Video of conference inside: Speeches verbally translated in English, live. Leaders of several European nationalist parties gathered for the ‘Freedom for Europe’ congress, in Koblenz, on Saturday, January 21. The meeting was the first official appearance of Frauke Petry, chair of the AfD (Alternative for Germany), alongside Front National leader Marine Le Pen. Both were joined by Geert Wilders, founder and leader of the Dutch PVV (Party for Freedom), and Liga Nord leader Matteo Salvini. Dubbed a “European counter-summit”, this first-of-its-kind gathering was organised by the Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) group from the European Parliament.

Jeff Dorset has begun a campaign addressed to the Prime Minister to reduce Australia`s economic, non refugee immigration intake to economically.environmentally and socially responsible level of 50,000 net pa and significantly reduce 457 Visa and other foreign worker import program. Please consider signing it.

To:

AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER

REDUCE AUSTRALIA`S (non refugee) EXCESSIVE IMMIGRATION and FOREIGN WORKER INTAKE

"[Raising immigration and open borders] would make everybody in America poorer. You're doing away with the concept of a nation state and I don't think there's any country in the world which believes in that. If you believe in a nation state or in a country called the United States or UK or Denmark or any other country, you have an obligation in my view to do everything we can to help poor people. What right wing people in this country would love is an open border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for 2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don't believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country, I think we have to do everything we can to create the millions of jobs." (Bernie Sanders)

Ezra Klein: Something that’s in what you said being a democratic socialist, is a more international view. I think if you take global poverty that seriously it leads you to conclusions that in the US are considered out of political bounds. Things like sharply raising the level of immigration we permit, even up to a level of open borders. About sharply increasing
...

Bernie Sanders: Open borders? No, that's a Koch brothers proposal.

Ezra Klein: Really?

Bernie Sanders: Of course. That's a right wing proposal which says essentially there is no United States ...

Ezra Klein: But it would make ...

Bernie Sanders: Excuse me ...

Ezra Klein: It would make a lot of global poor richer, wouldn't it?

Bernie Sanders: It would make everybody in America poorer, you're doing away with the concept of a nation state and I don't think there's any country in the world which believes in that. If you believe in a nation state or in a country called the United States or UK or Denmark or any other country, you have an obligation in my view to do everything we can to help poor people. What right wing people in this country would love is an open border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for 2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don't believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country, I think we have to do everything we can to create the millions of jobs. You know what youth unemployment in the United States of America today? If you're white high school graduate, it’s 33%, Hispanic 36%, African American 51%. Do you think we should open the borders and bring in a lot of low-wage workers or do you think maybe we should try to get jobs for those kids?

I think from a moral responsibility we've got to work with the rest of the industrialized world to address the problems of international poverty but you don't do that by making people in this country even poorer.

Ezra Klein: Then what are the responsibilities that we have? Someone who is poor by US standards is quite well off by say, Malaysian standards, so of the calculation goes so easily to the benefit of the person in the US, how do we think about that responsibility? I guess I'm asking for – I agree. You have a nation-state structure. You always are going to, the politics don’t allow anything else.

But I guess philosophically, the question is how do you weight it? How do you think about what the foreign aid budget should be? How do you think about poverty abroad?

Bernie Sanders: I do weigh it. Well first of all, again, as a United States senator in Vermont, my first obligation is to make certain kids in my state and kids all over this country have the ability to go to college, which is why I am supporting tuition-free public colleges and universities. I believe we should create millions of jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and ask the wealthiest people in this country to start paying their fair share of taxes. I believe we should raise the minimum wage to at least 15 bucks an hour so people in this county are not living in poverty. I think we end the disgrace of some % of our kids living in poverty in America. Now how do you do that? What you do is understand there's been a huge redistribution of wealth in the last 30 years from the middle class to the top 1/10 to 1%. The other thing that you understand globally is a horrendous imbalance in terms of wealth in the world. As I mentioned earlier, the top 1% will own more than the bottom 99% in a year or so. That's absurd. That takes you to programs like the IMF and so forth and so on. I think what we need to be doing as a global economy is making sure that people in poor countries have decent paying jobs, have education, have healthcare, have nutrition for their people. That is a moral responsibility, but you don't do that as some would suggest, by lowering the standard of American workers which has already gone down very significantly.

When your party is going off the rails, don't you have the right to shout out the windows for help? Geoff Dowsett is a member of the Hornsby Kur-in-gai Greens' Population and Sustainability Reference Group. He has been growing increasingly concerned about the failure of the Greens to take the issue of environmental sustainability seriously and make positive changes to their population policy. Geoff’s resulting activism on the issue of population numbers in Australia has been received by some Greens members with hostility. He is not the first and will not be the last Green to suffer for his convictions at the hands of party members. A threat of expulsion relayed by Greens candidate for Eden-Monaro, Tamara Ryan, is now in train, scheduled for the August Ordinary General Meeting to be held on Monday 12 th September 2016 at 6:30pm at Hornsby Central Library, 28-44 George St Hornsby NSW 2077. (Entrance in Hunter Lane). We publish the motion about this that was sent to Geoff and we report on Geoff’s reaction in this article.

The motion

"The Motion is:

That, Mr. Geoff Dowsett’s membership of the Hornsby Ku-ring-gai Greens should be cancelled on the grounds that the member has, as outlined clause section 6.5.3 of our constitution, "placed herself or himself outside of the Group" acted in contravention of clause 6.5.3.2 of our constitution, in that he demonstrated repeated disruptive behaviour within the Group and behaved in a manner that brought the group into disrepute.

Due to the confidential and personal nature of specific incidents underlying this motion, the details of these events will only be discussed at the meeting."

Geoff says that he rarely attends meetings, so he doesn't think that his alleged 'disruptiveness' could be about disrupting meetings. He says that he thinks that the objections are probably about his energetic, persistent lobbying, using emails and Facebook posts, addressed to Greens members and MPs. He has sometimes received responses indicating that some Greens see his population policy activities as insulting and counter to their ‘safe speech’ rules.

The motion above cites Section 6.7 of the Greens NSW constitution. Geoff believes this has to do with sharing information to people such as Jane O`Sullivan and Sheila Newman who are not Greens members. At this stage he thinks this concerns sharing Mercurius Goldstein's response to a question he circularised to candidates and encouraged others to send similar questions about candidates’ attitudes on Australian population policy.

Other Greens candidates who responded to Geoff’s question did so on Facebook so their comments were in the public domain, but Mercurius responded to the NSW Greens Population Working Group. Geoff told Mercurius that he was forwarding Mercurius' response to Sheila Newman (candobetter.net) and Mercurious wrote,

“It's nice of you to share my responses with Sheila Newman and I appreciate her interest in the NSW preselection -- is she a Greens NSW member? As an author I'm sure Sheila can speak for herself without your assistance and I'd urge her to contact me directly if she's interested in following up on any matters.”

It is hard to believe that there is a valid case against Geoff, but three members have apparently asked the secretary to arrange for Geoff's dismissal.

Geoff says that he has frequently been abused by some Greens members who don’t like his views on population numbers. (We published Tamara Ryan’s response to Geoff here:http://candobetter.net/node/4935.) A few Greens members have persistently described him as a racist, xenophobe and, more recently, as sexist, publicly breeching Greens safe speech protocols but without reprimand within the party, he says.

Greens candidates lack qualifications to make decisions on environment and population

Geoff has distributed an email to hundreds of NSW Greens MPs and members suggesting that none of the candidates for John Kay's now vacant Upper House seat are sufficiently qualified to represent the environment, quality of life, fauna and flora, or habitat of NSW. He came to this conclusion from their poor responses or failure to respond to a relevant question he sent to candidates [see below]. He said that the responses to this email 'displayed no knowledge, interest or inclination to admit that the Turnbull Government's record, high, excessive, unsustainable 457 Visa and middle class immigration intake should be returned to the long term average of about 50,000 net per annum from the current excessive 500,000 net per annum.’ With regard to the move to expel him, he has said that the Greens should read his message rather than shoot the messenger.

Text sent to candidates

This is the text he sent to the candidates:

As a candidate for John Kaye's Upper House seat how about a strong statement and policy improvement suggestion from you to address the desperate need to stabilise Australia`s population growth? The current "economic" middle class so called skilled (non refugee) immigration rate of 500,000 per year including 457 Visa (a world record high intake) is not sustainable. Sydney's population is growing by 83,000 net per a under the Liberal Govt's Immigration scam. It is causing excessive impact on inadequate infrastructure, impact on natural eco-systems through urban growth and consumer demand. Increased traffic congestion in our major cities - sky rocketing housing prices. Of course the immigration rate is just what big business wants, particularly the housing industry, while our quality of life, natural environment and urban environment goes down the gurgler. The immigration rate is also closely linked with the insane growth economy which is addicted to continuing growth in consumption. It is HYPOCRISY of the Greens to have a policy of sustainable economy without a policy for a substantial reduction in immigration. Priority should be humanitarian i.e. for political and environmental refugees NOT wealthy middle class business migrants. When will the Greens members such as yourself bite the bullet on population ? I won't vote for you unless you make a statement indicating a clear commitment to reducing Turnbull's excessive Immigration and 457 Visa intake."(Geoff Dowsett. Member. Hornsby Kuringai Greens. Population/Sustainability Working Group Member. Statement above does not represent the views of all of the working group.)

Shooting the messenger

We will be watching with interest and concern to see whether Mr Dowsett suffers injustice for his environmental activism. As noted in other articles on this site, e.g. ”Greens members harassed for expressing valid views on environment and population”, he is not the first Green to be pushed around for sounding the alarm on how rapid population growth and the intensification and expansion of human activity is threatening native animal habitat and quality of life in Australia. Geoff runs eco-bushland tours around Sydney national parks which are threatened by encroaching population density and its associated infrastructure and footprint. His blog on candobetter.net is at http://candobetter.net/blog/324.

Geoff Dowsett and the Greens, why and when he joined

Geoff says that he thinks he actually joined Hornsby Kuringai Greens about 10 years ago, but it could be more. He had been a supporter – letter-boxing – for instance and doing polling booth work for about 20 years.

He was friendly with an old Greens stalwart, Mervine Murchie, a Scotsman with trade union background--- who convinced him to join.

He finds that the Greens have changed a lot since then. They are very different. There were many more conservationists in the early days.

Geoff says that he has attended many community meetings organised by Greens and only one State Delegates Conference. He has placed Greens candidate placards in his front garden during elections and he has two Greens placards permanently in his front garden. One is high up in a tree and the other in ground. Have letter boxed----and handed out at polling booths. Meeting is 12th Sept 6.30 pm.

On 23 June, just prior to the vote on whether Britain should leave the European Union (referred to as 'Brexit'), Paul Craig Roberts (pictured right) put the case for Brexit in a 30 minute interview with Richie Allen (pictured left).

The interview is embedded below as a YouTube video. This 30 minute interview, provides clear, compelling arguments as to why it is urgently necessary for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union, not only to preserve its national sovereignty, but to prevent the war against Russia planned by the rulers of the United States. In the interview Paul Craig Roberts also confronts, and thoroughly demolishes, claims by those arguing for Britain to remain in the European Union, that those advocating Brexit are racist and xenophobic.

He puts clearly and succinctly the arguments that everybody has the right to control the numbers of people entering their community. It is not unreasonable for a community to object to large numbers of people from a different culture suddenly moving into their midst.

Paul Craig Roberts argues that while the British and other Europeans are right to object to as sudden high influx of refugees and immigrants, they should remember that these people are fleeing their own countries because of wars that the rulers of Europe and Britain have inflicted upon their countries.

Paul Craig Roberts "NATO Wants Britain In the European Union For War with Russia. Vote LEAVE Today!"

The significance of yesterday's event in The Netherlands was that this time the people spoke, not their elected or appointed officials.

By Gilbert Doctorow. Previously published (7/4/16) on Russia Insider. Includes embedded RT CrossTalkvideo CrossTalk: Ukraine's Destinies On this overcast Thursday morning in Brussels, the Capital of Europe, rays of bright sunshine are breaking through from the East as the latest results of vote counting in neighboring Netherlands suggest that yesterday's referendum on the EU's Association Agreement with Ukraine passed the 30% quorum requirement of all eligible voters, while those who cast their ballots came out nearly two to one against the Ukraine deal.

On this overcast Thursday morning in Brussels, the Capital of Europe, rays of bright sunshine are breaking through from the East as the latest results of vote counting in neighboring Netherlands suggest that yesterday's referendum on the EU's Association Agreement with Ukraine passed the 30% quorum requirement of all eligible voters, while those who cast their ballots came out nearly two to one against the Ukraine deal.

If validated when the official results are released on 12 April, this marks a resounding defeat for the Brussels-led conspiracy to pursue Russia-bashing policies of sanctions and information war without consulting public opinion at home. To change metaphors and speak in terms of Dutch folklore, it is the crack in the dam many of us have been waiting for, the opportunity for common sense to prevail over the illogic, hubris and plain pig-headedness of those who control the EU institutions in Brussels, and afar from Berlin and Washington.

While the referendum was formally just 'advisory,' both the public statements of parliamentarians and the acknowledgements of the Dutch government ahead of the voting indicated that it will force a new vote in parliament on ratification and likely send Prime Minister Rutte to Brussels hat in hand, requesting a renegotiation of the Association Agreement. As such, it may bring the EU foreign policy machinery to a shuddering halt and open the illogic of all the Union's policies towards its eastern borderlands these past several years to public scrutiny and, hopefully, to revision.

However, whether this was the decisive moment when the EU is brought to its senses or just the first of a series of knock-out blows directed at the political correctness and group think that has been driving policy ever since the coup d'etat in Ukraine on 22 February 2014, its importance cannot be overstated.

We have been hearing for more than a year that the Russia-bashing policies, the sanctions in particular, were opposed by a growing minority of EU member states. Among the dissenters named at one point or another have been Italy, Hungary, Slovakia. Then came Bavaria, within Germany, whose minister-president Seehofer just months ago flaunted the policies of Chancellor Merkel and paid court to Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Just yesterday the president of Austria did the same. And yet, despite all the fine words to reporters about how the sanctions violate the basic economic interests of their countries and of Europe as a whole, none of these statesmen broke ranks when the sanctions repeatedly came up for renewal. The significance of yesterday's event in The Netherlands was that this time the people spoke, not their elected or appointed officials. This was a consultation to remember.

In effect, the referendum played out at two levels. At the domestic level, it was a power struggle between the mainstream centrist parties in The Netherlands who stand for ‘go with the flow' on EU decisions and decision-making, versus the Euroskeptic extremes on the left and especially on the right (Geerd Wilders and his Freedom Party) who want to put a stick in the EU machinery and halt the slow-motion, seemingly unstoppable move towards greater union, indeed towards federalism that have gained momentum ever since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008. In that sense it foreshadows the campaign fight of the parliamentary elections that will take place in The Netherlands in 2017.

At the same time, the referendum had a geopolitical dimension going way beyond the spoils of office, as a proxy battle between pro-US, pro-NATO versus pro-Moscow ideas within The Netherlands.

In both dimensions, the particulars of the EU's Association Agreement with Ukraine that runs several hundred pages long were not the real issue on the ballot. All of which begs the question of what exactly Prime Minister Rutte will eventually be asking the EU Commission to renegotiate.

The signs are multiplying that the EU consensus on foreign policy driven by Angela Merkel is nearing collapse. Within Germany itself, her detractors are becoming ever bolder. Earlier this week the German papers were carrying on their front pages news of former Chancellor Helmut Kohl's invitation to Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban to visit him at his home next week. This is seen as a direct rebuke to Merkel and her policy of open-arms to refugees from Syria and the Middle East, a policy which Orban led a number of new Member States in opposing.

The next big test for the European Union, and the next opportunity to deal a severe blow to its complacent leadership in Brussels will be the Brexit referendum in the U.K. at the end of June. Watch this space.

#crossTalkOnDutchReferendum" id="crossTalkOnDutchReferendum">Watch Gilbert Doctorow discuss the Dutch referendum on RT's CrossTalk:

Population is a big issue happening in the world today, with our numbers having increased massively from around 1 billion in 1850 to what now looks like 11 billion at the end of the century. Right now, the numbers of the world’s poor increase by 80 million each year and the number of unwanted pregnancies are 210 million per annum. Considering that human population predicts 88% of impact to other animal and plant species (according to the International Union for the Conversation of Nature) human population remains a huge, yet very controversial concern. (This article was written by Michael Bayliss as part of an information booklet with Mark Allen (founder, Population Permaculture and Planning) entitled: 'Why We Need To Talk About Population.' This booklet is designed to engage with a younger, left leaning generation including environmentalists and activists. It will be available at the Sustainable Living Festival Big Weekend at Federation where Mark Allen will also present on town planning and population issues. To find out more, click here.

Australia's population numbers

It almost seems absurd to extend these world population concerns to Australia. Australia's a population of just under 24 million (at time of writing) and a density of around 3 people per square kilometre seems minuscule when compared to the demographics of other (mostly densely overpopulated) countries. Surely with miles and miles of free uncharted space, Australia could take its fair share of the world’s load? Isn’t Australia one of the highest per capita fossil fuel guzzling and carbon emitting countries in a society awash with consumerism and materialism? Couldn’t we all consume less, replace those coal industries with renewables, and open up our borders to take in our fair share?

