Australia's population

Registration with the Victorian Electoral Commission (VEC) has been confirmed for the Sustainable Australia Party.

It will now contest both the Victorian election on 24 November and the NSW election on 23 March, 2019. Importantly, local government elections in NSW and Victoria also now become possible.

The party says that a big focus for its state and local government campaigns will be better planning to stop overdevelopment.

It intends also to contest a federal election between August 2018 and May 2019, not to mention the current Perth by-election where Colin Scott is working very hard with the support of a dedicated local team.

"It's the first time we have run the Sustainable Australia brand in WA so we are effectively re-booting the party there," says William Burke, the President of Sustainable Australia Party.

He adds that the last 12 months has been dominated by these huge registration projects that have taken many hundreds of hours of work by a very small and mainly part-time HQ team, with the support of our volunteer state committees. He thanks everyone that helped, including the 500+ Victorian members and 750+ NSW members that returned the manual forms that were needed to register.

The Sustainable Australia Party is now looking forward to finalising the candidate selection process and doing more campaigning

British film maker David Bond interviewed today on ABC radio was saying that childhood obesity and too much screen time were linked. The amount of screen time robs children of time spent outdoors, having adventures, being in their own world, being independent from their parents and developing an appreciation of nature.

He said that there are increasing barriers to children playing outdoors now, for instance increased traffic. He said that we (in Britain) provide wildlife corridors for animals (although in Australia there are hardly any) but we do not provide corridors for children. He cited a place, where in desperation it was proposed to put a children’s playground underground!

He said the makers of computer games were very adept at getting children’s attention and getting them to be absorbed in the games. He said that he did not want to sound too cynical but that this is a great opportunity to advertise to the children.

He said there was a lot more parental protectiveness and fear than in previous generations e.g. “stranger danger” yet, he said that in fact there was no actual increase in dangers to children. He said children should want to meet strangers as most of them are OK people and not be afraid of them. ( I disagree with him on this in that I think that children should have a healthy mistrust of people they don’t know especially those who approach them.)

It seems that there are so many things that conspire against children having unstructured time out- doors. The dual income working family (of economic necessity, usually) also mitigates against children having time to wander in their environment in an unstructured way. This could be because they have to be enrolled in after school activities whereas 30-40 years ago, they would have played in the back yard or the street where one parent , probably the mother would have been “on duty “ either at home or at the home of a neighbour.

David Bond is based in the UK but a lot of what he was talking about is relevant to Australia.

A really serious consequence that I see of children growing up not appreciating nature (and he said they need to have exposure before the age of about 10 to develop this affinity) is that what is left of the environment in the -15 years’ time when they grow up with not be valued by these young adults as it was never experienced. The environment will just be theoretical or abstract.

What Mr. Bond did not say during this interview was that rising population was contributing to this situation. But what is behind increased traffic? Mr. Bond has highlighted something important, which is that children are sitting around gazing at screens for hours on end being sold to by large companies. They are having their brains moulded to that experience , they are physically inactive while this is happening. They are missing out on experiences that are not mediated by other people. i.e. direct experiences of their environment and nature. One can easily see the process as the children become faithful disciples of consumerism. Mr. Bond pointed out that their life expectancies as a result of inactive childhood will shorten their life spans but presumably not to the extent that they will not be able to raise the next generation of consumers. Big Business wins regardless of the fact that their little consumers don’t live out their full 83 years, as these children and their children , deprived of their birthright, the environment (as are wild animals in a zoo), will still produce a never- ending supply of consumers.

Mr Bond wants to re-introduce children to the outdoors and to this end has conceived of a widely targeted campaign. If he can succeed, he may break part of the cycle that keeps the capitalist machinery going. With natural areas disappearing in Australia at an alarming rate, due to rapid population growth and development it is not that easy for children to find space to explore. The more difficult campaign is to slow the population growth that is removing nature and open space from around the places where we live.

#F5F6CE;line-height:120%;">Bill Shorten’s simplistic statement on immigration population and refugees in Tuesday night’s ALP leadership debate was also open ended and "cornucopian", ignoring the important issues directly affected by high population growth: environment , quality of life , employment, resources and future sustainability. Is Bill Shorten unaware of the sequelae of continuing rapid population growth or is he ignoring them?

