Long-term arrivals hit record high

Population acceleration

A very timely subject for a post having given I spent a punishing amount of time sitting in south-east Queensland traffic yesterday in the new Holden.

I took the chance to catch up on a lot of great podcasts, at least!

The annual number of permanent and long term arrivals into Australia increased by 5.7 per cent over the past year from 802,830 to an all-time high of 848,570.

That, is a big, big number. 

Throw in increased life expectancy and I expect we'll see population growth accelerating towards a record high of about 450,000 per annum. 

In round numbers that would comprise more than 100,000 per annum in Sydney and Melbourne respectively, and about 100,000 per annum into Queensland, which would be the highest figure since the mining boom. 

Tourism powers on

The long drawn out surge in short-term arrivals hit a new record in May 2019, with the recent growth driven largely by Victoria.

Growth in Queensland petered out, despite the boost from the Commonwealth Games. 

This boom has resulted in record visitor and tourism spend.

What happens next is likely to be driven by the trajectory of the Aussie dollar.

Some of the commentary on Chinese visitors has spoken of numbers being 'off a cliff'.

They are down, certainly - for various reasons - but some context is germane here: to date they're down a little bit from a very high base. 

Similarly the multi-year boom in international student numbers may or may not be peaking, and this could be reflected in a recent plateau education arrivals. 

Overall, Chinese travel is a bit out of favour at the moment, but this hasn't yet slowed aggregate trip expenditure, while permanent and long term migration into Australia is at the highest level on record.

The wrap

A bit of noise from month to month, then but Australia's population will nudge 25½ million over the September quarter, and one might expect to see population becoming a political issue again as growth accelerates towards record high levels.