Ecological and logistical considerations

The problem is that when you look at our continent more closely, our vast land of plenty starts to look a bit wanting. Only around 6% of our soil is arable by world standards, with 80% of the land-mass arid or semi-arid. This means that we have an incredibly fragile ecosystem with a very low carrying capacity that has struggled with white occupation for the last 200 years and it is about to get another wallop through climate change. There is every good reason why the south-east coast of Australia is populated and the central and north-west are nearly vacant, and that having large numbers of people live in the interior of Australia makes almost as much sense as populating the Sahara.

Academy of Science opinion on our population

The Australian Academy Of Science has suggested that our capacity to sustain ourselves will be maximised by not exceeding 23 million (whoops, we’ve just done that!) with Jared Diamond and Tim Flannery, painting a bleaker picture - that Australia can only support around 8 million people in the long term for our society’s current level of per capita footprint. This means that to be sustainable, we need to find ways of reducing our per capita and overall consumption by 1/3 at our current population to be sustainable, according to these predictions. However, our population is also growing at a rate of an Adelaide every 3 years, and at this rate our population will double in 35 years time. This will mean reducing our per capita output by 1/6 of current levels in a very short amount of time. What happens after then?...

Breaking taboos

The topic of population has become a taboo in Australia over the past 20 years, partly due to the ongoing perception of us living on an empty continent, and partly due to the mass media promoting the social-demographic arguments of Pauline Hanson, One Nation and others to drown out rational ecologically-based discussion. While there are educated people with no xenophobic agenda currently championing for a sustainable population such as Kelvin Thomson and Dick Smith, there is still confusion in many people's minds between population numbers concerns and racial prejudice. When I ask my friends in the environment movement why they don’t think more about population, the typical reply is: ‘Every time we discuss it, it always ends up with a white guy in his 60s ranting about immigrants.’

Rational discussion

I would like a rational discussion about population to return to the conversations of progressive and socially minded people. Population numbers are intrinsically linked to our economy, and manipulated by our government to fast-track GDP growth (as I shall explain soon) so it is really difficult to talk about the end of neo-liberal capitalism without talking about population numbers at some point. It is hard to talk about cooperative self-resilient communities and eco-villages as the way of the future whilst our town planning system is trying to keep up with an Adelaide’s worth of growth in our major cities every few years. It is hard to share our environment with our native plants and animals for much longer if an end point to our population growth is never debated and if our only option to reduce our per capita footprint infinitely lower is unrealistic. Finally, higher population growth does not automatically mean greater diversity and better outcomes for refugees and asylum seekers. Under our currently societal structure, it can even be the other way around!

Three models and three ideologies

Below are three models of possible population growth in Australia, representing three ideologies, where I want to table the pros and cons with each model. The first is the ‘business as usual’ approach of our current system. The second is an open borders policy, and the third is a sustainable population model.

Model 1: Business as usual:

Business as usual with ~1.5% growth per annum, majority of growth policy regulated to raise GDP, and with a current tax system that allows people to pay less tax from owning property (negative gearing).

As can be seen from the chart, our current model of population growth is beneficial for government to raise money through more people paying tax. It is also very beneficial for employers, as it allows an environment for more applicants for jobs, placing downward pressure on wages and conditions. It is most certainly of benefit for those in the property and construction industries, especially for those who invest in property, where a growing customer base ever drives up the demand for the price of properties in established suburbs (for now).

Unfortunately, things become pretty much worse for everyone else. Whilst it is easy enough to deduce the negative effect of this kind of population growth policy has on young job seekers (for example) and in raising general costs of living, it may be surprising to note that refugees, both past and present, are adversely affected by this type of population growth. For example, past generations of migrant market gardeners have been priced out of their area as the urban boundaries of Melbourne and Sydney expand. Likewise, refugee immigrants are being pushed out due to the increased gentrification that comes with high density living in inner city Melbourne suburbs such as Footscray, Carlton, and Richmond that have traditionally been very viable hubs of strong migrant communities. In recent years, new arrivals through the humanitarian program have tended to settle in areas around Broadmeadows, Deer Park, Heidelberg Heights and Dandenong. A far cry from (say) Victoria Street in Richmond, current generations of refugees face social isolation and difficulties in accessing essential services, which makes establishing community or assimilation more difficult. The Multicultural Development Association has reported that refugees in current times are lacking access to essential information, such as what the swimming flags mean on Australian beaches! The fact that Broadmeadows has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country is telling.

Most people are surprised to find out that our humanitarian intake has gone DOWN since the Howard Era, as proportion of our intake, from 25% prior to 1996 down to current levels of around 5-10%. As Howard himself said on 2014 on live radio:

“One of the reasons why it’s so important to maintain that policy is that the more people think our borders are being controlled the more supportive they are in the long term of high levels of immigration. Australia needs a high level of immigration. I’m a high immigration man. I practiced that in government. And one of the ways that you maintain public support for that is to communicate to the Australian people a capacity to control our borders and to decide who and what people and when come to this country.”

In other words, the asylum seeker fiasco during the Howard Government era, Tampa crisis et al, was politically engineered so that people would be complacent to another kind of population growth that the government (and big business) prefers!

Imagine if we traveled to another planet and witnessed and alien society where the government, swayed by big business, had an immigration policy that was based almost entirely on making money for small sectors of society. Imagine this was at the expense of refugees, or people in desperate need from other countries. Imagine the government engineered a border crisis so that refugees were seen as a huge problem so that, once a tough stand seen to be taken towards them, the government used that ruse to bring in population growth policies from other avenues. Imagine, in this society, the the former leader could basically state this word for word and pull the wool over everyone’s eyes. Imagine, in the society where the left were disinclined to call the government out on these policies, for fear of sounding anti-refugee and xenophobic, even when the population policies themselves are discriminatory towards asylum seekers. Imagine if keeping silent perpetuated this growth as a component of the neo-liberalist growth-at-all-costs agenda and if keeping silent on this was a liability on environmental objectives. From an outsider point of view, I’m sure the whole situation would seem more than a little illogical and farcical.

Population has been a very prickly issue for us on the left, particularly in recent decades, with the shadow of Pauline Hanson and One Nation/Reclaim Australia, and particularly when population growth is generally equated in our minds to refugees and open borders policies. However, if we choose to not debate population at all, then our current social and politically engineered population growth policy will continue, the same one that unfairly disfavours refugees and asylum seekers in favour of migration programs that generate short term increases in GDP. This is, to my mind, a very cynical neo-liberalist ideology. We, on the left, have the obligation at the very least to be educated on population policy as it currently stands, and at very least, lobby for a change in policy in favour of the humanitarian program again, even for those of us who are pro-growth. There is also a strong argument that it is very important to support the anti-war movement to prevent the formation of refugees in the first place and that refugee crises are generated by arms manufacture, neo-colonialism and global conflict.

Even if one were recipient to the short-term benefits of this kind of population growth, it must be recognised that the positives are just that - short lived. Eventually, property becomes so expensive that it is not worth investing in anymore. This is called a housing bubble, and has happened to Japan in the late 80s early 90s and currently China and the USA. Coupled with an infrastructure deficit and environmental overshoot, this can only affect everyone in the long term.

So if the current model sounds unfair to most, one might consider a more egalitarian open borders approach. Let’s explore that below, with its associated pros and cons.

Model 2: Open Borders policy:

Open borders policy, no cap on humanitarian intake, no policy to mitigate natural birth rate or GDP fuelled migration (This is in spirit the policy of the Greens Party). This model assumes growth of 600 000 per annum (250 000 humanitarian, 250 000 GDP, 100 000 natural growth).

This model is conducive to the ideal for many who identify with the social left, as an open border policy provides an unbiased avenue of entry into Australia regardless of race, religion, socio-economic status etc. An opens border policy means that industralised countries such as Australia can play a more definite role in accommodating displaced people from abroad and the idea that everyone is free to move wherever they wish to worldwide. The idea of border restriction or control can be uncomfortable for many as this implies an exclusion from those living in the majority world from the relatively privileged position of Australia. From the political field, many Labor-Left and Greens politicians support this ideology, with perhaps Sarah Hanson-Young of The Greens being the most vocal and well-known advocate of this position.

However, in trying to write the above table objectively, I tried to come up with tangible Pros that were practical rather than ideological. This proved to be more difficult than I was anticipating, and had to put in a few question marks in the pros column as the practical benefits are either tenuous or are a double edged sword with associated cons.

Speaking of the Greens, I’ve observed that many Greens policies cry out for more and more infrastructure (trains, trams, social services, public housing etc). At the same time they generally do not support environmentally destructive mining practices, not least unconventional mining such as fracking. But then, where will all our infrastructure come from? Trains lines, schools, public housing, plumbing - these all require raw materials that need to be dug up from the ground, and processed into tram lines by use of fossil fuels. There really is no way around this unless we learn a way of making train lines out of renewable resources, which isn’t likely. So much of Australia’s per capita consumption is embedded within the town planning system - suburbia and high density apartment living are both inherently resource hungry. Separation of homes and workplaces, and our physical and economic separation from our food sources result in a reliance of our earth’s resources that no amount of wilful reduction of our per capita consumption will mitigate, unless our town planning system changes substantially. If it doesn’t, there is no way we can really put much of a brake on our dependency on resources, and with model 2’s annual growth rate at 600 000 per annum, this could only escalate within our current town planning system. Instead of being able to plan to change the town planning system to accommodate more people in a sustainable way, any government would probably be doomed to play an endless cycle of infrastructure catch up under our current system - at the environment’s expense, even more-so than under our currently system.

I doubt an open borders policy would be practical for any government in the long term. Without an opportunity to transition large scale to a better town planning system, the housing, services and infrastructure costs would be huge. This means either a steep decline in quality of life for residents, or huge taxes or government debt (most likely a combination of all the above). Voters tend to not like those things. Voters on the left would also feel alienated and lied to by a government that would be forced to continue to mine for resources to build the infrastructure with, even if the economy was completely powered by renewable energy. Finally, the huge population growth would have a massive and unavoidable impact to the environment, particularly habitats and water supplies near to the large urban conurbation, even if our per capita footprint were to go down. Any government being elected on an environmental platform would soon let down many of their voters. This is probably a realistic prediction of the Greens if they won government on an open borders platform - they’d soon be shot down. This is also a conundrum that I’m sure many of the left deep down struggle with. That environmental, as well as anti-capitalist objectives, are at odds, at some point, with a human population growth that is not sustainable. Government would survive better, in the long term, if there was some compromise and balance between open borders ideology and the realities of environmental objectives.

Open borders policy only works in the long term if we can work with the world to address the root causes of conflict and displacement that generate high numbers of refugees and asylum seekers. Without this, an open borders policy is great at helping individuals in immediate need for asylum, but can only serve to diffuse the larger problem into the long term. One example is the island of Tuvalu, which made a strong case for evacuating many of its people to Australia and New Zealand in 2003, due to land loss as sea levels rose. New Zealand now has a relocation policy which is very reasonable in those circumstances, however their population is expected to more than double from 12 000 to 28 000 in by 2050. This will mean an endless cycle of relocating people, unless there is a way for Tuvalu to be sustainable in its population growth. Fortunately, according to the UN, non-coercive population sustainability strategies work if women are empowered and educated, and when there is access to family planning and contraceptive strategies (often at odds with the predominating patriarchal religions in host countries). No need for one-child policies or for coercion by the west to the majority world! Mostly grass-roots foreign aid and proactive international cooperation is key.

One final concern with an open borders policy is consideration of the original custodians of our land. My instinct is that any policy to promote population growth without consultation of aboriginal people can be easily argued as more unsolicited colonization of Australia. This belief was certainly shared by some my Noongar identifying friends and community back when I lived in WA, many of whom would be very welcoming to a generous refugee intake, if only their people were consulted on policy. If aboriginal perspective on population issues is hard to find, I imagine this can be attributable to the many other uphill battles that their communities are fighting daily, and poor representation of both aboriginal perspective and the population issue in Australian society. For those willing to search however, there are references in the literature, perhaps most poignantly expressed in the Deaths In Custody Watch Report (1994):

‘Since 1788 the non-Aboriginal powers within our lands have taken upon themselves to increase the population by many millions, meanwhile our population became near to extinction...Australia’s population is bearable at this point in time but further ecocide of this country will leave nothing for no one...Ecologically our land is on its knees: with help it can survive and resuscitate itself, but with any major increase in population this land will die, and we will die with it.’

Model 3: Sustainable Population policy:

A medium term sustainable population numbers policy that promotes (1) fiscal policies that do not encourage large family sizes and (2) promotes policies where immigration = emigration (e.g. Between 70 - 80 thousand per annum), with priority given to the humanitarian program (intake of at least 20 000 per annum, with flexibility in times of crisis). An emphasis on foreign aid funding would go to empowering women to make their own life choices, including career decisions, earning capacity and family size.

No model is perfect, and although it is probably self-evident that I advocate for this third model, it would not be objective of me if I did not acknowledge the cons associated with the model. However I would like to highlight that most of the negatives are either risks arising from poor management of the model, or from short term changes as our society goes through adjustments. On balance, this model of population sustainability strikes me as one that allows for the best balance of long term economic objectiveness, environmental and pollution goals, town planning goals, whilst allowing for a defined but generous humanitarian intake. Keep in mind that refugees and asylum seekers would be better off adjusting to a country that had the capacity to provide them with the services that they required to participate fully in their new home. They would not need so much the additional burdens of suburban sprawl, un-affordable housing, and an unforgiving job market that many refugees, along with other disadvantaged groups, face in today’s growth-at-all-cost system. That’s not to say that these problems will disappear, but they will be less and so much easier to address and manage. Currently, many migrants who come to Australia in recent times report feeling very socially isolated in the outer suburbs and miss the greater sense of community that they had back home.

Not that immigration is the only way to a sustainable population - far from it. I envision a future where families with no children are seen as societal norms just as much as families with children, and where adoption is seen as a viable and accessible alternative to couple of all sexual and gender identities. The key, as always is through education, empowerment, and allowing people to make their own choices. High schools, for example, should educate young people into the pros and cons of having children, and with consideration of the environmental impacts of having children, and the implications for future generations with worsening environmental conditions. I do not advocate fiscal policies that reward large family size, instead this money should be spent on children’s services, such as schools and and medical subsidies.

With a sustainable population, more money and energy could go into grass-roots foreign aid instead of more and more infrastructure and more investment could go into transitioning our society and economy into one that less focused on growth and more focused on social and environmental resilience. If our town planning system were to reflect the ideals of eco-villages, intentional communities, and permaculture principles, we would be in a better position to accommodate our current population longer term. We may also be in a better position to assist people in need of asylum or refuge into the future.

Final Words:

I hope this article has helped to disentangle some of the confusion and assumptions that have been barriers for further discussion on population issues for Australia and abroad. Although my own views are currently for population sustainability at this stage, I acknowledge that there will be many differing views and ideas on this topic and I hope my ideas may help to stimulate further thoughtful discussion and debate. I have not yet heard a successful argument for long term high rates of population growth that can also account for positive outcomes for our cities, towns, environment and asylum seekers, however that does not mean that one doesn’t exist! Please let me know if you have any ideas =).

See also: Engineered Refugee Crisis to Justify "Safe Havens" in Syria (7/9/15) by Tony Cartalucci | Land Destroyer and other articles listed below.

The article below is formed from the start of Germany is 'exploiting' refugee suffering to recruit 'slaves' via mass immigration - Marine Le Pen (7/9/15) | RT. The remainder of the original article consists of stories about appeals by European pro-refugee-rights to let in untold numbers of refugees. ₁ 

As Germany welcomes thousands of refugees, with industries seeking ways to integrate newcomers into country's workforce, Berlin's move to temporarily bypass EU-wide regulations has met strong criticism from France's Marine Le Pen who accused Germany of recruiting "slaves."

The German drive to open its doors to refugees, as well as debated plans to resettle asylum seekers across the EU has been met with strong criticism from a number of politicians, including the leader of right-wing French party National Front, Marine Le Pen who accused Germany of imposing its immigration policy on the EU.

"Germany probably thinks its population is moribund, and it is probably seeking to lower wages and continue to recruit slaves through mass immigration," Marine Le Pen said in Marseille, refusing to admit that pure benevolence was Germany's only motive._{#fn2" id="txt2"> 2} 

Le Pen criticised European politicians for "exploiting the suffering of these poor people who cross the Mediterranean Sea."

"They are exploiting the death of the unfortunate in these trips organized by mafia, they show pictures, they exhibit the death of a child without any dignity just to blame the European consciences and make them accept the current situation," the National Front leader said.

Following days of chaos and uncertainty, thousands of refugees – mostly Syrians – were bused from Hungary to Austria, and then brought by train to Germany, after the countries agreed on allowing migrants access, bypassing the Dublin Regulation.

READ MORE: Thousands of refugees reach Germany after Hungary and Austria surrender to exodus

By Sunday night almost 11,000 migrants arrived in Germany, authorities in Munich said. Germany in August registered more than 100,000 asylum seekers with some 800,000 refugees overall expected to come to Germany in total this year – four times the level of last year.

