Peter Dutton

Albanese and Dutton finally publicly agree that Assange’s imprisonment should end, but slur his efforts for peace and press freedom.

Australia has no coherent population plan other than to inundate the major cities with people. Instead of a well though-out population policy, the strategy has been to stoke overall economic growth to support big business. This suits the property industry and retailers but GDP per capita growth is stagnating while ordinary Australians are worse off.

Peter Dutton and Tony Abbott have both recently called out for a reduction of immigration to Australia. To quote Mr Abbott: "At the moment we’ve got stagnant wages, unaffordable housing, clogged infrastructure and there is no doubt the rate of immigration impacts on all of these things.”

We support Mr Abbott's comments but it's unfortunate he didn't consider this while he was Prime Minister. Australia is suffering cumulative economic and environmental damage from unconstrained growth.

It is incorrect of Peter Dutton to suggest that “in the Labor years the number peaked at about 305,900 in one year which was an enormous number, we’ve got that number down now below 190,000 ”

While it is true that net overseas migration (NOM) – which includes both permanent and temporary long-term residents – peaked under Labor (at 315,700), it was still running at 245,500 as at the year to June 2017.

Most importantly, Peter Dutton failed to mention that Australia’s permanent migrant intake has never been higher than under this Coalition Government, set at nearly 210,000 a year currently.

Currently 60% of Australia’s growth is skilled migration whereas the humanitarian intake is less than 10%.

Foreign aid has also been significantly cut whilst the coalition has been in power. This is particularly true for overseas family planning services and the access to education that is required to empower women to choose the size of their families.

Paul Hawken, who was the keynote speaker at Melbourne’s Sustainable Living Festival, stated that family planning and access to education are together the most significant global responses to addressing climate change.

SPA calls for a fundamental change to population policy that addresses population issues both nationally and globally. This should involve reducing total migration to around 70 000 per annum (without any cuts to our refugee program) while also implementing a generous proactive humanitarian aid program that will address global overpopulation and displacement issues without coercion.

This will help to lead us towards stabilising populations both at home and abroad in the most sustainable and equitable way possible.

Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) is an Australian, member-driven environmental charity which works on many fronts to encourage informed public debate about how Australia and the world can achieve an ecologically, socially and economically sustainable population.

Dear Minister Dutton.
Australians are sick of your government's excessive and irresponsible immigration rate and 457 Visa intake levels. This is clear by studying recent polls, Mark O'Connor's book Overloading Australia, and monitoring social media. Of particular concern is the dreadful impact that the your resulting unsustainable and damaging population growth rate is having on our local urban and natural environments.
(This letter has been sent today, 17 Jan 2016, to the Hon Peter Dutton MP. Minister for Immigration and Border Protection. The author encourages others to copy and forward to other Lieberal MPs. The author, Geoff Dowsett, is a member of the Hornsby Kuringai Greens and a member of the NSW Greens Population/Sustainability Working Group. Headings have been inserted by the editor of candobetter.net and some minor typos have been corrected.)

Australia has among the world's highest population growth rates, due to mass immigration

Australia, now under your government has one of the world`s highest population growth rates which is destroying our capital cities and Australia`s delicate ancient eco systems and over stressing infrastructure and public services at an alarming rate. When are you going to recognize this and reduce Australia`s damaging, irresponsible and unsustainable immigration rate and 457 Visa intake ? When will you wake up to the fact that Australian`s are aware of your obvious hypocrisy in your treatment of desperate refugees while at the same time you import 260,000 pa net well off -middle class - aspirational economic migrants a year to flood our labour force to drive down wages and working conditions to third world levels. All for no better reason than to create consumers for Frank Lowy`s vile shopping centres, consumers for Harry Trigabuff`s battery hen appartments, while Melbourne and Sydney real estate prices sky-rocket out of reach of ordinary Australians? Our urban environment, quality of life, standard of living and heritage are now seriously compromised. I believe that your government is indulging in a giant Ponzi scheme which is rapidly leading to Australia`s and your government`s demise.

