Australia’s population has reached 27.9 million after growth slowed to its lowest non-pandemic rate in 15 years, with net overseas migration falling below 300,000 for the first time since the Albanese government came to power.
Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show the population increased by 130,887 in the March quarter. Net overseas migration stood at 101,005, down 6 per cent from the same period last year and the smallest March-quarter result since the depths of the Covid pandemic.
Over the year, net overseas migration eased to 292,100. The bureau also revised down its estimate for the 2025 intake to 299,000.
Net overseas migration drops below 300,000
Overall population growth was 392,100, or 1.4 per cent, in the 12 months to March. Excluding the pandemic period, when Australia’s international border was closed, it was the lowest annual growth rate since 2011.
Growth had reached 2.5 per cent in September 2023, when the population increased by 662,000.
The figures suggest the government remains close to its budget target. The May budget forecast net overseas migration of 294,000 for the year to March and 295,000 for the full financial year, meaning the latter figure will be met unless arrivals rise sharply in the June quarter.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the government was ahead of schedule in reducing migration.
“When we came to office NOM [net overseas migration] was surging and a lot of the key indicators in the housing sector were falling. We are turning that around, and the net overseas migration numbers show that that is the case,” he said.
But Andrew Bragg, the Liberal housing spokesman, accused the government of underestimating the impact of migration on the property market.
“So they are still on the highway to hell here in terms of their migration numbers being way too high and totally misaligned with housing supply,” he said. “So they have cooked up a terrible storm, which has made housing harder, and frankly, everything harder in Australia.”
Natural population growth is also weakening. Births exceeded deaths by 100,600 over the past year, a fall of 4.6 per cent, or almost 5,000, compared with the previous year.
The slowdown in overseas migration was most pronounced in the states that traditionally receive the largest numbers of new residents. New South Wales recorded a 6 per cent annual fall to 28,865, while Victoria’s figure declined by almost 9 per cent.
Migration also fell in Queensland, South Australia and the Northern Territory. Western Australia recorded a marginal increase, while Tasmania saw its figure rise from 888 in the March quarter of 2025 to 1,086 this year.
There were also changes in interstate movements. Victoria recorded a net inflow of 505 people from elsewhere in Australia, its strongest March-quarter result since before the pandemic. New South Wales recorded a net loss of 4,970 people, its lowest March-quarter result since 2017.
Matt Bell, chief economist at Oliver Hume, said shifts in the housing markets of Victoria and Queensland appeared to be influencing those movements. He said the number of people moving to Queensland had fallen to its lowest level in a decade, while vacant land in south-east Queensland had remained more expensive than in Greater Melbourne for almost 18 months.
New South Wales remains Australia’s most populous state with 8.7 million residents, followed by Victoria with almost 7.2 million and Queensland with 5.7 million. Western Australia has 3.1 million people, South Australia 1.9 million, Tasmania 580,700, the Australian Capital Territory 489,700 and the Northern Territory 268,900.
