An " Asian " Australia ?

In the past, the prime minister of neighbouring Malaysia clashed with Australian leaders  Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Howard when he referred to our predominantly white population as a " European colony ".    Dr Mahathir  Mohamad is Malaysia's ninety-four year old statesman and he recently rescued  his country from a wave of political corruption when he forced his way back into power.

Our two nations are a source of trade and direct foreign investment in one another and there are about 150,000 Australians of Malaysian descent living in Australia.  At any one time there will be about 26,000 students from Malaysia studying in Australian universities. It is quite evident that the Australian economy is tightly interlocked with our Asian neighbours.

Dr Mahathir makes the observation that " whatever white Australians may think of it, the fact is geographically they are more in the Asian region than Europe ".   That view is definitely supported by the 2016 Australian census.   Our overseas born population now comes from Asia rather than Europe and heavily features migration from China, India, the Philippines , Vietnam,. Malaysia and Sri Lanka.

Originally our support base was Britain but that changed during the second world war when the threat of a Japanese invasion  brought us closer to America.   The world chess board of power has again changed and now it is China that is fast dominating trade and exercising military power.   We have a nearby flash point because China is claiming sovereignty over the South China sea despite the rejection of its claim by the United Nations and this important waterway being vital to world trade.

At the moment Australia faces no clear threat from another country but it is evident that the United States is withdrawing from its role as the " world's policeman ".   We are a continent with a population of just over twenty-five million people and that " populate or perish " mantra is as important today as it was when Japan started a war of aggression to gain a colonial empire.

We broadened our population base after the second world war and received a volume of people with different nationalities and languages.  Today, it is their children and grand children and great grand children who make up the cosmopolitan culture of Australia.   With the passage of time exactly that same metamorphose will happen with people of Asian descent who will integrate to form the Australia of the future.

In a  century past Australia was really a European outpost isolated in the southern reaches of the world. A century into the future and Australia will definitely be an important Asian country in what will have become the centre of the world.  The centre of gravity is fast changing and it seems that this twenty-first century will be the Asian century.

There is wisdom in the views expressed by Dr Mahathir. To stand in the street and view the passing parade of people is to gain the view that we are now an Asian city in an Asian country.  It is important that we control the migration flow to ensure that the inflow from any particular country does not dominate the numbers.