Footnote[s]

#fn1" id="fn1">1. #txt1">↑  I have yet to see one of these pro-refugee-rights activists speak up against the West's attempt at regime-change in Syria, as Marine Le Pen has. This proxy war, overtly supported, since March 2011, by France, the United Kingdom, Turkey, the United States, Israel and the dictatorships of Saudi Arabia and Qatar has, so far, cost the lives of over 220,000 Syrians and is the principle driver of the refugee crisis. See YouTube Video of 3/1/13, Marine Le Pen and Alexander Lukashenko on Syrian Crisis, Marine Le Pen France's new Joan of Arc for Russians (22/3/12) | Live Leak, Le Pen says French government hiding true number of jihadists (20/11/14) | rfi English, Europe's Migrant Crisis Caused by West's Destabilization of Syria – Le Pen (29/8/15) | Sputnik News.

#fn2" id="fn2">2. #txt2">↑  How the RT author can know that Marine Le Pen is wrong about the motives of Angela Merkel and the German corporate interests she represents, is not explained in this artcle.

#OtherArticles" id="OtherArticles">See also: Marine Le Pen: migrants flee from death, brought by French (4/9/15) | Pravda.ru, Stephen Harper Promotes War in Syria as a "Solution to the Refugee Crisis": Canadian Government Is to Blame for the Death of Aylan Kudri (6/9/15) | Global Research, Enhanced US-NATO Military Action in Syria is Contemplated as a "Solution to the Refugee Crisis" (5/9/15) | Global Research, The Guardian: "bomb Assad and save the refugees" (4/9/15) | OffGuardian, Germany is 'exploiting' refugee suffering to recruit 'slaves' via mass immigration - Marine Le Pen (7/9/15) | RT, Europe has to deal with refugee disaster caused by US - Nicolas Maduro to RT (7/9/15) | RT, US to blame for Europe's refugee crisis: Venezuela president (/9/15) | PressTV

Republished from the Australian investigative program, 4Corners: Slaving Away By Caro Meldrum-Hanna and Ali Russell, a program about slavery in Australia today. Although the program focuses on the abuse of backpackers on 457 visas and tourists working illegally in the fruit picking and chicken meat packaging industry, this is just the tip of an iceberg of exploitation that has arisen in Australia with massive increases in immigration at the same time as our industrial law protection has been wrecked. At the same time, cheap imports have made it impossible for many honest and worthwhile businesses to survive, whilst the loss of industrial protection has created an opportunity for corporations to exploit people to the max. The program also reflects another effect of globalisation and mass immigration - the high cost of housing. The enslaved temporary or illegal immigrants in this documentary are usually packed into unsavory premises for which they pay rent. Some might argue that since these people are paid wages - albeit slave wages - they are not slaves. However when you do not actually get paid on time and are kept in debt to your employer for rent and other charges, and when you do not speak English and have no idea where you are, and so cannot begin to extricate yourself - this amounts not only to slavery, but to illegal detention. Apparently Australian authorities claimed that it was too difficult to find these abusive enterprises, yet 4Corners was easily able to uncover this frightening industry, with the cooperation of the exploited and trapped workers. It looks like government is complicit at all levels.

Updated May 4, 2015 22:47:00

Slaving Away

Monday 4th May 2015

Slaving away: The dirty secrets behind Australia's fresh food.

It's in your fridge and on your table: the fresh food that we take for granted.

But there's a dirty secret behind it.

Much of it is picked and packed by a hidden army of migrant workers who are ruthlessly exploited.

"There is slave labour in this country." - Queensland grower

A Four Corners investigation has uncovered gangs of black market workers run by unscrupulous labour hire contractors operating on farms and in factories around the country.

The produce they supply ends up in our major supermarkets and fast food chains.

"Almost every fresh product that you pick up... will have passed through the hands of workers who have been fundamentally exploited." - Union official

These labour hire contractors prey upon highly vulnerable young foreigners, many with very limited English, who have come to Australia with dreams of working in a fair country.

They're subjected to brutal working hours, degrading living conditions and the massive underpayment of wages.

Reporter Caro Meldrum-Hanna has obtained undercover footage and on-camera accounts of this dark world. One migrant worker told her:

"I felt like we were going back in time... the way we were being treated was inhumane."

And another:

"It made me question Australia as a country."

Female workers are particularly at risk with women coming forward to make allegations of harassment and assault.

From farmers' fields to factory floors, the program tells the story of those workers who slave away to produce the food we buy and eat on a daily basis.

SLAVING AWAY, reported by Caro Meldrum-Hanna and presented by Kerry O'Brien, goes to air on Monday 4th May at 8.30pm. It is replayed on Tuesday 5th May at 10.00am and Wednesday 6th at midnight. It can also be seen on ABC News 24 on Saturday at 8.00pm, ABC iview and at abc.net.au/4corners.

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community-and-society, human-interest, rural, australia

First posted May 4, 2015 16:51:00

The Intergenerational Report's (IGR) predecessors assume that the answer to our future prosperity lies in the combination of population growth, productivity and participation. After an almost unprecedented 24 consecutive years of economic growth, we certainly have achieved population growth, productivity is declining, there's record high unemployment, but where's the prosperity?

Download the summary

The report says that to drive higher levels of prosperity through economic growth, we must increase productivity and participation. If we are to achieve these goals we need to encourage those currently not in the workforce, especially older Australians and women, to enter, re?enter and stay in work, where they choose to do so.

Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey laments that by 2055 around 22.6 per cent of the Australian population will be aged over 65 and that there will only be 2.7 people of traditional working age to support the older population.

... the Intergenerational Report shows the growth in the costs of many services, especially in health, that will put pressure on the budget and threaten the sustainability of those services. Every day our spending exceeds Government revenue by more than $100 million. To make up the shortfall we have to borrow that $100 million per day.

If spending exceedes revenue, surely it's time to reconsider and redefine what's meant by "economic growth"? Family or individual households can't be maintained in this manner, and neither can businesses.

Income tax and goods and services tax, and taxes on superannuation – the taxes that affect us – will have to climb in order to fund the things we are going to need!

Beyond 2017-18 Commonwealth grants to states for hospitals will increase only in line with the population and the consumer price index. But the cost of running hospitals is continuing to climb. Not meeting that cost is unrealistic (unless the states meet it by doing something such as lifting the goods and services tax) but it holds back the projected deficit.

SMH> Intergenerational report how labor was framed

Australians could face record taxes in order to balance the budget if the full suite of government’s economic measures are not put in place, according to the recent intergenerational report!

But the future of the Australian workforce will mean Australians will need to work longer and harder over the next 40 years in order to sustain the nation’s economy.

Productivity

David Richardson from the Australia Institute questions our Treasurer Joe Hockey on the importance of workforce participation and technology and the role that health technology. By implication, education is going to play in economic growth into the future productivity, but none of those things are in the Intergenerational Report. It's assumed that productivity growth is 1.5 per cent for now and for ever, no matter what. Tertiary education, and skill training, is becoming prohibitevely more expensive, and based on a business model - hardly encouraging productivity and cutting-edge innovation!

While the recent Intergenerational Report references how technology is changing our lives it failed to properly quantify the shrinking correlation between future productivity gains and job growth. The Intergenerational Report expects Australia's past level of productivity growth to carry on into the next 40 years, largely on the back of technological change and innovation. On the contrary, our big exports of education and housing are hardly productive, and manufacturing is declining.

High immigration may have no effect on productivity, as data shows, or as the Australian experience suggests, may reduce it. And it can be irrelevant to participation.

Participation
Participation refers to how the workforce can allow people to work later in life, as well as how workforce options and flexibility can build the participation of more young people and women. So apart from population factors, participation and productivity hold the key to future economic prosperity.

Currently, three fifths of our population increase is through migration with only two fifths from natural increase, so it’s already pretty high by historic levels.

The IG report notes the importance of migration to the country's economic performance acknowledging over the years, migrants "tended to be younger" than the resident population and therefore "helped push labour force participation rates". On the contrary, unemployment within migrant groups is higher than averate, and migrants actually don't stay "younger" but age at the same rate as everybody else- one year more per year!

Population

Australia's population growth rate has increased above historic trends, largely due to immigration. Since the Sydney Olympics in the year 2000 the population of Australia has grown by 25 per cent. The ABS predicts population will be around 40 million in 2061 and up to 70 million by 2101.

Dr Jane O’Sullivan, of Queensland University, makes the point that each new person we need to spend at least $200,000 on infrastructure. (Some would say more like $500,000). Rather than producing prosperity, our unwieldy economy is costing more to maintain.

Australia will become even bigger, denser, and more multicultural over the next 5 years. Some ‘Aussie Dreams’ may start to disappear such as the ‘quarter acre block’ and along with it the Hills Hoist garden shed and enough space for a game of backyard cricket. People are to be more crammed together, for the benefit of "economic growth"? If lifestyles can't be maintained, then who benefits?

McCrindle- population growth in the media

Our economy is staggering under the weight of heavy demands, yet illogically it's assumed that we can "offset" our ageing population's costs through high population growth?

A growing number of voters say they would now support an increase in the rate of the GST, following a year in which the tax has been a simmering political issue. The Abbott government on Thursday revealed plans to subject downloaded music, movies and books to the GST in what Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey calls an 'integrity' measure, not a broadening of the GST. So, welfare is being cut, piece by piece, and taxes are increasing. Where's the prosperity?

Experience shows us that rapid population growth is no guarantee of economic prosperity, and conversely a stable population does not doom a country to economic failure.

The Federal Government is not the sole responsible for Australia's planned and economic immigration; in fact the States seem to be leading it. State governments and political parties tend to try to mislead Australians on this very issue, so I felt it was time to write an article. Now is the time to head to your local member's office and ask him or her what he or she is going to do about this. If you don't get a sensible answer, vote small parties before Lib, Lab or Green.

Your most telling examples of how the States impact on immigration are the State migration websites. The States 'nominate' migrants. I think the Feds just pretend to 'vet ' them. In Victoria it is www.liveinvictoria.gov.com.au, in WA www.migration.wa.gov.au/, South Australia, https://www.migration.sa.gov.au; in Queensland, migration.qld.gov.au/, ACT: www.canberrayourfuture.com.au/, Northern Territory: www.australiasnorthernterritory.com.au/; Tasmania, www.migration.tas.gov.au/
And there are the national pages: www.immi.gov.au/Work/Pages/Work.aspx

The States pressure the Federal government for immigration. They organise to redefine areas of the states as regions in need of migration. Jeff Kennett managed to reverse Victoria's negative population growth in the 1990s in part by doing this. He made it possible for rural people to sponsor nephews and other distant relatives as immigrants because they were places in need of migration for workers etc. I think following on from him, State governments around Australia did things like make their CBDs 'regions in need of immigration'. Note that on the NT site above, for instance, there is a display that explains that it is a "designated area Migration Agreement".

The States are in charge of land, water and power. They earn money from land-sales through stamp duties and rely a great deal on this. The political parties are invested in land, development and finance (including banks) as well and States have institutions which facilitate private investment in public land for property development. It is all quite incestuous.

The States also earn money from private public development, over our protests. How many of you knew that "Places Victoria" is actually the Victorian Government's public-private property development arm, and that it is a payed up member of the Property Council of Australia - which heads up the Australian growth lobby. And, for those who care about the homeless, the Department of Human Services, Office of Housing, is also a member. Truly, in the land of the not so lucky anymore, the foxes are credentialled chicken guardians.

Victorian voters could on Saturday 29 November begin to take back their state Parliament from the vested interests that are now running Victoria. If presented with open, informed discussion there is every reason to hope that a far larger proportion of Victorians than in previous years will vote for good independent or small party candidates and not for either of the two major parties.

The policies listed below are much of what I would like to see from the new Victorian government after 29 November. I believe that, if presented with the policies listed below, most Victorians would support them or, if not at first, would after open debate and discussion. So this document is intended to be guide to Victorians as to which of the candidates to vote for on 29 November, depending on the candidates' response to my survey, which I intend to publish here in coming days._{#fnVElec1" id="txtVElec1"> 1}

If you support these policies, and you know of a candidate in your electorate who also supports these polices, please consider offering to help him/her. Alternatively, if there is no candidate who supports these policies standing in your electorate or upper house region, the why not consider nominating yourself?_{#fnVElec2" id="txtVElec2"> 2}

The policies

More government participation in the economy

#VicElecPolicy1" id="VicElecPolicy1">1. No privatisation of any asset in which large numbers of Victorians have a stake, for example the Port of Melbourne._{#fnVElec3" id="txtVElec3"> 3} No privatisation of public buildings and public land. As the means to do so become available, reverse privatisations which have occurred since the time of the Kirner Labor Government in the early 1990's. Conduct a pubic audit of these privatisations.

#VicElecPolicy2" id="VicElecPolicy2">2. Expand the size of state government work force. The goal is for each Victorian who needs work to be offered work in a occupation which provides useful services to the community and which matches his/her interests and has on-the-job training and career structure. Private employers to be encouraged to do likewise.

#VicElecPolicy3" id="VicElecPolicy3">3. Public Bank of Victoria to be established. It is to be run like the Bank of North Dakota in accordance with the principles of the United States Public Banking Institute._{#fnVElec4" id="txtVElec4"> 4}

Full employment in secure and fulfilling occupations

#VicElecPolicy4" id="VicElecPolicy4">4. Oppose high immigration and dismantle the Live in Victoria website._{#fnVElec5" id="txtVElec5"> 5}

#VicElecPolicy5" id="VicElecPolicy5">5. No section 457 visas where there are local tradespersons. Employers must prove that they have attempted to train local workers before they are allowed to import new workers with 457 visas.

#VicElecPolicy6" id="VicElecPolicy6">6. Abolish sweat-shops in which illegal foreign workers are exploited. Employers found to have illegally exploited foreign workers in such factories to be prosecuted and jailed. Any public officer found to have been complicit in these sweatshops to also be prosecuted and jailed.

#VicElecPolicy7" id="VicElecPolicy7">7. Immediate reduction of working hours to 35 hours_{#fnVElec6" id="txtVElec6"> 6} with further reductions in the near future.

#VicElecPolicy8" id="VicElecPolicy8">8. Flexible part-time working hours to be offered to government workers who wish to work less than a full week's work._{#fnVElec7" id="txtVElec7"> 7} Private employers to be encouraged to do likewise.

#VicElecPolicy9" id="VicElecPolicy9">9. Create government enterprises to compete with private business. This will provide incentives for privately owned business better services and charge less._{#fnVElec8" id="txtVElec8"> 8} Government enterprises to include: real estate, funerals, car dealerships, equipment hire and land development.

#VicElecPolicy10" id="VicElecPolicy10">10. Re-build Australian manufacturing in Victoria._{#fnVElec9" id="txtVElec9"> 9} The government to plan the rebuilding of manufacturing with the private sector. Protective tariffs to be imposed to protect manufactured items as agreed to in the plan.

Effective town planning

#VicElecPolicy11" id="VicElecPolicy11">11. Reduction of commute times through better town planning and better public transport._{#fnVElec10" id="txtVElec10">10}

#VicElecPolicy12" id="VicElecPolicy12">12. End approval for high rise apartments._{#fnVElec11" id="txtVElec11">11} At most, allow medium density housing of heights of no more than 3 stories close to parkland, bushland, shops, schools and other amenities.

#VicElecPolicy13" id="VicElecPolicy13">13. Preserve spaces for community activities._{#fnVElec12" id="txtVElec12">12} Re-establish community spaces where they don't exist.

#VicElecPolicy14" id="VicElecPolicy14">14. Public liability insurance funding to be established for community events as done in NSW.

#VicElecPolicy15" id="VicElecPolicy15">15. Secure shelter to be provided as a right._{#fnVElec13" id="txtVElec13">13}

Reduce waste, make Victoria sustainable

#VicElecPolicy16" id="VicElecPolicy16">16. No over-packaging, demand effective recycling._{#fnVElec14" id="txtVElec14">14}

Computers, information technology and the Internet

#VicElecPolicy17" id="VicElecPolicy17">17. Free open source software_{#fnVElec15" id="txtVElec15">15} to be used in all government departments, statuary authorities, TAFE colleges and schools. Private companies and institutions to be encouraged to do likewise. The Victorian government to make generous financial contributions to the providers of open-source software.

#VicElecPolicy18" id="VicElecPolicy18">18. Establish a free social network on the Internet as an alternative to Facebook, Google and Twitter. That social network is to respect the privacy of its users and be free, transparently run and without commercial advertising._{#fnVElec16" id="txtVElec16">16}

Open Government

#VicElecPolicy19" id="VicElecPolicy19">19. End government secrecy._{#fnVElec17" id="txtVElec17">17}

#VicElecPolicy20" id="VicElecPolicy20">20. No "commercial in confidence" contracts_{#fnVElec18" id="txtVElec18">18}.

