Australia today has 26 million people and a relatively small place on the global stage or in its own region, with a POD of 1800 how can it be as powerful and prosperous as possible?
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Without altering the character of Australia make it have a population of 50 million by 2023 and a more powerful geopolitical presence in its region
- Thread starter Senor depresso
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Firstly probably should avoid world wars or at least WW2. Then yet make Australia more open for immigration. And if Australia could too keep Papua-New-Guinea and Nauru, then it would probably help bit. Even better if New Zealand would be part of Australia but that probably requires pre-1900 POD.
Giving it a more open immigration policy I guess. Depending on who's immigrating, how well they assimilate and how driven they are to succeed in work, education and business. On the low end, if they're successful I can see them being comparable to Italy. On the high end, they might be comparable to Britain and France. I don't think they'd reach Germany or Japan. I don't know how you'd get the demographics for this though.
It would be a major food importer and the East Coast and Perth areas would be much more densely populated. There would also be near-permanent drought (which means even less home grown food). If desalination is implemented on a scale required to supply 50 million, the salinity of the coastal seas will increase [1], likely even if Australia becomes the world's leading salt exporter.
[1] The desalination process removes water from the seawater, leaving a concentrated brine. If discharged to the sea, this raises salinity. The more desalination, the greater the salinity, and the stronger the remaining brine. Cue Dead Sea style waters in shallow sea areas.
[1] The desalination process removes water from the seawater, leaving a concentrated brine. If discharged to the sea, this raises salinity. The more desalination, the greater the salinity, and the stronger the remaining brine. Cue Dead Sea style waters in shallow sea areas.
It's got to be remembered that Australia's populationn has had a huge proportionate increase even ITTL, given the basic tyranny of distance. It is much further from Europe, even eastern and southern, and therefore travel expense meant that few families could afford to travel. Emigration was heavily tilted towards young men with no family to feed and pay for, which inevitably reduces population growth. There's not really any way around that.
Many people were also put off by the fact that emigation was largely one way for many years. The chance of making it rich enough to return home was small.
I don't think the latter sentence would have increased the population and GDP significantly; there just weren't the numbers. There also isn't any other country run by those of European extraction that hasn't got a history of ending up with indigenous people (or ex slaves) in a position of socio-economic disadvantage AFAIK, which indicates that the relevant issues are incredibly hard to solve. By the way, to make it clear I'm not denying the racism, have a little bit of indigenous heritage, have worked in immigrant protection and for indigenous organisations, married into a family publicly known for its anti-racism work for generations, voted Yes in the recent referendum, etc etc etc. During the recent referendum debates while arguing for the "pro indigenous" side I came across an interesting piece in The Times saying that the descendants of the Highlanders thrown off their land during the Clearances are still at a distinct disadvantage. That example shows that dispossession has enormous multi-generational effects even when racism per se is not an issue, so while "accepting and elevating" indigenous people is a great aim it seems that it would have done very very little to increase Australia's population.
It's already pretty prosperous, sitting about 10th in terms of per capita GDP. Apart from tiny Singapore and oil-rich Qatar, every other country in the top 20 is in the Atlantic/Euro area, where there's a huge market of affluent people. Given that Australia is a stand-out in the region it would appear highly likely that dramatic changes could easily make the situation worse.
Despite its huge land area, Australia has inherent problems of being an ancient landmass which therefore has soil fertility issues; low rainfall; and the resultant lack of convenient large rivers to form a transport route in the style of American, Chinese or European ones.
One other factor is that even the immigration that did occur regularly required employers or government to assist immigrants by subsididing or paying fares and providing other assistance. Those funds must come from somewhere so some other projects must be cut if more people are to be assisted.
You would probably have to go back to federation and White Australia Policy. Asians are more likely to immigrate than Europeans simply through geographical proximity. The problem is economic as much a racism. The industrial accords baked into the founding of Australia were as much about reducing competition for work, just like the WAP. A fair go for the workers and keep those cheap undercutting Asians out. You would have to imagine an Australia greedily seeking cheap labor rather than protecting those who were already there. That has its own 19thC rabbit hole of points of departure.
