United nations hri

Land and people

Land use

3. Australia features a wide range of climatic zones, from the tropical regions of the north, through the arid expanses of the interior, to the temperate regions of the south. Australia is the world’s second-driest continent (after Antarctica), with average (mean) annual rainfall below 600 millimetres (mm) per year over 80 per cent of the continent, and below 300 mm over 50 per cent. Summers are hot through most of the country, with average January maximum temperatures exceeding 30 degrees Celsius (°C) over most of the mainland except for the southern coastal fringe between Perth and Brisbane, and areas at high elevations. Winters are warm in the north and cooler in the south, with overnight frosts common in inland areas south of the Tropic of Capricorn. However, extreme minimum temperatures are not as low as those recorded in other continents, due to Australia’s relatively low latitude, the lack of high mountains to induce orographic cooling and because of the large expanse of relatively warm surrounding oceans.

4. In spite of Australia’s harsh environment, agriculture is the most extensive form of land use. At 30 June 2004, the estimated total area of establishments with agricultural activity was 440.1 million hectares (ha), representing about 57 per cent of the total land area. The remainder of the land area consists of unoccupied land (mainly desert in western and central Australia), Aboriginal land reserves (mainly located in the NT and WA), forests, mining leases, national parks and urban areas.

Population

Graph 1

Australian demographic trends

Population growth

Table 1

Australia’s population growth

(a) Includes Other Territories (Jervis Bay Territory, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands).

6. The Australian population has increased by 12 per cent over the past decade. Australia’s growth rate of 1.2 per cent for the 12 months to December 2005 was the same as the overall world growth rate. When compared with other countries, Australia’s population growth rate was similar to New Zealand (1.1 per cent), higher than Canada (0.9 per cent), the United States of America (0.9 per cent), and Hong Kong (0.7 per cent); considerably higher than the United Kingdom (0.3 per cent), Japan (0.1 per cent) and Germany (0.0 per cent), and well below the growth rates for Papua New Guinea (2.4 per cent) and Malaysia (1.9 per cent). China
(0.6 per cent), ranked as the largest population, had a growth rate half that of Australia.

Population density

8. In 1904, 63 per cent of Australians lived outside capital cities. This proportion fell steadily and by 1962 only 40 per cent lived outside capital cities. Since the mid-1970s, this proportion appears to have steadied at around 36 per cent.

9. The distribution of Australia’s population at 30 June 2004 is shown in Map 1 below.