quality of life

"God, Sydney’s just unmanageable now. The traffic is beyond control. The roads just can’t cope! I’m not against growth but there’s not enough room on our roads for all the traffic!”

The young woman was inviting her friend in Melbourne to visit her in Sydney.

“We have the same problems here." her friend replied. "The traffic is so terrible that if you head off to do something in a particular suburb, chances are you will have to change your plans due to traffic. You never know really where you are going to end up. One night recently I needed to cross to the other side of the city to meet friends for dinner and I had to just give up and go home. I didn’t even make it to the city, let alone out the other side. I was in gridlock. Of course, I’m not against growth either. How could one question it with all the benefits even though, I must admit, it’s hard to see what they are.”

"I do wonder myself," her friend from Sydney mused. "But they say we must have it." She continued: “They’re constructing a new major road in Sydney for the traffic overflow and people have had to sell their houses to the government and, you know, they don’t even get market prices for them! I’m not against growth but…"

"Yes, it’s the same here in Melbourne. Houses belonging to people who had lived in them for 60 years were acquired by the government to make way for a new tollway but then, with the change of government, it did not go ahead. It was too late for some people as they had moved on but many were very relieved to be able to stay. But then they will have to go through it all again with another change of government as the Libs are determined to build it. If or when it is built it will go right through Royal Park which will be a terrible pity, it will wreck it, actually."

" Oh that's terrible to put it through a park, although I'm not totally surprised."

"I don't live near Royal Park, but it is still upsetting. Nearer to home most of the houses in my area that come up for sale are bought by developers. Then they're demolished and replaced with high density living. We're even getting high rise towers. No wonder parking in the local shopping centre is almost impossible now! But that’s progress isn’t it? And neither of us is against growth.”

"No of course not!! But the same problem afflicts our suburb in Sydney. All the gardens near us have gone. We used to have lots of birds but we see very few now. I used to really enjoy hearing them in the morning. It’s sad but I guess we have to live without a few things we used to enjoy. Oh well, we can’t have things all our own way I suppose and you can't stand in the way of growth."

“I guess it’s all very well for us to say this but what about the kids? There are not enough schools in and around Melbourne and what about the poor train and tram commuters? The trains are terribly overcrowded, by about 50% over maximum capacity. It can’t be healthy to be crammed in like that.”

“Yes it’s the same in Sydney. It’s really not as nice a place to live in as it was when I arrived from London with my parents 12 years ago.”

“Well if it’s anything like Melbourne, it will have grown by about a million people since then. They have to be packed in somewhere!”

"I guess our family have been part of all this! Oh well, at least we subtracted a family of five from London but then London’s kept growing too! Where will it end? What will it be like in 50 years? “

"It’s too far ahead to think about really, but it’s happening so fast in Melbourne and we can see it happening. Maybe we don’t have to worry about 50 years from now but we sure as hell need to worry about five or ten years from now! Already it’s not as good as it was when I was a kid and it sounds as though it was much more free and easy when my parents were young and Melbourne was not so huge”

The two young women pause , deep in thought for a moment.

“If things are not getting better in Melbourne and they certainly are not in Sydney, then something is wrong!"

Neither of us opposes growth but this actually seems to be the problem! What do you have when you don’t have growth? How does that work?"

(Both together) "Oh God! This is doing my head in!”

"Don’t worry about it now , let’s go and have a drink and start planning your trip to Sydney. Oh!! that’s where this whole discussion began wasn’t it?!”

Saturday 29 June 2013 was the Melbourne launch of the Stable Population Party Australia.
Its leader, William Bourke, gave the following interview.

Since its beginnings in 2010 this party has come a long way in terms of policy and presentation. Their website conveys a clear and positive message. Bourke and the other candidates for the next Federal election carry a business-sized card summarizing six hard to beat policies. The major parties and the Greens have nothing like this clarity.

A better quality of life

SPPA calls for "A better quality of life" and articulates six reasons to vote for a stable population:

to Relieve overstretched infrastructure, incluidng hospitals, schools, roads and public transport;
to Ease cost of living pressures, including housing, energy, water and transport;
to Protect our environment, including food, water and energy resources, native bushland and animal habitats;
to Promote education and training to increase job opportunities for all Australians;
to Minimise overdevelopment, including high-rise and sprawl;
to Create a more resilient economy, to sustain and enhance prosperity.

