(We) can do better

Canadians respond to Australian Mischaracterization of Canada

LTE editor, Sydney Morning Herald

Re: "Canadians have successfully managed a similar swelling in population numbers", by Josephine Tovey (SMH June 29/2010)

It would come as a surprise to most Canadians that we have coped well with the addition of 13 million consumers since 1970. Yet with trans-oceanic vision, Professor Peter MacDonald, sounding less like a demographer and more like a growth-obsessive economist with rose-coloured glasses, confidently asserts that to be the case. In fact it is not.

At least three government-funded studies---Report number 25 from the Science Council of Canada, a 1990 report from the Privy Council and the damning Healey report of 1997----all documented the devastation wrought by population growth on our arable land and ecosystems. Our largest cities are bursting at the seams with congestion, smog, overloaded infrastructure and unaffordable real estate. Built-up development pressures have overwhelmed urban boundaries and claimed 20% of our best farmland for housing to accommodate a largely foreign-born demand. According to Ontario Farmlands Trust, Ontario alone lost some 600,000 acres of prime farmland in the decade following 1996.

Strict land use planning is typically touted as the panacea for this runaway population growth, but smart growth strategies have been a proven failure. The reality is, as York University Professor Robert MacDermid established in his report on municipal campaign financing in 2009, civic election campaigns are essentially bankrolled by corporate money, most of it from the same developers responsible for the cascading sprawl. The local planning department is, for all intents and purposes, a branch plant of the real estate industry. No wonder that the folks who underwrite home purchases, like the CEO of our goliath Royal Bank of Canada, Gordon Nixon, have lobbied for an immigration quota 50% higher than its current stratospheric level. More homebuyers, more profits. And the ecological costs can be expiated by discreet donations to high profile environmental NGOs like Nature Conservancy Canada or the David Suzuki Foundation, which naturally, have nothing to say about the negative environmental impact of mass immigration nor about the morality of accepting corporate donations.

Tovey and MacDonald have it dead wrong. In Canada we have not managed growth. Growth has managed us.

Tim Murray
VP Biodiversity First
Quathiaski Cove, BC
Canada V0P 1N0

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Re "Canada's Experience" dated June 29, 2010:

Josephine Tovey claims that Canada is some kind of success story for having gone from a population of 21 million in 1970 to 35 million today. She is roughly correct in saying that Canada's population has grown, but she and demographer Peter McDonald should be very careful about saying that any country's population increase (Canada's or Australia's in particular) should be characterized as a "sucess story".

Canada and Australia are similar in some respects: both are large areas of land, but Nature has imposed severe limitations on them. Both have huge desert areas : Canada's is in its north ; Australia's is in its Interior. In addition to desert, remember that almost 40% of Canada is north of the 60th Parallel and has to deal with extreme cold and 8 to 10 month long winters. Remember also that Canada, in contrast to Australia, has a river system in its Interior and that that system, in part, has enabled Canada to support its population increase.

The question Ms. Tovey should ask is this : Why should any country have a larger population? Canadians who have lived in southern British Columbia and Southern Ontario, the areas of Canada that have experienced high population growth, will tell you that those places have not been "improved" by bringing in more people. In fact, they are "full". In support of that claim, Ontario's Environment Commissioner has stated that Southern Ontario does not have the water to support the planned population increase there and that its river systems cannot handle the wastes from that population.

Ms. Tovey should note that in 1976, Canada's federal government asked The Science Council of Canada, Canada's most eminent scientists, to make recommendations about an optimum population for Canada and how Canada could best use its land base and its resources for itself and for its role in the world. That group stated that Canada had to discard two myths about itself One was that its large land base meant that it could take unlimited numbers of people. To help end that misconception, it recommended that Canada restrict immigration and stabilize its population at roughly what it is now. The other myth was that Canada had infinite resources. To assist in ending that myth, it produced rsearch to show that Canada had a finite resource supply and that it should take measures to protect those resources, particularly its farm land. It recommended that since there were few food-exporting countries in a world with an increasing population, Canada should concentrate on becoming a major food exporter.

Since then, Canada's real estate and immigration industries have convinced our federal government to ignore much of what The Science Council recommended. As a result, Canada has lost huge amounts of the country's best farmland in southern Ontario to immigration-driven housing development.

One event precipitated that loss. Canada's Progressive Conservative Party began an immigration intake policy of 240,000 in 1990, contrary to the advice they had been given that immigration produced alomost no economic benefits and that it would not solve aging population issues. As senseless and incredible as it may sound, Canada's Immigration Minister in 1990 stated she was raising immigration levels (which were around 85,000 when her gov't took office) in order that the Progressive Conservative Party could compete with its rival, the Liberal Party, for the immigrant vote. Even more incredibly, that policy has been virtually institutionalized and all of Canada's federal political parties now support it. Over 5 million immigrants have entered Canada since then. They are responsible for around 70% of Canada's population increase.

In other words, Canada has regularized population insanity. Contrary to what demographer Peter McDonald says, Canada is falling into "a big heap". Canada's immigrant visible minority has become the proverbial tail that wags the dog. Immigrant advocacy groups and their converts parade around the country evangelizing for the Religion of Diversity. The reality is that according to one academic, immigration has become a huge economic drag of over $20 Billion a year. According to many others, immigration-driven population growth is transforming many areas of Canada into a virtual social and environmental disaster-in-progress.

