The value of subsidised migration was not simply in the working men it brought to Australia. Its value was also in the women it enticed to a man's la… - Geoffrey Blainey

Our immigration policy is increasingly based on an appeal to international precepts that our neighbours sensibly refuse to practise. We are surrendering much of our own independence to a phantom opinion that floats vaguely in the air and rarely exists on this earth. We should think very carefully about the perils of converting Australia into a giant multicultural laboratory for the assumed benefit of the peoples of the world.

The power of the United States depended heavily on its pale empire of ideas, attitudes and innovations. Its ideas alighted effortlessly on foreign ground, irrespective of who owned the ground. Much of its influence came from such innovations as the telephone, electricity, aircraft and the cheap car, nuclear weapons and spacecraft, computers and the Internet. Its influence came through jazz, cartoons, Hollywood, television and popular culture. Its influence came from an excitement about technology and economic change, and a belief in incentives and individual enterprise. It was also the most ardent missionary for the creed of democracy. While military and economic might was vital to the success of the United States, the power of its pale empire of ideas was probably even more pervasive.

Mapmakers of Europe and navigators of the Indies once thought Australian seas washed the isles of gold. Even after navigators had seen the north-west coast of Australia it was named on one map the coast of gold. Unknown coasts were treasurelands; imagination shaped and gilded them. Then slowly Dutch and British voyagers tarnished the gilt, and Australia turned from a land of reward to a land of punishment when Great Britain dumped convicts and guards at Sydney in 1788. The imagination of the ancients had more truth than the knowledge of the moderns, but for two generations the settlers did not know that their prison had bars of gold.