Videos of KELVIN THOMSON and all panel speakers have been added to this article. Open mic part now published here too. Today, June 14, 2014, a packed hall with people standing at the back in the Hawthorn Arts Centre voted for a national plebiscite to ask the people what size population they wanted. The forum interacted with a panel of four speakers: Kelvin Thomson, MP for Wills; Sheila Newman, Evolutionary Sociologist and Candobetter.net editor and writer; Clifford Hayes, former Bayside Council Mayor and planning activist; and William Bourke, Leader of the Sustainable Population Party. There was a queue for the open microphone and the meeting closed later than expected. All motions passed with an overwhelming show of hands.
Packed meeting in Hawthorn backs vote on Victoria’s population
We will probably replace this film with another from another angle which recorded the size of the audience, the applause and the show of hand on the motions. In the meantime this gives the content of the Open Microphone session.
The Hawthorn Arts Centre was the venue for a large public meeting today asking the question “Must Melbourne keep growing?” Speakers, Hon. Kelvin Thomson MP, Ms. Sheila Newman, evolutionary sociologist, Mr. Clifford Hayes, former Bayside mayor and Planning activist and Mr. William Bourke president of “ Sustainable Population Party” all addressed the meeting with the ultimate message that Melbourne does not have to keep growing. The audience was given the floor for the open mic second hour of the program and took full advantage of this. The meeting voted unanimously for the federal government to hold a national vote on Australia’s population aiming to stabilise by 2040:
''That, on the basis of State of the Environment reports and in the interests of democracy, the meeting calls on the federal government to hold a national vote on population at or before the next federal election, with a proposal to allow Australia to stabilise its population by 2040. A working group will be formed by concerned citizens in order to draft an appropriate question."
Meeting voted for Gov to have scientific conference re long-term sustainable population
Additionally the meeting voted unanimously for the Victorian Government to convene a scientifically based conference to establish the long term sustainable population for the state, on a motion proposed by Ms Julianne Bell, of Protectors of Public Land:
"That this meeting calls on the Victorian government to convene a scientifically based Victorian conference on what constitutes a long term environmentally sustainable population for Victoria, with reference to the Victorian State of the environment reports of 2008 and 2013 indicating environmental damage from current population levels."
According to the President of Sustainable Population Australia’s Victorian and Tasmanian branch, Ms. Jill Quirk, ”The first resolution is to give the Australian people the right to determine their own quality of life and quality of the environment for the present and future. The second is asking the government to undertake its absolute responsibility and to stop the reckless, irreversible destruction caused by needless rapid population growth and over development happening now.”
Comments
No Toll Roads (not verified)
Sat, 2014-06-14 23:47
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Saturday 28 June 1 pm Rally "Trains Not Tolls" State Library
nimby
Sun, 2014-06-15 05:46
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Plan Melbourne a Trojan Horse
Sheila Newman
Sun, 2014-06-15 13:49
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Melbourne Age driving Plan Melbourne's population growth
The Melbourne Age is active in our dispossession and the destruction of our democracy because it never permits us to effectively question the right of the government to roll out massive and alienating infrastructure and fill it with inhabitants imported from other countries. This should not surprise given the financial interest of all our media groups in land, real estate, 'lifestyle' consumables and marketing.
It is sad to see how reliant people remain on the Age, apparently not even aware of the Age's property dot com, www.domain.com.au, which, like News Inc's www.realestate.com.au, markets land and property to buyers all over the world.
These dot coms market to overseas investors using this out-of-control population growth as an incentive to buy into property.
And, of course, both these newsgroups continually suppress or attack any cogent objections to forced population growth via excessive rates of immigration.
They are also active in creating the confused impression that most immigrants are refugees and that the government is controlling immigration by controlling our borders to keep boat people out. For unknown reasons, the Greens have supplied their parties to assist in the creation of this confusion, and Greens members are actually afraid to talk about population numbers.
It would be hard to find more unreliable information than in the Age and the Australian. We have more to fear as well, because there is no way that enough fuel can be found to supply these mad growth projects, which are doomed to falter and fail, leaving millions in hardship with nowhere to turn. It seems to me that all our mainstream media, including the ABC, as Michael S., writes about most recently on candobetter.net, are complicit in an invasion of Australia by infrastructure and people which will prove just as deadly as the ones where they also demonize democratic resistance, in Syria and Ukraine, Iraq and Afghanistan. The fascist quality (big business-led and intellectually thuggish) of this invasion lies in the fact that it is engineered by our 'elected' representatives. Candidates in the elections that produced these abusers of democracy were limited to those that met the approval of the Age and the Australian and their corporate investors, and the ABC and SBS were also complicit.
More of this malignant celebration here: http://www.realestate.com.au/blog/melbourne-growth-going-gangbusters/
POTA (not verified)
Sun, 2014-06-15 23:11
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The cost and futility of perpetuating sentient life
"Most of the population will not be the existing population or their descendants, but be fillers from overseas!"
So what? We all share the misfortune of having been brought into existence. Death and extinction are inevitable, we (and your descendants if any) are all going to die in the end anyway, it will be as if the human organism had never existed.
"There's nothing organic, evolutionary or natural about this growth being forced onto us."
It is existence which is forced onto us!!! LIFE, the product of unintelligent biological evolutionary design, is an insidious and pointless game of winners and losers where everyone loses in the end.
Sheila Newman
Sun, 2014-06-15 23:32
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The point is to be able to enjoy life and this planet
POTA (not verified)
Mon, 2014-06-16 07:14
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Imposing unnecessary risk without consent
DennisK (not verified)
Mon, 2014-06-16 09:14
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Existence is forced, outcome isn't
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