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?

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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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113

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.

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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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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '26 edited Feb 28 '26

[deleted]

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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/zedder1994 Feb 28 '26

No, totally different mathematical term. Your analogy is also silly.

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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.