How many Melburnians fled to the regions last year

Melburnians population declined by more last year than any in year since records began.

New data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows lockdown-hit Melbourne lost 26,093 residents in 2021.

But professor of demography at the University of Melbourne, Peter McDonald, says the drop is likely due to fewer people moving to Melbourne, rather than existing residents fleeing.

“My guess is these numbers are reflecting more the fact that people haven’t been moving to Melbourne,” he said.

Professor McDonald says most flow out of the city goes to satellite cities.

“The regional areas of Victoria, or actually the satellites of Melbourne — Geelong, Torquay, Bendigo, Ballarat, et cetera — have been growing fairly solidly for a long time, from people moving out of Melbourne and going to those places,” he said.

“Trains are very important in this. The faster trains to places like Geelong make a big difference.”

But Russel doesn’t think faster trains are the key to getting more people to make the move to satellite regions. He thinks another, much cheaper, initiative on existing trains would do the trick.

Press PLAY below for analysis of the new ABS population data + Russel’s idea