Consumer rights

#VicElecPolicy21" id="VicElecPolicy21">21. Outlaw built-in obsolescence. Manufacturers and importers of products with built-in obsolescence to be prosecuted._{#fnVElec19" id="txtVElec19">19}

#VicElecPolicy22" id="VicElecPolicy22">22. Encourage food self-sufficiency. Wherever possible, make land available to local communities so that they can emulate extant local initiatives such as Down's Estate at Seaford Wetlands. Available members of the Down's Estate group and others with expertise to be hired by the government to instruct other communities.

Biodiversity protection and respect for other species

#VicElecPolicy23" id="VicElecPolicy23">23. Preserve remaining native flora and fauna. Re-vegetate urban areas to provide additional living space for endangered wildlife.

#VicElecPolicy24" id="VicElecPolicy24">24. Avoid disturbance of established wildlife populations so that their social organisation and local biofeedback is preserved since this will tend to regulate their population in line with territorial and migratory rules

#VicElecPolicy25" id="VicElecPolicy25">25. Outlaw the harassment of possums, such as the banding of palm trees with bands of steel by the St Kilda Council to prevent possums being able to climb the trees.

#VicElecPolicy26" id="VicElecPolicy26">26. Protect wildlife with strategic underpasses and overpasses on freeways. To protect wildlife, these are to be mandatory on all new roads and retrofitted to older roads within 10 km of green spaces in order to maintain migratory pathways.

Improving the health of Ordinary Victorians

#VicElecPolicy27" id="VicElecPolicy27">27. Fund research to determine if processed food
bought from food retailers is harmful to our health_{#fnVElec20" id="txtVElec20">20}

#VicElecPolicy28" id="VicElecPolicy28">28. Government employees to share office duties with outside manual workers to remove health hazards caused by long hours of physical inactivity_{#fnVElec21" id="txtVElec21">21}, Private employers to be encouraged to do the same for their workers.

Protection of civil liberties, freedom of speech

#VicElecPolicy29" id="VicElecPolicy29">29. Outlaw indiscriminate telecommunications surveillance_{#fnVElec22" id="txtVElec22">22} of Victorians as revealed by Julian Assange and Edward Snowden and others.

#VicElecPolicy30" id="VicElecPolicy30">30. Acknowledge the debt of gratitude that the Victorian people owe to fellow Victorian Julian Assange and protect him from unjust persecution._{#fnVElec23" id="txtVElec23">23}

#VicElecPolicy31" id="VicElecPolicy31">31. Acknowledge the debt of gratitude that the Victorian people owe to Edward Snowden._{#fnVElec24" id="txtVElec24">24}

About the author

I stood in the 2009 Queensland state treasurer in the seat of Mount Coot-tha against then Treasurer Andrew Fraser. (prior to that on 15 March 2008, I had also stood against the current Queensland Premier Campbell Newman for Lord Mayor of Brisbane.) Articles about that election and my campaign can be found here. The reason I stood was I wanted to stop the further privatisation of Queensland's public assets which had started under the previous premier Peter Beattie. Amongst other assests Beattie privatised the State Government Insurance (SGIO - as it was then know, it is now known as 'Suncorp') and the Golden Casket lottery corpration, neither with any electoral mandate. I feared that then Premier Anna Bligh planned to privatise more public assets and that no other candidate was going to raise the issue. Sadly, I was right about both concerns (although one member of the Queensland, Dorothy Pratt, the independent member for Nanango until she retired in 2012 spoke, in Parliament against privatisation).

Whilst the Greens had stated their opposition to privatisation, they did not raise that issue during the election campaign as far as I was aware. Had they done so, they would almost certainly have a received a much better vote and considerably improved the prospects for success of the subsequent campaign against privatisation.

After the election Queensland Premier Anna Bligh claimed that she had suddenly discovered that debts owed by the Queensland Government and that necessary public expenditure on government programs made privatisation of a number of assets necessary. These assets included:

• Queensland Motorways Limited (Operating the Gateway Bridge and Logan Motorway tolling systems);
• The Port of Brisbane Authority;
• Forestry Plantations Queensland;
• Abbot Point Coal Terminal; and
• Coal carrying rail lines, currently owned by Queensland Rail (QR Passenger services will remain nationalised).

Sadly, I had been injured almost fatally on 10 May 2010, when a four wheel drive ran into me on my bicycle on my way to work. I was lucky not to be killed. My brain was concussed and I suffered #js">diffuse axonal brain damage. Consequently I am not able to work as effectively as I once could (although people tell me that my intellect, if not my memory, coordination and stamina, is about as good as it was before my injury).

Because I was disabled, I was not able to stand in the Australian Federal Elections of 21 August 2010 and the Queensland state elections of 24 March 2012. If I had, I would surely have got a much higher vote in both.

As a result of public outrage at Premier Bligh's asset sell-off, the Labor Party was routed by Liberal/National leader Campbell Newman in the 2012 state elections. Since then, contrary to the clear wishes of Queenslanders, Queensland Premier Campbell Newman is now proceeding with his own program of yet more privatisations.

This sad experience demonstrates that neither of the major parties offer any real alternative to voters, who will have to find an alternative elsewhere.

Footnotes

The Vietnam War led by the US spanned most of the 1960s through to 1975. The famous motto “All the way with LBJ” developed as a result of Australian PM Harold Holt’s commitment to military support of the US led War in collaboration with Lyndon Baines Johnson, the US President.

The conventional political wisdom at the time was that the North Vietnamese “Commos” were simply part of a larger Communist “Empire” led by Mao Tse Tung; the Chinese Communist revolutionary and founding father of the People's Republic of China, which he governed as Chairman of the Communist Party of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976.

The War was controversial and based partly on something called the “Domino Theory”, which meant that Australia was exposed to the threat of invasion by the Communist Chinese. Once the Commos took South Vietnam we were done for.

Today Australia faces the irony of an “invasion” by the Capitalist Chinese. Their money is invading Australia.

They are buying houses and farms in order to exploit opportunities for profit, including removal of food from Australia. We have empty houses throughout the suburbs of capital cities that may have been purchased to diversify some foreigner's asset portfolio.

Australia’s politicians, supported by the ABC, provide the Australian people with no reasonable option by way of public policy debate. The ABC just reports what is happening instead of challenging the logic.

It’s all about the wealthiest lobbying for “growth”. People like Paul Keating were praised for “deregulating” the Australian economy in the early 90s and cutting down tariff barriers. The Liberals fully supported these theories.

In 2000, with the Australian Dollar at around 50 US cents, the import duty on foreign cars was around 5%. By 2008 the Australian dollar had risen to around 95 US cents. Similar rises had also occurred against all major currencies. In order to maintain the competitiveness of the Australian car industry at a level comparable to year 2000, the tariff would have needed to rise to 78%, because US Dollar priced cars had become so much more competitive.

This was free trade (?) combined with a rigid tariff structure that ignored the integral part that the exchange rate played in defining competitiveness. What drove the Australian dollar so high? Surely this was a combination of factors driven by Government policies including:

• Extreme population growth driven by mass migration
• The population policy driving demand for everything, including housing
• The population policy creating a dilemma for the Reserve Bank’s interest rate policy. There is a conflict between the need to use high interest rates to resist house price inflation and the need to reduce Australia’s exchange rate using low interest rates. The Government and Reserve Bank have failed miserably in achieving a coherent outcome. Some of the blame must surely be attributable to the extreme population growth policy
• The FIRB’s failure to manage the impact of foreign investment on the long term "interests" of the Australian people by supporting foreign investment in all its forms
• The delusionary thinking that convinces both economists and politicians that GDP growth must be driven by population growth despite all the KPI’s that suggest that this may not be true. These include adverse trends in unemployment, homelessness, productivity, infrastructure funding, Federal budget growth, GDP growth per capita, and environmental impact. In fact there is arguably not a single KPI that clearly supports extreme population growth

So what is driving extreme population growth? It’s really quite simple. Politicians are addicted to dumb GDP growth and fail to perform the due diligence analysis of the facts that might lead to a better understanding of the extreme population growth problem in Australia.

The ABC fully supports this failure by claiming the issue is “not newsworthy”.

Big business loves it because it drives short term profits. No other criterion is substantially or actively used to drive the decision-making of big business.

If the Government can neither evaluate nor comprehend what is in the national interest; what hope is there for Australia's future?

While the media and political debates focus on cracking down on boat people, Fairfax media have exposed that rampant visa fraud is happening. It's a multifaceted yarn. Up to 9 in 10 skilled migrant visas are bogus. Militants are suspects in visa frauds. Afghan applicants 90% flawed!

Rampant visa fraud and migration crime involving people flying into Australia are going unchecked while the government focuses on stopping boats, according to secret government files detailing entrenched Immigration Department failings. Leaked confidential departmental documents obtained by Fairfax Media reveal that Australia's national security is being compromised by wide-scale visa rorting and migration rackets operating with impunity.

Internal documents reveal that despite repeated warnings, the department is failing to crackdown on wide-scale visa rorting.

Australia's open borders are a threat to our national security, and can't be justified on any sound basis.

While the immigration debate is anchored on asylum seekers, our open borders are allowing fraudsters to exploit the loopholes in our generous visa system with non-genuine "students", and bogus "skilled" migrants - at a time of record unemployment! There are bogus "skills shortages" that lure students to pay tens of thousands of dollars to study here, expecting a job and residency at the end - when the shortages don't exist! Thousands of foreign cooks and accountants being given visas despite an excess of local candidates.

The whole model of Australia as an Immigration Nation is outdated, and there's no correlation between grass-roots reality, and the number and type of visas distributed.

While there's a lot of media and political attention on a few ad hoc asylum seekers arriving by boats, the overwhelming majority of migrants are arriving by aeroplane, daily, enjoying anonymity and the lack of media attention.

Asylum seekers, and our humanitarian intake of about 20,000 per year, hardly add to our immigration intake, or population growth at all, yet they confuse the public on who our immigrants really are! Refugees make up less than 5 per cent of Australia's annual population growth of around 400,000 people.

This employment migration program and corrupt, especially considering the harsh crackdown on assumed "dole bludgers" who are failing to gain non-existent new jobs! Everyone knows it's going on.

Immigration experts Dr Bob Birrell and Dr Ernest Healy have obtained fresh Australian Bureau of Statistics information showing that 380,000 arrivals to Australia since 2011 had found jobs. But over the same period, net job growth in Australia was only 400,000. Australia continues to grant skilled migration visas to thousands of foreign cooks and accountants despite an excess of local candidates suitable for those jobs.

SMH> Call for migration rort crackdown as data reveals foreign workers snare net jobs growth

Afghanistan and Somalia have a trade in passports. Investigators identified a scam of people using each other's passports, after being lost or stolen. A loophole in passports lets people come into the country twice, without leaving first! With all the sophistication of technology this is happening.

A 2010 report reveals that immigration investigators had uncovered a Somali people-smuggling cell in Melbourne linked to terrorist suspect Hussein Hashi Farah, who "is believed to have links to the al-Qaeda offshoot al-Shabab".

The leaked files revealed that tens of thousands of immigration fraudsters are living freely after being assisted by migration crime networks exploiting weaknesses in working, student, family and humanitarian visa programs, and corruption within the Department that allowes the fraud to happen.

There are too many visas, flexibility and categories of immigration, and passports are not secure for all the tens of hundreds arriving each day at our airports. It's mayhem, and open-border chaos.

The immigration Department is dysfunctional, and needs to be closed for investigation. The number of visas is excessive, and our system is clearly porous and unaccountable.

The holes and flaws the system have been exploited. We've (almost) stopped the boats, but now it's time to stop the planes.

Scott Morrison interview with 3AW

The Age: Broken Borders report- pdf

The Hon Richard Marles, MP

The Hon Richard Marles, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, was a guest speaker at the Australian Institute of International Affairs Victoria, on 2nd July, 2014.

The Australian Institute of International Affairs (AIIA) is an independent, non-profit organisation seeking to promote interest in and understanding of international affairs in Australia.

(124 Jolimont Road, East Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia 3002)

As advertised for the event: “Associated with potentially contentious debates around population size and labour market flexibility, international migration is an undeniable feature of Australian society and future economic development. As such it warrants careful consideration from economic, social and political perspectives”.

Background

Marles comes from competent and illustrious parents. He was born in Geelong, Victoria. He is the son of Donald Marles, a former headmaster of Trinity Grammar School, and Faye Marles, Victoria's first Equal Opportunity Commissioner and later Chancellor of the University of Melbourne.

He was also the General Secretary of the National Union of Students in 1989

He graduated from Melbourne University where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Laws with Honours. He started his career as a solicitor with Melbourne industrial law firm Slater and Gordon.

He was Federal Legal Officer, Transport Workers' Union of Australia (TWU) 1994-98; Federal Assistant Secretary 1998-2000.
Assistant Secretary, Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) 2000-07.

Marles was elected member for Corio on 24 November 2007 in the election that returned the Labor party to office under the leadership of Kevin Rudd.

He is now the Shadow Minister for Immigration and Border Protection.

Richard Marles MP spoke on "International Migration and Australia's Future."

This is a synopsis of some of what he said:

Without immigration, our population would cease to grow and then decline.

Marles concedes that the 457 visa program must come with protection, and local workers must come first.

A sustained and fair migration program means we all benefit. Investors want security. There is a visa for the wealthy, with $5 million, to invest in bonds, funds or Australian companies.
We need immigration to compete with international investors, and it has a strong role in our economy.

Australia also needs to promote cultural and social development in our region and the world. Working Holiday Visa is a key for Australia's youth. The reciprocal nature of it allows Australians to travel overseas.

Hospitality needs this flexible workforce, and cultural ties in our neighbourhood. It provides for Gap Years. More than 185,000 came to Australia on WHV and boosted our economy. Hospitality staff still need seasonal workers with temporary workforce, and it encourages the exchange of cultures.

Tongans worked in Cosco tomatoes. It's not just for business but has global impacts. Tongans got benefits for their communities.. Household poverty levels have increased. Migrants are the key to trade innovation and brings skills and perspectives. It should be a job creating activity, filling in the employment gaps.
There is an enquiry at the moment on 457 visas. They should not become industrial tools.
Attention is not the same as when we were in government. We will be watching it very closely.

There is care and horticultural sectors, such as child care, aged care and other areas in which temporary migration can work. These areas are where there are gaps, and employers embrace it. There needs to be agencies to drive it. There must be genuine labour shortages.

Some responses to questions from the audience, and predictably most of the discussion was about asylum seekers. While it's a contentious issue of human rights, and a global problem, asylum seekers granted visas account for only 1.2% of our population growth last year out of 59% due to migration )

-Asylum seekers:
Pre 2001, pre Tampa, we enjoyed a bipartisan situation with regard to migration. We were as a country able to deal with the problem of 7 million people seeking permanent migration to Australia. We must say NO to millions of people. Even if all the political parties were on the same page, it can become impossible to navigate.

We need a more bipartisan approach and take the politics out of it. We really need to return to first principle on the values that drive us, such as compassion, fairness, and generosity.

-We must ensure that multicultural aspects of migration can be extended and migration can be as seamless as possible.

-racism
-Process of globalisation has potential to reduce racism. We are more exposed to each other. Racism is not modern. Multicultural has been embraced well. Pauline Hanson distorted the political debate. We have to embrace it as what we have is as good as it gets.
Now, we have old throwbacks to the past, with knighthood and dames. Odd!
There was an attempt to change 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act and the protection from the worst elements of racism. A campaign raged. Restoring of a sense of Australia as n outpost of the British empire is not the way. Our economic future is in S E Asia.

-Malaysia solution.
In 2009 there was a growth in the umber of people globally, and the number of people wanting to come to Australia. It was better not to close Nauru. More than 1000 people have lost their lives coming to Australia.
Significant proposal was in 2011. Turnarounds have now been reduced the numbers of asylum seekers. There cannot be more than 300 or 400 that have been turned around. We need to resolve this issue as a country.
As a country we must take some responsibility for loss of lives. Dismantling Nauru wasn't helpful.

-Why can't Australia tap into the skills of asylum seekers and contribute to the economy? Labor has never used the word “illegal”. It is not illegal to seek asylum. We opposed temporary protection visas. It puts people's lives in limbo. Labor disallowed it.
A High Court Decision meant that we can't close shop. The program needs to be implemented. People will then be able to be given work rights.

We need to deal with Manus to end suicides. We need a regional arrangement regarding displaced people. PNG arrangement is significant in reducing drownings at sea. Asylum seekers shouldn't be in hell holes. They need to provide humane, dignified and safe accommodation.

Lack of empathy and communication with Grass Roots

Marle's privileged upbringing and background has isolated and immuned him from struggles and contemporary issues that directly surround him. He exists in his broad landscape, imbued by the vocabulary of academia and political frameworks. He paints a broad picture, on a big canvas, with a wide brush. No details, or real world imperfections, are allowed to be focused on. His world is a global oyster. with rich pickings. He sees a world without limits, and pearls of endless resources for economic growth. There's nothing tainted by climate change, increasing scarcities, overpopulation and energy costs. His ideas have been incubated and absorbed from academic theories, political spin, economic and political ideals - and any contrary real-world limitation have been filtered out from his vision of cornucopia. There can be endless growth, and the benefits of the globe will come to Australia without any hindrances! Marle's policies are Kevin Rudd's “big Australia” but more subtle!

