Australian Superpower

Would it hypothetically be possible for Australia to become a super power, or at least a much greater world power than today? Similar to the UK and the US, Australia would benefit from being geographically isolated from other major powers. While it’s also true that much of the continent is desert, the rest of the continent still has a relatively low population density that can potentially be increased with some sort of POD.
 
All of Australia's energy is taken up in trying to survive the local wildlife. They don't have anything spare to invest outward and become a superpower.
 

Albert.Nik

Banned
I think it would be possible. Australia is a good sized country. But you would need futuristic solutions to make that possible as a lot of Australia is desert or dry grassland.
 
Australia is geographically isolated, yes, but it's also in a very different sort of position compared to the US and UK.

The UK is an island nation off of a pretty wealthy continent and is in the middle of the trade routes between much of Europe and the Americas. It's a country quite literally in the middle of things.

Likewise, the US had easy access to European markets and was/is in between Europe and Asia, which comes with its own advantages.

Australia, meanwhile, is very very very very very far from its main markets in Europe and North America. Australia also just started off later demographically.

Here's an idea: nerf the British Empire elsewhere. Have the Dutch retain the Cape Colony after the Napoleonic war and have the Americans grab Upper Canada from the British (let's say the Treaty of Paris in 1783 settles the US border at the Nippising Line, meaning loyalists have to go elsewhere instead of Upper Canada). All those immigrants who wanted to stay in the empire but go someplace else end up in Australia.

Also, have Britain grab more territory in the area. Have Cook take New Caledonia on his expedition and the UK settle some loyalists there. Apply this same logic to Vanuatu, Fiji, Samoa, the Solomons, etc. Settle places, have the populations blow up, etc. Later on, when Australia is federated, all these places come together with the country (and of course, New Zealand is part of the confederation). Papua territory will probably be important as well. Maybe grabbing and colonizing the Kerguelen islands too.

When Britain and the Dutch are deciding how to divvy up southeast asia in the 1820s, have Britain get Sumatra and the Dutch keep Malacca (the inverse of OTL). The British main city in Sumatra was on the west coast, and I could see a Cape-Kerguelen Islands-Perth-Sumatra shipping route working well. Later on, Sumatra and Singapore are handed off to Britain.


Australia + Sumatra + Singapore + Kerguelens + New Zealand + Papua + Solomons + Samoa + Fiji + more settlers = Greater Australia.
 
If Australia (combined with New Zealand) had more people earlier on and we combine this with some engineering wank to really irrigate the deserts--flood Lake Torrens too, since it's easier than Lake Eyre and would increase rainfall in both Australia and New Zealand--then we can have an Australia with more pull. Then let's nerf their competitors in terms of certain resources (platinum group metals, gold, diamonds) like South Africa and Chile/Peru/Russia--a lot of things could have gone wrong/even worse there in the second half of the 20th century--and also have a world where the threat of climate change is more understood and countermeasures funded earlier. Be it solar power or nuclear energy, Australia can rule in terms of both with the vast deserts and uranium reserves.

In terms of indigenous affairs, find a way to romanticize the Aboriginals and their culture. Add the Maori too. While they will never have the cultural pull as the American Indians do, they can probably be promoted to the world much greater (albeit expect lots of plastic shamans and other fake crap while the community still is generally in poor condition, albeit better than OTL). Aboriginal related tourism and cultural exports could be an economic benefit for the nation as a whole and important to Australia's soft power.

Throw in Papua with its resources and tourism potential, and maybe a few British Pacific islands (most all are economically or politically dependent on New Zealand/Australia anyway) and you have a country which is an energy/resource superpower with tons of money to throw around alongside a major exporter of agricultural goods and culture. The location is exceptionally strategic, and Australia has a real influence all over the Pacific and Southeast Asia. Population would be perhaps 60 million in 2018, with a GDP per capita of 60,000, meaning a GDP of 3.6 trillion, which is about that of Germany's (#4 OTL).

That's probably the best you can get.
 

Philip

Donor
What is a realistic upper bound on the population Australia can support given current technology?
 

Albert.Nik

Banned
What is a realistic upper bound on the population Australia can support given current technology?
Current technology varies between countries. As for the European populated countries,you have highly technological advanced countries with poor quality of land like Israel. Then you also have massive countries who have mismanaged their resources and are still backward comparitively having almost the similar peoples like the Russia which could have done wonders IMO with the land and resources they have access to.
So considering we put Australia in the above half,halfway to second next to Israel,irrigation of deserts that large would be hard if Solar or Nuclear energy isn't used. But first,you need to have a large population to settle there before you can unfold such grand plans. If at full potential,I think Australia can come halfway to quarter and a half to an another Anglosphere mega superpower,USA. Another Anglosphere country,Canada can also come a good quarter and a half way to USA if they model their system based on Sweden or Switzerland by using efficient energy systems more like Hydro,Nuclear,wind,etc. Within the Anglosphere,I rate New Zealand the most sustainable and advanced country and also has treated natives very well. Had NZ been a bigger Anglosphere country with the same but magnified peopling,systems,etc all remain same,wonders might have been achieved.
 
