In Tasmania, about 1.49 children were born per woman in the period of 2022-2023. This figure represents a significant decrease compared to the previous years.

Humans have been living on the continent of Australia (name derived from "Terra Australis"; Latin for "the southern land") for approximately 65,000 years, however population growth was relatively slow until the nineteenth century. Europeans had made some contact with Australia as early as 1606, however there was no significant attempt at settlement until the late eighteenth century. By 1800, the population of Australia was approximately 350,000 people, and the majority of these were Indigenous Australians. As colonization progressed the number of ethnic Europeans increased while the Australian Aboriginal population was decimated through conflict, smallpox and other diseases, with some communities being exterminated completely, such as Aboriginal Tasmanians. Mass migration from Britain and China After the loss of its American colonies in the 1780s, the British Empire looked to other parts of the globe to expand its sphere of influence. In Australia, the first colonies were established in Sydney, Tasmania and Western Australia. Many of these were penal colonies which became home to approximately 164,000 British and Irish convicts who were transported to Australia between 1788 and 1868. As the decades progressed, expansion into the interior intensified, and the entire country was claimed by Britain in 1826. Inland colonization led to further conflict between European settlers and indigenous Australians, which cost the lives of thousands of natives. Inward expansion also saw the discovery of many natural resources, and most notably led to the gold rushes of the 1850s, which attracted substantial numbers of Chinese migrants to Australia. This mass migration from non-European countries eventually led to some restrictive policies being introduced, culminating with the White Australia Policy of 1901, which cemented ethnic-European dominance in Australian politics and society. These policies were not retracted until the second half of the 1900s. Independent Australia Australia changed its status to a British dominion in 1901, and eventually became independent in 1931. Despite this, Australia has remained a part of the British Commonwealth, and Australian forces (ANZAC) fought with the British and their Allies in both World Wars, and were instrumental in campaigns such as Gallipoli in WWI, and the South West Pacific Theater in WWII. The aftermath of both wars had a significant impact on the Australian population, with approximately 90 thousand deaths in both world wars combined, as well as 15 thousand deaths as a result of the Spanish flu pandemic following WWI, although Australia experienced a significant baby boom following the Second World War. In the past fifty years, Australia has promoted immigration from all over the world, and now has one of the strongest economies and highest living standards in the world, with a population that has grown to over 25 million people in 2020.