Previous statements by Richard Marles

In response to the government's hard-line approach to asylum seekers, Mr Marles put forward an alternative motion in the meeting, that “asylum seekers should be afforded safe, dignified and humane conditions while awaiting refugee status determinations”.

SMH: Labor MPs fail to reverse party's asylum processing stance

By 2030, it's expected that the majority of the world's middle class will live in our time zone in East Asia, in China, in India, in the ASEAN countries. And providing goods and services to them will be an enormous economic opportunity for this country, given that we are providing those sorts of goods and services to our own population.

The density of people, economic activities in the coastal areas, rich biodiversity, and natural resource based economies make ASEAN cities especially vulnerable to climate change.

NAB chief economist Alan Oster says
Australia's agriculture is too small to be a global powerhouse like the resources sector, therefore replacing the mining boom.

Nobody would question the benefits of immigration to Australia development and economic growth. Due to our unique history, immigration has brought skills, infrastructure, economies of scale and contributed to a great nation.

Anyone who's studied science or the natural world knows that there are limits, thresholds and constraints to any growth. More of the same does not guarantee more of the benefits, without fallouts. While immigration has been beneficial and welcome, now our cities, economy, jobs market, infrastructure demands and natural systems are straining under our population overload. Bigger is not necessarily better! Nothing can be filled forever without experiencing internal pressure, or the fallouts from spill-overs. The benefits we had in the past from high immigration are now forcing job losses, unaffordable housing, the extinction of iconic wildlife species, overloaded infrastructure, higher costs of living and lower living standards.

The 2006 Productivity Report, the one being ignored, concluded that ongoing immigration to Australia would benefit the immigrants, and capital owners – and little for the general public! he research of the Productivity Commission confirms the findings of many previous studies -- that the overall economic impact of migration is very small, but probably positive. And that the benefits mainly accrue to the migrants themselves.

Actually, per capita wealth growth has largely stagnated in Australia! There is a much greater gap between the well-off, and a growing poverty problem in our country.

Richard Marles, the opposition immigration spokesman in an interview with The Australian noted, “The ageing population is going to see the size of the labour force plateau and within decades that will start to shrink.”

------------------------------------------------------------
OPPOSITION immigration spokesman Richard Marles says "the ageing population is going to see the size of the labour force plateau and within decades that will start to shrink" ("Welcome bubs, you'll live till 2101 in a very Big Australia", 27/11).
Does he imagine that by projecting our population to double its size by 2075 will stop the population from growing old? There won't be any reduction in ageing. In fact, there will be an even bigger ageing population by then.

If we need skills, our human resources should be used. Why is it imagined that skilled migrants from Asia would be better than our own?
We have seen university budgets slashed, TAFE funding cut, apprenticeship disappearing, along with manufacturing and jobs.
An economy based on perpetual population growth is unsustainable. If our budgets can't provide for pensions and care for the next generation, how will people be provided for in the future when their numbers will be even greater?

Vivienne Ortega, Heidelberg Heights, Vic
The Australian: letters/population mirage

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There were no counter arguments, points of view, or debate at this event. It assumes that, while our economic development was promoted by migration, our “future economic development” must follow suit – in strange kind of extrapolation of the past used for future policy making. It's a cornucopia attitude that if growth is good, more of it is even better. No constraints, no contemporary influences, no limitations, no realities on the real world to hamper this cornucopia vision of endless benefits from immigration and growth! It's one foot in the past without any new strategy or focus on present day implications.

Professor Brat can expect to be attacked by "journalists" across the political spectrum with every sort of accusation and scandalous report. He risks a well paid former female student coming forward to complain that while counseling her on her grades, he leaned forward and put his hand on her thigh._{#fnPcr_3" id="txtPcr_3">3} Or worse.

This will be Professor Brat's likely fate even though his election was not about Cantor being Israel's Representative, a fact that the voters who elected Brat probably don't even know. Professor Brat himself might not know it, hence this warning. Professor Brat accused Cantor of representing, not Israel, but "large corporations seeking insider deals, crony bailouts and a constant supply of low-wage workers." This ensures that the transnational corporations and military/security complex will join the Israel Lobby in gunning for Representative Brat.

And, in addition, Brat is unlikely to be warmly welcomed by the Republican Party as he defeated one of the party's top leaders. This could start a trend, and Republicans could lose Mitch McConnell, the Minority Leader in the Senate. Also, many, if not most, House Republicans will have spent a number of years accommodating Cantor in exchange for favors that the Majority Leader can confer, and they are not happy that their investments in Cantor have been wiped out.

A likely explanation of Brat's victory is that it was a protest vote, like the recent EU elections where the major parties in the major countries lost to relatively new and heavily demonised third parties, such as Farage's Independent Party (1993) in the UK and Le Pen's National Front Party (1972) in France. The establishment is already at work explaining that these electoral victories along with Brat's are due to their racist anti-immigration stance. Little doubt that immigration played a role, especially in the UK and France, but the extraordinary gain in third party clout is due to the public's disgust with the corrupt traditional parties who have ceased to represent the public on any issue.

Just as I think Representative Brat is a marked man, so are Farage and Le Pen. (Yes, I know, Marine is a woman, but the term is "marked man.") The Establishment thought that Farage and Le Pen could be disposed of with lies and demonization. Their unexpected victory in the EU elections has brought that supposition into question. If Farage and Le Pen cannot be assassinated by the media, the prospect of physical assassination arises. The Establishment has perfect cover. As both political leaders speak out against the heavy level of immigration that is transforming the national existence of the UK and France, the intelligence services that serve the state can easily come up with a "deranged Muslim."

The main target of Farage and Le Pen is not immigrants. Their important target is the EU, which, more than immigration, is attacking national sovereignty, thus dissolving the peoples of historic European countries into a new and artificial entity called Europe.

Farage and Le Pen are also opposed to Washington's control of European countries and their foreign policy through NATO and other organizations dominated by Washington. Washington is no more willing than the Israel Lobby to take assaults on its power lying down. Attacks on the EU and on NATO are regarded as attacks on US interests. My conclusion is that the lives of Farage and Le Pen are at risk.

And so is Vladimir Putin's. Despite Washington's demonization, Putin has risen to recognition as the most capable world leader. Unlike Obama, Putin walks freely among crowds. He doesn't stand behind a bullet proof shield when he gives a speech. Russia is overrun with opposition groups well paid by Washington. Putin needs to recognize his danger before he is removed.

Like Israel, Washington has no tolerance for those who get in its way. Just ask Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Viktor Yanukovych, and Bashar al-Assad.

Yes, dear readers, I know, the list is longer. You don't need to write in to tell me.

Footnote[s]

#fnPcr_1" id="fnPcr_1">1. #txtPcr_1">↑ From Australia, it has not been easy to cast judgement against Israel, a nation founded in 1947 by survivors of the Jewish Holocaust in which 6 million were brutally murdered. The Holocaust is possibly most brutal act ever carried out against any one one racial and cultural group in the history of humankind.

Ironically, in spite of the fact that many of the founders of Israel had relatives, partners friends, murdered by the Nazis were lucky, themselves, to have survived the Nazi death camps, they, themselves, behaved abominably towards native Palestinians — stealing their land, mass murder such as at Deir Yassin in order to cause other Palestinians to flee for their lives. In 1956 and 1967, the United Kingdom, the United States and France colluded with Israel in wars of aggression against its Arab neighbours including Egypt, Syria and Jordan.

A chilling example of the criminality of the state of Israel is documented in the article Kennedy, the Lobby and the Bomb (2/5/2013 - republished on candobetter.net) by Laurent Guyénot. On the sunny day of June 8, 1967, two days before the end of the Six Day War of 1967, in which Israel conquered the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights and the West Bank of Jordan:

"... three unmarked Mirage bombers and three torpedo boats flying an Israeli flag bombed, strafed and torpedoed for 75 minutes this NSA (National Security Agency) ship -unarmed, floating in international waters and easily recognizable - with the obvious intention of leaving no survivors, machine-gunning even the lifeboats. They only stopped at the approach of a Soviet ship, after killing 34 crew members, mostly engineers, technicians and translators. It is assumed that if they had succeeded in sinking the ship without witnesses, the Israelis would have attributed the crime to Egypt, so as to drag the United States into war on the side of Israel."

... http://www.voltairenet.org/article178401.html file:///?q=node/3432

More than any other article I have read, this article by Laurent Guyénot makes it clear why Israel is so hated and feared in the region. Only the close proximity of a Soviet warship, whose crew witnessed the crime, thereby enabling survivors to be rescued, prevented Egypt from being blamed. Had this occurred the U.S. would have had a pretext to join to also declare war on Egypt and a much larger and much more bloody conflict, conceivably even World War 3, would have ensued.

More recently, Israeli Mossad agents were observed in Kiev in February 2014 working alongside Nazi anti-semites helping to overthrow the democratically elected Ukrainian government of President Victor Yunokovych.

#fnPcr_2" id="fnPcr_2">2. #txtPcr_2">↑ A full list is not included in this article. Presumably, Paul Craig Roberts assumes that, in the United States, this is common knowledge what the other five "powerful interest groups" are, but, writing from Australia, I don't know. - Ed

#fnPcr_3" id="fnPcr_3">3. #txtPcr_2">↑ Whistleblower Julian Assange faces charges of rape and sexual assault in Sweden.

Immigration policy in Britain continues to reveal depths of incompetence, as Europe is under increasing pressure from illegal immigration. Government claims that they are tackling the issues will do little to reassure a worried public.

Migration has enriched many societies, but immigration and the growing cost to communities of accommodating large-scale inflows of people, in a now crowded world, raises many challenging questions. This is not a left or right issue or racist. It is about social and environmental sustainability.

Over 22,000 illegal immigrants have arrived in southern Italy alone in the first three months of 2014. Many more have entered Greece and Spain. Well over 100,000 African immigrants landed in the Spanish Canary Islands trying to gain access to the EU in the last few years. The EU and the media attempt to cloud the picture by calling them ‘irregular’ migrants and ‘undocumented workers’, but the growing consequences of these pressures will have profound impacts.

In 2010 the European Union's population topped half a billion. Of the 1.4 million growth from the previous year, 900,000 resulted from legal immigration alone into the EU. according to Eurostat in July 2010.

The number of foreign nationals given UK passports has soared. By 2050 the Government Actuary’s Department estimates the UK’s population could rise to 90 million, 70 per cent of this due to inward migration - enough to fill a major conurbation the size of Birmingham every five years in what is already the most densely populated country in Europe. Add to this, illegal immigration.

We now face a massive increase in population as our economy is struggling. Is this a sustainable policy supported by the environmental lobby? Is this a future we would vote for? We need to know but are still not being asked.

Displaying a mixture of complacency and incompetence the UK Government first lost control of the immigration and asylum system and then tried to spin the idea that large-scale immigration was vital to our economic interests. Growing evidence has shown this to be profoundly misleading.

What matters, not least to those in already vulnerable communities, is how immigration increases the number of people who are entitled to claim on the economy and the huge impact on infrastructure, schools, health, housing and the environment. The fact that the extra population cancels out any real benefit to the resident population was repeatedly denied until exposed by an investigation published in April 2008 by the Economic Affairs Committee of the House of Lords.

In the last five years, with high unemployment in some member countries, net migration from the whole of the EU rose to about 36 per cent of total net migration into the UK, says MigrationWatch, so nearly two-thirds is still from outside the EU. The eurosceptic press ignores this. But there is much Europe could do.

Illegal immigration pressure builds in Europe

Instability in North African countries has seen a big jump in illegals trying to get into Europe. National authorities in the EU apprehend more than 500,000 illegal migrants annually. In addition, there were 335,895 asylum claims in 2012, according to the EU Home Affairs Directorate.

Five amnesties have taken place in Italy since 1986, involving more than two million immigrants; four in Greece, four in Portugal since 1992 and three in Spain. These amnesties confirm that such strategies do not solve the long-term challenge of dealing with illegal migration.

Immigration has also had a major impact on Sweden and Norway, with their generous policies to would-be immigrants. Of nine million Swedes, roughly 1,080,000 are now foreign-born with around 900,000 children of immigrants. The city of Malmö’s population is almost 40 percent foreign, with high unemployment, social-welfare dependency and crime. Now the government wants to spread the burden, pushing other EU countries to take their share of this Swedish generosity.

Illegal migration into the EU from high-fertility countries that do not provide enough opportunities for their people presents a huge challenge. Lobby groups like the Refugee Council demand that Europe should just roll over and accommodate these continual pressures. Merely, negotiating how many each EU country should take.

Do the media and politicians seriously think that Europe can take in the populations of sub-Saharan Africa and beyond? When will the line be drawn? Most developed countries are already unsustainable in terms of resource use and the environment.

Using conflict situations to override border controls will only worsen this trend. This is a legitimate concern for millions of people, whatever their colour and background.

Once refugees and illegals are given leave to remain, most apply for citizenship and few go back to their country of origin. This can’t go on.

A global people-trafficking industry is running rings around the EU’s ‘human rights’ approach. The EU needs to send a clear message that illegals landing in Europe will simply be sent back to their county of origin within days, not be accommodated and then allowed to move around Europe.

Part of the problem is that EU countries don’t have repatriation agreements with many sender countries, but this could be remedied quite simply, as just about all the sender countries in Africa and many in Asia are recipients of generous Western aid. We need to tell them sign the agreement or aid will not be forthcoming.

Today, only Syria currently has an acute refugee crisis, but even here there is no need to give often large families permanent access to host countries, with follow up ‘family reunion’ leading to chain migration. They could simply be given temporary leave to remain while the situation settled and aid should primarily be targeted cost-benefit wise on refugee camps in neighboring countries

A bigger picture

Some people applaud Australia’s immigration system. They fail to say that Australia is letting in more immigrants each year than the country’s total annual net increase in the resident population. This, in an arid continent with only six per cent of the country suitable as arable land.

Similarly in Canada, where much of the country is too barren to support people, the Government is letting in over 260,000 immigrants a year – over twice the country’s annual net increase in births - and wants it to reach 330,000. Nearly 80 per cent of immigration in Canada is now linked to large-scale family reunion and an asylum backlog rather than primary skilled migration.

In the USA there are believed to be over 12 million illegals in the country and half a million illegal entries into the United States each year. (Pew Hispanic Center).

Ironically, Poland opened its doors to workers from outside the EU in an attempt to ease labour shortages, as it finds itself short of skilled workers because they're flocking to Britain.

Well over a million young people are not in education, work or training in the UK. Yet the Government more than doubled the number of work permits to non-EU immigrants since 1997 - despite the unprecedented influx of migrants from Eastern Europe who do not need permits. British workers wages are being depressed for employer profit, while taxpayers pick up the cost of low-wage welfare payments.

In some London boroughs, which now have immigrant majority populations of over 50 per cent, the proportion of immigrant origin school children is far higher, with potential social implications for increasing alienation and parallel societies, in conflict over cultural values. Official figures show one in every four babies born in Britain in 2009 was to a migrant mother – the rate in England and Wales was one in three.

A report by MigrationWatch (UK) in October 2010 says more than half a million school places will be needed over the next five years to meet future demand. The cost of the 550,000 extra school places will reach £40 billion over the five-year period and rise to £100 billion between now and 2020.

The UK’s Local Government Association warned that “Councils find it difficult to provide services for growing populations that are not recognised by the official statistics and for which they, therefore, receive no financial help” Yet the Government says it is scrapping the 10-year Census to save money.

Even the Conservatives’ pre-2010 election plan to allow 20,000 asylum seekers plus their dependents to come to Britain each year is equivalent to building a town the size of Truro in Cornwall or Godalming in Surrey every year. This is still environmentally unsustainable in a country as densely populated as Britain.

Crime hits us all, not least in vulnerable communities. Research by the International Centre for Prison Studies shows the percentage of foreign nationals in prison in 2012/2013 was 12.8 per cent for England and Wales, 34 per cent in Italy, 31 per cent Spain, 30 per cent Sweden, 44 per cent Belgium, in Austria 49 per cent, Greece 63 per cent and Switzerland 74 per cent - putting huge strain on our prison systems.

These are things we must face in our efforts to tackle existing inequalities in our society, not bury them in the politics of denial. We need more than ‘band aid’ campaigns and must focus real political will on tackling global environmental loss, bloody turf wars and religious feuds, overpopulation and under-employment that leads to poverty and despair.

The safety valve of migration is part of our collective history, but large-scale migration now raises vital social, environmental and economic questions about where the world is going and how we deliver reform and a better life for people wherever they are born. Like most of the key problems of the 21st Century, time to find solutions is running out.

By Brian McGavin, April 2014

March in March _{1 [Note from candobetter.editor]} Abbott took government by playing on the fears of Australians, supported by the Murdoch press.  Fears that have been built up and sustained through systems of secrecy, lies and deception. This is the emerging pattern of westernised governments and corporations across the globe.  And these techniques depend upon violence, fear and coercion. All of which were evident in the Manus Island riots and killing, despite attempts to demonise the victims (Howard pulled a similar trick with Tampa).

