One-way ticket: Labor’s Josh Willie warns government over Tasmanian population exodus

Labor has slammed the government for losing “planeloads of working-age Tasmanians” every week, after official data revealed 5472 residents left the state for the mainland in the last quarter.

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Labor treasury spokesperson Josh Willie has slammed the government for losing “planeloads of working-age Tasmanians” every week, after citing official data which reveals 5472 residents left the state for the mainland in the last three months.

Speaking outside Hobart Airport on Friday, Mr Willie also claimed the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed Tasmania continued to have the worst annual growth in the country at 0.3 per cent, well below the national rate of 1.8 per cent.

Mr Willie said it was the tenth quarter in a row that Tasmania had experienced an outflow to the mainland.

“It’s clear that many Tasmanians are looking for better opportunities on the mainland, and that’s a tragedy,” Mr Willie said.

Labor's shadow treasurer Josh Willie speaks to the media at Parliament Square in Hobart on Monday, March 17, 2025.

“And it is impossible to say how many more will move away for a better future if Premier Rockliff’s privatisation plans get off the ground.

“And for just the second time since the data has been collected, Tasmania has seen a decline in natural population growth with more deaths than births.

“Our measly 0.3 per cent annual population growth is only being propped up by overseas migration and if that was taken out of the equation, Tasmania’s population would be going backwards.

“To reverse the population crisis, Tasmanians need a government with a vision for the future, not a desperate plan to sell-off our public assets to pay for their own budget mismanagement.”

Government spokesperson, Kerry Vincent, said the latest figures needed to be considered in the context of a pandemic-era influx into the state, and said Tasmanians had a habit of eventually returning home after gaining career and life experience in other areas of the country.

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Mr Vincent said while it was possible to “grab numbers and make them say whatever you want”, he was confident in the underlying health of the state’s economy, and in the current and future career opportunities for working-age Tasmanians.

“We had an enormous growth of numbers coming into Tasmania during Covid, so I guess there’s a bit of levelling there,” Mr Vincent said of the latest ABS numbers.

“When you look at Tasmania, we’ve got very low unemployment.

“There are always the opportunities for people to go and have careers outside the state, but there is a great opportunity for them to come back in as well.

“As we saw with the Bridgewater Bridge, many older Tasmanians who had been working all around the world came back in to be part of that project.

“From my days in the construction industry, I saw a lot of people go to Queensland to work, but most of those have come back to Tasmania to raise families and have great careers here.”

Originally published as One-way ticket: Labor’s Josh Willie warns government over Tasmanian population exodus