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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Opening up to Eastern and Southern Europe early on. Being accepting of and elevating aboriginals.
Australia today has 26 million people and a relatively small place on the global stage or in its own region, with a POD how can it be as powerful and prosperous as possibl?
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.Being accepting of and elevating aboriginals.
(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 colonizationFirstly 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.
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.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.
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.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
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.Australia today has 26 million people and a relatively small place on the global stage or in its own region, with a POD how can it be as powerful and prosperous as possibl?
Perhaps a earlier Kimberley Plan might help with emigration to the Ord River Zone.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.
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.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...
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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.
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.