The truth is that refugees, particularly those arriving by boat, form a tiny percentage of immigration into Australia, and could not come close to the “legal” immigration figures (see here for Asylum Seeker Myths). Not to mention that we are bound by law to accept them, under our international agreements. The vast majority of immigration is officially encouraged specialist migration, done not out of any grand vision for Australian society, but solely to feed  the industrial growth model which is destroying the planet and leading not to higher prosperity for Australians, but significantly lower in terms of: levels of debt; less choices of jobs; less educational opportunities; crowded transport systems; hideous urban living developments and ongoing destruction of the natural environment.

In fact, it is this failing growth model that is mostly causing the refugee problem in the first place.  Our dependence on fossil fuels, Australia’s collaboration and support of the U.S in global manipulations to establish regimes that serve the interests of a wealthy elite; the general extraction of the resources of less developed nations;  manipulations of markets by multi-nationals which ensure that those nations at the bottom of the global food chain can never climb up, the list goes on. The WTO has never delivered the necessary agreements on agriculture that would eliminate subsidies by the U.S and other wealthy nations so as to allow developing nations to compete fairly. In the WTO’s own words: “developing countries […] say developed countries have failed to implement the agreements in a way that would benefit developing countries’ trade.”

George Monbiot – a respected journalist for The Guardian newspaper - is exactly right when he states: “The real threat to the national interest comes from the rich and powerful".

In fact the failure of the multi-nationals to achieve what they wanted through the WTO has lead to the Trans-pacific Partnership (TPP) , an “agreement” being negotiated in secret and described as a “corporate coup”.  

The manipulation of corporations is well captured in the following video parody of the Coal Industry – coal which is now polluting Gippsland as it has been polluting Chinese cities for years – to the sure detriment of their children’s long-term health.  Not to mention 8 million acres of Chinese land so polluted that food cannot be grown on it. It is in such nations that the dark underside of our growth based consumerism is hidden from view, and the less said about it in the corporate controlled media, the better:

The underlying fact is the whole destructive system is based on force. Even the most passive resistance cannot be tolerated and must be removed by force, as Occupiers around the world found out in 2012 (including in Melbourne). This is confirmed by Oxford Professor Avner Offer who says this model is: “a warrant for inflicting pain.”
Offer also says: “Economics tells us that everything anyone says should be motivated by strategic self-interest. And when economists use the word ‘strategic’ they mean cheating” and he concludes: “one of the consequences of this is that economists are not in a strong position to tell society what to do.” 

It is this coercive, cheats based system that the Abbott government firmly believes in and supports, and it is because of the faults and failures of this system that we must march in March.

In Melbourne: State Library at midday, Sunday March 16. Click here for other locations, including country towns

NOTES

#fnMarch1" id="fnMarch1">1. #txtMarch1">⇑ Candobetter Editor: Some of us are a little cautious about urging readers to jump on a popular bandwagon without citing good cause. We have tried to find out who is organising it and the origins of the March in March. The 'about' page of the associated website is not very informative, but gives a link [which facebook questions, but just put it in your browser, it's okay] to a blog by Sally McManus, http://sallymcmanus.net/Secretary of the Australian Services Union NSW & ACT Branch. The blog makes many valid complaints about Abbott, notably re Workchoices revisit risk, although does not make the point that ALP state and Federal governments have been agents of similar ills. McManus does not acknowledge the tweedledum/dummer systemic political problem in Australia. Basically you are asked to march on faith and you are not told how this will make a difference, except perhaps you are meant to assume that Abbott might be constrained by a show of people marching in the street. Because of the reach of this campaign, we assume that there must be a lot of money behind it, probably because it will garner information (via the website) of value for the financers. GetUp and the SumOfUs are examples of other organisations that do this in the guise of marshalling popular protest. March in March could just be after potential contacts who might be valuable to the union movement or the ALP, but also for various refugee activist and other political groups, commercial groups and the Abbott government itself. Readers should be aware of this when they add their facebook page or give personal information out. Nothing wrong with giving information to a union or to a political party, but they should be upfront in asking. On the March in March there is no way of contacting the organisers for more information, which is also troubling. We have also not been able to find out who Joanne Newers is, the author of the pyramaid shaped note at the bottom of this article.

On 9 February 2014, a Yes vote of more than 50% was obtained and the referendum to have a quota limiting immigration to Switzerland has now passed. Three referendums were held in Switzerland on this day. Voters were asked whether they approved of a proposal to impose a quota on immigration, a federal decree on the financing and expansion of the rail network and a federal popular initiative on abortion. Further referendums are planned for 18 May, 28 September and 30 November, with one to include a proposal on guaranteed income. Note also inside, Malthus on Switzerland's history of population stability.

The abortion referendum proposed that abortions would no longer be funded through health insurance, but should be paid for privately by the mother. The immigration reform proposal was supported by the Swiss People's Party,and opposed the free movement of workers between the EU and Switzerland, which was introduced following a 2000 referendum.

Results

The abortion referendum, that would have dropped abortion coverage from public health insurance, failed by a large margin, with about 70% of participating voters rejecting the proposal.

The immigration restriction proposal was supported by 50.3% of participating voters and approved by the required majority of cantons. The immigration measure requires the Swiss government to either renegotiate the Swiss-EU agreement of free movement of people within three years, or to revoke the agreement.

The proposal mandates re-introduction of strict quotas for various immigration categories, and imposes limits on the ability of foreigners to bring in their family members to live in Switzerland, to access Swiss social security benefits and to request asylum. Opinion polls ahead of the vote showed the lead for the opponents of the immigration measure, but that lead began to close as the day of the referendum approached.

Typical voter turnout in Switzerland is around 40%, and the 55.8% turnout for the February 2014 referendum is considered high. [1]

ECOPOP

The swiss ecological group, ECOPOP, was a key educator in this movement.[2]

ECOPOP, which describes itself as 'an association for environment and population' has a couple of key initiatives:

- To bring back the annual immigration rate to Switzerland to 0.2% of the permanent population.
- To apportion 10% of the development aid budget to the promotion of voluntary family planning.

ECOPOP active for more than 40 years

"ECOPOP (ECOlogie and POPulation) is a politically independent environmental organisation. Its objective is to preserve natural resources and quality of life in Switzerland and in the world for generations to come."

Every 12 years, a million more people in Switzerland!

"The rapid increase of population in Switzerland and in other countries damages the environment, reduces quality of life and is in conflict with the aims of Article 73 of the Swiss Federal Constitution - a sustainable world.

Since planetary ecological capacity and resources are limited, independent of national borders, and, given that international immigration flows are climbing, this federal peoples' initiative should help reduce demographic pressure, at national and international level."

[Note that, in Australia, the population is increasing by one million every three years which shows how bad Australia's plight is. (“Australia's estimated resident population (ERP) reached 22.7 million at 30 June 2012, increasing by 1.9 million people or 9.0% since 30 June 2007.’ ABS)]

So – which is 1.14 million in 3 years (calculated) ]

Malthus noted that the Swiss have a long tradition of small stable populations

The ECOPOP website does not mention this, but Thomas Malthus, in his last book,[3] wrote of this characteristic of the Swiss population.

Although better known for his theories about exponential population growth, Malthus also collected examples of stable populations in Continental Europe at the end of the 18th century, publishing this work in 1826. Among other examples, he discussed the Swiss parish of Leyzin.

In Leyzin, a pastoral society, life-expectancy was considered by Malthus to be extraordinarily high at 61 years. Average number of the births over a period of 30 years was "almost accurately equal to the number of deaths" and emigration was not a factor or a consequence. As Malthus observed, during this period, “the resources of the parish for the support of population had remained nearly stationary.” He described the pastures as limited, and not easily increased either in quantity or quality. The number of cattle, which could therefore be kept upon them was also limited and, "in the same manner the number of persons required for the care of these cattle."

Malthus theorised therefore that young Swiss men were not able to leave their fathers' houses and marry until employment as herdsman, dairymen, or similar, became vacant through a death.

"As, from the extreme healthiness of the people, this must happen very slowly, it is evident that the majority of them must wait during a great part of their youth in their bachelor state, or run the most obvious risk of starving themselves and their families.”

Malthus added that:

“The case is still stronger than in Norway, and receives a particular precision from the circumstance of the births and deaths being so nearly equal.”

Had he looked into the matter more carefully, Malthus would have realised that Swiss villages were small and comparatively isolated. Kinship rules meant that prospective brides and grooms were limited in one's own village and the rugged terrain meant that one's choice was quite limited outside the village as well.

Planes, trains and automobiles have have brought much greater population movement and fertility opportunity to the Swiss, but Switzerland remains democratic, retaining a system of popular referendums. It is this true democracy that has permitted the Swiss to control and advise their government about the immigration and population numbers that they want. They know their history and their country and they know their carrying capacity.

This is a great contrast to Australia, which has little effective democracy. In Australia the government and big business tell Australians what they must put up with. Currently Australia is being flooded with immigrants in such numbers that representation, choice and self-government are being destroyed, with the local population marginalised and disparaged.

Australians' lack of control over their population is deeply ironic because Thomas Malthus declared in his second book that the first had been inspired by the low population of the Australian Aborigines, as remarked upon by Captain Cook [sic]. (It was actually Joseph Banks).

NOTES

[1] Details of referendums, voting trends and outcomes were taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_referendums,_2014 with only minor paraphrasing.

[2] Information about ECOPOP, their aims and the rate of population growth were translated by Sheila Newman from the French page of ECOPOP, http://www.ecopop.ch/joomla/index.php/fr/. There are Italian and German versions of the ECOPOP website too. The the illustration of the high-rises intruding on rural buildings were also taken from the ECOPOP website.

[3] Malthus, Thomas, 1826. Of the Checks to Population in Switzerland in Of the Checks to Population in the different states of Modern Europe in An Essay on the Principle of Population, Book II 6th edition, Library of Economics and Liberty, http://www.econlib.org/library/Malthus/malPlong7.html#II.I.9 cited in S.M. Newman, Demography, Territory, Law: The Rules of Animal and Human Populations, Countershock Press, Australia, 2013

Malthus, the classic whipping-boy for Marxists and a poster-boy for many biological scientists, is usually given credit for his earlier work (1798) where he saw no way out of the Hobbsian destiny apart from abstinence on the part of the numerous poor. However Malthus did not stop his studies there. He did a world tour, inquiring into births, deaths, marriages and making statistical notes, published in 1826. In the extract here, he discusses European steady-state societies.

[4] Source. S.M. Newman, Demography, Territory, Law: The Rules of Animal and Human Populations, Countershock Press, Australia, 2013, pp. 68-69.

(Article by Sally Pepper)

Who pays for the cost of housing?

So, dear Gen Y, at least you were secure in growing up in a house you could call home and in many cases had a back yard to play in.

Whilst it is truly regrettable that you, Gen Y, will not secure houses of your own as did the Baby Boomers and many of Gen X, it is Gen Z and those who come after, who I feel really sorry for. They probably won’t even experience the pleasure of living in a home which their parents own or are paying off. They have spent or will spend time in crèches and child care as their parents frantically try to maintain two incomes to pay the rent on an apartment or, if they are lucky, to pay off a mortgage on a house with a small back yard on the city’s fringes.

We are all in this together

If you think logically, is it the fault of one generation for whom it was achievable to become the owner of a house with land on one salary, without working hellishly long hours, that the next generation can’t? Is it reasonable for that generation who benefited during childhood from the situation which brought this about, to resent the people with whom they shared this good fortune ?

The fact that Gen Y struggles now for home ownership actually impacts also on the previous generation, their parents, who in many cases, not without stress, still accommodate their adult children when the generation before that, Gen Y’s grand parents, were free of this responsibility at the same stage of their lives.

This was possible because teenagers and young adults could afford to rent or buy a roof over their heads and now they can’t.

As you can see, the decline in ease of attaining home ownership impacts differently on all generations but it impacts all in a negative way. The majority of Baby Boomers get nothing out of this situation and did nothing to bring it about. The dispossession of Gen Y and those beyond is nothing for any of us to feel satisfied about. It is a crisis! In fact the Baby Boomers and some of Gen X largely raised Gen Y, thus it would be perverse and pathological in some way for them not to want them to have at least what the previous generation had! Not to be able to pass on the expectation of home ownership is a terrible failure.

But this is not where the stripping of the hope of real estate ownership from ordinary Australians ends.

Government Stealing your inheritance to pay for Aged Pension

Recently there have been suggestions that the family home be assessed for eligibility for the Age Pension. Some of Gen Y may applaud this, but what it could easily mean is that the family home has to be sold to provide for people in retirement or a reverse mortgage has to be taken out to achieve the same thing. Your despised Baby Boomer parents may well end up without a family home to pass on to you, who so sorely need it! In Australia , the family home is a family’s main asset and this is the main opportunity for the next generation to gain a vestige of financial security. The family home which may have cost your parents only $20,000 -$50,000 when they were earning $10,000 – $15,000 a year could now be worth nearly $1,000,000, a dizzying inflated number that would have made any Baby Boomer gasp back in 1980. The trouble is that owning such an asset does not make the Baby Boomer rich or any less in need of an Age Pension in retirement. It is still the same home.

It is your inheritance!

This was your only chance and it could go.

No time for misplaced resentment

Don’t waste time idly resenting the ordinary rank and file Baby Boomers or Gen X. Neither has stolen from you. They want to hand on to you what is rightfully yours but it may become impossible.

High population growth, 60% from immigration and the selling of real estate overseas to much larger markets is placing enormous demand on housing in Australia. Both these factors are relentlessly pushing up prices. How will you catch up?

Growth pushers want to divide and conquer ordinary Australians

The people who push for this type of growth in demand for real estate love it when kids hate their parents’ generation for having it easy where they don’t. Growth spruiker, Bernard Salt, ridiculed widows living in ordinary houses in ordinary suburbs, saying they were "rattling around" in them and intimating that they should move out.

There has been a lot of propaganda against the Baby Boomer generation who are largely ordinary people who made some sacrifices in order to attain home ownership (interest rates were very high at times) and on the whole did their best in the situation in which they found themselves. They did not steal from you. You were part of it, you were there too ! You were beneficiaries in fact. We would like this situation back. We must regain our autonomy and our unity as a society and get back our relative equality.

New Year’s Resolve from our political leaders. Are they out of touch with reality?…………See comments in Bold

Australians should enter 2014 full of optimism and willing to have a go to better their country, Prime Minister Tony Abbott says. He says the strength of the country is in its people's willingness to better their lives. 'This is the year I hope more of us than ever will have a go', he says in a new year's message.

No problem there. 1.8% more every year is what Liberal, Labor and Greens are ensuring using a policy "by stealth; without consensus". Does the additional cost of supporting those additional people exceed the ability of economic growth to pay for it? Will we "have an indebted go" while our economy tanks according to Tony Abbott? Where's the due diligence to back up the strategy of extreme population growth?

'We'll start new businesses, we'll build new houses, we'll undertake further study, make investments and plan a future.
'May we all be nearer to our best selves in 2014, government included.'

Using debt, debt, debt and more debt?

In 2014 the country will start commemorating the centenary of Anzac - which falls in 2015 - and begin a conversation about a referendum to recognise indigenous people in the constitution.

Why recognise indigenous people if we don't also recognise, and show respect for, their sustainable population management policy which lasted over 50,000 years before we dispossessed them using extreme population growth? Isn't that dispossession still evolving at maximum speed?

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said he and Labor would spend the next year fighting for Australians' jobs and making sure the government sticks to its election promises.

I note from the Vote Compass data that Bill wants population growth to exceed 2012’s 1.8% per annum. Yet the ABS reports that unemployment has been increasing by an average of 2.3% per annum for the last decade. Great idea Bill; but how does this work? To be fair, looking at the changes from one year to the next can be misleading. People reach retirement age, economic activity rises and falls, etc.... So looking at a decade gives a longer term average. In the last decade, two of the largest two-year leaps in unemployment occurred in December 2009 (165,500) and December 2013 (92,100). Over those two year periods migration was about 585,000 and 387,000 respectively. The ratios of leap in unemployment to migrant arrivals were roughly 28% and 24% respectively. They look similar don't they? This is roughly one in four, which is an average family of four with one wage earner becoming unemployed for every family of four arriving. The trend in the total number of unemployed fluctuates, but is always upwards. Stating unemployment as a percentage is political manipulation, because it doesn't quantify the magnitude of the humanitarian problem. Has the government ever evaluated the relationship between migrant arrivals prior to economic slowdowns and the step changes in unemployment that follows? Is this a new Key Performance Indicator relevant to population growth management? Don't ask me; ask Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten !!

Australia will be rewarded by its resilience, hard work and the creativity of its people in the new year, opposition leader Bill Shorten says.

Does resilience mean pumping up the economy with rapid population growth so it booms forever and never busts? Is that why we had high interest rates driven by a surge in demand while the rest of the world dropped interest rates during the GFC? Did that contribute to making our dollar high and our manufacturing industry uncompetitive? Great idea Bill; but how does this work?

He says keeping people in work will be among the biggest challenges the country faces in 2014.

OK; got that.

'For all of us, the new year presents a renewed opportunity to focus on the things that really matter - our families, our community and our nation's future,' he said in a statement.

'The kind of job losses that occurred towards the end of 2013 can't be allowed to happen again this year.'