William Bourke speaks truly when he says, "Population is the everything issue." It touches on everything you can think of and more population makes for more impact.

Candidates for election

The Party is running five candidates in Victoria:
Lead Senate Candidate - Clifford Hayes

Senate candidate - Jill Quirk

Lalor candidate - Jonathan Page

Melbourne candidate - Michael Bayliss

Melbourne Ports candidate - Steven Armstrong

Is life as much fun as it should be or are our opportunities for enjoyment in daily life eroding? Brolga-Brolga explores the notion of a Gross National Fun Quotient and finds that Australia is deficient in this vital national resource.

Pointless Productivity and Gross National Fun Quotient

Is life as much fun as it should be? I’m tuned in a lot to the mainstream media, which gives me exposure to the prevailing messages to the masses and the local psyche. It was the nurses’ ongoing struggle to maintain their conditions and a phrase associated with this –“productivity improvements” that made me wonder if life was getting to be less and less fun. And I wonder how accurately productivity measures in a clinical situation like a hospital reflect the quality of the work done. What sacrifice is made by workers and patients in delivering “productivity improvements”? From the pressure that is being applied, it seems that there is absolutely no slack in the system to allow for nurses to be human, to have an “off day”, to “waste” a few minutes talking to patients or colleagues. Such intangible “time wasting” moments are fun; they make the job worth while. They make you want to turn up for work tomorrow and they increase staff and patient morale.

Are we in such a myopic, economically rationally straightened era that we can’t afford those moments any more?

Stressed Students

Universities seem to be populated with stressed students either grappling with tertiary studies in a foreign language or flying in and out of lectures between part time jobs which are an economic necessity dictated by HECS fees and little government support. Do students still have time to goof off and hang out fermenting ideas with other students on campus in the hours before the next lecture? I doubt it.

Perpetual Motion

My impression is that the whole country is in frantic perpetual motion! Mining workers fly in and fly out of their work places in isolated areas. Maybe it’s fun to begin with but it’s all about digging up stuff as fast as it can be shipped off and nothing to do with a reasonable life outside work for employees. A large sacrifice is made in that workers are absent from their families for the duration of their work stint. The lifestyle is mandated by circumstances and quality of life if is only incidental. In capital cities and larger centres both parents work now and so drop children of at crèche or school and then re-unite after work. No-one stays at home with the dog!

Poor Dogs

Dogs used to be good fun. I don’t own one at present but have had a total of 28 years of sharing my life with dogs. Where I live, everyone looks so serious as they stride purposefully to the designated off-leash area with their plastic bags tied to the leashes like flags, a signal of their dutiful consideration for others in a crowded suburb. They veer away from people walking in the opposite direction (if that person is not attached to a dog) as if to say “no one is going to accuse me of having an erring dog.” Looking after a friend’s dog recently I walked him in my street fully equipped with the requisite plastic bags. The dog sniffed around in the grass and even squatted in that unmistakable way but then changed his mind. I walked on with him and was immediately pounced on by a neighbour accusing me of anti-social behavior! I also notice that people walking their dogs don’t actually seem to have the time to do it. They plug something into their ears as they walk or else, they jog, cycle or skateboard as though they have to get the job done really quickly or do something else at the same time. This type of dog walking is no fun for dogs who, when liberated from the confines of a back yard, are subsumed into a world of tantalizing aromas and do not want to walk necessarily in a straight line at a constant pace. Rather they like to pull up or change direction without warning when arrested by a waft from a lamp post or distracted by a rustle in a bush. To be pulled along at cycling pace where any dog-initiated deviation will result in serious neck injury is not canine recreation! Some people actually don’t have any time to walk their dogs at all and pay a professional to do this. The professional I see at the local park looks as though he is having fun, at least. Yesterday he was in charge of about 5 dogs and took photos of each individually, wearing a small red and white trimmed seasonal hat. I must take my own hat off to these owners. They do love their dogs. The photos will go on the family Christmas card I guess. Perhaps paying the dog walker is akin to crèche fees.

