A Greater Australia: Population, policies and governance - CEDA

Section 1.3ConclusionA retrospective on attempts to understand the implications of Australian populationgrowth is not impressive. We see analysts sometimes misled by current demographictendencies – and blindsided by later demographic shifts; other times casting a priorinet that become tangled in submerged complexities; or fixated on one dimension of aproblem with many aspects. Australian population has proved a complex topic that atthe same time both calls for intense study and defies it.I would like to thank Jonathan Pincus for his useful criticisms of an earlier draft. I amalso indebted to the comments of Graeme Wells, and to John Hawkins for drawing myattention to the significance of Edward Pulsford.Endnotes1 Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, A letter from Sydney and other writings on colonization, p 19, London, J.M. Dent.2 Wakefield’s father managed some financial affairs of David Ricardo.3 Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, A letter from Sydney and other writings on colonization, p 17, London, J.M. Dent.4 Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 3 Chapter VIII.5 How to ensure that increased population did not result merely in a more extensive collection of subsistence households? Wakefield’sanswer: sell Crown land at a price that was out of reach of the bulk of the population, leaving labour to either work as hired hands insurplus producing agricultural properties, or to seek work in towns and thereby promote the division of labour. The revenues from landsales would also pay for infrastructure in a way that would at least partly justify the high price. This fiscal manoeuvre was used in 19thcSouth Australia, and favoured by the Commonwealth Development and Migration Commission of 1928. Otherwise Wakefield receiveda mixed reception locally and only partial implementation.6 EOG Shann, An Economic History of Australia, chapter 12; David Cameron, ‘Closer Settlement in Queensland: the Rise and Declineof the Agrarian Dream,’ 1860s–1960s, in Davison, Graeme and Marc Brodie Struggle country: the rural ideal in twentieth centuryAustralia, Clayton, Vic. : Monash University ePress7 The largest decadal rate of growth subsequently recorded was 55 per cent in 1958.8 Australian Dictionary of Biography.9 Pulsford adds: “The next Centennial must, however, have one sad record in the matter of population. The aboriginals of Australia willhave been long extinct ... Poor fellows, it was not for their good that Cook ‘discovered’ Australia’.”10 Pulsford was the author of Freedom in New South Wales Versus Oppression in Victoria.11 Otto C Lightner, The History of Business Depressions.12 Coghlan, p 25.13 Neville Hicks, The Sin and the Scandal: Australia’s population debate, 1891–1911.14 Australian Dictionary of Biography.15 Commonwealth Year Book, 191116 Clarence and Richmond Examiner, Tuesday 11 June 1912.17 Brady, p 101.18 Brady, p 159.19 Brady, p 680.20 The West Australian, 22 August 1921 p 7.21 “Australia”, said Mr Hughes, “is big enough for a population five times its present size. lt wants more people.” Barrier Miner, 27 October1920.22 The Brisbane Courier, 23 September 1921 p 7.23 Taylor, Griffith, “Frontiers of Settlement in Australia” Geographical Review, Vol. 16, No. 124 The emphasis on desert is accompanied by a disparagement of Tropical Australia: “The oft-quoted success of almost all economictropical plants in the Botanical Gardens at Darwin speaks of the care of the director rather than the capability of the Territory.” (Griffith,Environment and Race, p 274).25 The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 April 1926 p 12.26 £10m is $682m 2010 prices. In fact, the completion of the Alice Springs to Darwin railway in 2004 cost $1300m.27 The Sydney Morning Herald, 6 November 1928 p 8.28 Carolyn Strange and Alison Bashford, Griffith Taylor, National Library of Australia p 130.29 The Argus, 23 April 1948 p 1.30 The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 April 1926 p 12.31 Taylor, Griffith, Environment and Race, a Study of the Evolution, Migration, Settlement and Status of the Races of Man, London, p 334.32 Wikipedia33 The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 November 1928 p 10.34 See Carolyn Strange and Alison Ashford, Griffith Taylor, and Joseph Michael Powell, Griffith Taylor and “Australia unlimited”, for accountsof Taylor’s confrontation with populationists.A Greater Australia: Population, Policies and Governance47