Mark Cully in conversation with Emma Alberici

Mark Cully in conversation with Emma Alberici on his new book, Waves of Plenty.

The definitive story of how immigration made Australia

Many Australians can trace family journeys to new lives in Australia. In this landmark work, Mark Cully tells the full story of immigration to Australia, from pre-colonial origins through colonisation, the gold rushes, the post-war immigration boom, the end of the White Australia policy, and the modern era of unbound temporary migration.

Rigorously researched, the book dismantles persistent myths, gives human faces to statistics, and maps the forces that transformed a distant colony into one of the world's most diverse societies. Cully traces how immigration has changed Australia, making it bigger, younger, richly diverse, less provincial and more powerful.

This is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand where Australia came from, the fraught politics of immigration, and lessons for the future.

Mark Cully was chief economist for the Department of Immigration and Citizenship and the Department of Industry, as well as chair of the OECD's Working Party on Migration. As head of macroeconomic policy in the Treasury, he led the design of the JobKeeper program during the pandemic. He is an expert panel member of the Fair Work Commission and a visiting fellow at ANU's Crawford School of Public Policy.

Emma Alberici spent 29 years as a reporter and foreign correspondent. From News Corporation as a cadet on the Herald Sun and later a finance editor, she moved to Sydney to take on a role as a researcher and producer on the Money Show. After eight years at Nine and the publication of three books on entrepreneurialism, she moved to the ABC where she spent 18 years, as Europe Correspondent, Finance Editor of 7:30 and host of Lateline. Emma is now a Partner at Derwent - Australia's largest executive recruitment firm. She is searching for interesting people, hearing their stories, telling them to others and relishing the opportunity to influence leadership across the not for profit and public sectors.