Asian influence adds spice to melting pot At the 2011 census 1.3 million Australians or six per cent of the population were born in Asia. Bernard Salt explains. AUSTRALIA is predominantly an Anglo nation. We were settled by the British and by the Irish from convict times. And, even in the years after World War II, overseas migration was initially and overwhelmingly from Britain. "Ten-pound poms" made their way to the colonies by boat. Many got off at the first Australian port, Fremantle, which explains why Perth is still an Anglo-dominated town. The second port of call, Adelaide, yielded a new town developed in the mould of post-war English town planning, called Elizabeth. And, again, even today the ethnic influences of this migration is evident in the Anglo skew of the population in Adelaide's north. The Mediterranean migrants, the Greeks and the Italians, arrived en masse from the 1950s onwards and immediately embraced Melbourne and Sydney and, two generations later, have lent a measure of European sophistication to these cities. Asian migration was disallowed under the White Australia policy, which wasn't dismantled until the 70s. The first Asian migration wave was from Vietnam, but soon enough others arrived from Malaysia, The Philippines, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, Brunei, Hong Kong and, most recently, in very large numbers and often as students, from China. At the 2011 Census, 1.228 million Australian residents or 6 per cent of the population had been born in Asia. This definition of Asia excludes a further 295,000 Australian residents who were born in India. If at least one parent was born in Asia then about 10 per cent of the Australian population could be said to have a strong Asian heritage. Typically, the first generation of non-English speaking migrants to Australia cluster in specific suburbs in the capital cities. The logic being that it is the biggest cities that offer familial connection as well as familiar shops, newspapers, schools, churches and other supporting cultural institutions. It isn't until the second generation that migrant groups truly spread beyond the safety of the big-city enclave. The largest concentrations of Asian-born residents cluster in our biggest cities. More than 40 per cent of the population living in the Sydney CBD and in the suburb of Hurstville are Asian-born. In Melbourne, the Asian hotspot is Braybrook in the city's west while in Brisbane it is Sunnybank. In Adelaide, the Asian-born population peaks in the city centre while in Perth the hotspot is Bentley, which contains the campus of Curtin University. In Canberra, more than one-third of the population in the university suburb of Acton is Asian-born. What is especially interesting about Australia's Asian-born population is the pace with which a suburb is shaped by the incoming community. Between the 2006 and 2011 censuses, the proportion of the Australian population born in Asia increased by one percentage point from 5 per cent to 6 per cent. But in some suburbs this Asian acceleration jumped by 10 percentage points. The best example is Sydney's Concord West and Rhodes (postcode 2138), where the Asian-born population jumped from 15 to 30 per cent of the total population. Every year over this period, the Asian-born population expanded by three percentage points in Concord West. The proportion of the population living in the Sydney CBD, postcode 2000, jumped 11 percentage points from 33 to 44 per cent over this period. In other cities the impact of a rising Asian population has been more diluted. In the Melbourne suburb of Burwood (postcode 3125), the Asian-born community jumped eight percentage points from 14 per cent to 22 per cent of the local population. Similar uplifts in the Asian-born population applied in the Adelaide CBD, in the Brisbane university suburb of St Lucia and in the Perth suburb of Beckenham. There are now Asian suburbs within Australian cities just as there have been Italian and Greek suburbs and before that Irish suburbs in our capital cities. The Asian population is distinctly urban and has a preference for CBD and CBD-fringe locations as well as for university suburbs. Australia's Asian population is rising in areas connected with tertiary education as well as in areas characterised by knowledge-worker jobs. And, just as the Mediterraneans initially clustered and then dispersed, so too are Asians following this pattern. In Sydney, for example, the Greeks initially embraced Marrickville, but later spread to Earlwood as they prospered. In Melbourne, the Italians dominated Carlton before moving further afield to places like Fawkner and Keilor. Australia's Asian-born communities are carving out niches within or near the CBDs of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide, but are also colonising new suburbs further afield. This nation's Asian story begins with university and quickly spills into a CBD job and a CBD-fringe residential location. With workplace success and transition to the family formation stage of the lifecycle comes the requirement for more space in places like Sydney's Concord West, like Brisbane's Sunnybank, like Melbourne's Burwood and like Adelaide's Athol Park. The Asianisation of the Australian population is now at best 10 per cent of the population, taking into account the heritage of at least one parent. The Asian influence is largely constrained to the capital cities and to some often high-profile suburbs. But for the most part our Asian-born population mixes and mingles with Anglos and with other ethnicities in the melting pot of suburbia. The bigger issue for business is perhaps better understanding or anticipating how one-tenth of the population might influence the palate, the consumer behaviour, the workplace expectations of the balance of the population. Asians seem to prefer hierarchy in the workplace. They are less likely than Anglos to drink beer; they are more likely to drink tea than coffee; they buy houses that are configured by the principles of feng shui; they are less inclined to robust sports such as rugby and are more inclined to gaming. The issue is not the scale of the Asian-born population, it's the impact that this now sizeable segment has in shaping Australia's mainstream fusion Anglo-Mediterranean culture. Bernard Salt is a KPMG Partner and an adjunct professor at Curtin University Business School; bsalt@kpmg.com.au