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Similar to the UK and the US, Australia would benefit from being geographically isolated from other major powers

There's a difference between being isolated and being remote. Australia is so far out of the way, that international trade can't easily compensate for any natural resources they may lack. Of course, I know next to nothing about Australia, so I won't say much more. But there is something to be said about the importance of being close, but not too close, to other commercial powers
 
Seriously, the best way to do this is have a major nuclear war that wipes out everyone in the northern hemisphere. Also, nuclear winter might increase rainfall, which would help.

Australia is is big, sure, but most of it is desert. Even Great powers need, say, 50 million people or so (by the 20th century), and getting that kind of population in Australia would be difficult.
 
What is a realistic upper bound on the population Australia can support given current technology?

More population in Australia proper using current boundaries more or less comes at the expense of the highly successful agriculture industry there (and to a lesser extent other uses of water like in mining), since the water will need to be used for people instead of crops. But with current technology, Australia could easily support tens of millions more with not to big of a dent on agriculture, they just need to build more powerplants and more desalination plants. Unfortunately, a lot of these would likely be fueled by Australia's coal, so increase emissions quite a bit. At a slightly higher price tag, nuclear energy could be used, since both nuclear and desalination plants could be located in relatively remote areas to produce the power needed. A more powerful yet more pragmatic environmentalist movement which embraces nuclear power as a solution (since no dams are being built and no fossil fuels being used) could be important for later history in alt-Australia.

Current technology varies between countries. As for the European populated countries,you have highly technological advanced countries with poor quality of land like Israel. Then you also have massive countries who have mismanaged their resources and are still backward comparitively having almost the similar peoples like the Russia which could have done wonders IMO with the land and resources they have access to.
So considering we put Australia in the above half,halfway to second next to Israel,irrigation of deserts that large would be hard if Solar or Nuclear energy isn't used. But first,you need to have a large population to settle there before you can unfold such grand plans. If at full potential,I think Australia can come halfway to quarter and a half to an another Anglosphere mega superpower,USA. Another Anglosphere country,Canada can also come a good quarter and a half way to USA if they model their system based on Sweden or Switzerland by using efficient energy systems more like Hydro,Nuclear,wind,etc. Within the Anglosphere,I rate New Zealand the most sustainable and advanced country and also has treated natives very well. Had NZ been a bigger Anglosphere country with the same but magnified peopling,systems,etc all remain same,wonders might have been achieved.

Australia has a huge amount of coal, and that industry is part of the reason why Australia had/has an insane ratio of emissions to population. Yes, Australia has used solar, but the problem is that solar is not a developed enough technology globally, even now. Given solar power's current inefficiencies, and the distance of the best solar regions from Australia's population, it hasn't yet been the solution. Of course, this didn't have to be that way, and nuclear technology would be an effective supplement until then.

Desalination is another issue--Australia has surprisingly few plants (especially 10-15 years ago) when you consider the constant issue of water usage there. An Australia which is helping to pioneer the technology will be more advanced in that field.
 
But with current technology, Australia could easily support tens of millions more with not to big of a dent on agriculture, they just need to build more powerplants and more desalination plants.
Desalination works fine for drinking water, the cost is insignificant there. It gets iffy for things like making steel. It's totally out of the question for agriculture, at least for cereal production. The end product is too cheap, and the amount of water needed too much, by a few orders of magnitude.

Iirc, the cost of desalination is already pretty close to thermodynamic limits.
 
Desalination works fine for drinking water, the cost is insignificant there. It gets iffy for things like making steel. It's totally out of the question for agriculture, at least for cereal production. The end product is too cheap, and the amount of water needed too much, by a few orders of magnitude.

Iirc, the cost of desalination is already pretty close to thermodynamic limits.

Hasn't the cost been getting cheaper over the decades since the earliest desalination plants have been introduced? And the amount of water per person/per household is still pretty important, since it can easily be a few dozen gallons per day for water used for bathing, cooking, drinking, etc.

My impression is that more or less (this is very simplified), you just need to input a certain amount of energy to get a certain amount of water. The cost is in the powerplant used to make the energy, the infrastructure between the powerplant and the desalination plant, the desalination plant to make the water, and the pipes needed to distribute the desalination plant's water. It also makes brine as a waste product which needs to be dealt with. This more or else seems to be solved.

Instead of cereals, perhaps it might be used for more speciality crops, like Australia's famous wine industry?
 
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