Record number of Australia?s population born overseas

Twenty-eight per cent of Australia’s population was born outside the country, according to recent figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Some 6.6 million people living in Australia were born in other countries, a figure that has not been reached for around 120 years. Back in the late 1800s, foreigners flocked to Australia during the peak of the gold rush, which saw the country develop from a convict colony into an idyllic destination for migrants.

ABS’s Denise Carlton explained that Australia’s population growth had been largely impacted by overseas migration for a number of years, and revealed that it had contributed towards over 50 per cent of the population growth since the mid-2000s.

More than 1.2 million UK-born people are now living in Australia, while around 600,000 were born in nearby New Zealand. China and India take up the next two positions with 450,000 and 400,000 respectively.

Carlton noted that the biggest rise in terms of percentages of the number of people born outside Australia was from India, with the number almost tripling in the past decade from 132,800 to 397,200. Meanwhile, the number of people born in China during the same period almost doubled from 205,200 to 447,400.