The point being any drivers that eliminates WAP is likely to change the character of Australia, which goes against the OP.
The point being any drivers that eliminates WAP is likely to change the character of Australia, which goes against the OP.
So many hows and whys here. In the relevant time period you aren't even accepting and elevating the Irish. My grandfather could remember Aboriginals living basically traditional lifestyles around Atherton in the 1930s. That is not that long ago. Disease is going to smash the population no matter what you do. In the eyes of the period there are no redeeming features to the devastated traditional lifestyle so why embrace it? Any attempts to elevate Aboriginals leads to missions and the stolen generation because assimilation seems like the best option. It is tragic, but there are no drivers for good outcomes here.
(It was first preposed in 2003 so with 20 years I believe this is free from current politics, correct me if im wrong.) Something similer to a EU style Pacific Union that incorporates most of the south pacific if developed earlier (possibly with a pod during decolonization) could later federalize which would give it a population of over 40 million which puts them close to the 50 million goal and would also fulfill the secondary goal of giving them a larger geopolitical influance. In addition controling so much of the south pacific would also strengthen thier claim to Antarctica. The otl Australian and New Zealand claims together are massive and if the incorporation of more of the south pacific leads to a union claiming more of the remining unclaimed white chunk east of New Zealand claim (but on the left side of the map) they will control between 1/2 to 2/3 of Antarctica depending on how successful they are in enforcing a extension to existing claims into the remaining unclaimed chunk now below thier eastward south pacific member states. While currently useless having that large a slice of Antarctica will increase thier future influance once human tech allows for cost effective resource extraction and colonization
Pacific Union - Wikipedia
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The op is how, not why. Also, what you've describes isn't accepting and elevating, but the forced assimilation and cultural genocide that both Australia and Canada embarked on OTL. Accepting and Elevating means allowing free and unrestrained access to all the legal, technological, medical and educational opportunities that were available to White Anglo Settlers to aboriginals as well.
To contexualize the case of the Clearances, the areas where they occurred were already poor to begin with (part of the reason the lairds wanted to move crofters off to make way for more profitable sheep farms). The methods of the clearances generally meant they didn’t leave with much, and in many cases their ticket would be provided as a loan that would need to be repaid eventually. Thus most Highlanders were near penniless immigrants to places where the locals were less than happy with them competing for a limited pool of jobs. So many took several generations to move to a place of stability.
There was more to it than the dispossession, is what I am driving at.
If you want Australia to have 50 million people by now you would probably have to go back to Federation times and have NZ join Australia, which it nearly did in OTL. And after that make Australia more accepting of immigrants by having TTL's Australia take in more non Anglo Europeans than in OTL and abolishing the White Australia Policy earlier (Maybe in 1950 or 1960 rather than in 1973 like in OTL).
A lot of areas here have a fairly limited carrying capacity. Food isn't the issue, given how much is produced for export, but water is. Large parts of the country are effectively useless insofar as human population is concerned, being labelled 'wasteland' in maps of yore.
I don't think there is a simple one shot solution, such as the (practically unworkable) dropping of the White Australia Policy or simply throwing open the doors to immigration. Rather, those are just two parts of a multi-part puzzle.
To get to 50 million by 2023, we need to look at what the population was in 1901 - 3,788,123. The natural increase + immigration was 686% over 122 years. With a few tweaked policies, that can easily be raised to 800% at a minimum, but won't reach our nominated target of 1320%. The simplest solutions involve an increase to the baseline population figure as close to 1901 as possible, with a figure of 6.25 million getting us to our target 50 million at the 800% mark discussed above.