Small, fragmented or isolated populations are at risk of population decline due to fitness costs associated with inbreeding and genetic drift. The King Island scrubtit Acanthornis magna greeniana is a critically endangered subspecies of the nominate Tasmanian scrubtit A. m. magna, with an estimated population of < 100 individuals persisting in three patches of swamp forest. The Tasmanian scrubtit is widespread in wet forests on mainland Tasmania. We sequenced the scrubtit genome using PacBio HiFi and undertook a population genomic study of the King Island and Tasmanian scrubtits using a double-digest restriction site-associated DNA (ddRAD) dataset of 5,239 SNP loci. The genome was 1.48 Gb long, comprising 1,518 contigs with an N50 of 7.715 Mb. King Island scrubtits formed one of four overall genetic clusters, but separated into three distinct subpopulations when analysed independently of the Tasmanian scrubtit. Pairwise FST values were greater among the King Island scrubtit subpopulations than among most Tasmanian scrubtit subpopulations. Genetic diversity was lower and inbreeding coefficients were higher in the King Island scrubtit than all except one of the Tasmanian scrubtit subpopulations. We observed crown baldness in 8/15 King Island scrubtits, but 0/55 Tasmanian scrubtits. Six loci were significantly associated with baldness, including one within the DOCK11 gene which is linked to early feather development. Contemporary gene flow between King Island scrubtit subpopulations is unlikely, with further field monitoring required to quantify the fitness consequences of its small population size, low genetic diversity and high inbreeding. Evidence-based conservation actions can then be implemented before the taxon goes extinct. Methods 2.1 Sample collection To obtain indicative genetic diversity metrics across mainland Tasmania, we sampled between five and eleven scrubtits from seven a-priori subpopulations on mainland Tasmania (including Bruny Island) during the non-breeding season (January – March 2021). Due to small population sizes and licensing restrictions on King Island, we sampled five individuals from each of the three locations during the same non-breeding season (Table 1, Figure 1). We trapped scrubtits using a single 6m mist net and one minute of scrubtit song broadcast using portable speakers (ANU animal ethics permit # A2021/33). We sampled blood (< 20 μl per individual) using the standard brachial venepuncture technique with a 0.7mm needle into 70% ethanol. For two individuals from whom we were unable to safely obtain blood, we collected feathers shed during handling. One male Tasmanian scrubtit was collected under licence (see acknowledgements) for genome sequencing, from which organ tissue samples (heart, spleen, kidney, gonads, brain, liver) were taken (Table S1). For each individual we took standard morphometric measurements and scanned for any unusual physical features such as feather abnormalities or skin lesions that may be indicators of poor health. A single observer (CY) sampled and measured all birds, and the maximum capture time was 35 minutes. No birds showed adverse reactions to sampling and all flew off strongly upon release. The fifteen individuals sampled on King Island was the maximum permissible sample size under licence conditions. 2.2 DNA extraction, sexing and sequencing High molecular weight DNA was extracted from flash frozen heart and kidney using the Nanobind Tissue Big DNA Kit v1.0 11/19 (Circulomics). A Qubit fluorometer (Thermo Fisher Scientific) was used to quantify DNA concentrations with the Qubit dsDNA BR assay kit (Thermo Fisher Scientific). RNA was extracted from heart, spleen, kidney, gonads, brain, and liver stored in RNA later using the RNeasy Plus mini Kit (Qiagen) with RNAse-free DNAse (Qiagen) digestion. RNA quality was assessed via Nanodrop (Thermo Fisher Scientific). We extracted DNA for population genomics from blood and feather samples using the Monarch® Genomic DNA Purification Kit (New England BioLabs, Victoria, Australia). We quantified DNA concentrations using a Qubit 3.0 fluorometer (yield range 10.3 – 209 ng μl-1, Table S1) and standardised the concentration of each sample to 10-30 ng µl-1 DNA for 20 – 25 μl and determined the sex of individuals using a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) protocol adapted from Fridolfsson and Ellegren (1999, Supplementary file S1). We arranged the samples on a single 96 well plate, containing five technical replicates of the samples with the highest DNA concentrations, an additional 21 non-technical replicates including all of the King Island samples, five extra samples from mainland Tasmania and one negative control. Double-digest restriction associated DNA (ddRAD) sequencing following Peterson et al. (2012) was undertaken at the Australian Genome Research Facility, Melbourne on an Illumina NovaSeq 6000 platform using 150bp paired-end reads. Samples were first quantified using Quantifluor and visualised on 1 % agarose e-gel to ensure all samples exceeded the minimum input DNA quantity of 50 ng. Three establishment samples with at least 250 ng DNA that were representative of the distribution of the samples (2 Tasmanian scrubtits, 1 King Island scrubtit) were used to determine the optimal combination of restriction enzymes, which were EcoRI and HpyCH4IV. Further details on the library preparation protocol are provided in Supplementary file S1. 2.3 Genome sequencing and assembly Full methodological details of the genome and transcriptome sequencing and assembly are provided in Supplementary file S2. In summary, high molecular weight DNA was sent for PacBio HiFi library preparation with Pippin Prep and sequencing on one single molecule real-time (SMRT) cell of the PacBio Sequel II (Australian Genome Research Facility, Brisbane, Australia). Total RNA was sequenced as 100 bp paired-end reads using Illumina NovaSeq 6000 with Illumina Stranded mRNA library preparation at the Ramaciotti Centre for Genomics (University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia). Genome assembly was conducted on Galaxy Australia (The Galaxy Community, 2022) following the genome assembly guide (Price & Farquharson, 2022) using HiFiasm v0.16.1 with default parameters (Cheng et al., 2021; Cheng et al., 2022). Transcriptome assembly was conducted on the University of Sydney High Performance Computer, Artemis. Genome annotation was performed using FGENESH++ v7.2.2 (Softberry; (Solovyev et al., 2006)) on a Pawsey Supercomputing Centre Nimbus cloud machine (256 GB RAM, 64 vCPU, 3 TB storage) using the longest open reading frame predicted from the global transcriptome, non-mammalian settings, and optimised parameters supplied with the Corvus brachyrhynchos (American crow) gene-finding matrix. The mitochondrial genome was assembled using MitoHifi v3 (Uliano-Silva et al., 2023). Benchmarking universal single copy orthologs (BUSCO) was used to assess genome, transcriptome and annotation completeness (Manni et al., 2021). 2.4 Bioinformatics pipeline and SNP filtering Raw sequence data were processed using Stacks v2.62 (Catchen et al., 2013) and aligned to the genome with BWA v0.7.17-r1188 (Li & Durbin, 2009). Full details of the bioinformatics pipeline, which produced a variant call format (VCF) file containing 45,488 variants for SNP filtering in R v4.0.3 (R Core team 2020) are provided in Supplementary file S1. We filtered genotyped variants using the “SNPfiltR” v1.0.0 package (DeRaad, 2022) based on (i) minimum read depth (≥ 5), (ii) genotype quality (≥ 20), (iii) maximum read depth (≤ 137), and (iv) allele balance ratio (0.2 – 0.8). Then, using a custom R script, we filtered SNPs based on (i) the level of missing data (< 5%); (ii) minor allele count (MAC ≥ 3), (iii) observed heterozygosity (< 0.6), and (iv) linkage disequilibrium (correlation < 0.5 among loci within 500,000 bp). To ensure that relationships between individuals could be accurately inferred from the data, we used these SNPs and samples to construct a hierarchical clustering dendrogram based on genetic distance, with visual examination of the dendrogram confirming that all 24 replicates paired closely together on long branches (Figure S1). The percentage difference between called genotypes of technical replicates was also used to confirm that genotyping error rates were low after filtering (mean 99.91% ± 0.005% SE similarity between replicates). We therefore removed one of each replicate pair from all further analyses. We also made a higher-level bootstrapped dendrogram by using genetic distances among sampling localities instead of individuals (Figure S2). We used “tess3r” (Caye et al. 2016, 2018) to perform a genome scan for loci under selection, using the Bejamini-Hochberg algorithm (Benjamini & Hochberg, 1995), with a false discovery rate of 1 in 10,000 to correct for multiple testing. Because this method identified zero candidate loci under selection, we also used the gl.outflank function in “dartR” v2.0.4 to implement the OutFLANK method (Whitlock & Letterhos 2015) to infer the distribution of FST for loci unlikely to be strongly affected by spatially diversifying selection. This method also identified zero putatively adaptive loci, leaving a final dataset for formal population genetic analysis containing all 70 originally sampled individuals, 5,239 biallelic SNPs, and an overall missing data level of 0.98 %. The number of SNPs and samples removed from the dataset at each filtering step is provided in Table S2. See accompanying Supplementary File for further information on library preparation, molecular sexing, library preparation, bioinformatics, genome sequencing, assembly and annotation. References cited above are provided in the main document.