Lack of Leisure

It seems that a lack of leisure time is a big part of the problem. Whereas now we hear through the media that our huge problem is our aging population and the challenge of looking after them, just a few decades ago, the problem we all faced was what we would with our increased leisure in the future! How would we amuse ourselves with extra time on our hands ?

The problem never arose! Those who were going to be at a loose end dreaming up new activities to fill their unstructured time now work more hours than ever!

Robbed of time, robbed of space

Lack of space will also sap our capacity for uncomplicated leisure. Back yards are places to have fun but we have to give them up it seems. Every daily newspaper has an article about how we must give up our attachment to our outside play areas - our back yards. We must, we are told, be filed away in apartments on top of one another, unable to play outside on the spur of the moment. Even those lucky enough to retain a back yard seem to be making heavy weather of it ! It is no longer an unstructured relatively natural area but now must earn its keep and maintain its value (without being over capitalised) with swimming pools, concreted and paved areas, barbecue areas and decking crammed into the space. Will the kids still enjoy it?

Our 'leaders' bully and threaten us

The rhetoric from governments and business spokesmen is full of the threat that if we don’t shape up, buy more, move up, sell more, make more, produce more, be competitive, have more babies, import more immigrants - then we will sink into the quicksand of not keeping up.

My observations may be very subjective as is the notion of fun but I feel an increasing seriousness enveloping the world I know. Everywhere I look I see less fun, more angst. I think one would need to be oblivious or a committed optimist to believe that the gross national fun quotient was on the increase. Or perhaps I just haven’t grown up?

ROYAL PARK PROTECTION GROUP INC 2009 AGM WITH KELVIN THOMSON MHR FEDERAL MEMBER FOR WILLS AS GUEST SPEAKER

Here is a date for you diaries. The Royal Park Protection Group Inc gives notice of the 2009 Annual General Meeting which will be of interest given the special guest speaker. Here are the details:

Time: 7:15 pm for 7:30 pm.

Date: Wednesday 11 November 2009.

Venue: Meeting Room 1 North Melbourne Library 66 Errol Street, North Melbourne next to the Town Hall and Post Office near the corner of Errol and Queensberry St. (Parking usually available in surrounding streets.) Tram No 57 from Elizabeth St. travels along Errol St.

Guest Speaker: Mr. Kelvin Thomson MHR Federal Member for Wills. He will speak on the following topic: "Melbourne's skyrocketing population and its implications for our environment and our way of life". Kelvin would like a show of support as he is the sole voice in Government speaking up for sustainable population; opposing the expansion of the Urban Growth Boundary with the prospect of urban sprawl and destruction of Green Wedges plus imposition of the Growth Areas Infrastructure Contribution (GAIC) - a grossly unfair land tax - plus fast tracking of freeways and road tunnels. Royal Park is still under threat from the extension of the Eastern Freeway in a road tunnel or open cut freeway.

Election of Executive Committee: Proceedings will include election of the executive committee for 2010 and reconfirm the focus of the Group for 2010.

Supper: Stay to supper and meet our celebrity guest, catch up with other members and representatives of other community groups.

Contact: Anne Phefley Secretary Royal Park Protection Group Inc. Phone mobile 0412 279 156 www.royalparkprotect.org.au

According to the latest Intergenerational Report, Australia's population will balloon by a staggering 65 percent to 35 million in just 40 years' time, up from around 21.5 million people at present. This projected increase is around 7 million more than previously forecast and will be driven primarily by immigration.

Already, Australia is struggling to cope with the environmental and social effects of rapid, immigration-driven population growth. A decade of high immigration under both the Howard and Rudd governments has had a major impact on a variety of quality-of-life issues ranging from housing costs, infrastructure overload and traffic congestion to environmental quality, water shortages and social cohesion.

A lone voice of reason in the lower house, federal ALP backbencher Kelvin Thomson says the projected population explosion will have a "catastrophic" effect on the environment and has called for immigration levels to be reduced.

"We are sleepwalking into an environmental disaster," Thomson said. "There will be impact on the availability of food, water, energy and land. These things are already stretched and a 60 per cent population increase will only drive up the cost of these essentials and lower our living standards."

"And what about the impact on our major cities? Declining housing affordability, traffic congestion, over-crowded concrete jungles."

Yet, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is purported to have said that Australia's projected population explosion is "great" news.

