Population dynamics: the facts, Kingborough

Two videos on the population data Council has been briefed on, and the Council presentation itself so you can check every number.

Cr Aldo Antolli, Candidate for Mayor  |  Kingborough  |  Videos published 1 and 2 September 2026

↗ Download the Council presentation (PDF) ↓ Watch the videos ↓ Key points ← Back to Resources

You pay for this place, so you should get to see what Council sees. In September I took Kingborough through the population briefing councillors received, in two parts: how fast we are growing, and who we are becoming. Both videos are below, and the presentation they draw on, prepared by Kingborough Council, is here in full.

The two videos

Key points from the Council presentation

All figures below are taken from the Kingborough Council presentation at the link above. Kingborough and Tasmania are compared at 30 June 2024 (ABS estimated resident population) and at 2038 (Tasmanian Government projection, medium series).

We are growing faster than the state

Kingborough grew at 0.86 per cent in 2023/24, more than four times Tasmania’s 0.19 per cent. Over the 15 year average the gap is nearly double: 1.62 per cent a year here against 0.91 per cent statewide. On the medium projection Kingborough reaches 47,300 people by 2038 while Tasmania reaches 616,180.

Where the growth comes from is changing

Today Kingborough’s growth profile is natural increase (more births than deaths), a net loss of people to interstate, and a net gain from overseas. By 2038 the presentation describes Tasmania’s growth as migration-led with natural decline: more deaths than births, so the population only grows if people keep choosing to move here. Across Tasmania the birth rate and death rate have already converged over the last twenty years.

We are ageing faster than the state too

Kingborough’s rate of population ageing over the last 15 years was 0.51 per cent a year, against 0.37 per cent for Tasmania, and it is projected to run at 0.75 per cent a year to 2038. By then more than one in four residents will be 65 or over, and the number aged 85 and over more than doubles. The presentation’s age pyramids show the 2038 shape widening at the top and narrowing in the 20 to 34 age bands.

The bigger picture the presentation sets out

• Birth rates are falling in nearly every region of the world. Europe’s total fertility is about 1.4 births per woman; in East Asia it is below one.
• More than 50 countries and territories are now net-mortality societies, with more deaths than births each year.
• Fifty years ago there were seven working-age Australians for every retiree. Today there are four.
• Encouraging migration to distressed regions is one of the main policy levers available to address population loss and its economic consequences.
• Council is a member of the Local Government Association of Tasmania’s Future Populations Network, which aims to help councils build regional population strategies to guide infrastructure and services planning. The presentation says demographic data should be an integral part of strategy development.

What I take from it

Growth is a vote of confidence in Kingborough, and it is also an invoice: every new resident needs a road, a footpath and a pipe in the ground. Ageing is a fourteen year warning that very few organisations ever get. That is why Priority 8, infrastructure, backs a $5 million a year increase for Council’s engineering team and a published 10 year infrastructure plan, and why I will bring forward an ageing and accessibility plan built on these projections and report on it publicly every year.

The videos are my presentation of the data. The PDF is Council’s document, reproduced here unchanged so residents can see the source. This page is my summary and commentary, not a Council document.