As of June 2023, there were approximately 8.33 million residents in the New South Wales region in Australia. In comparison, there were around 252 thousand residents in the Northern Territory region.

Sexual assault rate of Tasmania dropped by 10.83% from 24.0 per 100,000 population in 2023 to 21.4 per 100,000 population in 2024. Since the 13.46% jump in 2022, sexual assault rate slumped by 9.32% in 2024. Offender rates are expressed as the number of offenders per 100,000 of the ABS Estimated Resident Population (ERP).

5,76 (deaths per 1000 population) in 2022.

As of December 2023, the proportion of the Australian population that lived in New South Wales amounted to 31.3 percent. The Northern Territory had the least number of residents in the country, with less than one percent of the population residing there.

As of August 22, 2022, over 80 percent of adults in Western Australia had been vaccinated with three doses of a COVID-19 vaccine. In comparison, less than 60 percent of Queensland population aged 16 years and over and received three doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.

This statistic shows the share of ethnic groups in Australia in the total population. 33 percent of the total population of Australia are english.

Australia’s population

Australia’s ethnic diversity can be attributed to their history and location. The country’s colonization from Europeans is a significant reason for the majority of its population being Caucasian. Additionally, being that Australia is one of the most developed countries closest to Eastern Asia; its Asian population comes as no surprise.

Australia is one of the world’s most developed countries, often earning recognition as one of the world’s economical leaders. With a more recent economic boom, Australia has become an attractive country for students and workers alike, who seek an opportunity to improve their lifestyle. Over the past decade, Australia’s population has slowly increased and is expected to continue to do so over the next several years. A beautiful landscape, many work opportunities and a high quality of life helped play a role in the country’s development. In 2011, Australia was considered to have one of the highest life expectancies in the world, with the average Australian living to approximately 82 years of age.

From an employment standpoint, Australia has maintained a rather low employment rate compared to many other developed countries. After experiencing a significant jump in unemployment in 2009, primarily due to the world economic crisis, Australia has been able to remain stable and slightly increase employment year-over-year.

The statistic shows the inflation rate in Australia from 1987 to 2022, with projections up until 2029. The inflation rate is calculated using the price increase of a defined product basket. This product basket contains products and services, on which the average consumer spends money throughout the year. They include expenses for groceries, clothes, rent, power, telecommunications, recreational activities and raw materials (e.g. gas, oil), as well as federal fees and taxes. In 2022, the average inflation rate in Australia was at about 6.61 percent compared to the previous year.

