DEMOGRAPHIC DRAFT AUSTRALIA

Australia’s Indian diaspora numbers approximately 700,000, and Indians are

expected to outnumber Chinese-born Australians over the next decade.
Significantly, it is the second-highest taxpaying diaspora after the British,
making it clear that it is a group making significant contributions to
Australia’s economy. In the time since the student attacks, it has become clear
that its Indian-born population will be key to Australia’s future. The
government has known this for years – there is a reason that Australia
stations around 30 or more diplomats in New Delhi, making it one of their
top-tier posts – and now, civil society also gets it.

At the Australian Bureau of Statistics' 2016 census, 619,164 people in Australia

declared that they were of ethnic Indian ancestry. This comprises 2.8% of the
Australian population. Among those, 592,000 were born in India
The Indian-born community more than doubled between 2004 and 2009 to
308,542, making it the second largest non-European group in Australia after
Chinese-born Australians .In 2009 there were an additional 90,000 Indian students
studying at Australian tertiary institutions according to Prime Minister.
Education
In Australia, major changes in the organisation of higher education created larger
universities, and governments encouraged them to seek fee-paying overseas
students to generate revenue. Australian universities had cost, climate and
proximity advantages, even though they trailed American and British institutions in
India’s perceptions of prestige.The John Howard government in 1997 changed visa
rules to give preference to “skills”rather than “family reunions” for the right to
work and live in Australia. For potential fee-paying students, the attraction was the
opportunity of working in Australia for two years or more after completing a
course in a designated skill. There was also a longer-term possibility of permanent
residence and citizenship.8By 2006, Indian student enrollments in Australia
reached 25,000; they were 45,000 by 2016and more than 100,000 by 2019 before
the COVID-19 disruption

DEMOGRAPHY
Two factors came together to explain the large, rapid increase in the Indian-origin
population in the 21st century. First, the economic reforms in India which began in
1991increased economic activity, opened areas of the economy to foreign
participation andmade foreign exchange easier to come by. A growing Indian
middle class looked for ways to invest in the education of its children, and banks
became willing to provide loans to finance education overseas.
Indian origin population in English-
speaking countries

FACTS
 675,658 claimed Indian ancestry in 2016, constituting 2.8 per cent of the
Australian population.
 Indian-born population amounts to 455,389 or 1.9 per cent of the Australian
population.
 It is the fourth largest, and one of the fastest growing, migrant communities
in Australia, growing at 10.7 per cent per annum on average between 2006
and 2016. Indian-born population is expected to overtake the Chinese-born
population by 2031, reaching 1.4 million.128
 48 per cent of the Indian-born population are Australian citizens – students
form one-third of the India-born, non-citizen resident population.
 Indian-born population is almost three times as likely as the wider
Australian community to hold a bachelor's or higher degree (58 per cent of
 the Indian-born population as compared to 22 per cent of the wider
community).123
 Around 88 per cent of the working age, Indian-born population are
employed, 61 per cent in full-time work, 27 per cent in part-time work.123
 The personal, family, and household median incomes of the Indian-born
population are higher than that of overseas-born, Australian-born, and
national populations
 Indian-born migrants are the second-highest tax-paying diaspora after UK-
born migrants
 they contributed $7.9 billion in 2011–2012 and $11.9 billion in 2013–2014
in taxation revenue.
 Predictably, Australia's Indian dispora population is concentrated in the
larger states of Victoria and New South Wales, as illustrated by Figure 29.
Indian-born residents account for around 3 to 4 per cent of the population in
Perth, Sydney and Melbourne, and around 2 per cent in Brisbane and
Adelaide.
 Figure 30 outlines the number of speakers of a number of Indian languages
in Australia, providing an indicative picture of the diaspora's Indian states of
origin. What is immediately obvious is the large number hailing from
Punjab, Gujarat and Kerala
INDIAN LANGUAGES SPOKEN IN
AUSTRALIA
INDIAN-BORN EMPLOYEES AND
ENTREPRENEURS BY INDUSTRY

Health in Australia
• Average life expectancy in India is 66.5 years (male 65.5, female 67.6) compared to 81.7 years for all
people in Australia (male 79.3, female 84.3)6 .
• There is limited research on the health of Indian Australians.

• Cancer rates for India-born Australians are lower than for people born in Australia, but higher than
rates in India17. The most common cancers among Indian migrants in the United States are prostate,
lung and colorectal in men, and breast, genital and colorectal in women18