Given that Labor’s most rusted-on demographic of all is the support it gets from voters born overseas, Julia Gillard’s full-frontal assault on immigration is one of the most remarkable political double-takes we’ve seen in a while.

And won’t the world be laughing at the selfishness of Australia, a nation that could comfortably accommodate 100 million people.

Wikipedia tracks population densities and this table shows that of all 200-plus countries on planet earth only Namibia and Mongolia are less populated than Australia’s 2.91 people per square kilometre.

Even more remarkably, when you remove the deserts and mountains, Wikipedia’s measure of people per square kilometre of arable land has Australia at just 43 — not the third least populated but actually the least populated of all. Yes, we’ve even overtaken Namibia and Mongolia on that measure.

So how do our first world Western friends compare? Is Germany over-ridden with congestion and pollution with 712 people per square kilometre of farming land? How about our original colonists  in England with 1077 — a whopping 25 times the equivalent Australian measure.

Then you have Japan with 2924, South Korea up at 2988 and even the US ranked right down the list in 181st position with only 179 people per square kilometre of farming land – more than 4 times selfish Australia.

Rather than reacting to xenophobes such as Andrew Bolt who claim the current migration level of 270,000 is way too high, our Welsh immigrant Prime Minister should be standing up for migrant communities and advocating for more immigration given the overwhelmingly positive influence it has on everything from housing prices to share prices, superannuation, tax revenue, cultural diversity and Australia’s connectedness to the global village.

Instead, here we are struggling with labour shortages in a mining boom and all our political duopoly can do is demonise the very migrants and refugees who have made Australia so great.

Tourism and education are two of the few industries where Australia actually does relatively well on the global stage, yet Gillard’s closed-shop projection to the world will hurt both of them.

Truth be known, Australia’s congestion problems in its coastal cities is a result of policy and planning failures by all three levels of government.

Under John Howard, Australia was the only country where the federal government didn’t spend a dollar on urban public transport.

This is finally being addressed by the Rudd-Gillard government, yet when a major rail project is announced in Melbourne, all we hear about is the potential loss of 50 houses.

The performance of “Sustainable Population Minister” Tony Burke on Insiders yesterday was lamentable to say the least.

Rather than declaring that Australia should confidently move forward and support its present immigration intake, he was fitting Tony Abbott up by quoting from his Australia Day speech this year when the Mad Monk supported the Rudd Big Australia approach and confessed his instinct was to take “as many people as possible”.

Who would have thought we’d ever hear a Labor government attacking someone such as Abbott for his treatment of people wishing to come to Australia?

Burke was also running away from Barrie Cassidy’s questions on the 36 million projected population by 2050 when that only assumes an annual migrant intake of just 180,000, well below the present level of 270,000.

Surely, Labor can’t get away with this blatant tactic. It is time it actually came out and declared its target migration cut.

Finally, it is worth reading the thoughts of Australia’s leading demographer, Bernard Salt, in The Australian last week when he lamented our incredibly sparse population and the low quality debate to which our leaders are subjecting the nation.

Stephen Mayne is a councillor in the City of Manningham, which is the only Victorian council with no rail or tram connection, has the highest car ownership ratio in Australia, the highest amount of open public space of any council in the world, the highest ratio of private tennis courts in the world and 4600 septic tanks because the trunk line sewer still hasn’t gone through some of the suburbs.