"For those who've come across the seas, we've boundless plains to share." — From Advance Australia Fair.
It's an irony that despite the refrain of the Australian national anthem, many people express alarm and fear about an immigration policy weighted towards taking in the poor and oppressed, let alone one which allows for the free movement of people into and out of Australia.
Australia could sustain a much larger population, and should overhaul its approach to immigration so that all those who seek a better life can do so. In making this case, there are a number of myths and fears about increased immigration which need to be challenged.
Myth: If we let in too many people from Third World countries, we'll end up like them: poor and overcrowded.
Australia is a land of immigrants, many originating from poor and war-torn countries such as post-war Italy, Vietnam and the nations making up the former Yugoslavia. Yet this has not made Australia poor or war-torn.
Between 1846 and 1875, a period of only 31 years, more than nine million Europeans emigrated to the United States. Mass migration doesn't impoverish a country. The opposite is true — people are the principle source of a country's wealth. More workers, more wealth.
Australia is a wealthy country with substantial resources. Newly arrived migrants enjoy an Australian standard of living. This is because people from Third World countries aren't "genetically" poor. They don't force employers to discriminate against them and pay low wages.
They are born into impoverished societies and given no chance to exercises their skills and develop their human potential. Moving to a country like Australia offers them these opportunities.
(Unfortunately, many are denied the fullest of these opportunities because of discrimination — such as the lack of recognition for qualifications. This is what has kept a section of immigrant Australians on a lower social rung.)
Myth: We'll be overpopulated. The Australian environment can't cope with an increase in immigration.
Anti-populationists speak of "teeming hordes" of people inhabiting the planet, threatening to destroy all life on earth like a plague of locusts. This is a ridiculous and profoundly anti-humanist exaggeration.
For example, in a presentation to 1990 National Immigration Outlook Conference, Phillip Ruthven pointed out, "The world's 5.3 billion inhabitants [now 6.16 billion] could fit on the island of Tasmania if they were prepared to have a density equivalent to downtown Manhattan and the technology to service such a residential mega-metropolis".
Ruthven was not advocating this scenario but simply reminding us that, contrary to many over-populationists' hysteria, the world is not a place left with standing room only.
This is least of all the case in Australia. According to World Resources Institute figures, Australia's population in the year 2025 will be 22.5 million in a global population of 8.2 billion; that's about one third of 1%. United States, with a land mass of 9.3 million square kilometres is 20% larger than Australia. With 255 million people, it has 13 times Australia's population.
Even if we take into account that the bulk of the continent, say two-thirds, is currently uninhabitable, Australia still has one of the lowest population densities in the world.
In this country, the density is 42.2 people per square kilometre of arable land. In the US, the same figure is 161.9; in Canada, 67.3; in France, 325.4; in China, 1354.8; in Germany, 714.3; in Pakistan, 669.5; in New Zealand, 157.6; and in South Africa, 358 people per square kilometre of arable land.
Australia's population capacity is not fixed, either. The fact that much of the land mass is desert does not, given the necessary technological developments, mean that it will always be so. Technology to reforest land turned arid and to reclaim salinated land simply requires the funds and government prioritisation to be applied.
Further, maintaining our current low level of immigration, even further cutting it, will not make any difference to the massive environmental devastation being wreaked by the huge agricultural, mining, fishing and manufacturing conglomerates which own the vast bulk of natural resources and control its use in this country.
Muth: We'd be flooded by people wanting to come here.
The popular fear is that Australia is an isolated continent surrounded by diverse cultures who have their eye on our "boundless plains".
While there would undoubtedly be an increase in the number of people seeking to immigrate to Australia, there's no evidence that we'd be flooded by people if the government relaxed its tight border controls. In fact there's a lot of evidence to the contrary.
Australia is not easy to get to. It is an isolated continent, surrounded by lots of water. Even the proportion of people arriving on boats to Australia is a miniscule fraction of the number of people fleeing to other countries around the world.
In addition to the difficulty, it costs money to move from one country to another and start a new life. The poorest of the poor in most countries of the Third World simply wouldn't have the means to come here unless they were assisted.
Generally, people prefer to live in the country they're born in. Because of language, social and other cultural reasons, people don't readily give up friends, family and the familiarity of their home country to move to another part of the globe.
So it's not like the rush of cold air into a hot room when the door is opened. People's lives are more complex than physical processes.
Consider the example of the open border between Australia and New Zealand. Since the 1920s, there has been a relatively free flow of people between the two countries. The 1973 trans-Tasman arrangement has allowed New Zealanders to live and work in Australia, and vice versa, without having to apply for a visa (in 1994, however, the requirement for New Zealanders to have a visa was introduced).
There is no "flood" of New Zealand citizens to Australia. As at June 30 last year, there were 435,000 New Zealanders in Australia. On top of this, a significant number of Australians move to New Zealand to settle permanently. In the 1997-98 financial year, 26,811 people left Australia to live in New Zealand. In the same year, 47,742 arrived in Australia to live. This figure fluctuates with the economic situations of the two countries.
If immigration was ended, Australia's population would steadily decline. This is a reflection of low birth-to-mortality rates. It is also because significant numbers of people permanently leave Australia. On average, 30,000 emigrate from Australia each year.