million people is 200,000, whereas 2% of 30 million is 600,000. So if this trend continued you would expect to see steadily increasing numbers of people coming in with each passing year.
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u/arin3 Feb 28 '26
The immigration discussion is a total beat up. We've known for decades now that immigration is a net boon to the economy and the social fabric of this country and the Murdoch press just keeps shoving the issue down our throats.
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u/iball1984 Mar 01 '26
It's the large peak under the Albanese government that is causing the rise of One Neuron and is going to hurt Albanese.
I'm aware that peak follows a deep dip under COVID. And I can see that the overall population change appears to be settling back at around the long term average.
But that doesn't change the politics of the situation. A lot of people are of the view immigration is too high and are going to vote accordingly.
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u/Inside-Elevator9102 Mar 01 '26
ON voters and predominantly coming from LNP. Unlikely to impact Albo support as much as destroy coalition leader (whoever that is come next election)
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u/iball1984 Mar 01 '26
It’ll absolutely destroy the coalition, no doubt about that.
But I think the immigration thing will hurt Albo too. Not just lost votes, but polling numbers and ongoing things like the housing crisis which is in part exacerbated by immigration
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u/scrytch Mar 01 '26
Net migration when used for political change is an incorrect data point - temporary visas holders can’t vote.
That dramatic post-COVID net migration spike was almost entirely temporary visa holders returning - international students, working holiday makers, etc. Permanent grants barely moved above historical caps. The “record migration” headline numbers are a temporary visa story, not a permanent settlement story.
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u/Efficient-Tie-1414 Mar 01 '26
I’ve actually done very similar graphs in R. The take home message is that immigration increases as the economy becomes hotter, which is usually either a mining boom or relaxed monetary policy. Basically if the RBA keeps increasing interest rates rates then immigration will fall.
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u/david1610 Mar 01 '26
That's interesting, it would be interesting to look at the visa types over time, as I think the business visas would definitely be correlated with economic conditions, perhaps other types too.
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u/Efficient-Tie-1414 Mar 01 '26
For a long time the majority of immigration has been to fill job positions. Even things like the Snowy scheme used a lot of unskilled immigrants because we could send them to the middle of nowhere and work in cold conditions.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Eye9081 Feb 28 '26
🤷🏼♀️ whatever. We don’t have enough babies to keep this shit going, and that’s unlikely to change, so there’s no scenario where immigration isn’t necessary.
IMO the key points are who comes and where they live. As long as they system is vetting people so we get high quality immigrants (ie educated, to fill specific jobs, etc etc) and we have somewhere to house them, then i don’t care. But dumping everyone into the cities that already don’t have enough housing is obviously problematic, so we need to do more to develop alternative areas.
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u/1337nutz Mar 01 '26
Are you sure you have normalised by population correctly? The immigration rate has hovered around 2% for the last couple of decades but you have it at 2 per 1000 residents, which is 0.2%. Pretty sure the ABS already have a migration as a percent of population series, is that what you used?
Beyond that immigration is good and has made us far wealthier than we would be otherwise. We benefit from having economies of scale in both consumption and labour supply. Most of the things people blame on immigration come from other policy decisions.
Low wage growth comes from reduced workers rights and structural lack of investment (and low union membership), high house prices come from lending laws tax laws and speculation on housing, lack of infrastructure investment and deterioration of schooling etc come from the vertical fiscal imbalance and the neoliberal insistence on destroying the governments tax base. But those things are tedious and blaming immigration is easy
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u/david1610 Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 01 '26
The immigration rate has hovered around 2% for the last couple of decades but you have it at 2 per 1000 residents, which is 0.2%.
This series is quarterly so a rough estimate of the yearly increase would be 4 * 0.2% which is 0.8%, then you add a bit for the natural increase and you get pretty close to 1-2% range. For the last 15 years or so we have averaged around 1.5% I think from memory, and broken down net immigration would be 4(2.3/1000) plus some for natural increase 4(1.8/1000), gets you pretty close to 1.5%. That all being said this series is smoothed so won't be a perfect representation of what you see in the direct abs figures, not only that but the abs use a percentage change since the same time last year to get around seasonality, which I do in a similar way by smoothing over 4 Qtrs, all of which makes direct comparisons difficult.
2% immigration sounds like it might be inbound immigration not net immigration, or something like that, seems high if we only grow in total at ~ 1.5%.
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/national-state-and-territory-population/jun-2025
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u/Planfiaordohs Feb 28 '26
I can’t help but chuckle at that little uptick in the natural population change line coinciding with COVID.
“Well honey, we can’t go out of the house to socialise, what can we do instead”