It’s time to confront home truths as Australia cracks the 25 million mark

As Australia cracks the 25 million mark, big issues must be tackled to maintain pride and prosperity.

Late in the day on Tuesday the boffins at the Australian Bureau of Statistics estimate that Australia officially will pass the 25 million population mark. This is long way demographically and culturally from the four million counted at Federation, which ignored the indigenous community.

You can track the approaching milestone on the ABS population clock. It ticks over in real time even though the pace is adjusted as new data comes to hand. Five years ago, in February 2013 when the 23 million mark was passed, I did 20 interviews in one day. On the day we passed the 20 million mark in 2004 someone named their daughter born on that day Matilda. Matilda is now 14 and Australia has added five million permanent residents in the intervening years.

It has become quite the media event even though there is nothing particularly special about 25 million. More people live in Texas (28 million) than in the whole of Australia. We’re about the same size — in population terms — as North Korea (26 million) but our economy is 100 times bigger. There is nothing but misery and poverty in North Korea beyond the presidential palace and military installations.

If the Australian state ever decided to go rogue we, too, could wreak havoc — although our reach is limited by our geography. Firing missiles over Papua New Guinea or New Zealand won’t garner the global attention that rogue states seem to cherish. (As you can see, I have thought this through.) Plus, I’m pretty sure Middle Australia would go rogue on any government siphoning wealth for grandiose military purposes.

Our economy with a gross domestic product of $US1.5 trillion ($2 trillion) is not too far behind that of Russia ($US1.7 trillion), which has five times the population. In fact, it is likely that the value of Australia’s economy will exceed that of Russia (and of Spain) by the late 2020s. Strong population growth underpinned by immigration is part of the reason for our economic success.

Still, I wouldn’t recommend going rogue because our island status leaves us vulnerable. The Americans (or whoever) only would have to blockade us and we’d be stumped. We’d probably run out of refined oil within a month. And I’m not sure we’d know how to build plasma televisions or mobile phones if the blockade really dragged on.

We couldn’t fulfil our trade obligations, which are the real basis to our wealth. Port Hedland iron ore and Port of Newcastle coal make our nation really, really, rich. Shhh — don’t tell the Americans that we depend entirely on their goodwill for our security and therefore much of our prosperity.

And so here we are with another million about to tick over. If nothing else, this alignment of numbers allows us to pause and to take stock. Why are we Australians so obsessed with how big we are? Is this a case of small country syndrome? India adds 15 million every year, which means its population clock ticks over another million every three to four weeks. Breakfast television in India doesn’t run this story.

But, to be fair, Australia’s circumstances are different. We are a predominantly immigrant nation settled by Europeans just 230 years ago. In the early years, each colony’s “progress” was measured by population levels, by livestock counts and by acreage under crop. Maybe not in Sydney and Melbourne but across the rural and regional parts of the continent, let alone the outback, a rising population is regarded as a symbol of progress by Australia’s heartland. Mayors show off a rising population and worry about a declining population.

Throughout Australia’s modern history it is demographic change that has signalled directional shifts. The gold rushes of the 1850s catapulted Melbourne to the position of largest city on the continent and ushered in an era of can-do manufacturing and industrialisation. Today Melbourne’s industrial heartland, union strength and left-leaning tendency is a legacy from that era.

And again, after World War II, Australia’s course changed as immigration transformed our biggest cities with British and the so-called New Australian Italian and Greek migrants. Perth and the west flourished off a low base at this time and especially with British migrants itching to get off the ship at the first port, Fremantle. At Federation, Ballarat was bigger than Perth.

The public mood in the late 1940s was populate or perish, and for good reason. The fall of Singapore in 1942 showed Britain no longer was capable of protecting us. Earlier that year prime minister John Curtin pleaded with (some say begged) US president Franklin Roosevelt to come to our aid. Roosevelt reportedly thought Curtin’s pleading was disloyal to Britain and it probably was.

But when we small-fry Australians have our backs against the wall we have form … we switch sides. Or so it would seem. And so, after the war and ever since our nation has bobbed about in perfect harmony with the US and its ally in our region, Japan.

Some say the 50s and 60s were Australia’s good old days, but I think not. Here was a time of relative peace but the era was shaped by the values and the behaviour of the Depression and the war. The indigenous, gays and women weren’t recognised as they are today and, according to royal commission findings, abominations were perpetrated on vulnerable children. The baby boomer childhood was set within a context of austerity and occasionally accepted institutionalised brutalism.

Later in the century as the current long boom got under way another great directional shift was initiated. China opened up and replaced Japan as our leading trading partner. The White Australia policy, in place since Federation, was dismantled in the early 70s. But, despite its dismantling, like the Depression it too cast a shadow decades into the future. As a consequence, a generation of Australians well removed from this era and its thinking remains sensitive to the taunt of racism.

Migrants from Vietnam, then China, India, The Philippines and more recently Africa, have clustered in our biggest cities. More than 28 per cent of our population was born outside Australia. For urban Sydney this proportion is 39 per cent. These are generous proportions by world standards and are exceeded only by small states or oil nations in need of guest workers. We Australians have been generous to targeted immigrants and more recently to a wider immigration net, and are likely to remain so, even if our future intake is moderated.

Within two years of each census the ABS produces official projections of the population. A new perspective on the so-called Big Australia projections are due in November.

Every edition of these projections since 1998 has upped the mid-century outlook for our nation. The present medium projection delivers 38 million by 2050 and 44 million by century’s end. At the start of this century the projections for 2050 indicated only 25 million. We’ve upped the outlook by 13 million in two decades.

I think that we are again at an inflection point where the nation surges ahead on present or even higher rates of growth, or we moderate — for a variety of reasons — the pace of our intake.

Across the decade to 2005, net overseas migration averaged 110,000 a year. Across the decade to last year, this figure averaged 210,000 a year. We’ve upped the immigration ante and it’s showing. Melbourne added 125,000 residents in the year to June last year. In 1993 this figure was 14,000.

Growth at this pace is all very well if we have the means in place to distribute and accommodate the extra people.

If Australia is to grow at these breakneck speeds, we need to be world’s best practice in raising taxes, delivering infrastructure, absorbing and integrating migrants, and city planning. On this last score barely four years ago Sydney’s strategic vision looked no further out than 2031.

But perhaps even more than these prerequisites for future growth there’s something else that we need to get right. And that is a vision of our nation, of our values and of our purpose that extends beyond the forward estimates.

A galvanised nation, a nation that is capable of discussing and resolving issues, based on good governance and on rock-solid institutions and alliances, is where we need to get to.

We Australians are world’s best practice at mining (and so we should be) and our farmers also do a fantastic job although sadly we missed the opportunity to develop a global agribusiness business a generation ago. In some parts of manufacturing, in media and information, and most certainly in agribusiness, we have conceded sovereignty to corporate interests based in other nations. Being good at “lifestyle” isn’t really a basis on which to build future prosperity.

If we are to remain a proudly independent and prosperous people a decade or two, and an extra 10 million people or so, into the future, then we need to get a few things right. Moderating immigration levels is one lever, but I think there are others that also need to be adjusted. We need to support local entrepreneurs; we need to build a culture that is capable of civilly discussing important issues; and at an individual level I think we need to be tolerant and forgiving of those — no, especially of those — who we deem as having trespassed against us. Do this, achieve all of this, and Australia’s future prospects are mightily improved no matter what population level we support.

Bernard Salt is managing director of The Demographics Group; research by Simon Kuestenmacher.