The suburb of Cranbourne East in the city's south-east recorded the nation's largest growth. Melbourne's population increased by 125,400 people – or 2.7 per cent – in the year to June 2017, taking its total numbers to a touch under 4.9 million, the Bureau of Statistics found. It amounts to an average of 350 new people arriving in Melbourne every day, a huge infrastructure challenge to local, state and federal governments. Isabel Frederick, who moved to Clyde North six months ago was among a chorus of residents who told The Age on Tuesday that better infrastructure was needed in the city's south-east.

"Cranbourne station, you can’t get a car park by 6.30am, and it’s standing room only by the time the train gets to Dandenong," said Ms Frederick, who wants to see the rail line extended to Clyde. “We are looking at adding the population of Adelaide every decade, and yet we're not planning anything like Adelaide’s level of public transport," said the Public Transport Users Association's Tony Morton, who argued that the numbers of people coming to Melbourne made better public transport planning essential. Migration was the biggest contributor to the city’s surge in population – with 80,000 of the moving to Melbourne coming from overseas. It made up 64 per cent of the growth. Births accounted for 29 per cent of Melbourne’s population growth, while migrants coming from interstate accounted for just over 7 per cent. Most of the city’s growth occurred in either the outer suburbs, or in towers around the CBD.

Cranbourne East had 27,000 residents in June 2016 and, just one year later, had added 7300 more people, taking its total to 34,000. Of the 10 fastest growing suburbs in Australia, five were in Melbourne. Laura Murray, the Planning Institute's Victorian president, said the state government was too often playing catch up with infrastructure announcements. This included Premier Daniel Andrews' announcement the May budget would include $353 million for new primary and high schools in the city's fastest growing suburbs.

"The schools won't be constructed until 2020," and many existing suburbs would wait until then for what was needed now, she said. "We need to ensure faster delivery of both community infrastructure and public transport options to these growth areas," Ms Murray said. She added that Melbourne's established middle-ring suburbs, "with excellent access to services and existing infrastructure" were not accommodating enough of the city's population growth. "We need to encourage more medium-density [housing] in appropriate locations in our middle-ring suburbs and less single-storey development," she said. Melbourne’s CBD experienced both the second-largest growth in Melbourne, and in the nation’s suburbs, increasing by 4600 people to 46,000.

The major driver for this was overseas migration, accounting for more than three-quarters of the population increase. There were 27,000 deaths in Melbourne over the period. Loading Planning Minister Richard Wynne said the government was doing plenty to accommodate the city's significant population growth.

"We’re building the roads, schools, hospitals and public transport network that will keep our city moving. It’s the biggest pipeline of projects in the state’s history," Mr Wynne said, pointing to a long list of major and minor projects in the city's south-east that Labor was working on. But the Coalition’s spokesman on planning and public transport, David Davis, said Labor was not doing enough. ‘‘They are playing catch-up with the surge in population, grossly underestimating its impact on our suburbs, and the massive congestion, impact on services, and overcrowding it has caused,’’ he said. Mr Davis said that Labor had ‘‘not understood the seriousness of the population explosion in Melbourne’’. ‘‘Our quality of life is under threat because Daniel Andrews and Labor have failed to plan,’’ Mr Davis said.

Other capital cities around Australia grew – but not by anywhere near as much as Melbourne. Sydney’s population grew by just over 100,000 people in one year for the first time, taking that city’s total numbers to 5.1 million. Australia’s big east coast cities carried most of the growth – Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane accounted for more than 70 per cent of Australia’s population increase. Meanwhile, Darwin, Adelaide and Perth grew at 1 per cent or less.