Further to this, Shorten either deliberately or naively melded the issues of Australia’s immigration program with the issue of refugees, seen by most of Australia, it seems as “boat people” thanks to the mainstream media who make it seem so. This is what Shorten said:

“We in Labor, we're pro-immigration. We are pro the growth of our population through immigration. We are pro-refugees. It is not a bad thing to want to come here. People should know where we stand.”

It should not be necessary for a political leader or anyone in our “civilized “society to say “we are pro refugees” ! Really, who would be or declare themselves to be “anti refugees”, the opposite of what Shorten declares the ALP to be? To be anti refugees is in a similar moral category to being “anti homeless” or “anti unemployed” That is say anti people in unfortunate circumstances! Who was brought up like that? I don’t know anyone who was!

All these predicaments that people can find themselves in are the responsibility of governments to do something about. But neither of the major parties in recent years has given the impression of welcoming refugees. Maybe this is just “bad press”, because Australia actually continues quietly to re-settle about 20,000 refugees per year and I understand that most of the asylum seekers who arrive by boat are assessed to have genuine claims to asylum and have been settled in Australia. In August, however Kevin Rudd announced a plan to send all boat arrivals to Papua New Guinea, never to be settled in Australia!

Neither party knows quite what to say to the Australian people it seems but everyone is agreed that it is good if the Australian people see refugees as interchangeable with the county’s immigration program. Both parties have wished to appear to the Australian populace to be very unwelcoming of refugees or at least reluctantly accepting .

As any real numbers person would know (and I think they are few and far between), the Australian refugee intake is chicken feed compared with the actual immigration program including all other categories. The difference is about tenfold! The annual immigration program is about 200,000. ABS data released today show that the Australian population grew by nearly 400,000 in the year to March 2013.

From the Australian Bureau of Statistics:

“The preliminary estimates of net overseas migration (NOM) recorded for the year ended 31 March 2013 (238,300 people) was 10.5%, or 22,600 people, higher than the net overseas migration recorded for the year ended 31 March 2012 (215,700 people). (3101.0 - Australian Demographic Statistics, Mar 2013).

Australian governments, Labor or Liberal preside over huge numbers of invitees moving to Australia. These are people who already have a country of their own, already live in a house or apartment in that country and are by global standards not badly off. Many of these people are business migrants, or skilled workers and, of course, about 30,000 per year are New Zealanders, who can move to Australia at will due to the Trans Tasman agreement

It is disingenuous of Bill Shorten to bundle together in the same statement the issues of refugees immigration and Australia’s population now and in the future . To do this is a sort of emotional blackmail.

It is the 90% of people from overseas annually who are shaping our future as an overpopulated land mass rather than the relatively small number of refugees. A good numbers person will not stress too much over the environmental effects of an additional 20,000 refugees who need somewhere to call home (unless you are Fiona Scott now the Liberal MP for Lindsay who in a televised interview before the election attributed heavy Western Sydney road traffic to refugees!) when 200,000 + people annually who really want to increase consumption and therefore their environmental impact are coming to Australia to do just that!

When Shorten put population growth, immigration programs and refugees all in one basket what could his opponent, Mr. Albanese say? Had Albanese wanted to clarify the situation - and I don’t know that he did - he would have run the risk of sounding like someone who was trying to explain when he stopped beating his wife! He might as well have let that one go through to the keeper – and I believe he did.

From 2011 to 2026 ethnic people over 80 will increase by 59% compared with 29% in the Australian-born population. The rate at which Australia's population is ageing has been accelerated by immigration. Furthermore, this effect will increase. Immigration is a major contributor to the dementing demographic. These statistics run counter to the ideology peddled by the growth lobby and its promoters should be held responsible.

Australians misled by so-called 'demographic experts'

Australians have often been presented with the idea that they must submit to ever-increasing mass immigration because this will counteract our so-called 'aging population problem'.

"Immigration is the best solution for Australia's aging population, according to Bernard Salt, from KPMG."
Immigration Essential for Australia - according to expert, Australian Immigration News, Friday, 2 October 2009

However, a recent publication by the Federation of Ethnic Communities (FECCA) shows that immigration is actually making what might have been a mild problem because of baby-boomers much worse.

