Sydney's population has officially reached 5 million, according to figures released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
ABS Director of Demography, Beidar Cho, said that at 30 June 2016, 5,005,400 people lived in the NSW 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," she said.
Today's figures show that Melbourne is Australia's fastest growing capital city. Its population grew by 2.4 per cent in 2015-16, ahead of Brisbane (1.8 per cent) and Sydney (1.7 per cent). Australia's slowest growing capital city was Adelaide, at below 1 per cent.
The fastest growing area in Australia in 2015-16 was ACT - South West, which grew by 38 per cent. This area includes the recently developed suburbs of Wright and Coombs. Other areas experiencing fast growth included Pimpama (35 per cent) on the Gold Coast, the coastal area of Yanchep (29 per cent) in Perth's north and Cobbitty - Leppington (28 per cent) in Sydney's outer south-west.
