Tasmania - the safest place to live on the planet?

Yes we have our share of crime but unlike other places in this big bad world, murder in Tassie still automatically makes page one or leads the news bulletin.

We are a haven.

When we took in refugees from the Serbia-Kosovo war in 1998, then Premier Jim Bacon told the refugees they were in a safe haven and could stay as long as they like.

Actually he had no authority to promise them asylum but the point is, to these poor people Tasmania was the promised land.

I am not suggesting we profit off the tragedies in Sydney, but the fact is we are still an undiscovered paradise.

Our migration share is about 3.7 per cent of all entries but South Australia and Western Australia are almost 10 per cent.

Over the past decade less than 50,000 overseas migrants have settled in Tasmania, while more than 50 per cent of all migrants have settled in greater Sydney and Melbourne.

You might argue that the big capitals have the capacity for large intakes, but that's not the point.

There's nothing wrong with an orderly migration policy, unlike the shambles federally, but we can take thousands more.

An average of 5000 a year is not going to soup up our economy.

The state government has a population plan to hit 650,000 by 2050.

They're dreaming.

Oh yes we have wilderness and lots of space and no crowding and we're always friendly while prices are reasonable and houses aren't too costly, but these attributes miss the mark.

In this dangerous day and age, with major conflicts threatening in Europe, Asia and the Middle East and violence gripping many parts of Australia, there's a safe house, called Tasmania.

I hear so many times from parents living or moving overseas to chase lucrative jobs, that once the kids reach high school the family is moving back because places like America and parts of Europe have high crime rates and terrorism.

Every country and province can boast spectacular scenery and fabulous cities, and you don't mind a visit as long as you don't have to live there.

Our tourism brochures and online information about Tasmania should be drenched in variations of the word safe.

I promise it will resonate.

I once spent New Year's Eve in the Champs Elysees, that great dual carriageway avenue in Paris running down from the Arch De Triumph and the place was shoulder-to-shoulder crowded as you would expect.

Every now and then someone would set off a large firecracker and the heaving mass of revellers would surge in alarm, and you had to brace in order to avoid the catastrophe of falling over, because it was possible you would never get up.

It was scary and we didn't stay for the midnight hour.

What was really unnerving was the bus loads of riot police in full riot kit, waiting in the nearby back streets in case they were needed.

On our way back to the hotel we heard gun shots.

Yes I know it can get rowdy here on New Year's Eve but not like the riot police in Paris, or the riot police who had to attend the church in Western Sydney last week after more stabbings.

I suppose if we hooked up to the migrant levels of other states we would eventually become less of a safe haven, but it would take years to get to that level.

And even if your migrant phobia, racist or not, prevented you from sharing my enthusiasm there is still a vastly untapped market of Australians who would move here and tolerate the temperate climate, as long as it was comparatively safe.

They may have missed the boat in terms of cheap houses and a bargain lifestyle, even though we have been telling them for years that it's all true, but if you told them they could walk home after a night out and the chances are they would arrive safely I reckon they would jump on the next plane and go house hunting.

Our crime rate keeps falling and has done so for the past six years.

We are hardly a modern utopia and we have our share of murders, but we don't have ethnic violence.

We don't have routine gangland executions in broad day light around arcades and shopping centres and I can think of only three high profile unsolved cases involving women who vanished or were murdered going back 50 years or more.

As I said, now is probably not the time to leverage off the Sydney tragedies and spruik our ideal lifestyle and all its safe qualities, but eventually the time will come when we can tell the world that in Tasmania we are safe and sound.

And I bet it will resonate.

There is immense satisfaction in being able to tell a new settler or a prospective one that their kids will be far safer here than in some overcrowded metropolis.