Shifting population poses a big challenge, that’s for shire
Local authorities face an uncertain future as the ‘pandemic factor’ continues to bite.
It has been a busy time for the 550 or so local government areas scattered across the Australian continent. It is this tier of government comprising cities, shires, boroughs and the like that was targeted for area-specific lockdowns, that hosted vaccination programs, and that accommodated the inflow and outflow of workers (and others) seeking to escape the virus.
But I suspect this is just a sample of what is on the agenda for the municipalities of Australia in the post-pandemic 2020s. The 2021 census (conducted in August) proceeded amid a global pandemic, the effects of which are evident in a rare population exodus from metropolitan Melbourne.
In the year to June 2021, when greater Melbourne could have been expected to add, say, 110,000 residents to the metropolitan area, census-adjusted population estimates showed a net loss of 79,000 residents.
But there is more to these flows, which were also evident in other capital cities. Generally, the inner cities lost residents – maybe foreign students going home – while city edges, and nearby treechange and seachange zones, flourished. It seems that many Australians responded to the pandemic by fleeing the city for the safety, the serenity, and the amenity of outer suburbia and lifestyle places beyond.
And Australians could do this because the pandemic delivered the option of working from home.
Lifestyle-obsessed Australians thought, “you beauty, I’ll Zoom in from down the beach”.
It is this thinking, combined with completion of the rollout of the NBN just prior to the pandemic, that is increasing the community’s “dwell time” (meaning working from home) in outer suburban and associated lifestyle LGAs across Australia.
All of a sudden, municipal libraries, health facilities, retail precincts, bike paths, even rubbish collection services are in greater demand, with more people living and working locally than was the case prior to the pandemic.
More demand for more services by a more “present” population without a commensurate increase in the rate base represents a dilemma for local councils.
The full extent of the uplift in the workforce’s suburban/lifestyle-zone dwell time will be published with the release of the next tranche of census data on October 12. I think the net increase over the 2016 figure (of 5 per cent) will be no less than 10 percentage points, or 1.3 million workers.
But the WFH revolution is just one of the challenges for local government. The vast bulk of Australia’s annual population growth is focused like a blowtorch onto specific municipalities.
Melbourne’s City of Wyndham added 74,893 net extra residents over five years to 2021; that’s a 34 per cent increase; this place is growing by 6 per cent a year. Wyndham is growing faster than the Gold Coast but without high-rise towers.
This requires strategic planning and infrastructure funding on a scale unmatched in other municipalities. And no doubt Wyndham and other municipalities are also struggling with the effects of skills shortages.
The Gold Coast and its myriad “copycat” coastal communities around Australia reigned supreme as this nation’s growth (seachange) hotspots for a generation across the 1990s and 2000s. But for the past decade or so, Australia’s growth-front has shifted south and (a bit) inland.
Indeed, the lifestyle coast is still important to Australians – but what is even more important is the kind of affordable housing that is on offer in Wyndham.
Blacktown’s five-year growth of 59,816 (up 18 per cent) reflects similar demand for traditional housing (at higher price points) in Sydney. Indeed, Blacktown contained 396,776 residents in mid-2021 and as such is “bigger” than the Northern Territory (pop 233,000) which has all the apparatus (and representation) of a state/territory government.
It’s likely that Blacktown council area will overtake the ACT population (425,000) before the end of the 2020s.
What would be the effect if, say, a net extra 15 per cent of Blacktown’s workforce decided to work from home permanently, post pandemic? Surely this would heighten demand for water, sewerage, power services as well as demand for local office space, office supplies, technology services and perhaps offsite storage. (Aussies don’t like their minimalist homes being cluttered with work stuff.)
For the better part of a century, Australia’s largest cities were administered by a collection of LGAs that operated on the logic of low-density suburbia surrounding a high-intensity CBD. That logic is being challenged in a post-Covid world.