FECCA cannot be accused of anti-immigrant or even anti-immigration bias. The date of the FECCA publication was 2011, and based on data reflecting much lower immigration numbers than we have had in the past few years. The mind boggles at what the real size of the problem may be, especially if we continue with current numbers, let alone ramp them up.

Immigration and Aging in Australia - the facts

- The proportion of older foreign-born Australians has been growing more rapidly than the Australian-born population.

- From 2011 to 2026 ethnic people over 80 will increase by 59% compared with 29% in the Australian-born population.

- From 1996 to 2010 the proportion of over 80s in the foreign-born population increased from 16.3% to 25.9% compared with 22.9% to
27.5% for the Australian-born.

- By 2026 one in every four people aged over 80 will be from non-English speaking backgrounds.

Immigration and Dementia trends in Victoria

- One in four Australians with dementia is Victorian.

- By 2050, the number of Victorians with dementia is projected to be 246,389, nearly 4 times as many as in 2011.

- 44% of victorians were born overseas or have one parent born overseas

Immigrant ageing population

According to the Access Economics report (2006) one-sixth (16%) of people aged over 60 years spoke a language other than English at home,

while just over one-third (33%) of people aged over 60 years were born in a country other than Australia.

Around one in eight (12.4%) of Australians with dementia do not speak English at home.

In 2011, 40% of Victorians over 65 were from culturally diverse backgrounds. The older culturally diverse population will grow by 44% in the next 15 years from 2011 to 2026.

Funding is being sought to care for non-English background people with dementia because of the growing size of the problem. It is ironic that in Victoria, where the problem is worst of all, in 2002 the Premier Steve Bracks convened Melbourne's Population Summit where he and others repeatedly justified unwanted and undemocratic plans to vastly increase immigration rates with the myth that high immigration fixes the aging population problem:

"LEADING political and business leaders have joined in a call for increased immigration into Australia in a bid to speed growth and overcome the problems of an ageing population.

Among the political leaders who consider more immigrants are good for Australia are Labor Opposition leader, Simon Crean and Victorian Labor Premier, Steve Bracks.

Both spoke in favour of a higher population at a special conference in Melbourne, last month.

Australia must set population growth targets as part of comprehensive national policy or risk becoming "an ageing, declining society", Simon Crean warned."

"Major call for more migrants," Consyl Publishing & Publicity Ltd, March 2002

Where is this immigration ideology taking us? How can we sheet this disaster home to those responsible and make them stop increasing the environmental and social damage they have inflicted on this country?

NOTES

The following links were updated on 1 December 2016:

Source of all immigration and ageing factoids and their references was, "Meant to Care," Discussion Paper, Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria, 2011, Volume 1, Number 2, p.13.
http://eccv.org.au/library/file/policy/Final_eccv_Dementia_Paper_Aug_2011.pdf. A library of earlier and later sources is at http://eccv.org.au/aged-care/aged-care-policy/

International Biodiversity Day May 22
Humans are appropriating too much water for their own needs and not leaving enough for the survival of other species, according to Sustainable Population Australia (SPA).

SPA National President, Ms Jenny Goldie, says that water is essential for all life, not just for humans.

“The more water that is taken from rivers and aquifers to supply humans for domestic use, industry and agriculture, the less there is for the myriad of other organisms,” says Ms Goldie.

“Habitat loss or fragmentation, introduced exotic species and diseases, overfishing, and deterioration of aquatic environments due to eutrophication are all threats to inland aquatic biodiversity,” says Ms Goldie.

“Both the world and Australia are suffering a biodiversity crisis. In New South Wales, for instance, the Macquarie Perch, once widespread throughout Australian rivers, has disappeared from the Lachlan River except in one tributary. In a few short years the introduced species, Red Fin, has annihilated not only the perch but possibly also the Yellow Spotted Bell Frog.

“Climate change – an outcome of human activities - is an additional threat to Australia’s biodiversity. Large parts of the country will be desertified while other parts subject to extreme flooding. The effect on biodiversity is likely to be dire,” says Ms Goldie.

