IT’S early morning and I have just been woken by a pair of cackling kookaburras.
The sky is cloudless blue and the temperature is already in the twenties.
I’m in Australia, a nation of immigrants, of which I was once one. And it has some lessons to teach us on the subject.
When I landed here 60 years ago as a Ten Pound Pom — an assisted passage migrant — it was like arriving in a sunny version of England.
Apart from the weather and jet lag, everything seemed familiar — the currency, the politics and the system of law and order.
This remained so, right up until the turn of the century.
In the 1960s, most of the 13million population were first or second-generation Brits. But things were changing.
Desperate for new citizens, the Canberra government opened its arms, first to Europe and then to the world.
But unlike Britain, they handled this demographic time bomb with caution.
When you touch down in Sydney or Melbourne today, arriving from the UK, you know immediately you are in a land strikingly different to the one you left 20 hours earlier.
It isn’t Australia that has changed. It is Britain and Europe that have taken a disastrous wrong turn.
Australia may be multi-racial but it has avoided the catastrophe of multiculturalism.
The Lucky Country is at ease with itself, a genuinely egalitarian society where everyone, from the humblest to the highest, expects a fair crack of the whip.
In return, the Aussies take a pride in their country and the communities they live in, no matter where they originally hail from.
Simple courtesies
And, in contrast to grubby, broken Britain, it shows.
Streets are strikingly clean and litter-free, the grass verges mowed, white walls devoid of graffiti.
While UK roads resemble ploughed fields, there are few potholes to be found here — and those are swiftly repaired.
In Sydney’s Kangaroo Street (yes, really) where I am staying, a team of workmen — and women — spent yesterday resurfacing this little-used side road.
Anti-social crime such as shoplifting and phone-snatching is rare. Police, often on traffic patrol, maintain a visible presence. They even turn up to burglaries.
City streets are dotted with frequently emptied litter bins.
There are clean, free, brightly lit public toilets.
In London, thanks to Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan’s scandalous neglect, public conveniences have been locked, bolted and replaced by urine and vomit-stained shop doorways.
The visible disintegration of civic society over the past two decades, spurred on by the ideological Left, shows a stark contrast between modern Britain and its former colony.
It has nothing to do with economics, either.
The UK is, or was, the world’s sixth-richest nation.
While UK roads resemble ploughed fields, there are few potholes to be found here — and those are swiftly repaired.
Mineral-rich Australia, in the top 20, is doing OK but is not in the same league.
Yet it spends taxpayers’ money in the taxpayers’ interest rather than on woke public sector cling-ons.
It’s what the Aussies call “a fair go”.
Which explains why this nation has successfully man-aged a booming population — which has doubled since the early Seventies to 26million — without all the trauma plaguing the Old Country. There are millions of Chinese-Australians, Indian-Australians and Vietnamese-Australians.
But at heart they are all Australians.
And for the most part they have melded successfully.
It might be the sunshine, but the most striking first impression, even for repeat visitors like me, is that everyone smiles at first glance.
People of all ages, male and female, meet your gaze, say “G’day” and engage in amiable chats in a bus, a shop queue or a pub. Generation X might not remember but we used to do that in the UK.
The second impression is that everything seems to work.
The buses, ferries and trains run on time.
Roads may be clogged with traffic but drivers observe simple courtesies. They give way, keep to the speed limit.
Nobody, including cyclists, jumps the lights.
Third, men and women dress in cheerful casual gear, rather than intimidating black.
I’m in Australia, a nation of immigrants, of which I was once one. And it has some lessons to teach us on the subject.
You will not see legions of young men in black hoodies over black beanies, worn with black sunglasses, black face masks and black tracksuits — the uniform of dissent.
E-bike takeaways are deliv-ered by recognisable human beings rather than shrouded Harry Potter-style Dementors Sure, the streets of Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney are still what screen luvvie Emma Thompson would brand “hideously white”.
But there are migrants of all colours and faiths here.
Australia has simply avoided the tidal wave of immigration from Syria and Africa into Europe a decade ago — for which Sweden, Germany and France are now paying such a hideous price.
Nor, luckily, is it bound by the draconian European Convention on Human Rights, although it scrupulously observes its own Human Rights Commission.
Tough move
Unlike Britain, Australia has taken a notoriously tough line on both legal and illegal migration.
Ports and airports are on watch for “unauthorised” arrivals. Those without a properly accredited visa are put on the next plane home — at their own expense.
In 2012, Aussie Prime Minister John Howard was denounced by the Labor opposition for diverting boatloads of asylum seekers from Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka to the remote island of Nauru.
But this tough move halted the people-smugglers who are now sending boatloads across the Channel to Britain instead.
Today, the minister in charge of that policy, former Queensland cop Peter Dutton, is leader of Howard’s Liberal Party and favourite to win a looming national election.
Australia has simply avoided the tidal wave of immigration from Syria and Africa into Europe a decade ago — for which Sweden, Germany and France are now paying such a hideous price.
And the Australian Labor Party is suddenly ready to deport 80,000 via a Rwanda-style scheme like that pioneered by the UK then scrapped by our current Prime Minister, Keir Starmer.
Of course, nothing and nobody is perfect. Australia has its own problem with militant Islam, stoked recently by the conflict in Gaza.
There is the abiding issue of Aboriginal or First Nation rights, with voters of all parties recognising the brutality of the early settlers towards the indigenous people.
But it has been managed without the divisive identity wars which which have soured race relations in the UK.
Life is tough even in paradise. Taxes are too high and wages too low for many families to afford a home of their own.
Australia may seem like a safe haven for UK professionals fleeing Starmer’s homemade recession.
But they must join the queue along with everyone else.
If they have the right credentials, they are in. Otherwise, forget it.
There is no appeal to a hand- wringing human-rights tribunal Down Under.
