After years of grappling with population growth pressures, NSW now faces an historic collapse in new arrivals that will drag on the economy and reshape the state's demographic complexion | MattWadeSMH
Population pressures have preoccupied NSW politics for decades. Traffic congestion, crowded trains and high-rise property developments are perennial themes of public debate, especially in Sydney. Migration is routinely blamed for pushing up prices in the city's famously expensive housing market.Nick Moir
The main cause for the population growth slump is border closures, as well as other restrictions, imposed to limit the spread of the coronavirus. In 2018-19, net overseas migration added more than 230,000 to the national population. Now net overseas migration has turned negative for the first time since the Second World War. The budget predicts 72,000 more people will leave Australia than arrive this financial year, followed by a net decline of 22,000 in 2021-22.
The budget also predicts fewer babies will be born in Australia as a consequence of the pandemic. The fertility rate is forecast to drop from 1.69 babies a woman in 2019-20 to 1.58 in 2021-22. The lower birth rate will contribute to “permanently lower” population growth compared with what was forecast before the pandemic.
NSW is likely to be disproportionately affected because, along with Victoria, it receives a large share of the migrants arriving in Australia.“A real driver of housing construction and the supporting infrastructure in NSW has been our population growth,” McCrindle says. “But with international borders closed, it suddenly means we don’t need so many homes, and we can’t justify so much infrastructure investment.
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