A " Bigger " Australia ?

Polls show that support for increased immigrant numbers being admitted to Australia is weakening. An ANU poll found that just three of every ten Australians now believe the nation needs more people.   This has slipped fifteen percent from the poll figures that applied in 2010.

It seems more people are siding with the view that our major cities are becoming dangerously overcrowded and that it is migrants that are pushing up house prices.  This is an election year and the government is looking at reducing the present 190,000 intake to 160,000 to fit in with the attitude that prevails.

We might do well to remember the mantra that took hold at the conclusion of the second world war.  "  Populate - or Perish "  was the reason we opened our doors to a flood of war weary Europeans because we had just had a very bad scare.   Japanese invaders were in New Guinea and Britain had written us off.  Fortunately, that brought the Americans into the war and with their help that invasion moved no further south.

By the middle of this century this planet will have about ten billion people and to others Australia will be seen as the last " empty continent ".   At present we number a little over twenty-five million and it is the lack of numbers that are retarding the progress we envy in other parts of the world.  We have only just completed a multi lane divided highway linking Sydney and Melbourne and any thought of a very fast train link is well into the future.

We recently went through a period when " boat people " were landing on our shores unannounced and that has only just tapered off in what was happening in Greece and Italy in Europe.  There are now huge masses of people in holding camps that face closed borders because they are unwanted in many countries.  At some time in the future it is inevitable that Australia will again face displaced people desperately trying to find a new home in an unwelcoming world.   Other countries are unlikely to help us stem that flow.

We have a very capable defence force, but Australia is a minnow in a nuclear world and it is a nuclear armed India and China that will face an overcrowding problem in the near future.  If they demanded we accept migrants from their country, the military option would not be in our favour.  The type of country to which Australia evolves in the future will depend heavily on decisions we make now.

Our track record is magnificent.   We have absorbed migrants from all over the world very successfully and this is a multicultural country.  We need to think long and hard before we make irreversible decisions on our migrant intake because what we decide now will have a big effect on the Australia our children and grand children inherit from us.