They’ve been happening for a decade, Bill. Isn’t 2.3% the averaged increase in unemployment per annum, compounding from 2003 to 2013, a decade? We have 26% more seasonally adjusted unemployed than a decade ago. The trend is up; and the yearly fluctuations will continue.

To confront these challenges the nation's resolve must be durable and unwavering, he said.

What does that mean? Unwavering denial of the unsustainability of extreme population growth regardless of consequences? A durable, unwavering policy "by stealth; without consensus"?

'We must continue to fight for the fair go and ensure every Australian has the opportunity to reach their full potential - through education, proper health care or a hand when they need it most,' he said.

A fair go for who, exactly? How? By refusing to perform a comparative analysis of the social, environmental, economic and humanitarian consequences (both domestic and international) of a range of Australian long term population growth rates; using zero population growth as the Base Case benchmark?

'No matter what is ahead of us, I know our nation will continue to be rewarded by the resilience, hard work and creativity of its people.

……..and the short term, unsustainable policies of our pro-growth dictatorship in collaboration with the Liberals and the Greens?

Please sign and forward this petition if you think these guys have lost the plot:

http://www.communityrun.org/petitions/australia-requires-a-public-inquiry-to-determine-a-basis-for-the-optimum-rate-of-population-growth-2

If you're in the electorate of Griffith, consider voting for the Sustainable Population Party so they can "have a go" representing over 50% of the population who reckon this issue needs to be addressed.

Australia's net overseas immigration absolutely dwarfs any asylum seeker or refugee program by about 280,000 to 20,000 people, yet almost no-one is blowing the whistle. (Planned immigration for 2013-2014 is 190,000 alone. The permanent migrant worker program called “Skilled Migration” is now completely out of whack with Australia’s current and future jobless numbers. "Whether you’re one of the many young people concerned about your future job and career prospects, or how you will purchase your first home, or an older Victorian concerned about the type of Victoria we will leave behind for future generations; Victoria First is taking up the fight," says MP, Kelvin Thomson, about this new organisation formed to fight for Victorians' democratic rights.

John Masanauskas reports in the Herald-Sun on 31 January that last year 129,000 permanent migrants arrived under Australia's permanent immigration program. (That's not counting family reunion and business immigrants). The largest occupation was cooks – more than 8000 got permanent visas. Hairdressers (1500) also made it into the top five categories. The other top five were accountants (5700), software engineers (2160) and IT business analysts (1550).

What gives? Gov Importing more skilled workers as more Australians unemployed

At the same time Australia had a 20% increase in the number of people receiving Newstart or Youth Allowance. As of December the total number of people receiving Newstart or Youth Allowance was over 827,000. Another 825,000 people are receiving the Disability Support Pension.

The Government says the welfare bill is too high, and must be cut.

How do you cut welfare if there are no jobs?

But how is it to be cut unless these people have jobs that they can go to? And what about the workers at Ford, Holden, SPC Ardmona, Qantas, and BP, who face the prospect of losing their jobs sooner rather than later? The market theory, enthusiastically promoted by this Government, is that these workers can be re-trained for, and should be prepared to work in, other areas. This theory falls flat on its face when every year we bring in 129,000 people under the permanent migrant worker program, rather than training up, and giving jobs to, our own cooks, hairdressers, and accountants. The size of the Skilled Migration program is a recipe for growing and long-term unemployment, social disadvantage and hardship, and an outsize welfare bill.

Victoria First

To fight this public policy craziness, Kelvin Thomson has set up a not for profit non-government organisation called Victoria First. Their first meeting as an incorporated organisation was yesterday, Saturday 1 February 2014, at the “Community Room” at Edinburgh Gardens in Fitzroy.

Guest speaker, Dr Ernest Healy of the Centre for Population and Urban Research of Monash University, gave his talk on "Melbourne – Heading for 'CARmageddon?” The subject was the problem of increased car ownership and dependence as Melbourne's population increases. The problem of overloaded public transport and gridiron traffic is one of many terrible problems Australians face with overpopulation. It was not, however, the only problem canvassed at the meeting on Saturday. Many other matters were put to the open mike in a packed room.

It will not be easy to unite and organise Australians in the face of the disorganising effect of mass media and government propaganda, but Thomson is showing leadership and attempting to empower. For more grass roots democracy avenues in Victoria check out some other anti-growth activists here.

Kelvin Thomson encourages all Victorians, young and old, to come to meetings of Victoria first and find out more about the problems of overpopulation. He says,

"Whether you’re one of the many young people concerned about your future job and career prospects, or how you will purchase your first home, or an older Victorian concerned about the type of Victoria we will leave behind for future generations; Victoria First is taking up the fight."

"It is astonishing that the Australian Industry Group [AIA] is calling for an increase in Australian migration from 190,000 to 220,000, through an increase to our permanent Migrant Worker Program. First it is astonishing that they think the number should be lifted by 30,000, when as recently as twenty years ago the entire permanent Migrant Worker Program was less than 30,000. Secondly it is astonishing that they want to increase the number of migrant workers when we are already unable to find jobs for Australian workers" (Kelvin Thomson, MP., Wills, Victoria, Australia)

[Headings and emphasis are by candobetter.net editor]

Why would industry call to increase worker immigration when Australians cannot get jobs?

Secondly it is astonishing that they want to increase the number of migrant workers when we are already unable to find jobs for Australian workers, including those who have come here on previous permanent Migrant Worker Programs. Last month unemployment increased by 3,400 to 712,500 Australians who cannot find work, and this number is forecast to increase. Official forecasts are that the jobless rate will rise within about 18 months to 6.25%, and stay there through to the end of 2016-17. More Australians will be out of work than at any time during the past decade, and far more than during the Global Financial Crisis. The forthcoming closures of Ford and Holden, job losses at Qantas, concerns for jobs at SPC Ardmona and Alcoa, the resources industry construction workforce winding back – all the indicators are that many Australians, including migrant workers, are looking for work or will be looking for work in the near future. They are entitled to our first consideration.

AIA irresponsibly and selfishly misrepresenting Oz population growth rate

The Australian Industry Group says that increasing migrant numbers is needed to “support positive growth in our population”, and refers to relatively low levels of natural population growth. This is incorrect. For each of the past thirty-six years I have gone back to check this, births have exceeded deaths in Australia by over 100,000 – we have natural population increase by over 100,000 every year without any migration at all. In any event, population growth is not a good thing. It is putting great pressure on our environment, quality of life, housing affordability, traffic congestion etc.

Need to use Australian's skills

The permanent Migrant Worker Program, referred to as “Skilled Migration”, should be used to bring workers with skills that it is not possible to find in Australia, not used as a catch all scheme – recently we even saw calls to bring in truck drivers from overseas. It should not be used to drive population growth, not used to put downward pressure on wages and conditions, and not used as a substitute for genuine action to train and skill young Australians. If we are fair dinkum about reducing unemployment, and fair dinkum about increasing workforce participation, we will reduce migrant worker programs, not increase them, and build and use the skills of out-of-work Australians.

- Please feel encouraged to post your comments on candobetter.net and also on Kelvin's Blog: http://kelvinthomson.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/extraordinary-call-for-increase-to.html 

See also: Europe’s Growing Immigration Challenge (13/5/2014), Miscellaneous comment of 31 Jan 2014, Citizenship a privilege, not a right, in the UK? See also: New Zealand Migration soars 40% - and a back door to Australia, Australia's migrant population has exceeded six million people, Mt Cotton koalas doomed by demand for building supplies.

This article was originally published on Russia Today 16 August 2013 with the disclaimer, "The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT." Whilst on-line news services such as Russia Today Press TV are good sources from which to learn the truth, particularly about the conflict in Syria, which is contrary to what we are fed from the mainstream news media (msm), they unfortunately mirror the msm's political correctness in regard to immigrants and claimed asylum seekers. A substantial number of articles from such news services have reported on the plight of prospective immigrants attempting to enter countries such as Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia, without regard to the already dire economic circumstance of many native inhabitants of those countries, which can only be made worse by the arrival of more immigrants also seeking shelter in a tight housing market and employment where unemployment is already high. This article by Tony Gosling is a welcome change from Russia Today's usual political correctness on the immigration question. A similar viewpoint was recently put by Australian Labor Party MP Kelvin Thomson at the inaugural meeting of Victoria First on 1 December 2013. Britain's shadow minister for borders and immigration, Labour's Chris Bryant, promised to take on the big corporations this week. But as his embargoed speech was leaked to big business, the nation watched his political resolve melt into nothing.

Friends and corporate funders of the ruling Conservative-led coalition have been sacking thousands of workers. They then market those same jobs to cheaper foreign workers, bringing misery to Labour's traditional working-class supporters.

Frequently those jobs are not even advertised in the UK. Former employees have to re-apply for their old jobs so long as they're prepared to accept worse pay and conditions.

Standing nervously behind the workers directly hit by this practice are millions of other apprehensive wage earners. They can see how this further corrodes what has become an increasingly brutal job market.

Unemployed young people as they stand in line outside a job centre in central London. (AFP Photo / Leon Neal)

It is the dedication of staff, not just how much they're paid, that determines how good a service the public receives. Staff who know they can be sacked at the drop of a hat do what they are told by their managers out of fear, rather than respect. Before long that culture of fear impacts on everything a business touches.

From the voice on the phone, through quality control, to the customer facing staff, as the company's commitment to the employee goes down, so the glue that holds the business together starts to come unstuck.

The figures, of course, look good on paper. Boardroom presentations with those efficiency graphs zigzagging gradually up accompanied by photographs of smiling staff in neatly-pressed uniforms.

But as well-paid lobbyists for these multinationals successfully demand the erosion of employment rights, trust in these cost-cutting companies is undermined. Trust doesn't figure on the balance sheet, but it's the only truly important quality a company has (or doesn't have).

Britain's opposition Labour party immigration minister, Chris Bryant.(Reuters / Luke MacGregor)

Britain's opposition Labour party immigration minister, Chris Bryant.(Reuters / Luke MacGregor

Britain's opposition Labour party immigration minister, Chris Bryant.(Reuters / Luke MacGregor)

This is one of the chief reasons why recruitment agency Office Angels found last week that over half of Britons in work want out of their present job, for the first time in decades. Off the balance sheet again: an unhappy company is a bad company.

Practices like these are turning the UK into a "conscript economy". Thirty years of retreat from Labour's 1970s policy of full employment has tipped the balance between employer and employee off the scales, until the employer holds all the cards.

Yet, despite the slump, there seems no let-up in the flood of economic migrants moving to Britain. Last week's net migration figures show that in the year to June 2012, 165,000 people, or nearly 500 a day, moved to the UK.

On New Year's Day 2014, Bulgarians and Romanians too are about to be allowed to work in the UK — boosting the net figure to over 200,000.

This influx is doubly bad, cutting both ways into UK disposable incomes. It helps keep house prices artificially high, and wages artificially low. So Labour has realized that not all critics of immigration are racists and, we are told, is seeing the error of its ways.

Party chiefs, for the first time, have been weighing the rights of the British worker who loses their job against the right of the migrant to work anywhere in the EU. Weighing up, too, the good work an immigrant worker might do, against the cost to the British taxpayer of yet another British family on the dole.

So, for Britain's opposition party, standing up for dwindling employment rights should have been an open goal.

Yes, migrant labor is justified and welcome when a country has full employment but with, for millions, wages not enough to live on and real unemployment hovering around 10 percent, to low-paid workers bringing in migrant labor just drives them further into poverty.

So Labour's Chris Bryant was going to weigh in this week to explain that Her Majesty's Opposition now thought it was wrong. A plea both to the origins of the Labour Party, standing up for the victims of cruel and greedy bosses... and to pragmatism. That it wasn't racist to discourage economic migration.

UK Tesco supermarket chain distribution centre. (Reuters / Andrew Winning)

Reuters / Andrew Winning

"Take the case of Tesco, who recently decided to move their distribution centre...." he was due to say, "...staff at the original site, most of them British, were told that they could only move to the new centre if they took a cut in pay. The result? A large percentage of the staff at the new centre are from the Eastern bloc."

But Tesco's friends in the London media tipped them off with a leaked copy of the speech, so after a call to Labour Party headquarters from Tesco this became:

"Take Tesco. A good employer and an important source of jobs in Britain... Yet when a distribution centre was moved to a new location existing staff said they would have lost out by transferring and the result was a higher proportion of staff from A8 countries... Tesco are clear they have tried to recruit locally."

Rarely do we get the opportunity to see so transparently how meek our politicians have become in the face of corporate lobbying. Tory Tesco effectively rewriting the speech of an opposition politician, no doubt with strong-arming from Labour Party apparatchiks, too.

Bryant's key allegation about the cut in pay disappeared. Instead, Tesco is "a good employer" that has "tried to recruit locally." Dead on the cutting-room floor, too, is another fact that many low-paid UK jobs are not even advertised in Britain any more.

To the tune most of us know as "Oh, Christmas Tree" or "Tannenbaum," Labour Party activists used to traditionally sing "Let's Keep the Red Flag Flying Here" on May Day, which called for a worldwide, worker-managed utopia with no borders. But when the Labour Party is no longer allowed to criticize practices that take food out of children's mouths, throw hard-working people out of a job, and possibly onto the streets, that party may as well pack its bags.

If the present leadership is not purged, Labour may go the whole hog and, as in Greece, show its true blue colors by going into a formal coalition with the big corporations.

Today I helped a registered nurse to scan documents to submit in a job application. While we were doing this, she mentioned to me with great concern that she had heard that the government is talking about making people work until they are 70 years old and make them take out loans on their homes in order to fund their retirement. "I'm only 46," she said, "but I didn't work when my children were young and I never had the money to save for a home. So I'm supposed to keep on working until I'm 70. I'm too tired now to work full-time because, even though standards are slipping, working conditions are getting tougher and tougher and management more and more unreasonable." The latest productivity report on An Aging Australia supplies policies to undermine the political strength of older people who would otherwise be able to represent the rest of the community and defend the wealth and security basis of the younger generations. Blaming older people for economic decline that has its real seeds in resource decline sets the scene for generational splitting. However, the real targets are actually today's young people and their children.

You would think that in an Australia where the Productivity Commission (see below) is banging on about how health care for an aging population is going to be a huge slice of our economic pie that my friend would be sitting pretty. Not so.

Setting the tone for scary policies: "An Aging Australia" Productivity Commission Report

The news about people working until they are 70 years old and being made to sell their houses back to the bank comes from another rather Orwellian report by the Australian Productivity Commission. The Commission seems to want to blame a lot of its suggestions here on the aging population and the costs of health care. (The reference is An Aging Australia, available at this URL: http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/129749/ageing-australia.pdf).

The report has a narrow economic basis whereby GDP = Numbers of Workers X Productivity X Terms of trade. There is no overt consideration of resource depletion, although you can tell it is lurking namelessly. The report presents as an excuse for more population growth, even though it predicts an indefinite (possibly endless) period of economic poverty, when people will have to borrow on their homes to live and work until they drop for declining returns, which it relates vaguely to the end of the mining boom.

Demographic Fairy-tales

In a section entitled "Demography: Net overseas migration", the Report comes clean on what is driving high population growth in Australia: Successive recent governments have pushed very high immigration.

"Unlike either fertility or mortality, [Net Overseas Migration - NOM] is more readily controllable by the Australian Government (DIAC 2013). Most particularly, the Government can set quotas on its migration program [...]."

The report also admits that our extremely high mass immigration is a wild card, although it uses less colourful language:

"Were such levels of [Net Overseas Migration - NOM] to persist over the next 50 years, it would imply a considerably more populous Australia than most population projections."

The section concludes with a sublimely irresponsible comment about why our population might not spiral out of control but somehow stop after 2017 or something like that:

"Typically, advanced countries experience population growth slowdowns as their population numbers rise, and some reversion of Australian population growth rates to the average OECD rate might ultimately be expected," it concludes, blithely.

My comment The Report's faith in Australia experiencing a population growth slowdown to the 'average OECD rate' is dangerously ridiculous in the light of Australia's high immigration. It is presumably relying on 'demographic transition' ideology, which is (a) unreliable and (b) does not take high immigration into account. Australia's population growth was slowing naturally but this natural trend has been completely distorted by State and Federally led mass immigration.[1]

See footnote for full quoted passage.[2]

There are some very slanted presentations of the medical costs of aging, notably in a diagram, "Hospital Costs by Age and Sex 2010-2011," which shows a kind of upside-down pyramid with costly old people at its wide top and low cost young people near the narrow base. This gives an apparent cost-weight per elderly person. The casual observer could easily infer from the graph that there were more people over 65 and 85 plus than all the other age-groups in 2011. In fact, due mostly to mass immigration, these numbers will actually be continually bloated, year after year, instead of dying back naturally as the baby-boomers leave their mortal coil.

Mass immigration, discontinued in Western Continental Europe after the first oil shock in 1973, meant that population numbers will decline naturally there as oil declines. In Australian and other Anglophone countries, however, there will be no such gentle and natural decline if artificial population boosting through high immigration is allowed to continue.