If Australia thinks Canada is a "success story" to imitate, then go ahead. See you in the asylum !!

Dan Murray
Immigration Watch Canada
www.immigrationwatchcanada.org
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Josephine Tovey's June 29th article leaves readers with the impression that
Canada has successfully "managed" the addition of 14 million people during
the last 40 years, the implication being that Australians need not worry
about their own population ballooning out to 36 million if, per Peter
MacDonald, they manage it properly. Ms. Tovey does not seem to have
consulted anyone about the cost of this rampant population growth.

A report released in March by the Toronto Board of Trade said that the
estimated round-trip commutes in that city now average 80 minutes, longer
than commutes in London, New York, and Los Angeles, and cost Canada more
than $5 billion a year. Gridlock also afflicts Canada's other large cities,
many of which are unable to maintain the infrastructure to keep up with
growth and suffer a decreasing environmental quality. The Ontario Medical
Association estimates that there are close to 6000 premature deaths and
17,000 hospital admissions in Ontario each year caused by smog. Canada's
growing cities are devouring not only the greenspace that makes them
liveable but the agricultural land that feeds them. According to a 2005
Statistics Canada publication, about one-half of Canada's urbanized land
sits on dependable agricultural land, and some 14,300 square kilometres of
dependable agricultural land have been converted to urban uses.

What about water? A 1991 advisory document to the Privy Council of Canada
says: "Canada is endowed with vast water resources, but with 90 percent of
its population concentrated within a band up to 100 miles of the USA border,
water resources in these areas are already being utilized to their fullest.
Polluted water has become an everyday concern." Most newcomers to Canada
come from countries with much lower per capita energy consumption levels and
consequently substantially increase their greenhouse gas production in their
new country (not to mention their consumption of other resources). Canada's
rapidly growing population has prevented it from meeting any of its targets
for greenhouse gas reduction. Population growth and development has also
taken a tremendous toll on Canada's ecosystems. The number of endangered
species in Canada, as elsewhere in the world, goes up each year. Of the 428
species of birds that regularly breed in Canada, 60 are in danger of
extinction. As the collapse of its cod fishery has shown, Canada's resources
are not inexhaustible.

And what of the much vaunted economic benefits that population growth has
allegedly brought Canada? Economist Herb Grubel calculated that recent
immigrants cost the Canadian government about $18 billion (Canadian dollars)
more in services than they pay in taxes each year. According to Statistics
Canada census data from 2006, the median earnings of Canadians (in
inflation-adjusted 2005 dollars) increased by a negligible 0.1% between 1980
and 2005, while the earnings of the poorest fifth actually fell by a
sizeable 20%. But the "doors wide open" immigration policy, initiated in
1990, that has ramped up Canada's population growth in recent decades has
brought economic benefits to some. The 2006 StatsCan census data shows that
the real earnings of the richest fifth of Canadians increased by 16%. Among
those, one can be sure, would be developers who profit from building houses
and bankers who profit from the mortgages, some business interests
benefiting from cheap labour, as well as the "immigration industry."
Politicians seek both to please corporate interests and gain the votes of
newcomers by maintaining mass immigration, come boom or recession. Given
that those who benefit from growth also tend to be the ones who own the
media, it is perhaps not surprising that the costs of immigration have
received so little coverage in the Canadian media.

Canada is a land rich in resources, which has enabled it delay paying the
price for its wasteful pursuit of growth. That does not make it a good
manager. Canada should not be seen as a "growth-managing" role model for
Australia. On the contrary, by virtue of the fact that Australia is having a
public discussion about growth, it is a role model for Canada, where the
media still spout the corporate party line that growth is good and more is
better.

Madeline Weld
President, Population Institute of Canada
www.populationinstituteofcanada.ca
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Original article:
Sydney Morning Herald
June 29, 2010

Canadians have successfully managed a similar swelling in population numbers. Josephine Tovey explains five things Australia must do to cope with an extra 14 million people.

How does a Western country used to low-density living, with an abundance of space but little arable land, create liveable cities while undergoing a population explosion from about 20 million people to 36 million in 40 years?

That is the conundrum now vexing Australia. But Canada has undergone that change in the last 40 years and it is one that experts in population and urban planning say Australia could handle too, if the growth is well managed.

''Canada didn't fall in a big heap because its population went from 22 to 35 million,'' Professor Peter McDonald, director of the Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute, said.

Its population has grown from about 21 million people in 1970 to almost 35 million today - roughly the same rate of growth projected by federal Treasury between now and 2050 for Australia.

Coping with such growth comes down to long-term planning and attention to key areas, Professor McDonald said. These include creating mass transit systems for expanding cities, providing housing where it is needed, addressing environmental needs like water, food and energy, and directing infrastructure into smaller towns that can share the population growth.

Canada's population is spread across a lot of medium-sized cities -more than 33 have a population above 100,000, but only one, Toronto, has a population of more than 5 million.

Public transport
''One of the problems people have with higher densities is that it does produce more traffic and parking problems,'' said urban planner Dr Garry Glazebrook. ''It will, unless we shift some of our travel out of cars.''

