The Morrison Government's updated population plan will underpin economic growth while maintaining the liveability of Australia's cities and supporting growth in our regions and smaller cities.
Released today, the updated Planning for Australia's Future Population comes six months after the first policy announcement, during which time the Government has forged ahead in implementing a range of population initiatives.
Minister for Population, Cities and Urban Infrastructure Alan Tudge said the measures were designed to reduce population pressures in our major cities and support our regions and smaller cities to attract the people they need.
"We are busting congestion in major cities while addressing skill shortages in regional towns, and working to meet the changing demands on infrastructure and government services," he said.
Mr Tudge said the expanded plan includes the following key elements:
- Lower permanent migration from 190,000 to 160,300 this year, and cap it at 160,000 over the next four years.
- Put in place incentives for new arrivals to go to regional centres and smaller cities. Incentives include 23,000 places for two new regional skilled visas within the 160,000 permanent migration cap that require people to live and work outside the big cities for three years before being eligible for full permanent residency.
- Create incentives for international students to consider going to universities in regional areas and smaller cities.
- Plan to build fast rail connections between the big capitals and their respective regional centres and allocate $2 billion to get the first fast rail connection from Melbourne to Geelong built as quickly as possible.
- Ensure that direct government economic development policy would boost jobs in smaller cities and regions.
- Build more congestion busting infrastructure thanks to the the investment in transport infrastructure of over $100 billion over the next ten years.
- Ensure better population planning with the states by putting two mechanisms in place. City Deals, for better planning across the three levels of government, and a National Population and Planning Framework to link up the policy responsibilities that each level of government has so we can better manage our growth into the future.
The updated plan can be found here:
https://population.gov.au/downloads/planning-future-population.pdf
