POPULATION figures released last month from the Australian Bureau of Statistics demonstrate the enormous pressure placed on infrastructure in Queensland.

Seven of Australia's top 10 fastest growing districts are in Queensland, with the Gold Coast/Tweed region still Queensland's fastest-growing.
The fastest growing districts in Australia between June 30, 2004 and June 30, 2005 were:

1.
Mandurah (WA) 5.32 per cent

2.
Bunbury (WA) 5 per cent

3.
Hervey Bay (Qld) 4.89 per cent

4.
Mackay (Qld) 3.21 per cent

5.
Townsville (Qld) 3.01 per cent

6.
Nowra/Boomaderry 2.75 per cent

7.
Sunshine Coast (Qld) 2.56 per cent

8.
Toowoomba (Qld) 2.47 per cent

9.
Gold Coast/Tweed (Qld/NSW) 2.47 per cent

10.
Cairns (Qld) 2.43 per cent

1.
Gold Coast/Tweed 11,629 extra people

2.
Sunshine Coast 5311

3.
Townsville 4350

4.
Cairns 2925

5.
Toowoomba 2867

6.
Hervey Bay 2229

7.
Mackay 198

8.
Bundaberg 1325

9.
Rockhampton 546

10.
Gladstone 521

Queensland still leads Australia as the fastest-growing state with an increase of 80,000 people in the 12 months to March this year, compared with 65,700 in Victoria and 56,900 in NSW.

The total of 80,177 new Queenslanders amounted to 31 per cent of all new Australians (263,200), although Queensland still has only 19.6 per cent of the total population.

That means an extra 1542 Queenslanders every week on average.