The 28th ANU Poll of just over 2,000 people shows only 30.4 per cent of respondents believe Australia needs more people, compared to 69.6 per cent who felt the country did not.
Support for a big Australia has fallen significantly since a similar question was asked in 2010, when 45.8 per cent of respondents felt the country needed more people.
Lead researcher Nicholas Biddle says the main reasons cited by those who don't support population growth include concerns about traffic, congestion, housing affordability and employment.
"It is not necessarily migration itself, and particularly reaction to migrants themselves, what it is is the view that the infrastructure investment, our training, our education system, our increases in supply of housing has not kept up with population growth."
"So yes one response to these findings might be to reduce the size of the migrant intake. Another response might be to make sure the infrastructure investment and the benefits that we get from a growing population are counterbalanced to make sure we are not getting those negative effects."
The 15 per cent drop is largely attributable to falling support levels among men from 53.4 per cent in 2010 dropping to 32.8 per cent in 2018.
Just over 38 per cent of women thought Australia needed more people in 2010, but in 2018 that figure had dropped to 28.2 per cent.
Younger people especially those aged 25-34 showed the greatest support for population growth while people aged 45-54 showed the lowest.
Mr Biddle says those who support population growth cite the economic benefits, the need for a skilled workforce and easing overpopulation overseas as the main reasons. "I think what people want to to make sure those gaps in the workforce are being filled but to make sure that is not being done at the expense of training of either the Australian born population or of recent or previous cohorts of migrants."
Last year, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he intended to cut Australia's permanent migration intake by about 30,000 people, citing public concern about congested cities.
The federal government sets an annual cap for skilled and family migration – currently at 190,000 – with skilled migrants distributed through a range of visa streams. Despite the cap remaining at 190,000 in the last financial year, where it has remained since 2011, the actual intake fell to 163,000 under the coalition government.
On the streets of Sydney, opinion on population growth was mixed.
1. "If you go to aged care, cleaning, hospitality, you can hardly find any white people working there, all migrants there. Sorry I am not a racist, but you have to find the labour force to work in Australia, otherwise what are you going to do?"
2. "It's good to help other countries out, but there should be be laws on how many can come in."
3. "Australia is large and it fits a lot of people and if they stop people from overseas investing in Australia then they will maintain the value of the properties so our children will be able to afford to buy properties."
John Daley is the Chief Executive Officer of the Grattan Institute, a policy research group.
He says the ANUPoll is consistent with other recent surveys showing growing concern about migration and its implications on housing and congestion in our major cities.
Mr Daley says the findings are not particularly surprising, given that housing supply especially in Melbourne and Sydney is only just starting to keep up with population growth.
Mr Daley says governments have a difficult choice in trying to figure out how to best handle population policy.
"Either they can ensure than planning policy allows enough housing to be built, ensure that our transport policies are getting enough additional infrastructure in place. That's option one. And that's probably the best option, although it's politically pretty difficult especially around housing. Option two is they can look at constraining the number of skilled migrants or they can reduce the number of additional international students that are coming here very year. Now none of those policy solution are particularly attractive, but those are the things that will make a difference.
The ANUPoll also gauged opinion on support for an expansion of the regional migration program, asking the respondents if they supported policies requiring new migrants to live in regional towns or cities for a period of time.
In total just over 70 per cent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed with policies requiring migrants to do so but support was lower for people who live outside of the capital cities at 66.1 per cent.
Mr Daley says the issue of regional migration remains a contentious one. "There is a big risk that governments will try and buy off concerns about migration with some new regional migrant program. Those kind of program as they survey shows are extremely popular, but the catch is that there is no evidence that they work. So there is a big reason that governments will give people what they think they want but in the long run they won't actually improve the situation."
Other findings in the survey show 46.1 per cent of those who say they will vote for the Greens party at the next election supported population growth, Labor voters stand at 33.6 per cent, while coalition voters had the lowest level of support at 26.6 per cent.
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