Albanese’s migrant rent-a-vote in Melbourne and Sydney kicked in at Saturday’s election. Forecast immigration figures will continue to flavour election results for Labor into the future
Census expert Glenn Capuano unpacks the latest population growth and decline trends by Local Government Area (LGA) in Australia, based on newly released ABS data for the 2023–24 financial year. As of June 30, 2024, Australia’s population reached 27.2 million—an annual increase of over 540,000 people, with net overseas migration accounting for a staggering 80% of that growth. While this marks the second-largest population increase ever recorded in absolute terms (following 2023’s record), early signs point to a potential slowdown in growth. This is the third annual update since the 2021 Census, offering valuable insight ahead of the next national count in 2026. New ERP data will be available in our profile.id and economy.id tools this week.
The latest population growth data are out for the 2023-24 year. Each year around late March the ABS releases this with a reference period of the end of financial year, June 30th of the previous year. This is our third yearly update since the 2021 Census – with a reminder that it all gets revised again based on the results of the 2026 Census.
The latest population data shows that Australia’s population stood at 27,194,369 at June 30th, 2024, a growth of 541,592 people in a year, driven by high overseas migration and low emigration (net overseas migration making up 80% of total growth). This was the second-largest annual growth (but not fastest in percentage terms) ever recorded in Australia, after 2023’s record. Indications are that in the latter part of the financial year (and the one quarter we have nationally since then) growth has slowed down, but migration remains high in historic terms, and that’s where most of our population growth comes from. Our population forecasters are assuming net overseas migration remains higher than official government forecasts into 2026/27.
The return to the cities continues
The main focus of this release is the regional variation. This shows that growth in our capital cities is higher than in regional areas, with the combined 8 capital cities of Australia adding 427,000 people compared to regional Australia’s 113,000. This means 79% of all population growth is in Australia’s Greater Capital City Areas. It continues a trend since COVID of a return to the cities, reversing the exodus of 2020-22.
At a capital city level in 2023-24, Greater Perth was the fastest growing, adding 72,700 people, or 3.15%, while Greater Melbourne added the most people, just over 142,000 for the financial year, and the second fastest growth at 2.74% just ahead of Brisbane’s 2.69%. Hobart had by far the slowest growth adding less than 1,000 people.
This table could represent Labor’s percentage voting margins.
| Capital city | ERP at 30 June 2024 | 2023-24 (no.) | 2023-24 (%) |
| Sydney | 5,557,233 | 107,538 | 1.97% |
| Melbourne | 5,350,705 | 142,637 | 2.74% |
| Brisbane | 2,780,063 | 72,930 | 2.69% |
| Adelaide | 1,469,163 | 22,125 | 1.53% |
| Perth | 2,384,371 | 72,742 | 3.15% |
| Hobart | 254,930 | 946 | 0.37% |
| Darwin | 152,489 | 1,367 | 0.90% |
| Canberra | 473,855 | 7,496 | 1.61% |
| Total capital cities | 18,422,809 | 427,781 | 2.38% |
Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Regional population 2023-24 financial year,
(ERP-Enterprise Resource Planning software)
Sydney vs Melbourne
Sydney remains larger than Melbourne on the widely used metric of the Greater Capital City Statistical Areas – these are stable wide boundaries around the cities, and in Sydney’s case includes the Central Coast.
Melbourne is larger on another measure, the “Significant Urban Area”, with a population of 5,245,182; about 100,000 more than Sydney’s 5,143,256. On this measure, which is not as widely used as the “Greater Capital City”, Sydney excludes the Central Coast and both cities exclude some outlying semi-rural areas making Melbourne larger when measuring contiguous urban area. We can say that Melbourne and Sydney on any measure are now very similar in size, and approximately twice as large as the next largest city in Australia. From Informed Decisions
