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28 pct Australians born overseas: statistics

Xinhua, March 30, 2017 Adjust font size:

The proportion of Australians born overseas continues to grow, with 28 percent of Australians found to have been born elsewhere, according to new figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on Thursday.

The number of foreign-born Australians has risen consistently over the past 10 years, however the proportion of those from India and China were found to have doubled in that time. In contrast, the number of Australian residents born in Germany has stagnated while there was a 10 percent drop in Italian immigrants.

According to the statistics, Japan was the fastest growing source of "new Australians" with 24 percent growth, followed by China, Malaysia and India.

Overall, those born in Britain (approximately 1.198 million) make up 5 percent of the overall Australian population, followed by 2.5 percent for New Zealand (607,200). Chinese-born Australians make up 2.2 percent of the population (526,000), while 468,800 Australians were born in India (1.9 percent).

Meanwhile the ABS also revealed the population of Australia's largest city, Sydney, had surpassed 5 million for the first time.

ABS Director of Demography, Beidar Cho, said that at June 30, 2016, 5,005,400 people lived in the New South Wales capital, up 82,800 from the previous year.

"It took Sydney almost 30 years, from 1971 to 2000, to grow from 3 million to 4 million people, but only half that time to reach its next million," Cho said in a statement on Thursday.

Despite Sydney's claim to be the first Australian city to 5 million people, Melbourne remains the nation's fastest growing metro area; its population grew by 2.4 percent in 2016, ahead of Brisbane (1.8 percent) and Sydney (1.7 percent). Adelaide was Australia's slowest growing capital and just below 1 percent per year. Endit