The 'skill shortage' is a furphy

The skills shortage is a complete furphy. It`s corporate and Liberal Party propaganda. A billion dollar industry all designed to mislead and deceive the Australian public. The reality is that it is corporations demanding high population growth for the purpose of lowering wages and working conditions and to create more consumers to boost their already obscene profits while your corporate masters laugh at the idea of any responsibility to employ Australians or pay taxes in return for the damage they do. This is pushing Australian living standards and over-stretched infrastructure down to third world levels. Your Governments propaganda is that there is a skills shortage. There isn't. The Baird Government in NSW is closing down and cutting funding to TAFE, public schools, and universities, when it should be training young Australians free—no fees. This tactic of reducing Government spending on needed infrastructure is all designed to keep big business happy. They are the big donors to the Liberal Party. He who pays the piper calls the tune. The non sense that we need more population to pay welfare costs is in reality more lies from your government`s propa ganda machine and the corporate media who finance your party.

Wealth distribution

The biggest welfare recipients are the big corporations who pay no tax and the very rich who avoid tax. Why should low income earners foot the welfare bill ? Australia`s growing problem is your government`s out dated irresponsible Social Darwinist economic policies which are widening the gap between rich and poor. Your government is one of robbing from the poor to pay the rich. An intelligent, socially and environmentally responsible tax system would tax BADS: gambling, alcoho, 4x4 gas guzzlers, McMansions, conspicuous consumption, and re distribute revenue into public infrastructure, free medical, free education, particularly to give women the freedom to choose to have smaller families, and free public transport. All of these civilized measures are the case in advanced intelligent countries such as Norway, Sweden, France,Italy and Cuba where population growth has been reduced down to responsible levels.

Most immigrants aspire to increase their consumer lifestyle

The bulk of your 260,000 pa well off middle class: aspirational, materialistic, high carbon and high eco-footprint immigrants are from the well off countries such as the UK and NZ. A smaller number of the well off so called “business” elites from India and China is increasing. They are not desperate refugees escaping death: war, flood, famine. If they are "skilled" then they are a brain-draining their home country. They come here to get rich: to indulge in high consumption lifestyles, just as the Liberal Party`s corporate donors want. More consumers = more consumption = more obscene profits and the wealth only trickles down to the masses, since your government has been instructed by your corporate masters to allow them to destroy Australia TAX FREE. This is nothing less than corporate welfare on a massive scale--unprecedented in our history. This is the foundation of the uncontrolled capitalist system we and the planet are suffering and which you are promoting. You have no mandate for this destruction of Australia. Your immigration policy and high birth rate policy is causing for more environmental problems increasing IMPACT on Sydney and other capital cities and the Brisbane Gold Coast growth corridor, increasing demand for high density housing, and increasing impact on Australia`s fragile ancient ecology.

Australia has the second highest carbon and eco-footprint per capita on the planet

Immigrants come here to get rich and to indulge in high consumption at the planet`s and Australia`s expense.
Baking a bigger cake in a finite world through increasing GDP Growth isn’t the solution. We must progress to a Steady State Economy and end our imprisonment by the Growth addicted capitalist behemoth and it`s addiction to constant increases in economic growth which demands constant population increase.

The Hon Kelvin Thomson MP, member for Wills is the only MP in Australia it appears who is prepared to criticise your Govt`s horrendous immigration rate and 457 Visa rort which fuels developers` destruction of Australian cities and fragile ecology and heritage. The population explosion is pay back for corporate bribes/donations to the Liberal Party. We are being SHANGHAI`D ( Dick Smith`s term ) by big business sociopaths – environmental criminals who care nothing for Sydney`s heritage, quality of life, infrastructure meltdown or sky-rocketing house prices out of reach of working families. Youth suicide and unemployment can also be attributed to the import of so called skilled workers and 457 Visa workers who work for third world standard conditions and wages.

Non-stop immigrant invasion

Your insidious immigration program deliberately favours middle class, aspirational, materialistic, right wing "business"/so called "skilled' immigrants who are not threatened with death, disaster, war or starvation, but who are brought into Australia to feed the insane capitalist, debt ridden, profit and growth-addicted destructive economy, while our standard of living, quality of life, urban heritage, infrastructure, fragile ecology hotspots and precious wildlife habitat, is bulldozed for more high rise and high density housing to house the non-stop immigrant invasion of Sydney and Melbourne.

