I remember it was once common in Australian TV shows to have characters move to Queensland when the actors wanted to leave the series or a character was no longer popular. The TV shows had obviously noticed the popularity of Queensland to people in southern states. Back in the eighties and nineties, Queensland was attracting many more interstate migrants than it is currently (see chart below).
As I’ve discussed before (When will interstate migration to Qld recover?), Queensland has had low levels of interstate migration in recent years, due no doubt in part to our relatively lacklustre economic performance. Victoria and WA have just overtaken Queensland in net interstate migration, based on new demographic data released by the ABS today. In the 12 months to September 2013, net interstate migration was around 6,700 in Queensland, 6,800 in WA and 6,900 in Victoria. The Courier-Mail has a nice summary of the data, with some interesting observations by Bernard Salt:
Queensland Economy Watch 
Gene, its quiet surprising really but accurate. Housing is still somewhat cheaper compared to Sydney and the fact that Queensland has had several large projects recently – LNG plants, mining desalination plants, tunnels etc. So you would think Qld was in a strong positon and that the graph above would be more positive. As a former southerner (NSW) I was one of the many that moved up in the mid 90s we seem to have lost the lustre. With the government in debt reduction mode it may take some time before we can catch Victoria.
Yes, I agree it may take some time for interstate migration to recover.
There were certainly a lot of jobs around in the early naughities, The government was spending billions on hospital redevelopments, and research facilities, all very labour intensive, and at same time as the mines were ramping up construction. We certainly couldn’t get enough engineers and architects, from interstate or on 457 visas.
Perhaps they are all heading home now, construction has slowed down to a crawl.
That, and the bikies all leaving town……
Haha, thanks Katrina.