Tighter visa requirements
Having hit 25,650 as at Q1 2020, Australia's estimated resident population more or less stalled for 21 months, with many temporary residents and students leaving the country, and with immigration paused.
When the borders reopened, population growth naturally soared back in 2022.
Increasing at a pace of 1,800 persons per day, or an annual pace of 650,000, the resident population will round at 2023 at 27 million.
Essentially the population of Australia is back on the same trend it would have been at if the pandemic had never happened.
The government has copped a lot of flak for this, but it was probably inevitable.
Temporary visa holder number increased by more than 1 million as the students, tourists, and working holiday makers returned.
Permanent migration visa processing has also been operating at full tilt, in order to tackle the labour shortage.
Even now the unemployment rate is still as low as 3.7 per cent.
Record low rental vacancy rates and poor polling mean that the government is compelled to make some announcements related to slowing population growth.
In reality, population growth will slow naturally in 2023, as the net growth in the number of international students normalised.
We won't see population growth like 2023 again any time soon, but more likely it will soften towards around 450,000 next year.
The government did what it had to do, and continues to do so.
The temporary skilled migration income threshold will be lifted to $70,000, but this will barely have any impact on student numbers over the next two years.
Visas for those with specialist skills and earning $135,000 plus will be fast-tracked and processed within 7 days.
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Inflation expectations fell from 5.6 per cent to 5.0 per cent on the latest ANZ-Roy Morgan reading.
Let's see if that sticks this time!
Pre-pandemic, the inflation expectations reading was tracking at around 4 per cent to 4½ per cent (and inflation was undershooting the 2 to 3 per cent target at that time).
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