I recommend you go to #10;<p>I suggest you acquaint yourself with the global movement for transition to the Steady State Eco responsible Economy. Your type of government is now irrelevant to the needs of Australia, which is facing terrible environmental challenges and social upheaval in the 21st century.</p>&#10;<p>It’s time to move away from the policies of the 1950s and try to find a way this country can live so as to preserve high standards of clean air, water, soil and biodiversity, whilst maintaining some semblance of community, rather than chasing the likes of Beijing and New Delhi into a nightmare of pollution and social polarisation.</p>&#10;<p>I don`t believe you understand your responsibilities in terms of inter-generational and intra-generational equity. Future generations will view your government actions as a vicious attack on Australia, its natural capital and social fabric.</p>&#10;<p>Geoff Dowsett. BA Dip Ed. Pennant Hills.</p>&#10;</body></html>">

The New Zealand Defence Force early in Janurary surprised a third unlicensed fishing boat, far south-east of Tasmania, illegally poaching toothfish - the ocean's "white gold".   The New Zealand government so far has intercepted three ships with their offshore patrol ship, HMNZS Wellington, in cooperation with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.  
(image: head of Patagonian Toothfish)
This summer is Sea Shepherd’s 11th Southern Ocean Defence Campaign and the first to target toothfish fishing operators in the waters of Antarctica. Patagonian toothfish, a species of cod icefish, can grow up to 10 kilograms in weight and are a highly prized eating fish.

Three ships using illegal gillnets to catch prized toothfish were operating in a protected fishery research area about 2500 kilometres from Hobart, according to details released by Interpol.

(image: gillnets)

The illegal fishing boats, believed to be carrying a catch worth $8 million on the black market in South-East Asia, are all flying flags of convenience to avoid prosecution. Fishing in the Southern Ocean is regulated by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).

Thanks to the New Zealand Navy operating in waters south of Australia, they were able to disclose the presence of three criminal ships using illegal gillnets to catch prized toothfish, operating in a protected fishery research area about 2500 kilometres from Hobart.   

In contrast,  the ship tasked with Southern Ocean patrols for Australia, Ocean Shield, was at found to be at anchor off Christmas Island.   Our government promised that the vessel would be employed on two 40-day patrols of the Southern Ocean. We have criminals in our marine "backyard", but the Australian ocean patrol vessel, Ocean Shield, is on AWOL!

The duty of patrolling the Southern Ocean has been silently abrogated to our neighbouring New Zealand, and a not-for-profit organisation.

Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Peter Dutton, said the government remained committed to the protection of Australia's sovereign territories and interests in the Southern Ocean, but their priorities were elsewhere!

This broken promise by an Australian government in neglecting the security of our oceans is alarming, disappointing but not surprising. 

Our Australian government has for years ignored Japan's thinly disguised "research whaling", and by procrastination and hollow protests, have allowed the killing to go on relentlessly, without redress. Similar to years of failure of our Australian governments to monitor and halt illegal whaling, this government is failing to control the illegal poaching of prized toothfish! 

If poacher are fishing from a boat that is not signed up to the CCAMLR agreement then the illegal fishing boat is simply fishing on the high seas and prosecution is almost impossible. The only way to prosecute a boat for illegal fishing is to prove that its owner is from a country signed up to CCAMLR.

Gillnets pose many threats, and they are more effective and deadly than longlines. The level of incidental bycatch is greater, and lost or abandoned gillnets have the potential to continue killing marine life through ‘ghost fishing’.

At least the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society will continue to hunt down the illegal vessels.

(image: Sea Shepherd vessel Sam Simon berthed in Wellington)

Successful poachers are making mockery of Australian law, and our so-called national security.  It appears that Minister for Customs and Border Protection, Peter Dutton, has gone to sleep at the wheel, or has abrogated his duties to a successful, vigilant and a service at no cost to the taxpayers from a not-for-profit organisation?