There are too many people in the world

Throughout this massive social change, Australia will face a tough political battle on the world scene. An overpopulated world will look lovingly at our wide open spaces, and heavy international political pressure will be placed on us to allow migrants to build our population up to that of the United States — 300 million — which occupies a similar land mass.

We can head-off this crisis now by progressively increasing our migrant intake in sizeable numbers so we are seen to be taking action to populate the continent while reducing population pressures elsewhere.

We must dictate what type of migrants we want. That is, they must be skilled and come from a wide divergence of ethnic, cultural, religious and economic backgrounds so that no race of people dominates the nation. If we can build our population up to 50 million by top quality immigration sometime in this century, we can rightly tell the world to mind their own business.

Can I say this in closing? The lack of energy supply in the world will be a massive issue. Right now, 50 per cent of the homes in India have no power, and successive governments have promised to connect everyone. This will require an enormous increase in energy capacity in India. There will be a similar situation in at least fifty other nations. While these nations play catch-up with the needs of their existing population, another 2.5 billion people will arrive by 2050, and they will all need power (and food, water, housing, hospitals and schools).

This will mean that all the renewable energy that the world can discover, finance and create will not even provide for the catch-up in existing power needs, let alone the requirements of the new billions. Coal power stations will never be replaced. Many more will be needed. Coal provides 80 per cent of the world’s power now, and this will continue to grow unless the world gets very serious about a heavy investment in nuclear power.

One way or another, a considerable investment in clean coal will become an absolute necessity.