Housing
Providing affordable housing will require a mix of high- and medium-density infill, as well as new homes on greenfield sites. ''There will be a strong demand for medium- and high-density housing,'' said Professor Peter McDonald, particularly from migrants.

Water
Better water savings measures, such as low water use toilets and showers, are needed, says Grant Leslie, the manager of the Water Services Association of Australia. Desalination plants, new dams and water recycling plants were also part of the solution, he said.

Energy
Homes and businesses will need to become smarter with their energy use. ''Many areas of our economy use much less energy … that's a matter of replacing more of our fossil energy sources with renewable sources,'' said demographer, Professor Graeme Hugo.

Redistribution
Targeting infrastructure at rural and coastal communities that can sustain high employment is important in managing growth around the country, said Professor McDonald. ''The important thing is investing in smaller places you think are going to be successful.''
http://www.smh.com.au/national/canadas-experience-20100628-zf9r.html

Click on first picture to see film of "Frankston Storm-tide surge and Channel Deepening - seaviews"

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Click on second picture to see film of "Storm tide views of CBD and Houses on Kananook Creek, Frankston"

The films made by Sheila Newman and including still-footage by James Sinnamon, show very high water at a time when the tides themselves were not at their highest, but rain was heavy and run-off had increased in storm conditions. This means that a very high tide could be devastating under similar rain and storm conditions.

Storm tides and heavy rains - recipe for disaster in overpopulated, overdeveloped Melbourne

Sue Pennicuik (Greens, Victoria) says that analysis of tidal data supports residents' reports of higher Bay tides since channel deepening. But even without higher tides overpopulation has made old conditions more dangerous. Films made by Sheila Newman and including still-footage by James Sinnamon, show very high water in a creek at a time when the tides themselves were not at their highest. What caused the very high levels in the mouth of Kananook Creek, Frankston, were increased volumes of run-off from increased hard surfaces associated with more buildings to accommodate population growth in Frankston, plus the very heavy, tropical style rain on top of the storm-tide. This means that, even without sea-level rise, a king tide could be devastating if it occurs during a similar short period of high rain and wind. Note that the deepening of the channel from the ocean to Port Phillip Bay was done to accommodate much bigger ships justified by projections of greater volumes of trade associated with the bigger populations in Australia as encouraged undemocratically by her state and Federal governments.
ABC TV Stateline 7.30 PM this evening (2 July 10) also has a story on the evidence of higher tides since channel deepening.

Rising tides in Port Phillip Bay – is channel deepening to blame?

"There have been growing reports of higher tides, beach erosion, faster currents and an increase in swell (surge from Bass Strait) since the Entrance to Port Phillip Bay was deepened,” Greens MP, Sue Pennicuik said today.

The Office of Environmental Monitor (OEM) is reported* as saying that there is no evidence to suggest that dredging is to blame for erosion at Portsea beach; and that the most likely explanation was natural erosion caused by the local impact of storms and seasonally high tides, exacerbated by the swell rolling in from Bass Strait.

“Tidal data that I have obtained from the Port of Melbourne Corporation and have had analysed, supports what so many residents, swimmers, divers and other businesses in the southern part of part Phillip Bay have been reporting since channel deepening: that tides are higher in the south of the Bay” said Greens MP, Sue Pennicuik today.

“Preliminary analysis of wind data from the past ten years suggests that wind beach erosion, particularly at Portsea was not caused by seasonal weather events alone,” she said.

Changes to shoreline

"I am very worried about the tidal changes that are being seen at many places around the south of Port Phillip Bay," said Ms Pennicuik. "It is one of the most serious effects of the channel deepening project that the government was clearly warned about at the time.”

“The preliminary analysis that I am releasing today strongly suggests that the average daily high tides have increased significantly at four points in the south of the Bay, by much more than was predicted by the Port of Melbourne on the basis of ‘expert advice’ in the Channel Deepening Project (CDP) Supplementary Environmental Effects Study.** However, more data is needed about tides, swells, currents and weather events to be able to know for certain what is happening in the south of the Bay, Ms Pennicuik said.“

"Unfortunately, the five metres of sea bed and rock can't be put back at the Entrance and Port Phillip Bay may be permanently damaged as a result of the expensive channel deepening project that we didn't need,” she said.

(From a media release from Sue Pennicuik, 2 July 2010)

In Frankston

The storm-tide associated with the flooding recorded in the films on 26 April 2009 above did not occur during a king tide. If the conditions had been similar and it had been a king tide, the damage and danger would be much greater. In the past few weeks there have been higher tides than in April 2009, but the amount of rainfall coinciding was not as great as in April 2009. Residents have the impression, however that Kananook Creek is running faster since the channel deepening in Port Phillip Bay. If this is true then erosion will be greater on the banks and the land where houses on Long Beach are situated.

Why does rain pose a new problem?

The state government (under Kennett, Bracks and Brumby) have made policies to increase development and population in Frankston over objections from many residents. The associated development has increased the hard surfaces (in the form of built surfaces like roofs, roads, gutters, pavements etc) and decreased the big tree coverage. Blocks have been moonscaped and smaller trees have been substituted for the old ones removed.

