Queensland has become the destination of choice for Australians looking for a tree change, beating Victoria for the first time in four years.
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Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows a net total 24,000 Australians decided to make the Sunshine State their new home in the year ending March 31.
That was 9000 more than Victoria, which gained a net total of 15,100 new residents over the same period.
ABS Demography director Anthony Grubb said Victoria had been the leader in interstate migration for the past four years.
"Before that, Queensland was the biggest gainer for 20 years, excepting a brief period in 2011 when Western Australia overtook it,” Mr Grubb said.
University of Queensland senior lecturer Elin Charles-Edwards told Fairfax Media in May that the 1980s and '90s had been Queensland’s heyday for internal migration as people flocked to the sunshine.
The latest data showed NSW residents were most likely to cross the border into Queensland, with 52,000 people heading north in the past year.
However, many of those were countermanded by the 36,900 people who moved in the opposite direction.
In the same year, Victoria recorded the highest population growth rate nationally at 2.2 per cent, with Queensland in third place at 1.7 per cent.
Queensland Premier Anastasia Palaszczuk said the state had "always been the land of opportunity".
“Since 2015 we’ve created 177,500 new jobs," she said.
“We are building the new industries that offer highly skilled, high-paying jobs.
“People are moving to Queensland for a better life.
“This year our population grew to 5 million and we add a new Queenslander every six minutes.
“You can’t blame people for wanting to live in the best place in the world.”
Overall, Australia’s population topped 24.9 million in the year ending March 2018, with Queensland accounting for 20 per cent of the nation’s population.
Data from the Queensland Statistician’s Office showed that “natural increase”, or the number of babies born, was still the biggest addition to the state’s population, at 36 per cent.
International migration came a close second at 35 per cent and internal migration at 28.8 per cent.
Dr Charles-Edwards pointed to international students as a key population boost for the state as more people came to Queensland’s universities.
