Australia's teeming millions pine for paradise lost (Feature)

By Sid Astbury Mar 17, 2010, 5:00 GMT

Sydney - Australia's 22 million people often say that what they most like about their country is its roominess.

It's a big country with big houses and big backyards. Cities are small, cars large and the countryside endless.

Australia's population density of 2.9 people per square kilometre is among the lowest in the world, exceeded only by places like Mongolia and Greenland. Canada, another major destination for migration, has a density rate of 3.4, and sprawling Kazakhstan in Central Asia has twice the density of Australia at 5.8 people per square kilometre.

But what Australians say they love about their country is fading fast. The wide, brown land is filling up. All that fabled space is disappearing - and many are upset at its passing.

In the 1990s, annual population growth was below 1 per cent. Now, with more babies, more immigrants and more people living longer, growth is touching 2 per cent a year.

There used to be 220,000 extra people each year; now, that figure is 443,000. By 2050 there will be 35 million Australians, and the populations of Sydney and Melbourne will have doubled.

'I actually believe in a big Australia,' Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said in October, when the government's population projections came out. 'I actually think that it's good news that our population is growing.'

Rudd expounds the classic argument for having more people: More taxpayers to fund national defence, more workers to keep the economy growing and a bigger headcount to give the nation's leaders a greater say in world affairs.

Government economists warned that attempting to slow population growth would slow the economy. They claimed that 17 per cent would be lopped of Gross Domestic Product in the next 40 years if immigration - now running at a record high of 244,000 settlers a year - was cut back to 100,000 a year.

'Immigration plays a role in ameliorating the ageing of the population, because migrants tend to be younger on average than the resident population,' the government report said.

What was as much a shock as the population projections was the fury that greeted them. Rudd was berated all round for his blithe acceptance of a fuller Australia.

The two opposition parties refused to share his enthusiasm and called for an independent inquiry into population growth and its implication.

There was dissent within Rudd's Labor Party.

'The prime minister might also like to explain why the government is telling us we must reduce our carbon footprint while suggesting we double the number of feet,' said Barry Cohen, a former minister.

Backbencher Kelvin Thomson went further, attacking Rudd's bigger- is-better credo and calling instead for cuts to immigration, an end to the 'baby bonus' that gives new mothers a tax-free windfall and a reform of the tax code to reward those choosing to have smaller families.

'Another 14 million people won't give us a richer country; it will spread our mineral wealth more thinly and give us a poorer one,' Thomson said. 'It will make a mockery of our obligation to pass on to our children and grandchildren a world in as good a condition as the one our parents and grandparents gave to us.'

Rudd quickly backed away from his Big Australia dreaming. The backlash has been so sharp that population is emerging as a critical issue in an election year.

A new, single-issue political party, advocating a population stable at 23 million, is in the making. The 23 Million Party has rich and influential backers and is likely to seal alliances with other minority parties.

Cohen, Thomson and other campaigners stress that there should be no change to the colour-blind immigration regime that replaced the White Australia policy in the 1970s. They deny they are racists, noting that they want the birth rate reduced along with the immigration intake. It's immigration numbers they have in their sights, not immigrants.

Bob Brown, leader of the Greens and supporter of a cut in immigration, said Australians should be brave and debate the carrying capacity of a country that is mostly empty desert fringed by a narrow, well-peopled coastal strip.

'We're a humanitarian party and an environmental party,' he said. 'There's a lot of ignorance, which drives fear of discussing population because you'll be labelled racist.'

The evidence from opinion polls - most say they want a cut in immigration - is that Cohen, Thomson and Brown have sniffed the wind. Population is a vote-getter.

Australians overwhelmingly say they want their country to live up to the image it projects abroad: Big, bountiful and unburdened by too many people.