Population

One of the first concerns of the Australian federation was population. A Royal Commission was established to see ‘whether we shall be able to people the vast areas of the continent which are capable of supporting large populations’. World War II brought a new intensity of concern with population. Australia's first Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell, said in 1948 that ‘Additional population is Australia's greatest need. For security in wartime, for full development and prosperity in peacetime, our vital need is more Australians.’

Tables 1.1 to 1.4 both confirm and qualify Australians' traditional fears of being ‘under-populated’. Table 1.2 shows that population density ranges from the sparseness of Australia's two persons/km2 to the Netherlands' 385. On the other hand, in terms of population size, Australia is certainly not a minnow. It ranks in the top half of these countries, and 52nd among the 227 countries listed by the US Census Bureau. But it is dwarfed by the United States, the biggest European countries, and of course the most populous Asian countries: China 1.28 billion, India 1.03 billion and Indonesia 231 million.

More recently the emergence of trading blocs such as the European Union has allowed member nations to exploit economies of scale far beyond their individual size. However, no conceivable amount of population growth by Australia is going to change the crucial equations affecting either its economic or military prospects.