I still call Australia small

Updated September 29, 2010 12:13:10

Australia's so-called population debate needs to get some perspective.

When I was in China as a visiting lecturer in Australian Studies at a Shanghai university I met a number of expatriates. Among them was Sue, a young woman from 'small town America' who now lives and teaches English in Nanjing. She described the same culture shock I received when I landed in Shanghai from Melbourne.

Shanghai is home to over 20 million people. It turns out that the population of Australia actually fits into an area roughly the size of metropolitan Melbourne or Sydney. After a few years in China, Sue declared that in her view, "if it doesn't have at least 5 million people in it, then it isn't a city". My Chinese students similarly told chilling stories of going to study in Perth, where they were terrified not of the people, but of the lack of them. One of them said, "it was frightening - I walked around the streets and there was no-one there".

Australians may complain about how crowded their cities have become, but by world standards our cities are small. After just a month in Shanghai, Melbourne's suburban streets felt empty and even a little depressing for the lack of teeming humanity. What is more depressing however is the narrow perspective being brought to bear on Australia's 'population debate' as Abbott and Gillard leap aboard the 'Small Australia' bandwagon in their race to govern by opinion poll.

Australia's population is projected to be somewhere between 34-40 million by 2050. The upper number has been seized upon by alarmists but like most high-end projections of this kind, something far lower is likely. Notwithstanding their misrepresentation of statistical projections, the 'Small Australia' bandwagon wants you to imagine all the extra millions housed next-door in your neighbourhood using the same infrastructure that exists now. This apocalyptic vision is, of course, ridiculous. More people means more talent, more creativity, more workers and more diversity. More people will demand more infrastructure which will create more jobs, more schools, more hospitals and more culture.

Yet to keep it in global perspective, by 2050 the whole of Australia will still contain no more than the population of one great city like Shanghai or New York. Greater Shanghai and New York are both projected to exceed 30 million by 2030 before population growth slows and the world starts panicking about population crashes instead.

Australian treasury has been whipping up fearful scenarios based on an aging population as growth levels off later in the century. Rather than fear a shrinking Australia however, public opinion has fixated upon the perceived threat of a bigger Australia. National anxieties are all too often based on culture rather than facts. Australia, it seems, has a big cultural problem with population. Perhaps this is a legacy of White Australia, when we feared the wider world. Perhaps it is because Australian culture has historically been alienated from cities, these sites and symbols of our population boom. Australians have preferred the suburb and the bush as sources of national iconography.

From the suburb, Australia derived such celebrated icons as the Hills Hoist, the outdoor BBQ and the mower - all symbols of Australia's spaciousness. Roads lined by double-door garages became the limit and embodiment of Australian civic life, turned as it was in the post-war period away from the city. Australians turned the working man's paradise away from the big smoke and into the suburban dream with all its neuroses parodied by Dame Edna Everage.

In this Australia, cites were in other places. The iconic song I still call Australia Home declares still that 'cities that never shut down' are not to be found in Australia - look instead to 'Rio and old London town'. I still call Australia Home is the defiant and defining anthem of small Australia. It also reminds us that Australians paradoxically have loved to roam the world, looking for those cities and seeking their culture. It is also a plaintive cry after all those talents and glories that small Australia has lost or never enjoyed, precisely because of the 'tyranny of distance' - its location on the edge rather than the centre of world civilisation.

For this reason, the growth and transformation of Australian towns into cities should be celebrated as a coming of age. It marks Australia's success as a global economy and society against significant historical odds. Big Australia is an idea that says our country can be more than a suburb on the fringes of global society, that it can embrace the change and become a nation of cities and a source of global culture in its own right.

Relative to the planet as a whole, Australia has plenty of space, even taking into consideration its vast deserts. On an individual level we are flocking to the city for entertainment and work. We love Australia's vibrancy and its opportunity. Yet when the pollsters call, the old anxieties seem to take over. Both political parties are now playing to this fear rather than explaining the facts or outlining a vision for a bigger, prouder Australia in the world.

Both Abbott and Gillard have distinguished themselves from Kevin Rudd by speaking out against 'a big Australia'. Neither however have outlined any policies that would prevent population increase. Instead, both have appealed to and legitimised the unfounded anxieties of small Australia through rhetoric. Petending to be against a big Australia lets our leaders off the hook when it comes to planning and building for its growth now rather than later. Yet Australia is destined to become bigger. If our political culture cannot speak to that destiny, we are destined to grow in fear and confusion rather than with hope and purpose.

Perhaps the political parties should share a slogan for the 2010 election - "Keep Australia Small". That is what their poll-driven rhetoric is doing to our national imagination.

Dr Aron Paul is a Melbourne-based writer and historian, and a postgraduate student in Environment and Planning at RMIT.

Topics: government-and-politics, elections, person

First posted July 07, 2010 15:20:00