Victorians drag down WA growth
One of WA's economic fundamentals, population growth, has shuddered to its slowest pace in eight years as Victorians turn their backs on the West.
In a new threat to the State Budget that could hit the annual GST carve-up, the population grew by 54,400 through the year to the end of June.
It took the population of WA to 2.57 million, a 2.2 per cent increase on the 2012-13 financial year.
Over the past 18 months, WA's rolling annual population growth rate has almost halved. The 2.2 per cent rate is well short of what State Treasury expected, at 2.6 per cent, and suggests its forecast for the current financial year of 2.1 per cent will be too optimistic.
Migrants from overseas and interstate are the cause of the sharp slowdown.
Net interstate migration was minus 33 in the June quarter, the first time in 11 years WA exported more people to the rest of the nation than it absorbed residents.
It is being driven by a collapse in the number of Victorians in WA. A net 514 people left for the Garden State in the June quarter, with the rate accelerating in recent months.
Overseas migration, in line with the slowdown in the mining construction sector, is also falling sharply. In early 2012, the State absorbed a net 16,000 people from other parts of the world. In the three months to the end of June, net immigration was just 3384.
Nationally, Australia's population is just short of 23.5 million. Both NSW and Victoria added more than 100,000 residents.
Labor MP Alannah MacTiernan said the figures highlighted the economic challenges facing WA in the coming year.
She said they were also at odds with forecasts by the Federal Treasury, which only this week forecast the State to have 2.63 million residents by year's end.
That is now impossible and suggests GST revenue to the State will be lower than expected in coming years.
"These figures should be a real wake-up call and should draw people's attention to the issues that WA is facing," she said.
"I think we can see population growth in WA being below or at the national average within the next year."
Separate figures reveal that Victoria Park is the State's most densely populated suburb with more than 3662 people per square kilometre.
It was just ahead of Maylands with 3562 people per sq/km and Northbridge.
Australia's most densely populated capital is Sydney.
