THE Moreton Bay region could become the fastest-growing district in the nation, a leading demographer said last week.

Bernard Salt, a partner in corporate advisory firm KPMG, said the area covering Pine Rivers, Caboolture and Redcliffe was second only to Melbourne’s western suburbs in “explosive’’ growth in the past decade.

Mr Salt was talking at council’s Better Business Breakfast at Norths Leagues Club, Kallangur on Friday and his analysis was based on a report on high-growth regions he released earlier this month. In the 12 months to June 2009, 13,000 people moved to the Moreton Bay region, more than double the number that moved here in 1999. The Gold Coast had more new arrivals, but its growth was steady.

The country’s most “explosive’’ growth region was Wyndham and Melton in Melbourne’s west, which almost tripled its new arrivals in the decade to 2008-2009 to more than 20,000 per year. Mr Salt said the Moreton Bay region could overtake Melbourne’s west if house and land packages here were cheaper, in line with the Victorian hotspot, which has packages for $275,000.

He said that here house and land packages started in the early $300,000s, but if they dropped there would be no stopping population growth. “You have the capacity to be a world-beater, or an Australia-beater,’’ he said. “It’s about lifestyle, it’s about suburbia, it’s about affordability, it’s accessibility, it’s retirement. You’ve got a bit of everything happening.’‘

Kallangur developer Denis Grant said infrastructure charges in Moreton Bay cost $32,000 on average, compared to $6000 in Melbourne.