AUSTRALIA’S POPULATION.

Otago Witness, Issue 3801, 18 January 1927, Page 69

AUSTRALIA’S POPULATION.

TOTAL NOW 6,076,432.

SYDNEY, January 7. On September 30 last, the population ot Australia was estimated by the Commonwealth Statistician (Mr 0. H. Wickens) to be 6,076,432 persons, of whom 3,104,821 were males and 2,971,611 females. This represents a nincrease of 118,512 persons, made up of 62,023 males and 56,489 females for the 12 months. The increase was made up of an excess of birth s over deaths of 77,988 persons, and an increase due to migration of 40,524. The population in the various States were: New South Wales 2,333,579, Victoria 1,703,177,' Queensland 882,340, South Australia 562,164, Western Australia 376,947, Tasmania 208,872, Northern Territory 3819, Federal Capital Territory 5534.

The returns indicate that since the census returns on April 4, 1921, the population of the Commonwealth increased by 640,698. Of this increase 445,493, or 70 per cent., was made up of the natural increase, the balance being due to migration. It is estimated that at the present rate of increase the population will top the 7,000,000 mark in seven years’ time. A striking feature of the analysis of the increase of population, according to the States, is that the population of Victoria is increasing far less rapidly than that of New South Wales. It is but a few decades ago that the Victorian population outnumbered that of this State. New South Wales’ increase represents practically half of the whole of the Commonwealth's ,and that of Victoria about one quarter. To-day New South W<!cs has 630,000 more people than Victoria. Striking comparisons can be made from from the figures. The population of Greater Sydney to-day is well over 1,000,000, or more than the number of people in the vast territories of South Australia, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory, or two-thirds of the whole of the continent. Greater Sydney contains nearly half the population of New South Wales. This State has nearly as many people as Victoria and Queensland together.

There is always intense public interest in population figures in this country, mainly because it is realised that the vast areas still unsettled are the vulnerable parts of the whole country. We realise that our country will never be fully developed until there are at least 50,000,000 in it, and every thousand that the population creeps nearer that mark is watched with breathless interest, as if it were a slowly-mounting cricket score. But the saner-minded, proud as they are of the size of Sydney, would be more pleased if some of the inhabitants of this city, containing more than one-sixth of the people of the whole continent, were distributed in the less-densely populated centrs.