There are 7.1 billion humans on the Earth and it is likely there will be at least another two billion mid-century, mostly in developing countries, many of which are already experiencing water stress (when annual water supplies fall below 1,700 cubic metres per person) or scarcity (when annual water supplies fall below 1,000 cubic metres per person). All Arab countries are deemed water scarce; likewise 300 million people living in Sub-Saharan Africa.

“As still expanding populations take whatever water is available to grow food, other species will suffer. In parts of China, for instance, excessive pumping of groundwater for agriculture has caused trees to die, taking associated fauna with them.”

Ms Goldie says that for the sake of biodiversity, population growth must end.

"Despite this grim picture, unlike global population growth, our own population future is very much under our control and we need not be overwhelmed. Stability of population numbers is within our reach this century. We owe it to Victorians who will be born 50 years from now to take control so that those who come after us can enjoy what we have enjoyed – clean air and water and reliable food and housing supplies. To do nothing is the real crime against humanity." Jill Quirk, President, Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) Victoria.

Today, 28 October 2011, Jill Quirk, President of the Victorian Branch of Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) spoke about the frightening trends in human population growth world-wide and in Victoria and Australia. Her message was that, despite the fact that Victoria and Australia are part of the overpopulation problem, it is still possible to stop before we are overwhelmed. Politicians and the commercial interests they serve by fanning local population growth here need to be made instead to serve the public good by stabilising our population.

"On October 31st the world’s population will zoom past the 7 billion mark just 12 years after reaching 6 billion. Despite taking all of human history up to 1800 to reach 1 billion, many seem to think the phenomenon of ever increasing human numbers is inevitable and normal!" said President Quirk.

"Globally we are growing at the expense of the environment on which we depend, threatening our water, air and food security. Our numbers are impacting on all the other creatures with whom we share the planet."

Ms Quirk said that, to many, the global human population “explosion” seems so vast that it is difficult to see how we might ever exert control over it.

"No one can be sure when this staggering increase might reach its zenith. We do know however that growth, even slower growth cannot continue forever."

Despite the impression we are given that "For those who've come across the seas, we've boundless plains to share," [1] we are running out of pure fresh freely accessible water, our few good soils are being impoverished and built over in Victoria, or threatened by extreme mining technologies like gas-fracking. Yes, our population is growing much too rapidly and is already too big. But this is not because of natural growth, it is because of government policy for extreme immigration numbers.

"Sadly, Victoria’s population also grows very rapidly cheered on by vested interests, lobbyists and the government. This growth and associated development is destructive to coastal areas, waterways and biodiversity, all of which also struggle with a changing climate," says Jill Quirk.

On a more optimistic note, however, she adds, "Despite this grim picture, unlike global population growth, our own population future is very much under our control and we need not be overwhelmed. Stability of population numbers is within our reach this century."

She says, "We owe it to Victorians who will be born 50 years from now to take control so that those who come after us can enjoy what we have enjoyed – clean air and water and reliable food and housing supplies.

To do nothing is the real crime against humanity."

We are often given the impression and even schoolchildren receive this propaganda that Australia is nearly empty and should therefore take on as many people as wish to come here, as if this arid continent could somehow act as a relief valve for the rest of this enormous planet. In fact Australia is already very densely populated on the thin green fringes around its southern and Eastern coasts, but very sparsely populated in the interior. There is a reason for this settlement pattern. Climate, rainfall and soil fertility make much of Australia almost uninhabitable for industrial society. Quite a bit of Australia is dry hot desert, similar to the Gobi Desert in China, which is also sparsely populated. Contiguous to Australia's deserts are rangelands. Those parts contain some mines and rangeland grazing, but little else. Even when only Aboriginal peoples lived here they only occupied the rangelands in very low numbers, which they kept low with very strict marriage laws that limited fertility opportunity for clan members.

Sustainable Population Australia (Victorian branch)
www.population.org.au
Patrons: Hon Bob Carr, Dr Paul Collins, Prof Tim Flannery, Prof Ian Lowe, Dr Mary E White

[1] From "Advance Australia Fair," Australia's National Anthem.