Tide turning on overseas migration as Australia’s population hits 27 million

Australia recorded its highest increase in net overseas migration in a calendar year in 2023, but the post-Covid influx is slowing.

Australia’s population continues to rise on the back of overseas migration, but the rapid post-Covid pace has started to slow.

The Coalition has reignited the “big Australia” political debate by accusing Labor of presiding over unsustainable levels of migration in the wake of new figures showing net overseas migration added 547,300 people to the nation’s population in 2023.

The Albanese government said it was currently overseeing the steepest cut to migration in the ­nation’s history outside war or pandemic.

The renewed political battle came after new Australian Bureau of Statistics population data showed that while almost a million more people arrived in Australia than left since the start of 2022, the pace of net overseas migration was beginning to slow.

The influx of migrants, primarily driven by the post-Covid return of international students, pushed the nation’s population 2.5 per cent higher in 2023 to 27 million, the ABS data shows.

Across 2023, there were 547,300 net overseas migrants, with 751,500 arrivals and 204,200 departures. This was a 114,000 increase from 2022, up by 26 per cent. Yet the influx is starting to slow.

In the December 2023 quarter, 107,300 people were added to the population through NOM, a decrease of 43,800 from the previous quarter.

There was also a significant fall in the natural increase component of population growth – births against deaths – which decreased by 6.4 per cent since 2022.

Opposition immigration spokesman Dan Tehan said the Albanese government was pursuing a “big Australia policy” by allowing an unsustainable immigration rate. “No government has ever brought as many migrants to Australia in a single year,” Mr Tehan said.

“As Australians struggle with finding a place to live, with congestion on our roads, and with pressure on services like seeing a GP, Labor’s record pace of migration is not sustainable,” he said.

“Labor must take responsibility for their big Australia policy. Australia experienced record migration in 2023 because this Labor government issued a record number of visas.”

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said there was no dispute that current levels of migration were “too high … That’s why we have intervened to bring migration back to sustainable levels as quickly as possible”.

“Migration is coming down from the post-Covid peak and we are halving migration rates over a very short period,” Ms O’Neil said.

“This will be the steepest cut to migration in Australia’s history, outside war or pandemic.”

Demographer Simon Kuestenmacher said the new ABS data showed the tide was starting to turn on net overseas migration.

“The 2023 total looks super high, and it is the highest intake ever for a calendar year,” Dr Kuestenmacher said, “but if you look at the December 2023 quarter against the same quarter in 2022, we took in 17,000 fewer migrants, which shows the tide has shifted.

“I expect this trend to continue until we reach the pre-Covid average. In fact if you actually take the four years since the pandemic, on average we sit at the pre-pandemic average for overseas migrants,” he said. “The political temptation will be to say Australia has let in more than a million new migrants in two years and that is the reason for the housing crisis, but that is a fear-mongering narrative.

Demographer Simon Kuestenmacher.

“Australia has really become no more or less attractive a destination for overseas migrants. We are simply reverting to the mean as the big increase of international students that came in after Covid reverts to a more normal annual intake,” Dr Kuestenmacher said.

With cost-of-living pressures, including housing and rent, the most pressing concern for most Australians, migration has become a political issue amid a chronic housing shortage.

Peter Dutton has accused Labor of overseeing a surge in migration that has placed strain on the housing market, vowing to slash permanent migration from 185,00 to 140,000 if elected.

The Coalition has also pledged to cut net migration to 160,000 in 2024-25 and introduce a two-year ban on foreign investors and temporary residents buying existing homes, in a bid to free up 100,000 homes for Australians.

Labor criticised the proposal to curb migration, arguing that fewer than 5000 foreigners purchased existing homes in Australia in two years, sticking to its plan to reduce permanent immigration from 190,000 to 185,000.

The government has already introduced legislation to give the education minister power to cap international student numbers.