Even throwing in New Zealand, which is borderline, only gets us to 4.6 million, or ~ a third short. So, the next question is where to slot those 1.6 million extra people in the early part of the 20th century. The obvious answer is to look where they've gone in @, such as Southern Queensland (a population of only 502,779 at Federation), but with caveats as to the climate, technology and long term employment. My gut tells me that we need to spread it out across the Eastern States; WA was very small and lacking in carrying capacity in the southern part and Tasmania doesn't have a great deal of scope for more sustainable numbers.
One of the paths not taken that has been discussed here a few years ago is earlier development of the Ord River and the Kimberley in general. Additionally, there have been discussions over the years of a second city for South Australia (mooted at Monarto during the Dunstan years). There also might be some scope for something to grow up around Albury-Wodonga or Wagga Wagga if there is a reason for it. Melbourne did have its 'pause' from 1891 to the early 1900s with the end of the long boom, so there is space there.
So, slot 250,000 in the Ord River/Kimberley if there is a reason and development starts a few decades before; 50,000 in Tassie; 50,000 around Southport/now Gold Coast; 150,000 in the Riverina and border area; 50,000 in Geelong; 100,000 in South Australia; 250,000 apiece in Melbourne and Sydney; 75,000 apiece in Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane; and the remaining elements variously spread over Newcastle, Port Macquarie, the Hunter Valley and Wollongong. That will get us to the magic number with the addition of New Zealand.
Alternately, elide NZ and engineer population increases of the manner outlined (largely through spurts of British migration and other European migrants in the 1870s-1890s) and then put in place a raft of policy tweaks to get the total increase rate to ~930% vs 686% and the task is done. The main thing is not trying to square the circle too quickly or to get results overnight. With change on this scale, it takes time.
I don't think there is a simple one shot solution, such as the (practically unworkable) dropping of the White Australia Policy or simply throwing open the doors to immigration. Rather, those are just two parts of a multi-part puzzle.
To get to 50 million by 2023, we need to look at what the population was in 1901 - 3,788,123. The natural increase + immigration was 686% over 122 years. With a few tweaked policies, that can easily be raised to 800% at a minimum, but won't reach our nominated target of 1320%. The simplest solutions involve an increase to the baseline population figure as close to 1901 as possible, with a figure of 6.25 million getting us to our target 50 million at the 800% mark discussed above.
Even throwing in New Zealand, which is borderline, only gets us to 4.6 million, or ~ a third short. So, the next question is where to slot those 1.6 million extra people in the early part of the 20th century. The obvious answer is to look where they've gone in @, such as Southern Queensland (a population of only 502,779 at Federation), but with caveats as to the climate, technology and long term employment. My gut tells me that we need to spread it out across the Eastern States; WA was very small and lacking in carrying capacity in the southern part and Tasmania doesn't have a great deal of scope for more sustainable numbers.
One of the paths not taken that has been discussed here a few years ago is earlier development of the Ord River and the Kimberley in general. Additionally, there have been discussions over the years of a second city for South Australia (mooted at Monarto during the Dunstan years). There also might be some scope for something to grow up around Albury-Wodonga or Wagga Wagga if there is a reason for it. Melbourne did have its 'pause' from 1891 to the early 1900s with the end of the long boom, so there is space there.
So, slot 250,000 in the Ord River/Kimberley if there is a reason and development starts a few decades before; 50,000 in Tassie; 50,000 around Southport/now Gold Coast; 150,000 in the Riverina and border area; 50,000 in Geelong; 100,000 in South Australia; 250,000 apiece in Melbourne and Sydney; 75,000 apiece in Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane; and the remaining elements variously spread over Newcastle, Port Macquarie, the Hunter Valley and Wollongong. That will get us to the magic number with the addition of New Zealand.
Alternately, elide NZ and engineer population increases of the manner outlined (largely through spurts of British migration and other European migrants in the 1870s-1890s) and then put in place a raft of policy tweaks to get the total increase rate to ~930% vs 686% and the task is done. The main thing is not trying to square the circle too quickly or to get results overnight. With change on this scale, it takes time.
