(We) can do better

In an effort to provide some relief to those readers who are paralysed by the idea of population growth as a tragedy for Australia, candobetter has invited writer Cirrus McNimbus to give us the benefit of his optimistic views on Australia and Melbourne's population growth. McNimbus is a well-known commentator for the ABC on housing and lifestyle imperatives and he is also the CEO of the international accounting firm, StormT and Cup, which is a member of the Australian Property Atheneum and Pyramid Association. Today he writes about how his three year old grandson will handle the future.

The “Outcome principles” as set out in the discussion paper, are aspirations with which no-one would disagree but they do not encompass an overall vision for Melbourne. Furthermore, they are, in our view in reverse order of their actual importance! Confining this part of the submission to what is before us we will examine the importance and substance of each “principle.” Firstly it is necessary to look at the rate of growth which underpins the whole strategy and discussion paper. The present rate of population growth should not be “non negotiable.” [...] One must ask “How much harder does a high level of growth make the achievement of any of the aims underlying the principles?” [...] While the Minister invites the public to “talk” about Melbourne's future, its growth is considered inevitable and non-negotiable. That is, “Over the next 40 years, Melbourne will continue to grow, both geographically and in population.” This is not compatible with the overall aims and objectives of preserving and enhancing the 5 principles stated above.

On the Sunshine Coast development has destroyed a great deal of the beautiful natural surroundings that attracted people there in the first place. Native animals are being cruelly decimated by starvation and exposure.

Developers seem animated by greed alone, machinally moonscaping lots when buyer uptake has dropped to 1996 levels[1] in Australia, despite constant mass immigration. The developer lobbies have not been able to restimulate demand, even by touting for overseas immigrants and selling property to foreign investors off the plan. (That doesn't stop them charging huge fees for membership.)

"This submission does not follow the suggested response questions but sets out to make comment upon what we see as the necessary strategic planning issues for the future of Melbourne... In our previous submissions on planning, BRAG has pushed for a federal population policy that limits immigration to more sustainable levels like we used to have in the 80’s and 90’s of around the 70,000 to 80,000 p.a. mark and we have not moved away from that stance. The first step in any planning is to have a population policy that is sustainable otherwise planning policy will continue to fail....we believe that the general planning powers must be with local councils who better understand their municipalities and those who live in them. Centralization leads to power and power leads to corruption and this is one of the issues we are now facing with developer donations being used to corrupt decision-making." You may not agree with everything, but it's a pretty impressive democracy submission.

“Mr. Rudd needs to be severely questioned on the title of his talk but the context makes this unlikely. Were he speaking in parliament or the public realm he might be questioned but his speech on Thursday will be heard at a forum of an industry known for its bias to high population growth with no practical or logical end point.” (Jill Quirk, President, SPAVicTas)

Liberal Leader Will Hodgman's idea of pushing up Tasmania's population from 512,000 to 650,000 by the year 2050 has started a predictable bidding war, with Housing Industry Association's Stuart Clues, weighing in with a proposal for one million by the year 2050. Tasmania is currently a destination for Australian refugees from the unpleasant effects of turbo-charged population growth in Western Australia and other mainland states, so no-one in government or the property development industry is likely to ask Tasmanian residents what they think. Meanwhile, Canadian population renegade, Professor T. Murray, is accusing the Libs and the HIA of lack of vision. In a phone call to Candobetter.net, he called them 'pussies.' "Let's not dick around," he said, "The sky is the limit for Tasmania..."

"Both the process and the discussion paper are undirected, unsatisfactory and of little help to anyone or anything. Nothing so inadequate has ever been seen in the history of Melbourne strategic planning."... "The paper generally avoids any discussion of how to intensify established areas while not destroying amenity, or even whether it is possible to achieve both objectives.

Reading this letter to the Wheeler center about a shocking spin exercise delivered by professional development spruikers, with Roz Hansen (who is also involved in fielding public submissions), one is reminded of the film, We need to talk about Kevin, a film about a totally underestimated problem with utterly dire consequences. In fact, Melbourne really needs to talk about the corruption of democracy via Melbourne planning and development organisations, their contempt for citizens, their infiltration of law-making in parliament, and the gross unsustainability of the philosophy and projects they seek to unilaterally impose - Candobetter Ed.

VCAT is proposing draconian fees on citizens who wish to protect their property and environment from undemocratic corporate backed development and overpopulation. Fees for a citizen lodging an objection to any development in 2012 were $38.80. For 2013 fees are proposed to rise to $731.80 (for developments costed at less than $1.0m) and to $1,462.30 for developments estimated at $1.0m or more. These fees would increase even more in 2014 respectively to: $869.60 and $1,737.90, and, in 2015, respectively, to $1,007.40 and $2,014.80. Add to this the cost of hiring barristers and this will make a complete mockery of democracy, which is already a laughing stock in Victoria anyway. Submission deadline is 5pm Friday 15 February 2013.

