The crucial thing about Australia’s population is that the decisive factor has not been migration. It has been the White Australia policy, colonisation, wars, pandemics and global financial shocks — from the Great Depression to the Global Financial Crisis of 2008.
At various times, wars and economic deprivation have created refugee crises and led to sharp increases in the number of people seeking safety in Australia. These movements have included those fleeing the Irish Famine, the Vietnam War and wars across West Asia, particularly in Iraq and Syria.
Despite Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the resulting humanitarian catastrophe and mass displacement, migration from Palestine to Australia has remained comparatively small. Indeed, in some periods, more Palestinians have left Australia than have arrived.
Migration is a minor component of population change when compared with wars, pandemics, and major economic shocks. These have repeatedly had greater effects on Australia’s population trajectory than migration alone.
Please note in the graph below the population shocks of 1914-18 World War, the 1920 Spanish flu, the Great Depression of 1930-37, the Second World War, the ‘banana republic’ of 1991-93, the global financial crisis of 2007-8, and the global pandemic of 2020.
Australia’s Two Population Doublings
In the 31 years from 1945 to 1976, Australia’s population almost doubled—from 7.5 million to 14.1 million.
It has taken the next 50 years to almost double again, reaching 27.7 million in 2026.
But these two population booms were not driven by the same forces. The first was fuelled by a combination of high birth rates and mass post-war immigration. The second has been increasingly driven by migration, particularly the rapid growth in net overseas migration in recent decades.
The striking question is not simply how many people Australia has gained, but how the sources of that population growth have changed.
Ian Curr, 20 September 2026.
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