In other local government areas, post-pandemic issues relate to matters of population loss. Diminished FIFO workflows plunged the Shire of Ashburton in the Pilbara into population loss: almost half (43 per cent) the 2016 population had FIFO’ed out by the time the 2021 census was conducted. Other mining/resources communities followed suit. Australia’s vastness, and our capacity for tidal shifts in population, can make the delivery of services lumpy and difficult.
The role of local government is relatively straight forward in places like Wyndham and in other growth areas such as the Camden municipal council area on Sydney’s southern edge. Camden needs more of everything to accommodate an expanding community. But in, say, Tasmania’s City of Burnie it’s a different story. The 2021 census shows overall growth of 5 per cent on 2016 figures. But dig deeper and there are losses from the early-40s cohort (reducing the labour pool), in older teenagers (15-19), and in young adults (20-24).
These figures can bounce around from census to census, but they do suggest that some (mostly rural) communities are uniquely challenged by demographic shifts. For example, an outflow of 40-somethings is often linked to a loss of teenagers as whole families relocate. Hold onto teenagers, perhaps through sport or community engagement, and parents may make another choice.
The census also tracks median personal weekly income, which in 2021 averaged $805 across the nation but which reached the heady heights of $1619 in Sydney’s Woollahra municipal council area.
That Australia has well-to-do hotspots is well known. What is less well known is that some municipalities are becoming wealthier due to processes such as gentrification, which is the inshift of high-income earners.
Over the five years to 2021 the median personal weekly income in Australia increased by 21 per cent, but in the City of Melbourne this increase was 49 per cent while in Perth’s Peppermint Grove income growth was 41 per cent.
Municipalities at the centre of Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide have transformed over the past five years most likely due to an influx of downshifters gentrifying the CBD fringe. Also gentrifying is Melbourne’s City of Maribyrnong, centred on cosmopolitan Footscray where median income levels rose 37 per cent in five years.
Income levels also increased in the Shire of Ravensthorpe by 37 per cent between censuses, largely due to the effects of nickel, cobalt, copper and lithium mining in the local area.
In many respects, the local municipalities of Australia are the embodiment of demographic diversity. They comprise the fast-growing communities such as Wyndham and the fast-declining places such as Ashburton.
Local government areas can be young, like the Indigenous community at Woorabinda in Queensland where the median age is 23. Or they can be old, like the retirement community of Queenscliffe in Victoria where the median age is 62 years.
The Shire of East Pilbara (population 9760 in 2021) covers 376,000sq km. Belgium could fit into the boundaries of this shire 10 times over. I imagine services provision would be challenging in East Pilbara.
The Shire of Murchison, located 300km northeast of Geraldton, is estimated to have contained a grand total of 101 residents at the time of 2021 census, including the mayor. Sadly, Murchison lost 52 residents over the previous five years, which suggests this place is on a downward trajectory. However, in the South Australian community of Maralinga Tjarutja, an Indigenous local council, the 2021 population of 96 was up 34 residents on the 2016 figure.
The point is that these communities, these local government areas, from remote to fast-growing, have a lot to say about the resilience of the Australian people.
Murchison has hovered around the few hundred population mark for two decades. Burnie still manages to field football and netball teams even with a reduced pool of teenagers from which to draw players.
And Wyndham, much like the Gold Coast of 20-plus years ago will deliver the roads, the sewerage systems, the shopping centres, the schools, the hospitals, the housing estates required by a seemingly unstoppable avalanche of Australians seeking their slice of suburbia.
One of the great challenges of the 2020s for local government is the possibility of a fundamental shift in the way Australians deliver their workplace value.
Any sizeable shift in commuting and workplace behaviour that is maintained into the future will require a response from local councils via the provision of local services.
But this also represents a great opportunity to activate previously dormant-during-daytime communities, thus creating even more vibrant places in which to live, work and play.
Bernard Salt is executive director of The Demographics Group. Research and data by Hari Hara Priya Kannan.