THE COMMONWEALTH CENSUS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22025, 7 August 1933, Page 6

THE COMMONWEALTH CENSUS

The preliminary count in connection with the census taken throughout Australia on June 30 gives the population of the Commonwealth as (1,619,059. This is not indicative of, any advance upon the slow growth in the numbers of the Australian community that has been latterly remarked. Between censuses a useful index for comparative purposes is afforded in the estimates of population made at frequent intervals. At the end of 1931 the number of people in Australia was estimated at 6,525,000, and roughly at the present time the country appears to be adding not many more than 50,000 persons to its total per year. Yet the emphatic need of Australia, as is emphasised by every discussion relative to the settlement of her vast vacant spaces, her defence, and the maintenance of the “ White Australia ” policy, is population. The latest census returns will no doubt be studied with particular interest in the aspects in which they show the distribution and movement of population. Australia has the distinction, not an enviable one, of being conspicuously a country of large cities and sparsely peopled rural areas. Her future, in respect of settlement of her unoccupied lands, is full of undetermined ■ possibilities, and presents something of a problem. The concentration of population in the capital cities is simply abnormal when it -is compared with what obtains in most other countries. This is particularly noticeable in Victoria and South Australia, the cities of Melbourne and Adelaide accounting in 1931 for as much as 57.6 per cent, and 55.45 per cent, respectively of the total populations of these States. Though Sydney is claimed to be the second greatest “ white ” city of the Empire, the extent of its absorption of the population of New South Wales is less pronounced. In New Zealand the tendency towards an undue concentration of the people in the urban areas is quite sufficiently pronounced. The distribution of urban population in New Zealand is marked, however, by a characteristic which differentiates it from the distribution in Australia, in what may be termed its decentralisation. The “ urban drift” is thus not likely to produce results similar to those seen in the Commonwealth. In this Dominion a quinquennial census is provided for, but the last census taken was that of 1926. There was no count of the population in 1931, the enumeration being postponed indefinitely for reasons of economy, and the probabilities are that there will not be another till the census year comes round again in 1936. The interval of ten years which will in that event elapse between one national enumeration and another is not, however, exceptionally long. In the Commonwealth the census is normally taken every ten years, and there has been an interval of over twelve years between the census of June 30 last and its immediate predecessor, reasons of economy having actuated the Federal Government in its decision to defer the count which became due in 1931. The previous census, that of 1921, showed the population of the Commonwealth to be 5,435,000, so that in a period of twelve years the number of persons occupying the Australian continent has been increased by about 1,184,000. The average annual increase thus indicated is considerably higher, even double, the estimated increment for 1931.