For many years young people from Perth in the west of Australia have moved to the bigger cities like Sydney and Melbourne to find work. But recently, something has changed and people are coming back to Perth.


BERNARD SALT: There's a clear shift across Australia at the moment from the east to the west.

There has been a complete turnaround between 2002 and 2004, and my view is that the trend has even improved further into 2005.

DIANNE BAIN: Western Australia is experiencing a population shift that has not happened for years.

BERNARD SALT: The kick-along in the resources industry at the moment is attracting people back from the eastern seaboard to the west.
The net migration flow to Western Australia for the year ending 2004 was 1,300 people. Two years previous in the year ending June 2002, it was a net outflow of more than 4,000 people.

DIANNE BAIN: For a long time, WA has said goodbye to people intent on moving to Sydney or Melbourne in search of better pay, better jobs and a dose of excitement and glitz a bigger city has to offer. Bernard Salt is one of the nation's leading demographers. He says that many people were drawn to bigger cities for work.

BERNARD SALT: There was a major out-shift from Western Australia soon after the economic collapse of the early 1990s, and right throughout the 1990s there was a lure, if you like, of the eastern seaboard. This was as a consequence of a number of events and projects that were occurring in Melbourne and Sydney at the time.

The issue is that all of those events, projects and programs ended in 2001, and those residents of Western Australia made a value judgment that the quality of life was actually better in Western Australia or in Perth, and you had a backflow, if you like, starting out around 2002 and 2003, and that is being augmented by the resources boom and job generation in the west leading to quite a hyped level of activity in terms of jobs and population now flooding into Western Australia.

Job generation occurs right across the board in Western Australia. It may well be led by the resources sector and the miners out in the mines, but this has the effect of spinning off further demand for office workers down in Perth.

DIANNE BAIN: While all this bodes well for the State, Bernard Salt warns the increased population growth is unlikely to last forever, but he believes its slowing is at least a few years away.

BERNARD SALT: I think Western Australia is on the thin end of a quite significant wave of growth and development.