But there is a problem with immigration. The world is in angry convulsions over it. Following the pattern of the Great Depression in the 1930s leading to the rise of fascism, the Great Recession of 2008 is leading to the rise of right-wing populism. Right-wing populism, like left-wing populism, targets elites. But the right's distinctive feature is that it always adds an "out-group", the "other", the Jew, the Muslim, the Chinese, the immigrant in general. While this has been raging in the United States and Europe, Australia has been an island of calm and harmony. That seems to be approaching an end. Illustration: Jim Pavlidis Credit: Last year, the Premier of NSW was asking for more immigrants for her state. This week she called for the number to be halved. Gladys Berejiklian, the daughter of Armenian immigrants and premier of Australia's biggest immigrant home.

Why the sudden change? The timing was, no doubt, designed to distract from the Opera House fiasco. But she was led to her new position by NSW Opposition Leader Luke Foley, who called for the cut first, in March. Now Foley has accused Berejiklian of being in a "blind panic", with an election due in six months. And the Premier's rationale? "We are definitely doing the heavy-lifting when it comes to infrastructure. I don’t want to continue to play catch-up. I want to be ahead of the game. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying 'let’s take a breather'." In this she embraces Tony Abbott's position. Abbott has been the leader on this. Months ago, and before Luke Foley discovered the issue, the former prime minister called for immigration to be slowed to allow infrastructure to catch up: "My issue is not immigration; it's the rate of immigration at a time of stagnant wages, clogged infrastructure, soaring house prices and, in Melbourne at least, ethnic gangs that are testing the resolve of police," he told the Sydney Institute in February. Tony Abbott has been the leader on the push to cut immigration. Credit:Fairfax Media "At least until infrastructure, housing stock and integration has better caught up, we simply have to move the overall numbers substantially down."

Abbott, in turn, on this and on other matters, including the Paris accord on climate change, has been encouraged by the success of Donald Trump. In these ways, political fashions abroad become political fashions at home. Why has this idea found such traction in Australia? There was no Great Recession in Australia. There was no recession at all. And in contrast to the endemic illegal immigration into the US and irregular flows into Europe in the last few years, there is no such problem in Australia. But there is a real problem in Australia, nonetheless. It's the reason that Scott Morrison doesn't call his Minister for Cities, Urban Infrastructure and Population by his official title and instead calls Alan Tudge his "minister for congestion-busting". The "minister for congestion-busting", Alan Tudge. Credit:Andrew Meares Australia is in the self-inflicted paradox of having vast amounts of space but no room.

Australia has pursued a big immigration intake for the entire post-war era for the very selfish reason that it's in the national interest. It boosts the economy. It lowers the average age of the population. This means that national ageing is slowed. As a result, the rising cost to the taxpayer of healthcare and aged care and welfare is slowed. And it adds skills. And cultural richness. And it's been an exceptionally successful policy for all these reasons. Malcolm Turnbull famously called Australia "the most successful multicultural society in the world". He also liked to call the policy a "recruiting program for the nation" to seek the best possible talent from around the world. But there have been serious failures in managing the program. First is that the federal government sets the number of immigrants each year but the states are supposed to build the cities to absorb them. Tudge gives this example. "You have these projections of growth and state governments are supposed to plan accordingly. Then Kevin Rudd comes in and overnight doubles the immigration intake, but in NSW you had Bob Carr saying 'Sydney is full'," he tells me.

"So you have a state saying, 'We don't need to build any more infrastructure,' and then a few years later you have a federal government turbo-charging the intake." And of course Carr made his pronouncement in the full knowledge that he had no control whatsoever over the number of people moving to Sydney. He wasn't making immigration policy; he was making excuses for failing to build his city. There has been very little effort to manage the settlement patterns of new immigrants. Three-quarters of new arrivals flock to Sydney, Melbourne and south-east Queensland. Other parts of the country are desperate for people. We have the absurd situation of a beautiful city that's rated among the 10 most liveable in the world yet is begging for new settlers - Adelaide - while other cities choke. One result: "While the overall population of Australia has been growing at the rapid rate of 1.6 per cent per annum, our three large population centres have been some of the fastest growing cities in the world," Tudge said in a speech this week. Melbourne last year grew by 2.7 per cent, Sydney by 2.1 per cent and south-east Queensland by 2.3 per cent. "Only Canada has experienced comparable growth of its large cities amongst the OECD countries," says Tudge.

Sixty-four per cent of Melbourne's population growth has been been because of net overseas migration. In Sydney it's a stunning 84 per cent. Loading These pressures are real, as everyone living in these cities knows. Abbott's proposal earlier this year was to cut the annual intake of 190,000 permanent immigrants to 110,000, to bring it in line with the Howard government's intake. Understanding the pressure coming from Abbott and the conservative flank of his party, Peter Dutton was already cutting the intake. He didn't cut the annual cap, an upper limit, of 190,000. Instead, he applied more rigour to the processing applications, producing an intake of 162,000. So the intake has started shrinking. Buthow far do you take this shrinkage before you start sabotaging your national economy, cranking up your average age and seeing health and ageing costs soar?

Tudge has two other solutions. He is now proposing these ideas to the federal cabinet. One is to change the system to get a better distribution of immigrants around the country; to encourage new immigrants to spend their initial years - perhaps three, maybe five - living in a city or town or region that wants more settlers. The plan would operate with a carrot and a stick. The carrot is that a potential immigrant willing to live in, say, Tasmania, would score more points on the test applied to new immigrants and would move ahead in the queue. The stick would be that this would be a condition of winning a visa. Move to Melbourne, say, and you've violated the terms of your visa and can be deported. Melbourne’s population grew by 2.7 per cent last year. Credit:Wayne Taylor When Tudge floated the idea of a region-specific visa in his speech this week, there was instant outcry that it was impossible, unconstitutional and unconscionable. It's none of those things. Australia already has such a program in place - designated area migration agreements. There's only one in effect, in the Northern Territory.

"We are already working on some of these as boutique arrangements you can make with smaller towns. We are working very closely with local leaders and businesses in western Victoria, the goldfields and in far north Queensland," says Tudge. Of course, it's unconstitutional to try to tell an Australian citizen where to live. But this proposal would apply to immigrant visas, not to citizens. And the key principle is that it would be voluntary. Tudge's second proposal is to create a better framework for the federal government to work with the states. To more closely plan inflows of people on the one hand and the infrastructure of schools, hospitals, housing, roads and transport to accommodate them on the other. "The punchline" says an informed source, "is that this model has been available to the government for two years". Dutton brought very similar proposals to the Turnbull cabinet in early 2017 and again earlier this year. The cabinet made no decision, probably fearing it would set off a huge argument on immigration, an argument the government wanted to avoid. Well, it's too late now. The argument is under way.

The question now is whether Australia applies these principles of sensible management to an urgent problem. Or whether it ducks and adds it to the list of political failures. National politics is not supposed to be parlour games. It's supposed to be problem-solving. It'd be good to see a problem solved. Good, but shocking. Peter Hartcher is political editor.