Despite losing some ground to Sydney because of an exodus of citizens during the pandemic, Melbourne is still on track to become Australia’s most populous city, as it once again becomes the destination of choice for overseas and internal migrants.
Melbourne is predicted to overtake Sydney by 2031-32, when the Victorian capital is forecast to reach a population of six million, pipping its northern rival by a couple of hundred thousand people, new data from the Centre for Population reveals.
The prediction has triggered a fresh round of fire in the war of words between Sydneysiders championing their city’s natural beauty and Melburnians pointing to their vibrant cultural offering and cheaper cost of living.
The New South Wales premier, Dominic Perrottet, on Thursday mocked the suggestion that Melbourne was a better place to live.
“Melbourne more livable than Sydney? I mean please,” Perrottet scoffed. “We’ve got the best harbour in the world, the Opera House, the Blue Mountains, the best beaches, and they’ve got that Federation Square thing. Like, no, Sydney’s the place to be, we all know that.”
But what’s behind Melbourne’s superior population growth? Demography points to three main factors:
More overseas migration
Waves of foreign migration have not only shaped Australian society – they are significant economic drivers that state governments attempt to draw in.
Melbourne has long attracted a larger share of net overseas migration compared to Sydney, in large part due to past policies from the Victorian government, says Prof Nick Parr, a demographer at Macquarie University.
“This has long been a factor. Victorian governments actively sought to encourage international migration to their state,” Parr said.
Melbourne has more liberal requirements for skilled migrants looking to move permanently, as well as a dynamic related to international students moving temporarily, Parr said.
Sydney, on the other hand, went through a period that had the effect of restricting growth. The former NSW premier Bob Carr famously declared Sydney as “full” in 2000.
People moving to Melbourne from around Australia
In a trend that began before the pandemic (and briefly reversed in recent years due in part to Covid), Australians from other cities and towns move to Melbourne at a greater rate than it loses residents to other states.
Net internal migration data even showed there has consistently been a distinctive group of people moving from Sydney to Melbourne.
Sydneysiders moving to Melbourne are attracted to the cheaper house prices and the better cost of living, Parr said. “There’s an affordability factor.”
For Australians moving to Melbourne from elsewhere, the Victorian capital’s “economic and job opportunities are an important part of the picture” according to Parr.
Additionally, demographers have noticed a trend of recent international migrants who first moved to Sydney later moving to Melbourne. This group accounts for about half of interstate flows from Sydney to Melbourne, and is largely migrants from south Asian countries such as India and Sri Lanka, Parr said.
Meanwhile, Sydneysiders have a long history of leaving their city to move interstate at higher rates than the rest of the country.
“For a long time more Australians have moved out of Sydney to live elsewhere than in the opposite direction,” Parr said.
Birthrate
The third key factor driving Melbourne’s population growth faster than Sydney’s is largely a flow-on effect of the first two factors of international and interstate migration.
Melbourne has a larger natural increase in population – measured by births minus deaths – influenced by the fact that the majority of migrants to the city are young.
“Young adults move to Melbourne in greater numbers, and that has a greater effect on the number of births than it does on the number of deaths,” Parr said.
Has Melbourne ever had a larger population than Sydney?
This isn’t so straightforward.
In 1930, Melbourne had just 200,000 fewer residents than Sydney’s 1.2 million – the closest it had ever come to parity.
But Parr notes that the definitions that tend to be used in statistical compilations are for greater Sydney and greater Melbourne. “Greater Sydney extends up parts of the central coast, as well as fully rural areas, and into the Blue Mountains.”
If only considering “significant urban area”, a term that only considers continuous built up areas, Parr points out that “Melbourne actually nudged Sydney very narrowly just before the pandemic”, but swiftly lost this lead because of its pandemic exodus.
