Australia set for 39 million people by mid-2060s – but slower population growth

Australia’s population is projected to reach 39.3 million in 2065-66 but its rate of growth will have slowed, according to the Intergenerational Report (IGR) released Monday. The projected number in 40 years’ time compares with a current population of about 27.9 million. The IGR projects population growth slowing from an average of 1.4% a year over the last 40 years to 0.9% a year over the coming four decades. This is 0.2 percentage points lower growth compared with the projection period of the last report, issued in 2023. In 2062–63 the projected population would be 1.8 million lower than projected in the 2023 IGR. In a Monday speech launching the report, Treasurer Jim Chalmers will say that by the mid 2060s: “People live longer, healthier lives, families have fewer kids, and that will make the population grow more slowly, to less than 40 million in forty years”. He elaboprated on News24 on Sunday:“We do acknowledge in the IGR that we expect fertility rates to fall further and faster than we anticipated even three years ago. That’s actually one of the biggest influences over the next 40 years or so. Almost half the decline in fertility rates is actually because fewer people are having three or more kids. And what that reflects is mums having fewer kids later in life. That’s what’s playing out in the fertility rates.” Population level projection across intergenertational reports ABS National, state and territory population; and Treasury Chalmers says in his speech the report’s projections also show living standards will have risen and people will retire with much larger superannuation accounts than they do now. A major change in this report compared with the 2023 one is the central place it gives artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has met Apple executive chairman Tim Cook in Silicon Valley on the first leg of his visit to the United States, where he will attend the United Nations and spruik Australia’s case for one of the non-permanent seats on the UN Security Council for 2029-30. The PM and Cook canvassed AI as well as what Apple is doing about safety online, and Australia’s social media ban for under 16s and its proposed Digital Duty of Care legislation. Later Albanese told the ABC Cook regarded the work Australia had done on social media as “world leading”. The prime minister will use Australia’s lead on the under 16s ban and its Duty of Care initiative in his campaigning for the Security Council spot. Albanese said he hoped this week’s talks between US Predident Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping would see “positive engagement” on managing AI. Australia supports guardrails. But Trump has made it clear he regards AI as a central element in the competition between the US and China and does not want to see its development slowed in any way. “Individual leaders will speak for themselves. What I do is I speak for Australia’s national interests, and Australia’s national interests are served by us engaging, by us recognising that there are risks which need to be mitigated,” Albanese told a news conference at Apple Park. “That is something that we will continue to pursue, and something that is common. The discussions that I’ve had with leaders already in the lead-up to this week’s [UN] meeting, I think you’ll see some statements this week emerge as well from nations that recognise that we need to work together and cooperate.” In his IGR address Chalmers says the Australian economy will be twice as big as at present in 40 years’ time. While the budget will be under strain, it will be better placed than in the last report, he says, in a speech extract released ahead of delivery. “Our industrial base will be dominated by services, powered by cleaner energy, completely transformed by technology.” The world is expected to be more fragmented and uncertain. Chalmers says the report shows Australia better placed than peer countries “in almost every regard”. But is is living in a world that is becoming more dangerous, unpredictable, unequal, and divided. “These are not just individual threads but part of a bigger fraying of that intergenerational promise of better times.” Chalmers quotes writer and activist James Baldwin who said if people were denied participation in the American Dream, “by their very presence they will wreck it”. I know this was the 1960s, not the 2060s, the US not Australia, but it still speaks to a truth on every page of this analysis and in every corner of the Commonwealth. If people are unmoored economically, generationally, they feel disconnected from, and disregarded in, our politics. At worst that’s what we’re seeing now, at best it’s what’s at stake. Accelerating change is putting more pressure on people. It’s eroding trust in the institutions of our democracy. It’s exacerbating the strain felt by younger generations in particular. The division in politics now is not between those who accept this and those who don’t. But between those who prey on it and pick on it and politicise it and catastrophise it – and those who seek to alleviate it. The responsibility that we embrace today and every day is to respond to the pressures of the here and now – and plan so that the accelerating pace of change is accompanied by the accelerating pace of opportunity. Chalmers confirmed on Sunday that the IGR assumed growth for productivity at 1.2% annually, despite the fact it has been flat for years.