Tony Abbott has cut through the polite evasions that dominate Australia's population debate. In his recent piece, the former Prime Minister delivers a simple, profound truth: nations do not sustain themselves by endlessly importing people to replace the children they have stopped having. The healthiest, most cohesive way forward is to put family first — to create the conditions where Australians feel confident and supported enough to have more children. Migration has played a valuable role in our history, but it cannot and should not become a permanent substitute for renewal from within.
Australia, like much of the West, faces a quiet crisis of civilisational confidence. Our total fertility rate has collapsed to around 1.5 births per woman — well below the 2.1 replacement level needed for a stable population without relying on net overseas migration. Similar figures haunt other developed nations: France and the US near 1.6, Britain at 1.39, Italy at 1.2, and Spain at a dismal 1.1. Even Hungary's determined pro-natalist efforts (tax breaks for larger families and cultural emphasis on motherhood) lifted its rate from 1.2 to 1.6 before slipping back, showing that economics alone do not explain the reluctance to have children. Something deeper — a drift from the hearth, from long-term commitment, and from faith in the future — is at work.
Abbott rightly draws on Edmund Burke's insight that society is a partnership between the living, the dead, and those yet to be born. Children are not a lifestyle choice or an optional extra; they are the living link in that chain. The family remains the primary school of responsibility, solidarity, and belonging. When families weaken and birth rates fall, societies do not simply shrink in numbers — they risk losing the cultural transmission that binds generations and maintains national character.
For decades, high migration has papered over this demographic hole. Australia's net overseas migration surged from around 100,000–200,000 annually in earlier periods to peaks exceeding 400,000 in recent years. In Britain, it exploded from near zero pre-1990 to nearly a million in some recent years. The United States has seen similar surges, especially illegal entries. The standard justifications are familiar: migrants fill labour shortages, support an ageing population, bring skills and ideas, and enrich the nation through diversity.
These benefits are real in measured doses. Australia has been one of the more successful immigrant nations precisely because earlier waves largely came to join and build upon our existing framework — an indigenous heritage, a British foundation, and an immigrant character that historically emphasised integration, rule of law, and shared values. Many migrants, including from non-Western backgrounds, have contributed enormously and embraced Australian life with gratitude.
But scale and nature matter. When net migration runs persistently high and integration falters, problems compound. Cheap travel and instant communication allow some to treat their new home as "Hotel Australia" — enjoying the prosperity and security without fully committing to the culture that produced it. Rapid population growth exacerbates housing shortages, strains infrastructure, and intensifies competition in cities already facing cost-of-living pressures. Most seriously, when inflows outpace the organic renewal of the host population, there is a real risk of diluting the social cohesion and cultural confidence that make a country worth preserving in the first place.
Abbott's blunt formulation captures it best: replacing the babies the West won't have with migrants risks a form of civilisational suicide. It signals a loss of faith in our own future. Every child born to Australian families represents the ultimate vote of confidence — in oneself, in one's partner, in the country, and in the civilisation that shaped it. No imported population plan can replicate the deep-rooted loyalty and instinctive belonging that comes from growing up in the culture you inherit.
Australia should continue a selective, skills-focused migration program that serves our national interest — controlled, integrated, and modest enough not to overwhelm social capacity. Illegal arrivals must be stopped firmly, as Abbott's Operation Sovereign Borders demonstrated. Legal migration needs calibration: enough to add dynamism, not so much that it becomes the default answer to every demographic shortfall.
The real priority must shift upstream — to pro-family policies that make it easier and more attractive for young Australians to form stable families and have children. This includes serious action on housing affordability, affordable childcare that supports rather than displaces parental roles, tax settings that do not penalise larger families, and a broader cultural message that values parenthood as a noble contribution rather than a lifestyle drag. We need to restore the "drift back to the hearth" that Abbott calls for, countering the self-loathing and cultural disorientation that have made many in the West hesitant about their own continuity.
Hungary's experiment, for all its mixed results, at least treats population as a serious national question rather than an afterthought left to market forces and open borders. Australia can do better by combining realistic migration control with genuine family support.
The best migrants any nation can have are its own children — raised in its values, attached to its story, and invested in its future. Tony Abbott is right: family must come first. Until we rediscover the confidence to renew ourselves from within, no amount of immigration will fill the deeper void.