This decreased vegetation mass has the effect of decreasing the absorption and transpiration once provided by tree cover, which kept water tables down and absorbed a lot of running water. Now, when there is a lot of rain, more runs down into the bay via the hard surfaces and drains and it runs faster. During the storm tide in April 2009 Kananook Creek was flooded by water from drains and surrounding hard surfaces as well as by the incoming tide which was driven by high storm-winds. On this particular day the low pressure system was 997.7, the maximum wind gust was 93, the high tide was .92 cm and the rainfall was 30mm.

If this flooding from the hills had met with a king tide what would have happened to the houses, businesses and residents along Kananook Creek?

The Council will have to redo their planning scheme where the Land Subject to Inundation Overlays did not correlate with the land contours and did not accommodate the changes that were brought on by overpopulation and overdevelopment in the April 2009 situation.

In the absence of rain, storm-tide-surges still highly problematic

On August 25, 2009, most of the conditions were very similar to those on 26 April 2009. The low pressure system was 999.4, the maximum wind gust was 96, the high tide was .93 cm, but rainfall was only 8.4 mm. The creek did not flood, but this storm-surge still inundated the pier forecourt.

What will happen to Seaford, the next suburb, which is much lower than Frankston, if these trends continue?

Frankston most vulnerable to storm-tides but weather-station removed

Melbourne Water also seems to have been taken by surprise and to have used old data for Frankston Beach in the design of new infrastructure because new data was not available due to the removal of a Bureau of Meteorology weather station at the end of Frankston Pier.

Frankston has the longest reach of westerly winds in the bay and the storm surges rely on prevailing westerlies. For instance, when tide levels are .389mm in St kilda, they may be .730mm in Seaford. In Frankston, they would be higher again. The removal of the weather station makes information for Frankston elusive, just at a time when it is crucial.

All this indicates that the state of organisation and technology and planning in Victoria is not of a sufficiently high standard to predict or deal with the impacts of accelerated and additional development and population growth. The government departments are not competent for the demands they have been generating. The promotion and engineering of population growth and development was done against public opinion. This makes any impact, particularly any damage to person or property, all the worse, since it would have been avoidable if the governments had listened to the public.

Bigger pipes were put in under the McCoomb reserve, on the bend of the creek near the mouth, adding to the inflow rate and volume. These pipes should probably go out into the bay. It has been suggested by a resident that all big buildings should have retention pits. Others have called for no more building permits to be granted and for massive replanting of trees above the flood-level.

The Future

The Future Coasts site finds the likelihood of tropical style rains to be increased, with more storms in this area. Storm surges can virtually double height of water over the highest tide. Sea level rise on its own may not be the worst problem in the future; it will be more storm surges.

Notes

* The Age, 5/5/10, "Life’s not so swell at Portsea."
** SEES Appendix 45 Cardno Lawson & Treloar, 2007b.

Storm data from http://www.melbournewater.com.au/content/rivers_and_creeks/rainfall_and_river_level_data/rainfall_and_river_level_data.asp

Ed. Australians need help from the world's ecologists! Royal National Park, known to many tourists as the closest to Sydney, is the world's second-oldest National Park and Australia's first. It is also of enormous importance to conservationists and ecologists and contains an impressive range of fauna in rare habitats including coastal rainforest which has often been destroyed by early Australian development elsewhere. It is under threat through selfish and stupid adjacent overdevelopment by the growth-mad New South Wales government. Even Australia's primeminister doesn't want growth now and Sydney's expansion must be stopped. Royal National Park is of world class historic and ecological significance and it is incomprehensible and alarming that the NSW Government is allowing development to encroach.

From Greg Petty, Public Officer of the Otford Protection Society Incorporated

Wikipedia entry

Illawarra Escarpment and proposed rezoning by Wollongong City Council

Many of us here in Otford, Helensburgh, Stanwell Park and Stanwell Tops have been campaigning for years to protect this beautiful and sensitive region, and always too with the backing of groups such as the National Parks Association and the Total Environment Centre.

This land is adjacent to “Royal National Park”, Australia’s first and the worlds 2nd oldest National Park, and now being lobbied for World heritage listing, plus source of the (Class P “Pristine”) Hacking River Catchment.

Public clearly against adjacent development

We achieved 3,447 submissions last year during the exhibition period of the Wollongong DLEP and proposed rezoning of 7D land, but the 'fight' still continues, and WCC have asked for further submissions in particular specific to the different precincts of 2508.

To speed and ease requests to conserve the green belt of the escarpment to the Royal National Park and say No to overdevelopment, we have compiled a number of e-forms. Responders have a choice of general letters, a letter to 'save' the Symbio Wildlife Park precinct, the crucial Otford precinct (remaining habit corridor between Bald Hill and the Royal National Park) and an e-form for the submitter to cut 'n' paste selected key points.

