Perhaps that’s why the Labor leader has strongly declared himself a supporter of a “big Australia” population policy, setting it down as one of the markers he will adopt if he wins the next election. Bill Shorten told The Australian that immigration had been a great economic driver and he expected Australia’s population to grow at a faster rate than the world average.

Both key political camps in Australia have declared their support for immigration going against the recent rumblings of iconic entrepreneurs like Dick Smith and Flight Centre’s founder Graham Turner’s who have been campaigning that a “big Australia’ is unsustainable.

Their views are supported by a 2013 Galaxy poll of 1000 people for News Limited which found that the majority are overwhelmingly against a “Big Australia”, with 70 per cent hoping the population does not hit the 40 million mark projected by 2050.

Bill Shorten however says, “I don’t favour that bumper sticker which says ‘Go away, we’re full.” Mr Shorten says he is enthusiastic about a bigger population. “I’m a fan of immigration and what it’s done for this country,” he told The Australian, noting that there is a disproportionately high number of immigrants among entrepreneurs and tax­payers.

“The number presents itself. We’re going to have a natural birthrate and we’re going to have immigration. We’re going to keep growing, probably faster than the average for the rest of the world,” he said.

Kevin Rudd generated a political storm in 2010 when he endorsed a “big Australia” following projections in the government’s Intergenerational report that the population would reach 36 million by 2050. The then opposition leader Tony Abbott said he would cut immigration by about 130,000 people a year.

Treasury’s quote of a population of 36 million by 2050 was based on the formal projections of the Australian Bureau of Statistics that had been released in 2008. New projections released last year show the population could now be as high as 41.4 million by 2050.