Challenge: Advance Australia

OK, here's the challenge today - How do you make Australia a major, world power? Not a superpower, but a powerful nation nonetheless. To win this challenge, you need:

- Australia has 11 states (New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, Northern Territory, Tasmania, North Island, South Island, Papua New Guinea and Pacific Islands (which includes Fiji) (if you can make more states be part of Australia, that's a bonus :))
- Population of 65,000,000 or more (the nations altogether have about 30,000,000 now)
- Economy of $2 Trillion or more (1.5 trillion is the current combined total)
- Military on par with the RN and RAF (nuclear weapons optional, aircraft carriers an absolute)
- Commercial influence worldwide

Plus most of Australia's benefits and good points as they exist today.

POD can be any time after 1880.

Have at it. :cool:
 
OK, here's the challenge today - How do you make Australia a major, world power? Not a superpower, but a powerful nation nonetheless. To win this challenge, you need:

- Australia has 11 states (New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, Northern Territory, Tasmania, North Island, South Island, Papua New Guinea and Pacific Islands (which includes Fiji) (if you can make more states be part of Australia, that's a bonus :))
- Population of 65,000,000 or more (the nations altogether have about 30,000,000 now)


Plus most of Australia's benefits and good points as they exist today.

POD can be any time after 1880.

Have at it. :cool:

1880? Tough, since demographics are beginning to shift by this time: by the 1920s, Europe doesn't have so many spare bodies to send abroad, and anway Australia is a less appealing destination than the US/Canada. And given racial attitudes at the time, Australia is unlikely to take in any large number of Asians. Heck, IIRC they didn't make much effort to get settlers from continental Europe until after WWII, when they felt they needed to raise the population to counteract the Asian Menace, even if it meant letting in dagoes and such.

Now,I presume that "floods of refugees from nuclear holocaust/giant meteor fall/Yellowstone blows its top" would be considered the lazy mans way to solve this, so we need something else.

(BTW, for those who will raise an outcry of "Australia is too dry to support many more people", I'll point out that green, wet, slightly-bigger-than-the-UK New Zealand could support a LOT more people than in does today - I suppose, TM, that you wouldn't mind if, say, 40% of those 65 millions lived in New Zealnd?)

But first, we must get them there. Hm. Britain loses WWI and decides it needs to greatly stregnthen the Empire, starting with building up the populations of the (white) colonies through a massive program of subsidized migration? But the Australians and New Zealanders might not want to go along with this - can we get a federal empire with post-1880 PODs? Relocation of the Empire to Australia, as in DOD? But can we get a successful *Sealion with PODs after 1880? Communist revolution in Britiain leads to a great exile of the Posh Accent crowd? Conquered by the US in the Anglo-US war of 1927, heavily settled by Americans, breaks away again as a result of the US-MittelEuropaBund nuclear war of '69? We are invaded in 1942 by Frogs rather than Lizards, and humans from favored wet, swampy areas are resettled in Australia?


Bruce
 
Well, the obvious way to do it is to have Fiji & New Zealand agree to take part in Federation, rather than declining as in OTL. Fiji has a large black population, of course, so that's a precedent for Papua New Guinea getting statehood when Australia acquires it later. The question is, how?
 

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
1880 is too late really, short of cataclysmic events crippling other great powers.

If Australia had less autonomy, then maybe you could have Britain forcing more Japanese immigration onto Australia in order to improve the Anglo-Japanese alliance.

But for Australia to have that little autonomy, you'd have to make it weaker than OTL first. Also, I can't really see the British doing something that short-sighted, since it has the strong potential to one day threaten all their Asian possessions.
 
1880 is too late really, short of cataclysmic events crippling other great powers..

I think you exaggerate a bit: this isn't "make Australia No. One", after all.

If Australia had less autonomy, then maybe you could have Britain forcing more Japanese immigration onto Australia in order to improve the Anglo-Japanese alliance.

But for Australia to have that little autonomy, you'd have to make it weaker than OTL first. Also, I can't really see the British doing something that short-sighted, since it has the strong potential to one day threaten all their Asian possessions.

