Australia’s strong history of immigration is proof that political leaders must not be driven by the polls, according to a new essay by senior journalist with The Australian, George Megalogenis.

In his Quarterly Essay, Trivial Pursuit: Leadership and the end of the reform era, Megalogenis cites a poll taken in 1951, asking people whether or not Australia should take immigrants from Greece, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, France, Italy and Yugoslavia.

Only 42.7 percent of Australians said Australia should take immigrants from Greece, as opposed to 80.6 percent approval for The Netherlands, and 55.4 percent approval for Germany.

“It’s quite an unusual distinction for people to make, to prefer Germans more than Greeks, straight after the end of the Second World War,” Megalogenis told Neos Kosmos.

He said, while the leaders at the time pushed on with immigration policies despite low approval ratings, he isn’t sure today’s politicians would do the same thing.

“Polls like that, if they were taken today, would have our current generation of leaders freeze in terror,” he said.

“They’d almost take it to its illogical conclusion and say, ‘let’s not bring them here’.”

“Leaders were leaders then, they didn’t blink at the first shudder at the polls.”

Megalogenis, the author of Faultlines: Race, Work and the Politics of Changing Australia and The Longest Decade, described the 2010 federal election campaign as “weak”.

“The disappointing thing for me about the 2010 election campaign was in the first week, when both sides of politics actively perused an agenda to slow immigration, regardless of the economic cycle.

“I thought that was a pretty weak display.”

Megalogenis said Australia was probably the world’s best example of immigration policy.

“It was disturbing that after 60 years of this evidence that an open immigration program actually builds creates a bigger and a better country, you had an election campaign that begins with, ‘let’s slow the immigration intake regardless of the economic cycle’.”

“The only thing I hope is that Gillard and Abbott didn’t really mean it.’

This week’s job figures revealed unemployment is down to 5.2 percent, which Treasurer Wayne Swan described as “stunning”.

Megalogenis,who is on leave from The Australian to work on a new book, said he hoped figures like these would bolster the argument for a ‘big Australia’.

“The reality will just mugg them at some point,” he said.

He said people’s concerns about the lack of infrastructure shouldn’t mean a cut in immigration intake.

“If people are there, you’re more likely to have stuff delivered by government than if they’re not there,” he said.

“The state that did try to slow population growth is New South Wales – and their infrastructure isn’t the better for it.”

He also criticized Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard for allowing the issues of immigration and asylum seeker policy to become confused, which John Howard managed to keep separate.

“Even for established immigrant groups, you hear the stuff in some of the communities – we came here the right way, you came here by boat.

“Well, no not really. Everybody who comes here comes for a better life, that’s the motivation.”

‘Trivial Pursuit: Leadership and the Reform Era’ is available in all good newsagents and book shops.