Theres nothing to debate: we must have more people to face the China threat

This year, opposition to immigration has flared up again, because of high housing costs and a post-pandemic surge in arrivals from overseas.

But, facing the China threat, we simply must have maximum immigration. The only question is how to manage fast population growth, and the main answer is to actually achieve decentralisation rather than endlessly talk about it.

Opponents of immigration have a point. Adding population does mean more congestion and more loss of nature or farmland to build houses.

Proponents reply by pointing to immigration's value in countering population ageing, which for most people is a fairly abstract idea. Other economic arguments are even less intuitive. They're mainly about larger markets creating more competition and lifting incomes, all demonstrated by economists' intricate research and calculations.

Well, the economists can put down their sharp pencils, because the issue that shoves all this aside is simple enough to write in crayon: if China succeeds in dominating this side of the world, we will need vastly greater military strength and therefore as many people as possible to pay for it.

We will need that strength even with the US standing beside us, but the really frightening possibility is that we could find ourselves alone.

There is no guarantee that the US will continue to resist China. With American isolationism rising, especially among Republican voters, it's madness to assume that our national survival is anything but our own responsibility.

And there are only 26 million of us.

There still will be only 43 million of us in 2066, according to an ABS forecast that preceded the pandemic's immigration slump. The ABS estimated an average annual growth rate until 2066 of 1.2 per cent, well below the 1.6 per cent we've averaged since Federation.

But if we again sustained 1.6 per cent a year, we would get to 52 million in 2066 - and have an economy that could pay for a fifth more defence than the ABS estimate implies.

Last year this column suggested going for 2 per cent annual growth to achieve 70 million by 2072. That population would be twice as many people as we'd have if immigration opponents succeeded in, say, halving the current forecast growth rate.

We would become a far tougher nut for China to crack.

Viewed in that light, opposition to immigration is the worst imaginable nimbyism. To preserve streets lined with bungalows instead of townhouses, immigration opponents would increase the risk that future generations won't have an independent Australia at all.

Interestingly, greater population would be the policy that Mao Zedong, the leader of China from 1949 to 1976, would have recommended to us. China today presents a frightening threat not just because of its aggression and apparently unlimited desire for control and obedience, but because it has so many people. That's partly a result of Mao's promotion of childbearing in the 1960s.

More people equalled more national power, he believed. These days we see that he was right.

That leaves us with the question of where to put more Australians. Even on the ABS's forecasts, the numbers are daunting: between now and 2065 we need to find places for an average of 380,000 people a year.

It's perfectly obvious that we need a really powerful decentralisation policy that annually directs hundreds of thousands of people away from our biggest cities.

It is also perfectly obvious that this country is the world champion in talking about decentralisation while achieving hardly any of it.

This column suggested a potent decentralisation policy last year. We could expand selected towns and secondary cities by giving their residents deep income-tax discounts until each location reached a population of 1 million.

To build up major cities in that way, we have plenty of candidate places, mostly coastal, many of them lovely tourism destinations. Where to put 70 million Australians is in fact easy to see. We just need to get people to move to those places - with fat tax concessions.

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There isn't space here to repeat the full list of 44 locations suggested last year, but they'd include, for example, Queensland coastal towns at 100-200 km intervals: Cooktown, Cairns, Townsville, Bowen, Mackay, Yeppoon, Gladstone, Bundaberg and Hervey Bay. The sequence continues down the coast of NSW, along Victoria's and into South Australia. We can get a cluster of big cities in pleasant southwestern WA, too.

Then there are splendid inland cities that can be expanded, from Toowoomba, through NSW to Bendigo and Ballarat.

And don't forget Launceston, Devonport and Hobart.

Canberra, already blessed with roads for a city of more than 1 million, can be greatly expanded at moderate infrastructure cost, while Greater Newcastle, thanks to its coal-mining history, has corridors for more rail lines.

To minimise land use, the new major cities would be planned for, on average, medium density, meaning streets of townhouses. A coastal city of even 2 million could usually be held to within 15 kilometres of the coast, forbidden to expand further.

The logic of our situation is unavoidable. We're faced with the risk of being forced into obedience by authoritarian superpower. We have no idea when that threat will subside and must plan to face it without US help.

So we must have as many more people as possible. Luckily, our attractiveness to immigrants gives us a strong ability to get them.

We have locations for them, too. We just need an effective policy to disperse a rapidly growing population into new major cities.