Stop the Queensland growth treadmill!

The Queensland Government does not pursue its environmently reckless course of encouraging endless population growth with the support of Queensland's existing population, who are overwhelmingly opposed. Rather it is being done to suit the interests of property developers and land speculators and dependent industries who are able to paradoxically exploit circumstances, in which all members of society must necessarily, on average, become poorer, in order to enrich themselves.

It accedes to the wishes of this parasitic growth lobby, because it is financially dependant upon stamp duties generated from real estate transactions and because developers, rather than trade unions, have become the principle source of contributions to Labor Party coffers.

On 22 April, the Age newspaper that the Queensland Government had rejected a call by the group to cap the south-east corner's mushrooming population to help save its dwindling water supplies. Deputy Premier Anna Bligh stated:

"The only way we could really do that is to put a fence up at the (Queensland) border, or to cancel or freeze all new home building approvals," she said.

"That would have a very serious impact on the construction industry that a lot people rely on for jobs.

In other words, Bligh was stating unapologetically that the Queensland economy was not being run to meet the needs of Queensland's existing population, rather that it was necessary to keep importing more and more people in order to keep existing Queenslanders employed. Evidently, she had never paused to reflect on how those new Queenslanders would, in turn, gain employment. One could only conclude than even more people would have to be imported in order to provide further employment opportunities for the new arrivals. In turn, those newer arrivals would would require yet more even newer arrivals.

In the meantime Queensland's existing population would be made to pay ever more for its basic sevices such as water water as Goverenments would find it necessary to depend upon energy-intensive technologically complex alternatives such as desalination and sewage recycling to provide the necessary water. Communities such as that in the and at are to be face destruction as more dams were built in order to store the necessary water.

Clearly this stituation is unsustainable in the long term. The longer it is allowed to persist, the more difficult it will be for Queenslanders to cope in future with environmental crises, both global and localised, and looming shortages of natural resources. The sooner this cycle is broken the better.