CANBERRA, Jan. 31 (Xinhua) -- South Australia (SA) has revealed its plan to boost its skilled migrant intake to stimulate population growth.
In a pitch to Prime Minister Scott Morrison, SA Premier Steven Marshall requested that a greater share of Australia's migrants be directed to SA, Tasmania and the Northern Territory (NT) - regions where population growth has stalled.
Marshall's population plan called on the government to incentivize migrants to settle in regional parts of his own state as well as increasing SA's share of international students.
Australia's population grew by 390,500 in the 12 months between June 2017 and June 2018, the vast majority of which was through net overseas migration (NOM).
The populations of New South Wales and Victoria - the nation's two largest states - grew by 1.5 and 2.2 percent respectively while that of smaller regions such as SA (0.7 percent), Western Australia (0.8 percent) and the NT (-0.1 percent) stagnated.
Morrison in December 2018 gave state and territory leaders until the end of January to submit population plans that would see that growth spread more evenly.
"As a nation we realize migration is good for economic prosperity for our country," Marshall said in his submission on Thursday.
"But the days of having a cookie-cutter approach, where we had one set of rules for the entire country, is not serving our country well.
"We have a two-speed arrangement, where you have some states and cities where they don't want any more migrants because their infrastructure has not kept up with their population growth and they want to slow the increase.
"However, there are other parts of the country that want to grow its population to deal with some of the significant skills constraints that are holding those states, like South Australia, back."
Australia welcomed 162,000 permanent migrants in 2018 - well short of the 190,000 cap.
Morrison has alluded to revising the cap down to 160,000 if he is re-elected at the May general election.
"There is a lot of talk about what that top number should be," Marshall said.
"What we are trying to say is it shouldn't just be about that top number, it should be about the mix, so who gets what.
"At the moment we would like to get a greater share of that population increase."
