Aussies multiplying in great numbers

Australia is poised to be the world's fastest growing industrialised nation over the next four decades, a report in today's Sydney Morning Herald today says.

The population of New Zealand's transtasman neighbour is expected to be 35 million by the year 2050.

At the census last year, Australia's population was just over 20 million.

Australia's rate of population growth is estimated to be higher even than India's.

Australia is projected to grow at a rate of 65 per cent in the next 40 years, well above the global average, a survey by US-based private research body, the Population Reference Bureau, shows.

The population is already growing at the fastest rate since post-war migration and the baby boom saw it explode in the 1950s and '60s , figures released yesterday by the Bureau of Statistics show.

In the first quarter of this year Australia saw the biggest influx of migrants in almost 30 years of detailed figures. It gained about 97,000 net migrants in the quarter, about 20,000 more than at any time since Bureau of Statistics figures started in 1981.

The natural increase in the population - births less deaths - was also about 15 per cent higher in the year to March 31, than the previous year, the SMH report said.