THE number of babies born in the two hospitals in Ipswich is increasing, with the total continuing to rise despite the falling fertility rate across the country.
Australia’s fertility rate has fallen to 1.5 children per woman, however the country’s key population reporting group has said that it’s not time to worry.
In 2020, during the first year of the pandemic, only 3045 newborns were delivered between Ipswich General Hospital and St Andrews Private, before peaking at 3388 in 2022.
Ipswich General has sat at the seventh from 65 hospitals on the number of deliveries for the past decade, showing the population boom of the city.
Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) has welcomed the news, dismissing claims it represented an economic crisis.
SPA national president Peter Strachan said any worry was unwarranted.
“Europe’s fertility has averaged around 1.5 for decades now, with very low population growth, and most EU nations have performed better than Australia on per capita measures of economic performance,” Mr Strachan said. “A lower Australian fertility rate means that the sustainable level of immigration might be slightly higher. With fertility at 1.5, we can receive 90,000 net migrants per year to maintain a stable population, compared with only 75,000 net migrants when fertility is 1.6.”
Mr Strachan said it was sad that people were choosing not to have children because they could not afford decent housing.
“Ultimately, if Australia stabilises its population, then housing will become more affordable, and the fertility level may well go up,” he said. “Australia’s immigration rate is currently so high that, even if we had no children at all born in Australia, the population would still grow.
“This is the absurdity of scaremongering – Australia is not running out of people.
“The real threat to our economy is our very rapid population growth rate, over 80% from immigration.”
Any “crisis” was a myth devised to scare people into accepting higher immigration to pump corporate profits, “while squeezing their living standards and trashing our natural environment”, he said.
