Authoritarian Planning: Not just your suburb or your state - but Australia-wide

It is not just in Victoria, or NSW, or South Australia, or West Australia, or the Northern Territory. Activity Centres and densification are being pushed in every part of Australia.  And decentralisation is not the answer either; country towns are being forced to accommodate dense new settlements too. And it's not just we humans who are impacted.  Dogs are flooding animal shelters because their owners can no longer afford space or food to keep them.  Horses cannot find paddocks. Kangaroos and other wildlife die of starvation or are hit by cars and their ancestral territories are taken over for densification. Not only is this cruel, but it is destructive of both post-1788-imperial culture and Aboriginal values and culture.  Australians are being subjected to the same impoverisation and dispossession by high-rise restructure and ultra-urbanisation as post-Ottoman Arab countries. Planners and developers treat todays Australians as Untermensch, not entitled to self-government,  the same way the British colonial government treated Australia's Aboriginal people.  Being black or white is not going to save you. And sometimes this planning imperialism is justified as something Australians deserve because of what the British did to Australian Aboriginals. But Australian Aboriginals are not excepted from this treatment.  They are like the rest of us. Herded.

In November 2024 11 Sydney suburbs were rezoned to provide capacity for nearly 60,000 homes as well as more than 126,000 commercial and retail employment places. Similarly to Victoria's 'Activity Centres,' stations in Sydney are being rezoned to 'provide significant uplift [meaning high-rise!] and support new homes within 1200m of these Metro and rail stations, including  Bankstown, Bays West, Bella Vista, Crows Nest, Homebush, Hornsby, Kellyville and Macquarie Park. (https://meetings.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/ieDecisionDetails.aspx?AIId=17680) Locals and local representatives have protested vigorously, showing the sheer unwiseness of proceeding, but the state is steamrolling them and people standing up for their rights are being ludicrously portrayed as 'NIMBYs' by governments who are working for property developers and bankers, not for you and me.  https://meetings.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/ieDecisionDetails.aspx?AIId=17680.  The Australian mainstream media, including the ABC, presents news to states in isolation from what is happening to other states, so many people actually believe these megacity programs are only happening in their own state, or even in their own suburb. In South Australia it is the same. See https://livingadelaide.sa.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/278246/Transit-corridors-growth-areas-and-activity-centres.pdf  In West Australia State Planning Policy 4.2 - Activity Centres Policy is a state planning policy for the planning and development of activity centres throughout Western Australia. (https://www.wa.gov.au/government/publications/state-planning-policy-42-activity-centres). (Last updated: 22 June 2023). Activity centres were being planned for the Northern Territory as early as 2016, and we can see the role of the Property Council of Australia more clearly here: https://www.propertycouncil.com.au/news/nt-planning-scheme-performance-criteria: https://www.propertycouncil.com.au/submissions/coolalinga-freds-pass-rural-activity-centre-plan 

State Premiers are selected to push these authoritarian programs through against all opposition. It is ironic that the last NSW Premier to try to push back against stuffing Sydney past bursting - Gladys Berejiklian - was forced out of Government by the exposure of a romantic relationship with a property developer.  Now, I don't think the Property Lobby of Australia would ever allow this to happen to someone they thought was loyal to them.

We allow our natural social organisation to be disabled at our peril. It is a much more serious thing to drastically reorganise land-tenure than just an affair of NIMBY’s or affordable housing. It affects our human and political empowerment at the deepest level, leaving us isolated from our origins and unsure of our personal identities, disconnected and unsafe. Without real community, we are not able to negotiate with our planning-captors.  They hold the cards that dispossess us.  Who we are and what influence and importance we have as individuals, is largely a product of  social networks we were born into or accumulated as we grew up. Infill our suburb, remove the old schools, churches, replace shops with malls, hide old people away, bulldoze the established houses, and we no longer have a sense of place. If we cannot find some temporary identity in workplace or some new activity, or a certain look, if we are constantly commuting and hardly see our family, if we are unemployed and poor, divorced or homeless, then who are we, where do we fit?  A rolling stone, a homeless stone, not only gathers no moss; it is socially isolated and politically disempowered. 

The repercussions of these planning decisions extend far beyond mere zoning changes; they disrupt the very fabric of our communities and erode our social cohesion. As suburbs are transformed into high-density living spaces with little regard for local identity or history, residents find themselves alienated from their neighborhoods and each other. This disconnection fosters a sense of powerlessness, as individuals struggle to assert their needs in the face of overwhelming state-led commercial developments that cannabalise society for the blind pursuit of profit. With essential community ties weakened, the ability to advocate for our interests diminishes, leaving us vulnerable to decisions made by distant authorities and developers. The impact is not just physical but deeply psychological, as the familiar landscapes of our lives are replaced by alien and coercive structures, further compounding our feelings of isolation and disempowerment.

Australians are falling prey to the authoritarian believers in  a mad numbers game aiming to perpetuate youthful age-cohorts employed in 19th and mid-20th century industrial economies. This is lunacy in the face of growing automation and digitilisation.  Vast numbers of people are not necessary in such an economy.  Are they even going to be permitted to grow old? We should be allowed to follow our instincts and let our populations sizes reduce to a point where land becomes affordable again. Since the 1970s, increasing employment precarity has taught people not to have large families. Internet-based global speculation on foreign real-estate has also made getting a home increasingly difficult, and that is another sign which people have responded to, choosing not to marry and plan any family. 

It is very hard for Australians to resist their awful governments and the transnational pressures because of our massive social disorganisation already, but we must at least arm ourselves with an understanding that the problem goes beyond our own little neighbourhood. It is Australia-wide.