Australia’s proportion of born overseas has reached a 120-year high according to new data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Approximately 6.6 million residents currently living in Australia were born outside Australian borders, a figure representing around 28 per cent of the national population.
“Australia traditionally had a high proportion of migrants, but we’ve now hit a peak not seen since the gold rushes of the late 1800s,” ABS spokeswoman Denise Carlton said.
“Overseas migration has been a large contributor to the total Australian population growth for several years — it has consistently been the main driver since 2005-06, contributing more than 50 per cent of population growth in Australia.
“While the largest migrant groups were people born in the United Kingdom and New Zealand — with a total of over 1.8 million Australian residents being born in those two countries, the next two most common birth places were from the Asian region.
“These were China and India, with around 450,000 and 400,000 people respectively.”
At a domestic level, Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia were the only states to record a net positive migration intake, whereas every other State and Territory recorded a loss in residents.
