Tasmanian population strategy to look at growing regional areas

The Government’s population target of 650,000 people will rely on arresting falling numbers of residents in many of the state’s regional areas.

Many regional areas of the state are predicted to have declining populations as births fail to keep up with residents leaving.

AN update to the state government’s bold plan to increase the Tasmanian population to 650,000 people by 2050 will look specifically at growing lagging regional areas.

The new element of the updated population strategy — expected by the end of the year — was on Monday confirmed to the Mercury and comes after Treasury and University of Tasmania projections predicted sharp population decline in some areas.

According to UTAS’s Institute for the Study of Social Change, the West Coast would suffer the worst population loss into the future with an expected decline of 28.8 per cent of its 2019 population to just 2963 people by 2042.

Although the Government has insisted annual population growth had the state on track to reach the 650,000 person target, issues predicted for some local government areas have included an ageing population and migration to other regions and states.

Acting State Growth Minister Guy Barnett said on Monday: “An ageing population is a challenge, but also a potential opportunity that all jurisdictions are managing.

“We will continue to implement the Population Growth Strategy by promoting Tasmania as a place to live, work and invest and it will be updated later this year, as it has been in previous years.”

In the South, the Tasman and Southern Midlands councils were predicted to experience population decline over the next 20 years, reducing 17.2 per cent and 9.3 per cent respectively to 1978 and 5492 people.

The Break O’Day Council was predicted to lose 947 people — 15.3 per cent of its current population — to have 5239 people in the local government area by 2042.

Southern Midlands Council mayor Alex Green said arresting population decline required a whole-of-state approach.

“Our council’s involved in a regional workforce planing project to look at what future jobs are required and matching them up with people in school now in discussion with industry,” Cr Green said.

Break O’Day Council mayor Mick Tucker said his council had been involved in a lengthy jobs and skills audit to identify and increase employment opportunities.

Emerging industries such as those that would be created by new mountain bike trails would create new opportunities, he said.

“We know we will need a lot of people from ... hospitality and accommodation to guides to maintenance people to specialist repair workers.”