Coronavirus: Vaccine delay will hit population growth

More than 1.6 million NSW residents will have been vaccinated against COVID-19 by September next year, according to the state’s budget.

A delayed vaccine would see a further 1 per cent decline in NSW’s population compared with the latest forecast.

More than 1.6 million NSW residents will have been vaccinated against COVID-19 by September next year according to the state’s budget, which has warned any delay in vaccine rollout will cost the state billions and slash population growth even further.

A delayed vaccine would see a further 1 per cent decline in the state’s population compared with the latest forecast, which the state government has already revised down by 376,000 people to just under 8.4 million by 2024, in the wake of the pandemic-induced slump in net immigration.

“A vaccine for COVID-19 will start to roll out in NSW from around the middle of 2021, with 20 per cent of people vaccinated by the end of the September quarter,” the NSW budget papers, delayed from June because of the uncertainty around the pandemic, say.

The state government has assumed international borders will reopen by the end of next year and state borders are completely open by Christmas.

NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet slammed other states’ border following concerns in the wake of a new cluster of coronavirus cases in South Australia.

“Let’s open up, let’s be the free people that we are and let’s get our nation moving,” he told reporters. “We can’t control the pandemic based on lines drawn on maps.”

NSW’s population growth has collapsed from 1.4 per cent annually before the crisis to a forecast of practically zero this financial year, the lowest in 100 years, ahead of a steady forecast rise back to 1.1 per cent by the end of 2024.

“A net outflow of migration is expected for the first time since 1946, with no catch-up in subsequent years, leaving the level of population permanently lower than expected prior to the pandemic,” the state Treasury said.

“A gradual return of international students and permanent migrants is assumed from the latter part of 2021,” the budget papers say, noting student com­mencements in the state fell 17 per cent in the first eight months of 2020 compared with the corresponding period last year.