Australia's Population - 22.7 million

 

State/Territory	Population	% in capital of state/territory
Australian Capital Territory	344,200	99.6%
New South Wales	6967200	63%
Victoria	5297600	71%
Queensland	4279400	46%
South Australia	1601800	73.5%
Western Australia	2163200	73.4%
Tasmania	498200	41%
Northern territory	219900	54%

As can be seen (in the map) the majority of Australia’s population is along the coast (83% is within 50km of the coast) and in the State capital cities, total urbanity is 83%. Is this surprising? Not really, Australia, since white settlement, has always been an urban country (initial urbanises was 50%) and the grand internal desert has, and will as long as it survives, keep people close to the coast, mostly the Eastern seaboard.

What is malleable is the incredibly high concentration of people in the big capital cities. I expect the first decomplexification of Australian society to be a move away from the big cities to the Country, one way would be by going into Small cities regional centres and small towns instead of farmland or villages. This actually offers several advantages over a population moving directly into rural areas.

A transition from the big city to the country is quite a leap and, while individuals and small groups can certainly succeed, the shock caused by large numbers of people migrating at once would likely cripple or damage our economy and society. However, if most people move into the regional cities and towns (spread out to minimise stress) then manufacturing can be revitalised, markets and infrastructure can be built to service the new population distribution while benefiting from a now larger labour pool. Some people would also move into the rural areas, but at a more manageable pace (and also those more suited and motivated to the tasks required). This approach also has the advantage of moving people to available resources in enough numbers to access those resources.

Faith and Ancestry:

Ancestry	Percentage of overall
English	36.1%
Australia	35.4%
Irish	10.4%
Scottish	8.9%
German	4.5%
Chinese	4.3%
Indian	2%
Greek	1.9%
Dutch	1.7%
Lebanese	.92%

The major ancestry of Australia is English but growing proportions are Australian born and bred. While the European proportion is falling to an Asian rise this is not a quick or even substantive change (Chinese only account for 4.3% ancestry), especially compared to the British settlement and the destruction of the Aborigines (now only 2.3% of the population).The fear and concern is probably more of what I call the “Box Hill” effect than facts. Boxhill is a suburb/town centre near where I live and is a highly Asian (Korean, Chinese, Japanese but not Indian) area with lots of stores focused on Asian foodstuffs. This concentration of immigrants (highly diverse, especially the food), which is at times more of an illusion, gives the impression that there are lot’s of Asians when statistically it is not a big deal.

The major variable that could substantially change Australia’s demographics is another mass migration, potentially from Indonesia but to full explore that possibility will take another post.

                       

Faith	Percentage of Pop
Roman Catholic	25.8%
Anglican	18.7%
Total Christian	63.9%
Others	19.4%

Faith is an important aspect of Identity, but, functionally, what is Australia’s faith? You might say Christian, at 63.9%, but that statistic hides the fact that only 7.5% of the population attends church, or only 11.7% of people who answer Christian on the census form.

Australia is a deeply secular society and the strongest religion, Christianity is a spent force that has very little influence on Australian culture or politics and is only used symbolically. Only two of our Prime ministers since 1950 have actually been observant Christians (John Howard and Kevin Rudd) and the current Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, is an atheist. The attitude, from my experiences, is that religion does not matter much and it actually harms a politician’s election campaign more than it helps. For clarity, I’m agnostic, my family is agnostic (only one grandmother was religious and only for a time), I’ve only met 1 person to whom religion was important, 2 others who go to church (one hates it and only goes because her mom forces her, the other’s family immigrated here from Malaysia) and most people I meet are functionally agnostic.

Our faith will probably change as Overshoot’s downside begins as there is no strong core of religion (spirituality is existent) to oppose the changes. But the religions that succeed here will not be Christianity or Islam, since they’re both too alien and organised (in the religious sense) to penetrate mainstream Australian society. My bets are on paganism or some form of earth worship, since an unorganized religion will be better able to penetrate Australian society and not carry the stigma of previous religions. Nevertheless, it is a very good possibility that Christianity will stay; it just will not have any great significance.