Melbourne remains fastest growing Aussie capital

Melbourne has lived up to its tag as "the world's most liveable city" by remaining Australia's fastest growing capital city, according to new figures.

The data, published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on Wednesday, showed the Victorian capital's population rose by 2.1 percent in 2014-2015.

One Melbourne suburb, Cranbourne East, recorded the fastest growth rate in the state, expanding by 32 percent in the space of a single year.

"Seven out of the countrys top ten growth areas were in Greater Melbourne," ABS director of demography, Beidar Cho, said in a press release on Wednesday.

However, Melbourne's growth rate, in fact, slowed by 0.1 percent compared to the previous year.

That downward trend in growth was consistent among the majority of Australia's other state and territory capitals, namely Sydney (1.7 percent growth), Perth (1.6 percent), Brisbane (1.6 percent) and Adelaide (0.9 percent).

Cho said only three capital cities improved on their performance from last year.

"Of all the capitals, only Hobart (0.8 percent), Canberra (1.4 percent) and Darwin (1.9 percent) grew faster in 2014-15 than in the previous year," Cho said.

The Northern Territory (NT) capital city of Darwin reaped the rewards of more Territorians swapping the region's outback communities for the city life, with Darwin's growth jumping a further 0.3 percent compared to 2013-14.

The impending end of Western Australia's mining boom also seems to have impacted on migration to its main epicenter of Perth, which slumped to its lowest growth rate since 2004-05.

Despite Melbourne's superior growth to Sydney, the ABS expects the New South Wales capital to soon become the first Australian city to house more than 5 million people.

"Should this amount of growth continue in 2015-16, we would expect Sydneys population to hit 5 million sometime this year," Cho said. Endit