Amazingly or perhaps, true to type, Australia is experiencing extreme shortages of domestic natural gas supplies. World-wide there is a gas-rush. It also looks like oil is already not keeping up with demand as countries scramble for new more energy costly, polluting and environmentally destructive forms of energy, like tarsands, fracked gas, and sugarcane ethanol. The media is failing to paper over the cracks: Australia looks like a cartoon demonstration of entropy with energy dispersing, the environment overheating, overpopulation and political disorder. And there is nowhere for Australians to escape.

"Let me return to my old primary school, St Joseph's convent [in Cloncurry]. Saint Mary McKillop, I'm sure, was just like my principal, Sister Thomas..." Bob Katter's book, while retrieving some good Australian ideas and paying its respects to our ancestors, also markets big population ideas uncannily like those of B.A. Santamaria.

If I were an aboriginal in West Australia, I would be buying up camels and organizing my clan to develop them as transport, food and materials in a revival of a new style Aboriginal society, which might take in some, but definitely not all, of the refugees from Perth’s collapsing civilization only decades from now. Submissions invited from public on planning doc. (Link inside article)

Fire taxes and people taxes - Are we seeing the genesis of what could well be the next tax imposition for the people of Victoria to pay for the population growth that the state forces on us?

Community groups are making submissions on the Reformed Zones in Victoria. The government's zoning aims to increase commercial areas into residential areas in a serial manner and to intensify activity in the green wedges. The Department of Planning and Community Development has appointed a Ministerial Advisory Committee 'to review all submissions and provide advice back to the government', but the Chairman of the Committee is Geoff Underwood, who is prominent in the affairs of the Australian Population Institute (APop), which is officiated by professional developers and has the primary aim of promoting a huge population for Australia. What chances do robust submissions have with APop defining the parameters of planning in Victoria? See Planning Backlash submission inside.

On November 6, 2012 it was reported that the Victorian government was cooling on the idea of another port for Hastings and instead its planners were casting their collective beady eye in the direction of Werribee. ("Government looks west for next port development," The Agep.6.) One imagines hope springing on the Mornington Peninsula as a dark shadow turns west to cast its pall on Werribeeans instead. But do we even need one new port?

How did stealing from the public to enrich the private sector become a norm in Australia and why do some religions give it moral credence? This is a reminder of the existence of an important, publicly available article about the rise of right-wing so-called 'think tanks' in Australia since the mid 1970s and their recent tendency to combine forces with the religious right. Here, from another source and angle, are arguments that reinforce candobetter's message about the problems Australia has with the growth lobby and its merchants.

Here is yet another example of why big business and governments want more population growth - they can always milk it for money while you and I pay for it. With the right press, this can even appear helpful, although it's really just the opposite. "To reduce congestion, imagine the government charged by the kilometre," says David Hensher of the University of Sydney. "The hip pocket must be where road pricing reform commences. The call for a congestion charge is getting louder and more frequent in many countries, as major metropolitan areas experience increasing levels…" Growth doesn't pay for itself - you do.

Sustainable Population Australia takes the State of the Environment report 2008 as a warning of the unsustainable path that Victoria is on as the government recklessly engineers its population at a rate about twice the level it would naturally be at present. This state government and its predecessors have actively encouraged population growth through the artificial means of seeking increasing numbers of migrants from overseas to settle in Victoria, using the website "Liveinvictoria.com.au".

MEETING IN FLINDERS COMMUNITY HALL 4 PM SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 15th 2012 The Government and opposition's population engineering continues to wreck havoc on democracy and land-tenure, affecting both private property and public lands, and impacting on established low-key local commerce. New proposed uses for the Green Wedge actually include saw-mills and display homes. The Flinders Community Association have begun issuing an information-packed alert for distribution to the local community detailing the damage that State Government changes to our Green Wedges can do to peoples' local natural, social and commercial environment, whilst removing their ability to defend what is theirs. Other communities may wish to take a similar democratic initiative before all our rights to self-government are swept away by unjust legislation to benefit developers. Note that these moves were begun by the previous Labor Government - which is hardly fighting them now. The incumbent government should be rolling back what Bracks and Brumby did, but instead, they are making things worse.

Jon Faine surprised many Victorians yesterday morning (4 September 2012) when he lambasted the abuse of 457 Visas in Victoria at a time of high local unemployment. He drew listeners' attention robustly to the folly of importing thousands of workers to industries where Australians could not even afford to train. Today, 5 September 2012, on ABC Radio 774, his guest was the Executive Director of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI), but we heard not a word about how mass immigration is driving Australia's housing shortage nor how the property development growth lobby is driving mass immigration and the destruction of Victoria's green wedges and other greens spaces. Should we expect more of Jon Faine and the ABC or are ABC announcers constrained to toe the government line that supports the property development lobby?