If able can I please ask you to email the link/s to submissions, to your members? Please feel free to send onto ALL your “Contact List” or your local club, community group, etc. Kindly remove the previous “SEND TO” information first, the FWD in the Subject box and put your name and suburb below. Submissions close July 17, 2010 but may be extended – link will be automatically removed when submissions eventually close.

http://www.otfordeco.com/submission.php

Or for more information and photographs, and links to more e-submissions Otford Protection website http://www.otfordeco.com.au WCC's deadline for submissions is July 17, 2010

Signed by

Greg Petty - Public Officer

Otford Protection Society Incorporated

Helensburgh NSW 2508

AUSTRALIA

Phone (0407) 473 889

Follow us on Twitter - Save SYMBIO WILDLIFE PARK and ROYAL NATIONAL PARK from encroaching developers Plz e-sign

PS To find out more about this beautiful part of Helensburgh & Otford, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, Click Here

Source of illustration.

Grandiose fantasies

Grandiose fantasies about filling up a continent to create a great and powerful nation are not exclusive to Australia. Demographic hubris is alive and well in Canada too, and even now, after the loss of 20% of our best farmland to development, with more than a thousand species at risk and an immigrant population that has, over the last two decades, generated four times as much GHG emissions as the Albert Tar Sands megaproject, there are people who believe in a Big Canada concept. Irving Studin of the University of Toronto is one of them.

Five Canadians Respond to Irvin Studin’s Proposal for a Big Canada

(Sources:) http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/todays-paper/Canada+should+100M+population+essay+says/3147990/story.html and http://www.ottawacitizen.com/technology/Challenges+100M+populace+overwhelming/3163659/story.html

"Challenges of 100M populace overwhelming," The Ottawa Citizen, June 17, 2010

REPLIES:

Re: Canada should aim for 100M in population, June 13.

Irvin Studin's vision of Canada with a population of 100 million stirs the imagination in terms of our increasing our capacity for playing a role of importance on the world stage. Unfortunately, however, what might have been possible in Wilfrid Laurier's time a century ago is no longer realistic today.

For one thing, the ecological footprint of individual Canadians is much larger now and the environmental impact of such a massive increase in population would be overwhelming.

In terms of current immigration policies, it could also be extremely costly for Canadian taxpayers -- particularly because of our generous system of social programs that did not exist 100 years ago. It is estimated that the benefits newcomers now receive already amount to tens of billions of dollars a year more than what they pay in taxes.

A third and particularly challenging problem would be the integration into Canadian society of huge numbers of people from very different cultural backgrounds. With the connections they can now maintain with their former homelands through satellite TV, the Internet, inexpensive overseas travel, etc., assimilation of large concentrations of newcomers is increasingly problematic even today.

Nor would there be significant advantages in terms of economies of scale as a result of domestic population increases since we are now very much part of a global trading community.

Cities such as Toronto and Vancouver are already struggling to cope with rapidly increasing populations due to international migration and will hardly welcome the prospect of dealing with even faster growth.

Martin Collacott,
Vancouver
Collacott is a former Canadian ambassador.

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/technology/Challenges+100M+populace+overwhelming/3163659/story.html#ixzz0rAvfb7qa
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Saucy double entendre

While the saucy double entendre query of whether "size matters" may produce snickers from those in that frame of mind, the proposition that Canada's population should be encouraged through immigration to grow to 100 million is no laughing matter. "Size" does matter. And the consequences are profoundly far-reaching and important.

With a global population of 6.8 billion today and over 9 billion expected by 2050, what the planet - and that includes Canada, Mr Studin - does not need is more people; quite the reverse. Relentlessly expanding human numbers place ever more demands on the earth, leading to deforestation, biodiversity loss, soil exhaustion, vanishing fisheries, and increases in
greenhouse gas emissions. Typically, conflicts that dominate media headlines are caused and/or exacerbated by these and other associated resource scarcities. Today we face unprecedented global challenges including food and water shortages, a looming energy crisis and climate change, all driven by ever-expanding population increases. In Canada environmental degradation is a sad, growing fact of life. Prime farm land is being gobbled up, traffic congestion is worsening as our cities expand, and with urban sprawl air quality is deteriorating.

"Size" does matter, Mr Studin, and what we don't need is more and more people. If anything, we need fewer, since fewer translates into fewer problems, greater social justice, a better standard of living for everyone.

Look at Sweden, envied by many for its quality of life and for its outstanding role on the world stage, whether as peace keepers, aid givers (leagues ahead of Canada) and, with a population much smaller than our own, a voice in international fora that is listened to and respected as Canada's once was. Sweden's environmental record puts ours to shame. It's not
population "size" that gives Sweden its clout, any more than it is Bangladesh's 130 million that accounts for its more modest standing on the world stage. What enables Sweden to "punch above its weight" internationally is explained by factors of quality not quantity. It is those very qualities that Mr Studin and the rest of us should be addressing and not the simplistic, fallacious notion that a larger Canada would somehow automatically become a better, more influential Canada.

Clifford Garrard
VP, Population Institute of Canada
Ottawa

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Dear Letters Editor,

RE: Canada should aim for 100M in population, essay says, June 13

The degree to which Irvin Studin is divorced from environmental realities is breathtaking, even for an economist. If most of Canada’s vast territory were habitable, people would already be living there.
Yet satellite images of the world at night shows that most of Canada is as dark as Antarctica— because much of it is about as habitable as Antarctica. Trying to put large numbers of people into such an environment would require tremendous expenditures of energy (transport of food, heating of homes etc) and result in a concomitant increase in our greenhouse gas production.

