The Shire of Carnarvon, the Gascoyne Development Commission and the local Member of Parliament all dispute population forecasts released by the State Government last week.

The Western Australia Tomorrow Population Report forecast the Shire of Carnarvon’s population to decrease to 4400 people by 2026 while the State is expected to swell to more than three million.

Minister for Planning John Day said these figures were used by government to plan for service delivery and budgeting.

But Member for the North West Vince Catania said this was not so.

“All of the infrastructure that will be delivered will be close to $200 million and that’s from State funding and Royalties for Regions,” Mr Catania said.

“All of that is already committed, or already funded.

“I just don’t know how they came to the point that the population is going to decrease; there’s a lot happening in the town that will attract and retain people.”

GDC executive officer Stephen Yule said the population in the Gascoyne had not grown at the same rate as other regions around the State but he did not believe there would be a decrease.

“I think (the projections) are wrong and Carnarvon population faces a strong growth,” Mr Yule said.

“(The GDC) want to see a strong growth in the economy and the population and we will continue to work towards it.”

The recent figures were a contrast to the 2005 report which forecast Carnarvon to have a population of 7300 in 2021, a rise of 100 residents every five years.

The projections of the report show the likely outcomes in 2026 “based on trends since the 1980s”.

In the best case scenario, Carnarvon would grow by about 300 residents to 6500. However, in the worst case Carnarvon’s population would slump to 2900.

Shire president Karl Brandenburg said he did not even agree with the best case results and that a more accurate prediction would be about 7500.

“The population has never gone backwards in the past 30 years,” Cr Brandenburg said.

“We are still pushing hard to make this town grow and we dispute these figures and we will work doubly hard to prove them wrong.”