"Any encroachment into our green spaces is irreversible. On the other hand, remaining faithful to the original intention of the green wedges, would give us all a more disciplined, sustainable, and welcoming city for the future." (Lady Hamer on 29 August 2012 as the Libs prepare to give bulldozers open slather on our green wedges, destroying wildlife and natural amenity.) Labor and the Liberals response is less than edifying and does not solve the problem. Basically both parties are in cahoots with the developers against the people of Melbourne.

Tim Murray opines on free lunches, Canada as an international flophouse, the Republican manufacture and marketing of moral hallucinogens, and the notion of manifest destiny in the light of the laws of thermodynamics [you can't have your cake and eat it], as he listens to the US GOP (Republican) Convention.

Australia and Canada are in a race to the bottom to dig up all their minerals. They are importing workers and failing to train their own. Their politicians are caught up in the myth of sustainable economic growth. "The tar sands are the engine of that growth. And we'll want top dollar for what we export because the thirst for tax revenue is insatiable. We'll want the Americans to compete with the Chinese for the privilege of burning our bounty of black death. No wonder then that the support for continued mass immigration is bipartisan. We are in a big hurry to get that resource out of the ground and get it shipped out ASAP---so we bringing in migrant labour like mad to satisfy a "shortage" in skilled labour that we assume to exist because we have never conducted a proper inventory nor seriously tried to train our own people."

The Four Corners program said it's about either homes for "us" or homes for "them" - koalas! Actually, our population growth is politically forced to be the highest in the developed world, and is burgeoning.
Koalas are slow evolving, stress-prone animals with no evolutionary defence against chain saws, axes, miners, developers, roads, human invaders, dogs and other feral animals.

This article commentates the parliamentary 'debate' on 14 August 2012 on this bill, including how these politicians avoid confronting the driver of overpopulation. We also cite speakers on the associated ills: "[T]he government is setting us up for privatisation of the permit system. That is the holy grail. [...] What we have here in Victoria is the product of a mad scientist experiment, turning a simple matter — something that is simple in cities around the world, planning and building codes — into a privatised, almost anything goes objective-based system that is fundamentally broken. We think this approach is fundamentally wrong. There is a simple and easy process for the minister to achieve the same objective within the existing provisions of the Planning and Environment Act 1987." (Greg Barber, Greens)

Tim Murray says that bankers and politicians cooperate to promote high population growth and so-called ethnic diversity, but in doing so, they have turned their backs on most of the electorate. They may be kissing babies in public, but they are not safeguarding those babies' futures.

The Growling Grass Frog, one of the largest frog species in Australia, was previously widespread across Victoria. They are now endangered. Southern Brown Bandicoots once occurred commonly in the wider Frankston area (pre-1970s). They have rapidly declined and are now restricted to isolated remnant habitat patches. They have little chance of long term survival against the economic benefits of population growth. Without robust ecosystems, with each natural species contributing its part to the web of life, we end in a barren, artificial and sterile, wastelands. (First posted
Posted July 13th, 2012; Reposted July 15, 2012.)

(Updated 10 July 2012 at end of article.)Housing prices are going down and the small coterie of people who profit from unaffordable housing and land costs and the other forms of resource inflation and associated human misery have found it necessary to invent yet another force to massage unwanted population growth and high immigration in Australia. This one, the New Migration Council to advocate for a bigger Australia" calls itself an NGO rather than a think-tank or an association or a foundation, but it has multi-million dollar backing and is way out of the league of traditional advocates of community causes most people associate with NGOs. See also the latest members of the Multicultural Foundation - Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott.

Richard Laverack writes about the connections between the Spanish property development lobby and the shocking systemic corruption issues in Spain. There are many similarities between the Spanish and the Australian banking and property development lobbies and their relationships with government. The Ballieu Government's push for Westernport and a new "bubble" in Webb dock is based on the same philosophy of friendly fascism. So was the preceding Labor Government's. This article gives a short history of fascism and corruption in Spain before describing the current financial problems and their relationship with property and finance.

A recent article about Nigel Franks, who tortured a female kangaroo and cruelly disposed of her joey, led to expressions of despair and horror about this young man's behaviour. A criminological link between cruelty to animals and cruelty to humans was drawn. I would like to suggest here that there may also be a political explanation in the normalisation of cruelty to animals by Australian authorities. Governments are demonstrating that they think it is okay to mistreat these sentient creatures, with the thinnest of justifications. At the end of this article I will suggest that this political attitude may forerun government violence against citizens in Australia.