Most newcomers to Canada settle in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal, and only a handful settle outside the 12 largest urban centres. Our large cities are already bursting at the seams with increasing congestion and smog and ever more stressed infrastructure, and have trouble dealing with their own wastes. Only about 5% of Canada’s land surface is classified as dependable agricultural land. Due to the massive population increases of recent decades, urban uses now cover
14,300 square km of dependable agricultural land. How smart is it to destroy one’s own food security?

There have been at least three reports that specifically looked at population growth in Canada from an environmental perspective (Science Council of Canada Report No. 25 in 1976; a now declassified confidential report to the Privy Council in 1991 called The environment: marriage between earth and mankind; the Healey report of
1997 on the ecosystems of the Fraser River). All documented the stress that population growth is putting on Canada’s agricultural land and ecosystems. The collapse of the cod fishery and the recent spectacularly poor run of salmon in the Fraser River support their conclusions.

In terms of consumption of resources, greenhouse gas production, and stress on agricultural land and ecosystems, Canada is already overpopulated.

Sincerely,

Madeline Weld President, Population Institute of Canada
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Dear Letters Editor,

Re: Ian MacLeod - aim for 100 million

"At 100 million, this is among the most powerful and important countries in the world. And the world will takenotice." Phrased another way, "the sun never sets on the British Empire" or "the beginning of a 1000 yearReich".

Given the environmental and economic issues looming in this century, it is doubtful the world will take positivenotice of Canada's continuing on its current path of being the worst performer in carbon emissions of theKyoto 58 signatories save Saudi Arabia. Nor will our second worst per capita income growth in the developedworld over the past 4 decades draw much applause.

We are already taking ridicule from all sides for our worst-in-the-developed-world environmental performance andwe get singled out regularly on our poverty and productivity levels. Both of these failures are driven primarily byour policy of mass immigration, again, the highest in the world over the past 40 years.

In this century, the world will be looking to countries of whatever size which can deliver solutions notjingoistic slogans and fantasies of empire from a bygone era.

Yours truly, John Meyer

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How to make Canada "Big"

Letters editor, Ottawa Citizen

So Irvin Studin believes that by becoming a nation of 100 million people through immigration, Canada would becomea big player on the world stage. (Citizen June 13/2010)
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/todays-paper/Canada+should+100M+population+essay+says/3147990/story.html

Presently some 80 per cent of New Canadians lack the skills necessary to earn an income high enough to pay enoughtaxes to reimburse government for the services they consume. In fact, Professor Herb Grubel of Simon FraserUniversity estimated that by 2002 the cohort of immigrants who came in 1990 were imposing a staggering netcost of $18 billion a year. No doubt that figure would be much higher today.

Here's a thought. Rather than importing this fiscal burden, we take the 18 plus billion dollars that would havespent on immigration, and deploy it instead to development aid in developing countries made conditional onfamily planning. In that way we could help people where they are helped best---at home where they live, andthereby alleviate the conditions that motivate them to leave----the competition for land, water, food and otherresources made scarce by overpopulation. Imagine what clout and status such a policy would bring to Canada.Not only would we meet the UN target of spending 0.7 per cent of our GDP on foreign aid, we over-achieve itby leaps and bounds and set an example for the rest of the world. And by doing so, we would also provide neededrespite to our prime farmland and endangered species habitat that have been bulldozed at an alarming rate tobuild housing for our runaway immigrant-driven population growth--- already the highest of G8 countries. A win-win proposition all around.

Forget the demographic ego-trip, Mr Studin. That is how to make Canada big and influential.

Tim Murray VP Biodiversity First

For those who follow the stock exchange, building materials share values are the key to the boom and bust cycle of Australian (and similar systems) property, infrastructure and construction booms. When building materials values go down we know that overall market demand decline has settled in. It means that the developers and engineers have reduced their forward orders for bricks and mortar. At the same time Australian state governments have been told to reduce their own little-known immigrant-sponsorship programs.

ALP Investments

Are business forecasts another key to Julia Gillard's apparent sea-change in population policy and Rudd's disappearance?
The ALP doesn't rely on mere donations from developers; it has its own huge investments in finance, insurance, mining, development and property, which act as a barometer for the benefits of growth. Could ALP investments and other big business now be warning the Labor Government that construction will no longer be able to soak up immigrants? Sure, pumping up population pumps up demand, but only if there is money to invest. Problem is that the money seems to be drying up.

Boral pulling up sticks

Building materials giant, Boral, long a veteran investor in Australian population growth and an early vocal member of the 20th century Australian population growth lobby, is downsizing some of its Australian and US operations and heading north, presumably scavenging the last inertias of scale in the post-colonial malignant growth of China, India and South East Asian regions.[1]

The Australian Financial Review reported that Boral made a $49 million loss before interest and taxation in the first half of 2010.[1]

The most tasteless era of ostentatious spending on multi-management layers wining and dining big projects and buyers since the one preceding the Great Depression may be on its last legs. The US housing market has gone phutt. The Australian market will follow.

And Boral shares, running at around $10 in 2006, are now about half that.