It may be great news for the parasitic "growth lobby" which profits from both the cheap labour and additional consumer demand supplied by immigration, but it is far from good news for the rest of us who are forced to carry the costs. In fact, it's a living nightmare.

Read more:

"How the growth lobby threatens Australia's future", January 24 2009.
"Australia 'sleepwalking' into population disaster", ABC News, September 18, 2009.
"Population boom 'a recipe for tragedy'", The Australian, September 18, 2009.

[This article was initially posted as a comment in response to Brian McGavin's article 'Report on conference to find 10 best of 20 climate solutions'].

A 'Queenslander' style family home in Brisbane

If "Australia was a big country well able to absorb a bigger population" [Ed Miliband, UK Climate and Energy Secretary], then we would have full employment, public infrastructure and services would have excess capacity ready to cope, federal and state governments would be in surplus and there would be no undue pressures on our economy, society or ecology. But this is clearly not the case - just read any newspaper in Australia. It's obvious when commuting to work. Try getting a job. Try getting elective surgery. Try booking children into a school or toddlers into childcare. Try buying a house.

Edward Miliband, an economist and now somehow qualified to be UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change in Britain's Labor Party, and somehow qualified to be an authority on Australia and its population capacity and ecological footprint - or else really an ambitious UK polly who will say anything before checking his facts, and who has no expertise on Australia or in population sociology?

Demand stress upon all resources is worsening and at its root, this demand is driven by the growth of human population and its proportionate demand for scarce resources.

What is needed to clarify the problem is to establish measures and benchmarks. The ‘best or most favourable’ population for Australia and each of its cities and regions will be its 'optimum population'. This is one key benchmark. It is a more appropriate measure than 'sustainable population', because 'sustainable' implies the maximum possible, which is a less than ideal outcome. If Australians want to live in congestion akin to Bangkok or Hong Kong, then even if our resources could be pushed further to the sustainable limit, Australia's 'sustainable population' would be a scary number!

Bangkok

But how do we measure the benchmark of 'optimum population'? The Optimum Population Trust (OPT) approaches this measurement by applying the test of ecological footprinting (or eco-footprinting) This seeks to measure the ecological carrying capacity of a district, province, country, global region and even the whole planet. Carrying capacity is defined by OPT as "the size of human population that can be supported in a given territory, in a specified life-style (for example 'Modest European'), without degrading its physical and ecological environment, and without imposing wastes on the global environment beyond a specified limit." OPT Research Co-ordinator Andrew Ferguson defines eco-footprinting as "the process of determining the bioproductive area that a person or a population needs in order to sustain a specified lifestyle."

So the test then comes down to one of lifestyle. Lifestyle is a familiar term but one worth defining at this point. Dictionary .com defines lifestyle as "the habits, attitudes, tastes, moral standards, economic level, etc., that together constitute the mode of living of an individual or group." Perhaps Australians should reflect on this definition -'room to move', 'low cost of living', health, individual freedoms, access to opportunities, access to resources, etc. In Australia, we apparently have one of the best lifestyles on the planet. Australian lifestyle is made up of a set of values that should not be taken for granted.

So if eco-footprinting is about the relationship between a bioproductive area of a person or population to sustain a specified lifestyle, then this assumes lifestyle is inversely proportional to population - where the larger the population and faster the growth of that population the lower the standard of lifestyle - 'room to move', lower costs, opportunities, resource access, reduced competition, etc. In Australia, we apparently have one of the best lifestyles on the planet.

But this is relative and these days it depends on where one lives in Australia and one's socio-economic status. Back in the 1960's Australia was arguably a classless society. These days not so. In 1960 Australia's population was 10 million. In 1970 it was 12 million. In 1980 it was 14 million. In 1990 it was 17 million. In 2009 it is 21.8 million and increasing exponentially currently at 300,000 per year and could reach $23 million by 2010. So in 50 years, Australia's population has more than doubled. With current government policy at both federal and state levels our population will likely double again to 50 million in less than 50 years. Based on policies and historical trends to concentrate population in Australia's capital cities, this means Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and other major cities will be twice the size they are now. Imagine that for a moment! This is the real risk. It is frankly the biggest problem facing Australia.

