Decline picked for S.I. regions

Press, 13 April 1989, Page 3

Decline picked for S.I. regions

By

PETER LUKE

in Wellington

The populations of three South Island regions, including Aorangi, will decline over the next quarter century, according to projections by the Planning Council.

New Zealand’s population is projected to rise from 3,263,000 to 3,759,000 between the 1986 and 2011 censuses — an increase of 15.2 per cent. But the South Island population is projected to rise just 3.1 per cent, from 847,000 to 873,000, and to decline in three South Island local government regions, according to the Planning Council report, “Diversity and Change: regional populations in New Zealand.” The areas predicted to decline are Aorangi (from about 80,000 to 73,000), Coastal-North Otago, including Dunedin (from 136,000 to 132,000), and Southland (from 104,000 to 100,000). A fourth South Island region, the West Coast, is projected to remain stable at about 33,000 people. Between 1961 and 1986 the South Island population increased 18.6 per cent, compared with the North Island’s 45.3 per cent, with fails in only the West Coast and CoastalNorth Otago. Only two South Island regions, Nelson Bays and Clutha-Central Otago, are expected to grow more than 10 per cent in population. Nelson Bays, projected to increase from 67,000 to 75,000, and Clutha-Central Otago, from 45,000 to 50,000, are both retirement favourites, likely to gain from immigration. Of the other South Island regions, Marlborough is projected to increase from 37,000 to 40,000, and Canterbury from 344,000 to 368,000. By contrast, the North Island population is expected to increase 19.5 per cent, from 2,415,000 to 2,886,000, with the growth particularly marked in the northern half. The Auckland local government area is picked to top the 1 million mark, rising 24 per cent from 881,000 in 1986 to 1,094,000 in 2011. But Northland and the Bay of Plenty share the greatest percentage change. Both are tipped to increase by more than 28 per cent. The only other areas with a growth rate above

the national average of 15 per cent are Horowhenua (19-8 per cent), Tongariro (19.7 per cent), and Thames Valley (17 per cent). These six North Island regions are expected to gain from immigration, the five non-metropolitan areas becoming retirement zones. The large Maori populations in Northland, the Bay of Plenty and Tongariro also contribute to the areas’ above-average expected growth. The council emphasised that its projections were not predictions. “At best they indicate some of the broad changes in patterns of growth and composition that might be expected on the basis of selected assumptions related to recent demographic trends.” Shifts in national immigration policy or big public works policies in a region could affect the projections. The detailed projections provided by the council include high and medium assumptions of fertility trends, and high, medium and low net migration assumptions for each region. But the fact that these assumptions could not all be realistic did not invalidate their usefulness, the council argued. “The current age-sex structure of regional populations, coupled with assumptions about migration of people aged 15 years and over, will largely determine the composition of the labour force and elderly components of the population.” The council acknowledged that low levels of growth in the 1980 s combined with high, constant levels of net emigration over the next 25 years, produced depressing prospects for such regions as the West Coast, Aorangi, Southland and CoastalNorth Otago. This could be unduly pessimistic for a metropolitan region such as Coastal-North Otago — “it reflects more about the assumptions concerning migration than any calculated assessment of prospects for economic and social development in the southern South Island.”