CITY ON A GROW-SLOW

Downgraded predictions for Cairns population to hit spending

NEW schools, roads and hospitals could go unbuilt in Cairns over coming decades as low population projections foreshadow grave implications for spending on infrastructure. The Queensland Government Statistician’s Office forecasts average population growth of 1.5 per cent per year for the Cairns region to 2041.

It is a significant decline on actual historical growth rates achieved in the period to the last Census (2.3 per cent per year for the 15 years to 2016 and 2.5 per cent per year for the 30 years to 2016).

Advance Cairns CEO Nick Trompf said population was a notoriously inexact science, with Cairns dramatically exceeding expectations in the 1980s, 1990s and some of the 2000s.

He believed history would show the QGSO had once again underplayed the city’s expansion potential.

“The last decade has been difficult for the region and population growth has fallen to not much more than 1-1.5 per cent over a number of recent years,” he said.

“It was a combination of the global financial crisis, the US dollar getting to $1.08 – making us non-competitive as a tourism destination, then a series of financial collapses.”

Mr Trompf renewed Advance Cairns’s call for $1.5 million in state and federal funding for a new population and migration strategy.

“Talk to employers in town and almost all will say they would put more people on if they could get the right skilled people,” he said.

The figures are in line with predictions demographer Bernard Salt made in his Cairns Post Future Cairns forecast in April, which indicated the Cairns local government area alone would have a population of more than 200,000 by 2030.

Even on the QGSO’s conservative estimates, the city’s population is set to grow from about 162,000 to 236,000 by 2041, which will require costly new infrastructure.

A report before today’s Cairns Regional Council meeting reveals the council hired economic advisory firm AEC Group to undertake a separate forecast to check the validity of the QGSO’s numbers.

Unfortunately for the council and its infrastructure advocacy efforts, AEC found the numbers were appropriate.