Australia's economy

Australia has one of the world’s largest economies and is a significant global importer and exporter. It is also labeled as one of the G20 countries, also known as the Group of Twenty, which consists of 20 major economies around the globe. The Australian economy is highly dependent on its mining sector as well as its agricultural sector in order to grow, and it exports the majority of these goods to eastern Asian countries, most prominently China. Large quantities of exports have helped Australia maintain a stable economy and furthered economic expansion, despite being affected by several economic obstacles.

Australia’s GDP has seen a significant increase over the past decade, more than doubling its value, and experienced a rather quick recovery from the 2008 financial crisis, which indicates that the country experienced economic growth as well as higher productivity. One of the primary reasons is the further development of the nation’s mining industry coupled with the expansion and success of many Australian mining companies.

Australia's café and restaurant scene continues to thrive, with New South Wales leading the way with over 19,225 establishments in operation at the end of the 2024 financial year. The second-leading state in terms of the number of cafés and restaurants was Victoria. As Australia's two largest states in terms of population, the concentration of food service establishments in New South Wales and Victoria mirrors Australia's population distribution, reflecting the urban-centric nature of the country's café and restaurant landscape. Gastronomy: a key economic sector In recent years, the number of cafés and restaurants throughout the country has shown relatively consistent growth, exceeding 55,700 in the 2024 financial year, up from approximately 41,570 in 2017. Australia's cafés, restaurants, and takeaway food services turnover experienced steady annual increases for many years up until the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, since 2021, the industry's revenue has been on the recovery, hitting a record of over 65 billion Australian dollars in 2024. Additionally, food services represent a key source of gross value added to the tourism industry. An added boost from coffee Coffee plays an important role in the Australian food service sector, with the beverage topping the list of regularly consumed drinks among Australians in a 2024 survey. Several international chains like McCafé operate alongside popular domestic coffee franchises, including The Coffee Club, in the country. Alongside this, the country's annual domestic coffee consumption remains robust, consistently exceeding two million sixty-kilogram bags in recent years, underscoring the enduring nature of Australia's coffee culture. Nonetheless, recent cost-of-living pressures have led to a shift in consumer behavior, with more Australians opting to brew their coffee at home.

This statistic depicts the results of a survey about swimming pool ownership in Australia as of September 2018. During the period examined, Queensland had the largest concentration of homes with swimming pools at 20 percent. By comparison, Tasmania has the smallest share of homes with swimming pools at three percent.

In June 2023, South Australia had the highest unemployment rate among all states and territories in Australia with approximately 4.2 percent of those eligible to work jobs not in employment. The Australian Capital Territory had the second highest unemployment rate of 3.9 percent.

Unemployment Figures 

Australian unemployment figures had remained relatively stable, hovering between four to six percent for some time before recently dropping to 3.5 percent in June 2023. Unemployment levels and the economy have regularly been a priority of the Australian government and unemployment remains a key political platform for the major parties during elections. However, long-term unemployment remains a concern, with the rate almost doubling between 2009 and 2019.

Unemployment among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples 

The employment outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders in Australia remain a key indicator for the ongoing inequality experienced by this population group. The figures remain high, especially among Aboriginal youths aged 15 to 24 years old, with almost one-fifth who are out of regular employment as of 2015. This meant that more than 25 thousand Aboriginal youths were out of work and struggling to find employment in that year.

With a total of 210 private hospitals in 2017, New South Wales was the Australian state with the highest number of both public and private hospitals overall. Conversely, Tasmania and the territories had the lowest number of private hospitals with a combined total of 35 private hospitals, which coincides with their lower populations by comparison.

In 2017 the total number of private hospitals in Australia was 657.

The fertility rate of a country is the average number of children that women from that country will have throughout their reproductive years. In 1800, Australian women of childbearing age would go on to have approximately 6.5 children on average over the course of their lifetime, and this number decreased gradually to just below five in the early 1850s. Over the next ten years the fertility rate increased to 5.7 children per woman, as an influx of migrants arrived on the continent during the Australian gold rushes, however the fertility rate dropped from 1860 until 1935, when it was then just 2.2 children per woman, although there was a small baby boom after the First World War. Australia's fertility rate did rise during the global 'Baby Boom' after the Second World War, reaching 3.4 in the 1960s, but it then dropped to two children per woman in 1980, and it has plateaued just under this number until today.