Some other useful measures to better define the population growth problem are:

'Ecological footprint' is defined by the World Wildlife Fund as "an ecological footprint compares countries' consumption of natural resources with the Earth's biological capacity to regenerate them," or "a measure of humanity's use of renewable resources."

'Ecological space' is "the biologically productive space available to each person on the planet. Divided into equal shares (i.e. divided by world population) it was 5 - 6 hectares per person in 1900 and decreased to 1.5 hectares per person by 2000. Ecological space can expand or shrink depending on resource consumption, technological innovation, population growth and other factors."

Hectare, global (gha) "In eco-footprinting, 1 hectare (10,000m2, or 100m x 100m) of biologically productive space with world-average productivity. In 2002 the biosphere had 11.4 billion hectares of biologically productive space corresponding to roughly one quarter of the planet's surface. These 11.4 billion hectares include 2 billion hectares of cropland, 3.5 billion hectares of grazing land, 3.8 billion hectares of forest land, 0.3 billion hectares of inland waters and 0.3 hectares of built-up land. One global hectare is therefore a hectare representing the average capacity of one of these 11.4 billion hectares. Thus a hectare of highly productive land represents more 'global hectares' than the same surface of less productive land. Global hectares allow the meaningful comparison of the ecological footprints of different countries, which use different qualities and mixes of cropland, grazing land, and forest."

Becoming familiar with these measures and benchmarks will enable us to have a clearer understanding about what population numbers and growth Australia and Auatralians can indeed 'absorb'.

Moama Beach, South Australia...with many hectares per person (and seagull).

Greed cannot be defined in conventional terms exclusively as a quest for more money or material possessions. It is simply a desire to have more and more. More than one needs. More than one can use. We know that billionaires don't need and can't use four yachts and a fleet of twenty antique cars but most North Americans have affluenza too. And our greed is manifested not just in our insatiable material appetites, but in our need for more activity. More hobbies, more “courses”, more “lessons”, more structured leisure events, and volunteering. All this in tandem with a double income work schedule.

Something must give. So what is deemed expendable? Small talk with friends. (Sorry, gotta go). Real talk with family. Time with pets. (North American dogs average a 20 minute nightly walk). Reading time. (remember novels?). Writing letters.(Emails mutilate the language ) Our sleep. (Canadians slept 9 ½ hours a night a century ago). Our health. (Indigenous people averaged 2 hours of work daily—the industrial revolution turned us into mindless robots.) In our contemporary society it is a sin to be seen not to be busy. I recall the words of Thoreau:

“If a man should walk in the woods for love of them of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer, but if spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.”

Above all we must be “goal-oriented”. We must have “plans”and “objectives”. The impression must be left that my life is not something to be experienced but rather like a career in the Cub Scouts where I get various performance badges to mark my “progress”. Just like the people who plaster their cars with the decals of National Parks to prove they had a good time. Well, I am an not a Japanese tourist and I feel more like just experiencing the moment rather than ruining it by recording it. I don't think life is like a carport that you have to fill up with junk —activities—so much to the point that there is no room for your car, that is, for what is essential.

In the 1950s people found time for people. Because they were satisfied with less. Satisfied and happy for the most part. When people had problems, my recollection was, hey, come over for a cup of tea, dear, and let's talk about it. Grandparents and their concerns were an integral part of the family. Mom was always home waiting for me to arrive from school with a cup of cocoa and a peanut butter sandwich, wanting to know how my day went. She could do that, because it took only one income to deliver what we wanted. A 950 square foot house, with three small bedrooms, one small bathroom, one icebox and one car for seven people. And no foreign vacations. A typical middle class lifestyle. Rich in time and quality of life.

But times have changed. 950sq feet is now a telephone booth for today's Canadians. Bathrooms are that size it seems. Some kids today have their own ensuites. I had to share my bathwater with two brothers, third in line, and one bath a week sufficed for hygiene. Many people in my boyhood were of the belief, like my parents, that Canada's wealth was not fairly shared, and that it was outrageous that there were poor among us who did not even have shelter or medical care. This situation is even worse today. But with one difference.