The report justifies its presentation of 'trends' in the following statement:

"The apparent neat precision of any particular number is not meant to convey that this shall inevitably be the result, when over a 50 year period a wide variety of unknown factors will arise. But the existence of unknown factors is no basis for not considering the trends, which are the important aspect of this analysis. The trends are unmistakable in most cases."

The problem is that those 'trends' in population, and their proposed solutions in erosion of housing equity and retirement benefits will be taken for gospel by the mass media and parliament. They will be portrayed as inevitable and used to further the corporate agenda, which is to control more and more of Australia's remaining wealth, and allow the majority of citizens less and less control over their material and political circumstances. The very narrow context of this kind of economic report prevents it from recommending citizen empowerment or admitting to resource depletion or inviting comparison with more democratic societies and reconsideration of our legal system. Can the report researchers and writers be criticised for this? Not really; they are working within the same paradigm as the nurses I described at the beginning of this article. It would be career suicide for them to suggest that we are going in the wrong direction with overpopulation and overconsumption.

The Report fails to take into account some enormously influential trends in climate change, overpopulation, oil depletion, loss of democracy (e.g. laws against 'terrorism'), numbers of wars with increasing impact.

It doesn't consider that during the industrial revolution where its life-expectancy charts begin, life expectancy went down to less than half of the ordinary biblical span of three score and ten before it went up again 'due to modern medicine'. And that now diabetes and other nutritional diseases related to our so-called advanced lifestyles and medicine are reducing life expectancy, not increasing it. It does acknowledge a failure to factor those disease risks in, but still merrily uses its projections:

"As the ABS notes, this approach also ignores the possibility of major adverse events, such as major pandemics or wars, though historically these have sometimes been important. Some of these events would be difficult to estimate given their rarity in historical data, and at best, could be treated separately as low probability, high impact events with assumed statistical distributions. For example, the European Actuarial Consultative Group (2006) assesses that there is a high risk of a major global pandemic over a decade, but that events with significant excess population mortality are unlikely. Others doubt that it is possible to make ‘any scientifically based prediction about the emergence of future pandemics ’ (Taubenberger and Morens 2009). Given this, it is more reasonable to take account of other significant risks — such as the possible adverse impacts on longevity of lifestyle factors (growing obesity) and antibiotic resistant bacteria, which would have a gradual effect and could be modelled as a lower - life expectancy scenario in mortality projections. "

In fact, the Report shows what struck me as a wicked sense of humour at times, as if it recognises its own absurdity. On prevention of obesity and other diseases like AIDS, it seems to suggest that dying young might be more economical in the long run:

Second, and more subtly, gauging the effectiveness and efficiency of preventative measures on a disease - by - disease basis can miss the reality that people live to die another day (Bonneux et al. 1998). Dollars saved on avoiding (or minimising the costs) of one disease opens the possibility of people experiencing another costly disease. Ideally, assessments of particular interventions should adopt a longitudinal approach that takes into account the timing and costs of disease and quality of life under the counterfactual that no preventative action is taken.

Housing equity, poverty and power

The Productivity Commission Report "canvasses "policy approaches currently over - the - horizon, but nevertheless relevant to a deeper consideration of the challenges of an ageing Australia (including the role of non - fungible housing equity as a financing method and the link between labour force participation and the Age Pension eligibility age)."

Comment:This report supplies policies to undermine the political strength of older people who would otherwise be able to represent the rest of the community and defend the wealth and security basis of the younger generations. Blaming older people for economic decline that has its real seeds in resource decline sets the scene for generational splitting. The power elites (in the form of banks and corporate government) can then find ways to seize remaining assets and resources in the community for their own enrichment. Young people should realise that this report actually targets their generation - see the huge bulge in the 2014 population pyramid of people below the age of 60. These are the post-baby-boomers. It is their old age that is targeted here. Without land and housing they have no means to grow food, no secure shelter, no security to pass on to their families. The Productivity Commission, with its very narrow parameters of examination, is effectively providing future governments with excuses to make laws to beggar the population. And the Commission is cynically aware of this, implying that young people are stupidly myopic and won't realise that it is their futures that are being targeted, because they cannot imagine being old:

"Despite the possibility of such responses [i.e. protests against giving up their homes], governments can use anti-avoidance measures to reduce the risks of such behaviours at older ages (as it does already with gifting provisions). And responses by the young to possible asset tests when they are old are likely to be relatively weak, reflecting discounting of the future , myopia and the fact that caps would apply to any government - backed equity withdrawal."

Don't you love the term government-backed 'equity withdrawal'? A great new term for the State stealing from its citizens.

On Housing equity: Aim: Put land outside the reach of banks.

To avoid being patsies to these predator policies, Australians need to create new community ownerships with special laws of inheritance for their children, to help relocalise power and organisation in line with families and clans. These are the only secure bases for people in hard times. The British legal model promotes the opposite. If Australia changed its system to Roman Law (the kind used throughout continental Europe) children would be guaranteed to inherit from their parents; shelter and income would be deemed civil rights at law. Another model that amounts to the same thing is the New Zealand Maori land-rights model, which guarantees every Maori descendent land which cannot be sold. Banks should not be able to take shelter and food-gardens from owners or their inheritors. Governments should not be able to legislate water prices out of reach of suburban food producers. Planners should not be able to authorise buildings which block sunlight from gardens and solar panels. People should all have rights to viable land. This is what is missing from this report, which assumes that we will all work for other people and rely on diminishing rations when we can no longer compete with young workers.

The Report trots out the low inflation assertion with which many Australians would disagree:

"The average Australian has nevertheless fared well in the last two decades in terms of net national disposable income per capita, low inflation and low unemployment."

In fact, inflation indicators fail to take into account the very high cost of land for housing, which drives up all other costs. Wages must be high enough for workers to pay the highest accommodation costs in the world and business must pay similar costs for premises, plus wages. Shrinking disposable income has appeared to stretch because of cheap imports from low-wage and low land-cost countries, like China. People have only been able to afford trinkets, however. Whilst rents and mortgages rose, dependence on wages and debt grew. With mass immigration and watering-down of industrial protection, wages and conditions are deteriorating and the cost of finite resources, shelter, food, water and power are inflating.

Conclusion: These trends are the result of government engineering the population to please corporate fancy. If Australians do not start to band together against their corporatised governments these nightmares will come to pass.

Commission Press Release: Key Points of An ageing Australia: preparing for the future

Productivity Commission, 22 November, 2013 [3]

"The report examines the effects of ageing on economic output (underpinned by changes in population, participation and productivity) and the resulting implications for government budgets were current policy settings to be maintained.

Key points:

Australia's population will both grow strongly and become older. Such slow but profound shifts in the nature of a society do not elicit the same scrutiny as immediate policy issues. The preferable time to contemplate the implications is while these near inevitable trends are still in their infancy.

Population ageing is largely a positive outcome, primarily reflecting improved life expectancy. A female (male) born in 2012 will on average live for an estimated 94.4 (91.6) years.

However, population growth and ageing will affect labour supply, economic output, infrastructure requirements and governments' budgets.

Australia's population is projected to rise to around 38 million by 2060, or around 15 million more than the population in 2012. Sydney and Melbourne can be expected to grow by around 3 million each over this period.

The population aged 75 or more years is expected to rise by 4 million from 2012 to 2060, increasing from about 6.4 to 14.4 per cent of the population. In 2012, there was roughly one person aged 100 years old or more to every 100 babies. By 2060, it is projected there will be around 25 such centenarians.

Total private and public investment requirements over this 50 year period are estimated to be more than 5 times the cumulative investment made over the last half century, which reveals the importance of an efficient investment environment.

Labour participation rates are expected to fall from around 65 to 60 per cent from 2012 to 2060, and overall labour supply per capita to contract by 5 per cent.

Average labour productivity growth is projected to be around 1.5 per cent per annum from 2012-13, well below the high productivity period from 1988-89 to 2003-04. Real disposable income per capita is expected to grow at 1.1 per cent per annum compared with the average 2.7 per cent annual growth over the last 20 years.

Collectively, it is projected that Australian governments will face additional pressures on their budgets equivalent to around 6 per cent of national GDP by 2060, principally reflecting the growth of expenditure on health, aged care and the Age Pension.

Major impending economic and social changes can create the impetus for new reform approaches not currently on the policy horizon. For example:

The design of the Age Pension and broader retirement income system might be linked to life expectancy after completion of the current transition to 67 years in 2023.

Using some of the annual growth in the housing equity of older Australians could help ensure higher quality options for aged care services and lower fiscal costs.

Wide ranging health care reforms could improve productivity in the sector that is the largest contributor to fiscal pressures. Even modest improvements in this area would reduce fiscal pressures significantly."

NOTES

26/11/2013: Correction to Stupid mistake about baby-boomers' ages corrected on population-pyramid-2014.jpg. I had them as tweny years older than they are. Apologies. Thanks Jill Quirk of SPA Victoria for pointing this out.

[1] For the latest on demographic theories and which ones hold water, see Sheila Newman, Demography, Territory and Law: The Rules of Animal and Human Populations, Countershock Press, 2013, Chapter 2, "Modern Fertility, Mortality and Development Myths."

[2] An Aging Australia, (Productivity Commission), pp.37-38:
"DEMOGRAPHY
While the technical definition and estimation of net overseas migration (NOM) is complex, it is a measure of long - term arrivals less long - term departures.

NOM has been a critical factor behind Australia’s population growth and will continue to be so (PC 2011 d ).

Unlike either fertility or mortality, NOM is more readily controllable by the Australian Government (DIAC 2013). Most particularly, the Government can set quotas on its migration program — which comprises three categories of migrant (humanitarian, skilled and family re-union). That said, the Australian Government does not have full control over NOM as any number of Australians (and New Zealanders) can arrive or depart. Moreover, the number of temporary entrants, such as long - term visitors and working holiday makers, is effectively uncapped. Their numbers are largely driven by other factors, such as economic conditions. However, since temporary entrants ultimately leave, they do not contribute to long - run population growth.

Currently, NOM is around 230000 per year, which is well above the longer - term average.

From 1948 to 2003, NOM was around 90 000 per year, with no upwards trend. In contrast, in the period 2003 – 2012, the average NOM was around 200000 and the trend growth was around 10000 per year (figure 2.2).

DIAC (2013)forecasts that current high levels of NOM will persist at least until 2017, but that its growth rate will decline. It projects NOM of around 250000 in 2017.
Were such levels of NOM to persist over the next 50 years, it would imply a considerably more populous Australia than most population projections.

It is difficult to establish whether a level of NOM around 200000 – 250000 is likely to persist. In part, the high recent levels may reflect strong relative economic and income growth in Australia c ompared to other countries, which make Australia an attractive destination. Given that the terms of trade are now declining, it is possible that NOM will fall somewhat from its current level.

The contribution of high relative fertility rates and migration means that Australia’s population is growing at a rate well above most OECD countries. Over the period from 1999 to 2010, Australia had the 4th highest population growth rate among OECD countries, with higher growth rates than some less developed economies, such as Mexico and Turkey (OECD 2013). The average growth rate for Australia (1.47 per cent growth per annum) was more than four times that for the 27 European Union countries (0.35 per cent per annum) and more than twice that of the OECD overall (0.68 per cent per annum). The persistence of NOM of 250000 persons per year would underpin continued high growth rates of this order.

Typically, advanced countries experience population growth slowdowns as their population numbers rise, and some reversion of Australian population growth rates to the average OECD rate might ultimately be expected. "

[3] This is a press release from the Productivity Commission about its report.

Demographers Bob Birrell and Ernest Healy of Monash University have released their most recent report, entitled Party for Freedom: ‘Scare Jobs: Migrants or Locals at the end of the Queue?. This damning report highlights the incompatibility of recent and current immigration policies sponsored by both Labor and Liberal governments.

Over 250,000 young people leave school each year. They are then faced with the task of competing with a similar number of those on Working Holiday Maker (WHM) visas, coupled with Australia’s population growth of 1.7% or 370,000 a year (including 214,000 permanent migrants) and a pool of over 1.1 million foreigners (excluding New Zealanders) on temporary work visas. This has created a dire situation for locals – especially the young local workers without post-school education.

University educated job seekers are also finding it increasingly difficult to secure employment. For example, Australia has an over-supply of accountants, and despite this, large numbers of foreign accountants are still being granted work visas.

Table 1 Temporary entrants in Australia as of March 2012 and March 2013

Full Total 92,490 more temporary workers in Australia from March 2012 to 2013, despite rising youth unemployment and heavy net overseas immigration.

Table 1 above details the full extent of temporary entrants and temporary visa holders with work rights in Australia. The 457 and WHM visa categories are rising drastically, taking away employment opportunities from Australians in low skilled service jobs, and the hospitality and construction industries.

There is a lot of misinformation being pushed by self-appointed demographers, government ministers, political parties and vested interests on the “need” for more foreign labour.

Self-appointed KPMG Demographer Bernard Salt is well known for his incorrect statements when commenting on demographics and the cry for ever-increasing levels of immigration. In his recent book, The Big Tilt, he claims: ‘2011 is a break point year. From this year onwards, more baby boomers exit the workforce than generation Ys enter’. The above excerpt from Bernard’s book is propaganda and not statistically correct.

The lack of genuine public discussion on the pressing issue of high levels of immigration, especially third world immigration is adding to our woes. More than ever the nation needs robust public discussion on the matter. Debate needs to come from a broad range of stakeholders, including the Australian workers who are being displaced and retired early due to successive governments’ preference for unsustainable immigration.

The negativity and incompatibility of successive immigration policies have contributed to growing dole queues, while increasing numbers of foreign workers on temporary work visas and new migrants displace Australians in the job market. Regrettably, it seems our government has been shackled to pro-population growth advocates and the lobbying of well-organised special interest groups.

Party for Freedom believes protection of the Australian worker is paramount. The Australian ‘battler’ worker deserves a better deal from our government. It does not make sense to import large numbers of foreign workers on temporary visas or maintain high levels of permanent immigration when real job growth has stalled creating an environment of lost opportunity for local job seekers.

It is time for the Australian government to ‘do the right thing’ and shut the gate on large-scale immigration, so that local workers, especially the young, are protected from the encroaching, foreign, job hungry multitudes.

Radio interview with the thinking person's politician, Kelvin Thomson, on the impacts of population growth and the policies that keep pushing it up in Australia.

Elliot says there is not a great deal state governments can do about population growth, but suggests that the Fed Gov should look at immigration numbers. Kelvin agrees with him and makes other points, perhaps choosing not to disagree with the interviewer whose knowledge is probably deficient.

Candobetter.net wants readers of this article to realise though that State Governments all have websites dedicated to attracting immigrants from overseas. The reader should also understand that housing and land development, water and power - all the things that population growth is inflating - are almost entirely the responsibility of state governments. There are growth lobbies dedicated to influencing state governments and parliaments on just these issues. These growth lobbies are shored up and given authority by the mainstream media - Murdoch and Fairfax - which both own property.dot.coms marketing Australian property to the world. The ABC, our public media, apes these attitudes.

The economy of Australia is one of the largest capitalist economies in the world, with a GDP of US$1.57 trillion. We stand apart from the rest of the OECD with both population growth and economic growth rates roughly four times the OECD country average. Admittedly some of the other members of the OECD are going through hard economic times, but many of similar size to Australia (such as Sweden) have sound economies, high GDP per capita and far slower population and GDP growth rates.

There is no evidence supporting the argument that rapid population growth is a rational strategy for Australia. Quite the opposite.

The only countries with higher population growth rates than Australia are authoritarian regimes with average GDP per capita roughly 4% of that of Australia. The exceptions to this low GDP per capita are Singapore and the UAE. But there is a big difference between these and Australia. They are city states where the cost of infrastructure expansion and social welfare is nowhere near the cost in Australia. The UAE has 88% expats and Singapore also grows due to its expat workforce.

But Australia has some other remarkable statistics in its historical closet. Since Federation compound annual population growth has rigidly adhered to an average of around 1.6+%. At the same time annual GDP growth has compounded at around 3.2+%. GDP per capita has, not surprisingly, compounded roughly in line with the rise in GDP diluted by the increase in population = 1.032/1.016 = 1.6% per capita.

Now it doesn’t take a genius to see that in 1900 these growth rates were based on a young undeveloped country and a world “without limits”, where the rise of humanity against its adversary the environment met with no logical opposition.

It also doesn’t take a genius to see that, at least hypothetically, zero population growth would only require 1.6% compound GDP growth to deliver 1.6% GDP growth per capita without the adverse social, environmental and economic consequences of population growth.

But hang on; haven’t we become more enlightened since 1900? Haven’t we learnt through the 60s and 70s that there are Limits to Growth? The Club of Rome was formed in 1968 and commissioned MIT to research and publish the now famous “Limits to Growth”.

Well yes we have become more enlightened, based on numerous ANU Polls and the Essential Report, 23 July 2013. But this never gets mentioned in public policy debate. Are the government and the media just pretending that this inconvenient truth should have no influence on public discourse or political policy development? How much longer will we have to wait?

Please also consider signing (and most importantly forwarding) the petition at the following link:

http://www.communityrun.org/petitions/australia-requires-a-public-inquiry-to-determine-a-basis-for-the-optimum-rate-of-population-growth-2