"Deutsche Bank believes that although Boral's Australian construction materials arm has been one of its strongest-performing divisions, with earnings before interest and taxation up 12 per cent to $107 million in the first half, it could easily cut some $14 million in costs by eliminating several layers of management." [1]

This will be a relief for less exalted workers and managers in the sector. Survival is possible in such industries if they follow the post 1970s oil-shock European model of maintaining infrastructure and housing stock instead of investing in population and construction growth. However, there won't be room for wedding-cake management tiers.

States told to cut their 'secret' immigration programs

Another sign of terminal decline in bricks and mortar bubbles is the new Federal Government's request to the states to cut back their semi-secret immigration programs, including the 176 visas.[2] The states control land and derive income from its sale, notably through stamp duty. To generate land and housing sales they have been engineering population growth, in tandem with property developers and financiers. The associated state-sponsored immigration programs seem to have started in Victoria and are the most excessive there. Introduced by the Kennett government, one of their ploys was to make a low profile category of 'regional immigration' (once designed to assist low-population rural areas by facilitating skilled immigration and loosening definitions of family reunion) into one that applied everywhere, designating dense urban areas as in need of immigration. Long and short-term immigration in numbers previously unimagined has generated a demand for housing and jobs in construction. The same immigration probably supplies many of those non-English speaking construction-workers one sees moving like ants on roadways and tragically moon-scaped once green patches in Australian suburbs, carrying out orders at which most locals would bawk, if in control of the process.

State government spokespeople, including growth-corridor spruikers, have repeatedly claimed that immigration numbers were outside of their control, yet the states advertised aggressively for immigrants. See these articles, for instance: "Premier Bligh pretends Queenslanders cannot cap population growth although 60% want to" and "Melbourne 2008, Life in a destruction zone" and "Julianne Bell delivers resolutions to Planning Minister Madden in late impromptu meeting."

Yet the State Premiers continue to try to mislead the public on this, even subsequent to Gillard's new policies:

"We can't control who comes over our state borders, but the federal government can control who comes into Australia," (Anna Bligh) [3]

Tragically and wastefully the tendency of state governments to deny reality may see green wedges rezoned and destroyed even at this stage of construction detumescence by parliamentary rogues. See for instance, http://candobetter.org/node/2058 and http://candobetter.org/node/2067 Yet it may all be for nothing; those wedges might be sold at a financial loss in the end.

Women in power

We may gauge the panic of big business to the idea of a real debate on population through its mainstream media mouthpieces' hopeful perseveration with tying that rusty and irrelevant old racist can to the idea of sustainable population and Julia Gillard, reflected for instance, in this glowing chestnut where Gillard's red hair provides a cliched motif:

"Who can forget the last redhead to talk tough on immigration and protecting Australian values?

and "This isn't just about talking to voters in western Sydney but also in Queensland, which gave rise to Hansonism. Maintaining seats there is shaping as a major challenge in the federal election."[4]

The comments above evoke the medieval European stigmatisation of red-heads, not to mention witch-hunting. Starting with the new Primeminister, women in Australia may be in for an interesting time as the boys start fighting over the scraps, in the property sector and government.

Notes

[1] Jeremy Wiggins, "Boral set to offload dead wood," Australian Financial Review, 28 June, 2010, page 1.
[2] Sophie Morris, "States' visas blunt skills thrust: Migration," Australian Financial Review, 28 June, 2010, page 8.
[3] Marcus Priest, "Values, being sustainable are the keys: Population,"Australian Financial Review, 28 June, 2010, page 8.
[4]Marcus Priest, "Lurching to the right on boat people: Comment," Australian Financial Review, page 8.

The Zero Carbon Australia 2020 Stationary Energy Plan by Beyond Zero Emissions outlines a technically feasible and economically attractive way for Australia to transition to 100% renewable energy within ten years. The Zero Carbon Australia report provides a detailed blueprint for transitioning Australia’s stationary energy sector to 100% renewable energy sources by 2020.

The ZCA2020 Plan shows that with a combination of energy efficiency, fuel-switching from gas and oil to electrified energy services, then using a combination of commercially available renewable energy technologies, Australia's energy needs can be met with 100% renewables.

The required investment is the equivalent of a stimulus to the economy of 3% of GDP or $370 billion.

The project involved a team of engineers, scientists, researchers and others — including engineers from the existing fossil fuel energy sector —contributing thousands of hours of pro bono work to put together a detailed roadmap of the steps necessary to replace our coal and gas infrastructure with renewable energy.

The plan details a rollout of large solar thermal plants at 12 proposed sites across the country to supply 60 per cent of Australia's power, with the other 40 per cent being supplied by wind.

According to the Plan, to avoid the threat of a “tipping point”, such as the decline in Arctic ice, triggered by excessive temperatures we need to reduce atmospheric CO2 from the present level of 390 ppm to well below 350 ppm‚ significantly closer to pre-industrial concentrations of 285 ppm .

The aim of the Project as a whole is to outline how each sector of the Australian economy can achieve zero or negative greenhouse emissions: in Stationary Energy, Transport, Buildings, Industrial Processes, and Land Use. This Stationary Energy Report is the first of the installments.

To make an immediate transition, we can use only the solutions that are available to us today. Should new zero-emissions technologies become viable, cost-competitive and available in the lifetime of the Plan, their inclusion may reduce costs and increase benefits even further.