While folks like my parents, the socialists of the 1950s, believed that government services should assist the needy, they did not think, as apparently many people now do, that government should substitute for the care and assistance that friends, neighbours and relatives used to provide in the 1950s. The role of government in their view was to supplement what was already being done. Nothing is so debilitating as the notion that one has no individual responsibility, or community responsibility, to help people because we can just sit back and leave government to carry the ball. Or that we must await “funding” from government to proceed. In the post-carbon era we will have to return to the old Canadian pioneer ethic, get off our butts and help people ourselves. Barn-raising was not done by government employees. But by neighbours and friends who found time to help neighbours and friends. For nothing. No “funding” was available.

Presently, when an individual in obvious need of help or assistance is encountered the reflexive response is to offer the recommendation that he seek the help of some government agency or counseling service. That cup of tea that was offered in the 1950s is never proffered. There is a comfortable and convenient belief about that “these people” will be taken care of “if only” they will seek help. The fact is that if we spent 50% of our GDP on psychologists and counselors it would not take the place that stay-at-home moms, live-in-grandmas, and kindly neighbours did 5 decades ago. And given the choice between the fashionable trauma counselor of this century and my grandmother's apron, I'll take my grandmother any day of the week. The people who survived the London blitz didn't need psychologists—maybe if they had had them, they would have surrendered to Hitler. As it was, they just spent the time to help each other.

But the 50s will never return, you say. Just wait until the oil economy is done. You're going to get a crash course in Amish living and I am going back to the future… You'll have lots of time to slow down then and get re-connected with the people around you. But hey, you can do that now. You have time for me. Your day is 24 hours long just like mine. The point is, you will not make time for me because you have put too much on your plate and I am not a priority.

Now, I most probably should not be a priority. You have your family after all. But realize that is not external forces that are making you run so quickly on a treadmill. It is the force of your own greed to have it all. The bigger more expensive house, the higher paying more stressful job, the two cars, your yoga classes, the two kids, their music lessons, their soccer practices, your Mexican vacations that have to be financed by working over-time. etc. I didn't twist your arm to make those choices.

You “gotta go” because you are as “Type A” and wired into the system as is any Vancouverite, who at least doesn't have the hypocritical trappings of Island culture.

Have another expresso.

But one day, please read Leo Tolstoy's “How Much Land Does a Man Need?”

Tim Murray
June 13/06

See also: Living standards and our material prosperity of 6 Sep 2007 on Online Opinion and discussion.

How do the politicians and the CBC define prosperity?

It is time we ask ourselves: Has this ”progress“ called ”Economic Growth“ (of which population growth is the main factor) really made our lives better? Politicians say it improves our lives. The CBC's host of ”The Sunday Edition“ Michael Enright said on his June 7, 2008 radio show that we need immigration-driven population growth in order to ”prosper“.

I would like to know what his definition of ”prosper“ is. Does Enright think that prospering means converting hundreds of thousands of hectares of Canadian land from biodiverse ecosystems into new roads, subdivisions, clearcuts, malls, parking lots, and open-pit mines to accommodate about 250,000 additional immigrants every year? Does that make life better for the average Canadian? Has real wealth per Canadian increased?

When I was born in 1980 there were only 24 million people in Canada. 28 years later, would a middle class person be able to afford more quality and quantity of real resources now than in 1980? I don't think so. In 1980, a middle class person could easily afford a 40 hectare hobby farm where the climate is mild such as Southern Ontario. Today, you'd have to be upper class to have that.

In 1980 a middle class person could afford more seafood with more varieties to choose from, thicker fillets and less chemical contamination in those fillets. In 1980 the furniture that the average person bought was made from solid wood, not particle board with a glued-on veneer that peels off when wet. In 1980 grocery stores in Canada gave patrons paper bags that could be used as tinder in your woodstove, used as mulch in your garden, or composted. Now we get non-biodegradable plastic bags, which are overflowing landfills, littering the countryside, and we are made to feel guilty for using them.

The lesson: ”Economic Growth“, or increasing the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) does so by increasing the population, which explains why it results in less real wealth per person. More people means less space and resources per person. No wonder ”progress“ has made life worse for the average Canadian

.

Brishen Hoff, President of Biodiversity First
(biodiversityfirst.googlepages.com/index.htm)

See also: Living standards and our material prosperity 6 Sep 08 concerning the quality of life in Australia