But why would they force _Japanese_ emigration, rather than pushing for more European emigration? (And it's not like Australia, with about 2.25 million people in 1880, or New Zealand, with under half a million, was in a position at the time to tell the UK where it could get off, especially given increasing fears of being overrun by the Asian Menace without protection - although if pushed too hard, I suppose they could always try to join the US... :D )

Bruce
 

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
I think you exaggerate a bit: this isn't "make Australia No. One", after all.Bruce

Well, yeah Australia was doing pretty well at the time. But then so was Argentina. How powerful does Australia need to be to be considered a major power? Major power to me means more than a regional power but a genuine great power.

But why would they force _Japanese_ emigration, rather than pushing for more European emigration? (And it's not like Australia, with about 2.25 million people in 1880, or New Zealand, with under half a million, was in a position at the time to tell the UK where it could get off, especially given increasing fears of being overrun by the Asian Menace without protection - although if pushed too hard, I suppose they could always try to join the US... :D )

Australia would need a much larger population, and as has been pointed out, not nearly as many Europeans were looking to emigrate during this period. Whereas Japanese most definitely were, and in the huge numbers Australia would need in order to have a population capable of supporting great power status.

In the end, if you're going to add New Zealand and Fiji in and lots of European and Japanese migrants, Australia will be losing social cohesion fast and if this process is beginning in 1880 then Australia might not even be able to achieve federation. I say the POD is too late because I think it's too much too quickly.

If Australia is to get to 65 million, it will basically need to invite the Asian menace at some point, because I doubt you will be able to scrounge together enough Europeans without it being ASB. The biggest challenge would be maintaining Australia's institutions (what I assume the OP meant when he said maintaining most of the good things about Australia) amid such a rapid and substantial demographic shift.
 
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There was a TL around a while ago where the OTL post WW2 immigration occurs post WW1 and we go industrial between the wars. I can't recall the name.

In my opinion a more powerful Australia needs to be settled in the late 1600s, which rules out the 1880 POD.
 
Just looked up growth numbers, and Tarquin may have a point: 1880-1945 Australia grew OTL by 231%, which surpasses the US rate of 179% and the Canadian one of 184%. As a low-population country, Australia would be more sensitive to increases in immigration than the US, but it seems unlikely we can increase the (white) immigration by voluntary methods enough to double what was already a rather high growth rate.

Bruce
 
Federation 1901? The first law was the immigration exclusion act (White Australia Policy), perhaps while keeping the Chinese out it could have laid down immigration quotas for sustained population growth. IOTL immigration was unstructured until 1947.
 
What if we start with New Zealand first? Could it perhaps support a sugar industry or something similar that could lead to large-scale immigration of workers (mostly from Asia one would assume), and then join in a federation with Australia later on in history, opening the possibility of migration between the two?
 

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
Actually, I remember reading a paper a little while back from an American think tank or government agency which speculated that if the Atlantic conveyor were to collapse, Australia would effectively become the bread basket to the rest of the world. Otherwise you can always go to the scenarios outlined in Y: The Last Man or that episode of Sliders, both of which involve a male gendercide. Hmm, this kinda goes back to my point about cataclysms, doesn't it? ;)
 
Actually, I remember reading a paper a little while back from an American think tank or government agency which speculated that if the Atlantic conveyor were to collapse, Australia would effectively become the bread basket to the rest of the world. Otherwise you can always go to the scenarios outlined in Y: The Last Man or that episode of Sliders, both of which involve a male gendercide. Hmm, this kinda goes back to my point about cataclysms, doesn't it? ;)

I highly doubt a gendercide would affect which power is the most powerful that much. The Aussies in Y were only a noticeable power because they had women serving in their navy, but it shouldn't take that long for the ladies in other countries to train military personnel, plus there's still economic power to be considered.
 

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
I highly doubt a gendercide would affect which power is the most powerful that much. The Aussies in Y were only a noticeable power because they had women serving in their navy, but it shouldn't take that long for the ladies in other countries to train military personnel, plus there's still economic power to be considered.

Well I was being a little facetious in recalling the few silly depictions of Australia as a major power that I've encountered. The other would be from the final season of SeaQuest where Australia is the evil underwater real estate developing empire which is aggressively building sea colonies. I think it was called Macronesia there and its leader had an American accent for some reason.
 
What if we start with New Zealand first? Could it perhaps support a sugar industry or something similar that could lead to large-scale immigration of workers (mostly from Asia one would assume), and then join in a federation with Australia later on in history, opening the possibility of migration between the two?

I don't think NZ has the right sort of climate for that. Sugar is grown presently in the north of Qld.
 
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