Populate - or perish !

We have just ticked over to twenty-three million people who call Australia home.   That will spark an interesting debate between people who think we must continue to grow our numbers and those who think we are already over populated.  Entrepreneur Dick Smith claims that our present population exceeds the capacity of this country to host even the present numbers.

When the second world war engulfed Australia we were a perilously small number of people living in a vast continent.    At the end of that war, the motto " Populate or perish " was in the ascendancy and we opened our doors to the people wishing to exit the devastation that was Europe.   Looking back now, this was a successful melding of many cultures, religions and languages.    The original settlers from that time are now in their twilight years, but their children - and their children's children - are unmistakably - Australian !

Those wishing to lock Australia into a no further growth culture would be wise to expand their thinking and view the world scene.  Planet earth has over seven billion people calling it home, and that number is rising steadily with little sign of change to come.    There is another portend for the future happening on our doorstep.     War - religious intolerance - shortage of food and shelter - and a host of other grievances has the tribes of planet Earth on the move.    We call them " refugees "     They cross national borders like a plague of locusts - looking for food and shelter - and survival !

Our reputation precedes us.  This is " the Lucky country ".     This is where the people live the " good life " - and it has become the Mecca for those prepared to sell everything to pay people smugglers for their journey here.   Some drown along the way.   Some are looted and murdered by pirates. Those that arrive are not greeted with enthusiasm - and many are turned away after their circumstances are investigated.

We are a country that successfully absorbs people of different cultures and melds them into what it takes to be " Australian " !   If we managed to stop our numbers growing by reducing both our birth rate and our acceptance of new settlers, we would contract into the dangerous statistic of a small population occupying a huge land mass - in a vastly overpopulated world.

Further down the track it would be inevitable that the need for living space would see our borders face an unstoppable inflow of desperate people, far beyond our ability to absorb into our Australian culture.   It would be the culture of these invaders that would prevail, simply because they would eventually outnumber us.

It is one of the laws of nature that this " nature abhors a vacuum ".    We would be creating that vacuum if we were stupid enough to think we could isolate the Australian continent from the expansion needs of a world whose numbers are spinning out of control.

The only way Australia can survive and maintain it's present culture is to steadily increase it's population by absorbing a stream of new settlers and do what we do best - have them distance themselves from their former life and embrace the Australian culture.

To do otherwise, is to ignore that " Populate or perish " warning !