What has been basically ignored is the lack of water downunder. Australia was settled during a wet pause in our climate, when water was relatively abundant on the continent. It soon turned back to it's long term dry trend. Without water, settlement is difficult, even impossible. We can encourage immigration but without water living here would be difficult. Until we address the water problem, people will find it difficult to produce sufficient crops for themselves.
Start with nuclear powered desalination, and terraforming the arid/deserts with deep water reservoirs and irrigation projects, and do this back when nuclear power first hits it's stride, and thus in the decades since, the continent is lush and green in a centaury or two, with parts green and growing in just a few decades.
The land is there, but the fresh water isn't. Don't just throw the salt back into the sea, but take it and use it.
How many tons of salt are in a cubic mile of seawater, and how many cubic miles of desalinated seawater would be needed to change Australia's climate/environment, to eliminate all arid/desert climates?
Wiki has this image...
So, nuclear powered desalination, on a vast scale, is the go to starting place, but then we still need to construct large, deep, freshwater lakes/reservoirs, all over the red zones, and even then, we may need some system to protect these from excessive evaporation, and I would think that that would require some kind of floating farms, with refrigeration of the waters directly exposed to the sunlight, until and unless that added moisture might be able to mitigate the evaporation rate naturally. But if you are building the needed nuclear power plants to be able to desalinate the seawater on such a vast scale, I would think the power needs for chilling the surface of the man-made lakes and reservoirs wouldn't be insurmountable.
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Perhaps a earlier Kimberley Plan might help with emigration to the Ord River Zone.
Even if earlier than the 1930s and 40s, which would remove the basis for such a need, it would still be too late and too little insofar as a larger Australian population is concerned. The time to hit it is in the late 19th century, which raises issues of technology.
On a practical level, the Kimberley isn’t suited to hundreds of thousands of urbanised people from the colder parts of Europe. It is hot and humid, among other charms. On a political level, the KP was never a starter.
On a practical level, the Kimberley isn’t suited to hundreds of thousands of urbanised people from the colder parts of Europe. It is hot and humid, among other charms. On a political level, the KP was never a starter.
Seawater is typically about 3% by weight salt, so that's 30kg per ton. Typical water usage per person in Australia is 100,000 L /year (100 Tonnes) So that's 3t salt per year for each of those extra 30Million or so people, 100 Mt salt per year.
Typical daily salt intake is 9g/day, so 1kg/ year, 30,000 t/ year for 30 million people. For such a rough calculation, that's still 100Mt/ year accumulating. That's enought for 100 billion people to have a bit too much salt every year.
Sea salt has a density of 2, so that's more or less 50 Million cubic metres of salt each year For a place the size of Australia, that's not a lot.
Desalination uses about 3 kWh /m3, and 1m3 is a tonne, so 100 t × 30 million people= 3 Gt water, and more or less10,000 GWh per year. There's roughly 10,000 hours a year, and a typical nuclear powerplant is 1GW, so you only need one extra plant to power the desalination.
As for other power needs, I feel I've done enough approximations for the day, but quite a lot, say 2.5x current total generation capacity.
Exactly what do you mean by "accepting and elevating"? Exactly how do you define "free and unrestrained access" to all the opportunities that were available? Does that mean making top class roads to medical centres in the heart of the desert when such things weren't available even to most country white anglo settlers? The assumption that indigenous people should want access to police, courts and western education seems a lot like assimilation.
I think the point is that the changes that come into play when two such different civilisations clash are so enormous that such measures won't work and can't work in a short enough time to answer the OP. I've married into a family with quite prominent anti-racist workers over generations, including a Prime Minister, much of the time in a place where the racists played for keeps; one of my wife's friends as a teenager soon afterwards cradled her father, a white anti-racist academic, as he lay dying in his front hall after being shot by a racist death squad. I've seen them regularly say and explain how the clash between civilisations will take generations yet to heal. When someone who had adopted two children of colour and lived in a tent in one of the wildest parts of Africa for years when working for NGOs says that, one knows they are not doing it from racism or ignorance but from deep experience.