Opinion
Every few years Australia returns to a familiar refrain: population growth is “too fast”, migration must be restrained, and pressure on housing, infrastructure and public services demands a slowdown.
The narrative is resurfacing again now, fuelled by concerns about rents, congestion and the cost of living.
Much of the anxiety rests on projections that have repeatedly underestimated how many people live here and how fast Australia is growing.
But what does “too fast” mean when we talk about population growth?
There is no official threshold. No single number.
In practice, growth is labelled too fast when housing supply falls behind demand, infrastructure lags, or planning systems fail to keep pace.
When dwelling construction can’t match household formation, rents rise, prices accelerate and pressure builds.
But the issue is rarely population growth itself – it is whether we planned for it. And it is an important debate.
Population growth shapes how we plan our cities, build our homes, invest in infrastructure and sustain our economy.
But, before arguing about pace, we must be sure we are measuring it properly.
Too often, the real problem is not the debate – it’s the numbers underpinning it.
Government population projections have been systematically wrong for years.
Not by chance, but consistently.
They have repeatedly underestimated how many people live in Australia, how fast the population grows, and how central migration is to economic performance.
Across the Commonwealth’s last five Population Statements, Australia’s post-COVID population growth has been underestimated 15 times out of a possible 17.
These undercounts matter because policy built on erroneous projections leads to faulty decisions.
Some variances have been small, and the 2024 statement came closest to the mark.
But projection shortfalls have tended to widen over time.
Part of the problem is the habitual assumption that population growth returns to its long-term trend, and that stronger growth is temporary; something to ride out rather than plan for.
The 2025 Population Statement expects growth of 1.3 per cent by June 2026, slowing to 1.1 per cent by the end of the decade – nearly 100,000 fewer people than forecast just a year earlier.
That is a big hostage to fortune.
Governments could force that outcome by capping skilled migration.
But at what cost to economic growth?
Net overseas migration is a quiet workhorse of Australia’s economy, demand-led and deeply tied to prosperity.
Over the past two decades, migration has contributed around half of total economic growth.
“We are planning housing, infrastructure and services using projections that repeatedly underestimate reality, while debating migration as if it were optional or temporary.”
Not occasionally. Consistently.
It has expanded labour supply, supported productivity and strengthened industries across construction, resources, healthcare, education and small business.
OECD research aligns with the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre’s latest findings: migration lifts employment across skill levels, ages and genders, without adverse wage effects.
Western Australia understands this well.
Its capital-intensive, export-oriented and cyclical economy relies on migration to smooth labour shortages, stabilise growth and support regional development.
Without it, growth would have been weaker, wages more volatile and productivity lower.
At the same time, Australia’s fertility rate continues to fall.
This is not cyclical. It is structural.
Australians are having fewer children, later in life, with many either choosing not to have children or wishing to but being unable to.
Even well-designed family policies are unlikely to reverse this trend meaningfully.
The implications are profound for the future workforce, tax base and sustainability of essential services, and demand a more serious national conversation about fertility and family policy.
This is not nostalgia or moralising, but practical economic policy.
Affordable childcare, high-quality reproductive healthcare, secure housing, flexible work, modern parental leave and stronger support for women balancing careers and caregiving are no longer social extras.
They are economic necessities.
Natural population growth can no longer do the heavy lifting it once did.
Here lies the disconnect.
We are planning housing, infrastructure and services using projections that repeatedly underestimate reality, while debating migration as if it were optional or temporary.
It is neither.
Migration is now a structural driver of economic growth.
None of this denies the real pressures on housing, transport and public services, especially in fast-growing states such as Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia.
But these pressures are not caused by migration alone.
They arise when population growth outpaces housing supply, infrastructure delivery and the responsiveness of the planning system.
Just under 174,000 dwellings were completed in the year to June 2025, well short of the National Housing Accord’s 240,000 annual target.
At the current pace, Australia will fall roughly one third of a million homes short of the 1.2 million new builds promised by June 2029 under the Accord.
This is a housing supply problem, not a migration problem.
Lower population forecasts can act like a pressure valve, taking the heat out of the scale of the challenge – and the urgency required to address it.
If projections continue to undercount reality, we will keep building too little, too late – and then blaming migration for the consequences.
A more honest conversation is needed. One that recognises declining fertility as a long-term constraint, migration as an economic necessity, and accurate population forecasting as essential economic infrastructure.
Getting the numbers right will not solve every challenge.
But getting them wrong guarantees we will keep having the wrong debate.
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Professor Alan Duncan has been director of the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre at Curtin University since 2013, having previously directed the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling at the University of Canberra.