To meet the 40% extra electricity demand by 2020, a combination of wind and solar thermal with storage are proposed as the primary electricity generation technologies. The ZCA2020 Plan calls for energy efficiency measures to progressively reduce electricity used for current services.

Examples of how this can be done include efficient appliances, improved building design, retrofitting insulation, double and triple-glazing, as well as improved industrial efficiency .

The chosen renewable energy technologies are a mix of wind turbines, concentrating solar thermal with storage, small-scale solar, and backup capacity from biomass and existing hydroelectricity:

Wind Turbines: Wind generation is a key component because of its relatively low cost and industry maturity. Wind is proposed to meet 40% of the total grid-connected demand.

Concentrating Solar Thermal (CST): Large scale Concentrating Solar Thermal with molten salt storage offers reliable electricity 24 hours per day. Solar power towers are proposed because of their technological maturity, higher operating temperatures and efficiency compared to other technologies. CST is proposed to meet 60% of the total grid-connected demand.

Small scale solar: Small scale solar photovoltaic (PV) power has a role in reducing the demand for grid electricity during sunlight hours. This in turn allows the CST plants to accumulate more stored energy for release at night.

Hydroelectric generators: existing hydroelectric generators have a useful role providing first-dispatch backup and peaking power.

Biomas backup: backup from crop-residual CST plants offers energy security, protecting against occasions when a combination of low wind daily solar radiation occurs.

Plants will be located at sites around Australia that are selected for their wind availability, solar incidence, economy of scale, transmission costs, technical efficency, and geographical diversity.

The plan has received support by a variety of academics and scientists. Associate Professor Keith Lovegrove, Leader Solar Thermal Group at the Australian National University said ”The ZCA report analyses one particular scenario of renewable energy technology choice based on available solutions, in considerable depth. It successfully shows in detail that 100% renewable energy is both technically possible and economically affordable”.

The plan would create up to 80,000 jobs from installation of renewable energy generation at the peak of construction, and over 45,000 jobs in operations and maintenance that will continue for the life of the plant. Such a scheme would also generate up to 30,000 jobs in manufacturing wind turbines and heliostats.

Ironically, Trade Minister Simon Crean recently signed an export deal between Melbourne-based Environmental “Clean” Technologies and Vietnamese company TinCom. From 2014, the Victorian company expects to export 2 million tonnes of dried brown coal a year to burn in Vietnamese power stations, eventually rising to 20 million tonnes a year. Greens climate change spokeswoman Christine Milne said the federal government could not be serious about reducing emissions if was willing to open up a massive polluting export industry. It's no use talking about a carbon price in Australia if at the same time you are going to rev-up coal exports to other parts of the world to make climate change worse.

Why does it take volunteers from a non-government organisation to come up with such a sustainable solution to our energy needs that avoids our addiction to fossil fuels?

FREE PUBLIC LECTURE - The Future of Renewable Energy in Australia
When,
Wednesday 14th July,
6pm – 8pm
Where,
Basement Theatre,
The Spot,
198 Berkeley Street
University of Melbourne

Download the full report

Chapter 4: Carr’s ‘regeneration’ sowed factional vengeance

4.1 Carr’s leadership ethos

NSW Premier Bob Carr has been described by political lecturer Shelly Savage as ‘urbane, literate or, most commonly, bookish’.¹
Eastern Suburbs Sydney born and raised, Carr graduated with honours in History (UNSW), then became a skilled journalist and reporter with a keen focus on politics, before he won the NSW Labor 'Eastern Suburbs' Seat of Maroubra in 1983 at age 36. Aligning himself with Labor Right faction, he was quick to assume ministerial portfolios in Planning, Environment, Consumer Affairs and Heritage before Labor lost power in NSW. Carr aspired to foreign affairs but was pressured by his own Right faction to become Labor Opposition Leader.² It was however, Carr’s twelve years in the rough and tumble as Opposition Leader that would shape his ten year Premiership from 1995.

A devotee of 19th Century US President Abraham Lincoln, whether coincidentally or otherwise; Carr in some ways emulated Lincoln’s scholarly charisma, his authoritative determined persona, his passion for reading and learning, his power of oratory, and coincidentally his physical likeness.

16th US President Abraham Lincoln [1809–1865]

Like Lincoln, Carr conducted himself as a statesman and felt he had a moral contract with the ordinary citizen.

Carr claims he was a ‘reluctant leader’³, originally seeking a career in foreign diplomacy. But career opportunities sometimes are life’s fate, and once he had resolve to lead the NSW Labor Party he managed to remain popular with the electorate for three and a half four year terms and eventually to choose the timing of his departure. In contrast, Lincoln had been a born leader and lived through a tumultuous time of civil war in another era, in another country. Lincoln’ personal and political life became a perpetual struggle against successive failures.⁴ Lincoln’s ideological commitment to emancipation alienated many. Southerners hated Lincoln for his contribution to the Civil War casualties and ending slavery and many Northerners hated Lincoln for being too soft on the South, and tragically in 1865 Lincoln did not chose is departure.

But where Lincoln had been a visionary reformer, passionately committed to individual human rights and to the principles of democracy, liberty, and equality⁵; Carr was politically pragmatic, a popularist but hypersensitive to public opinion about his self image and reputation.

Philosophically distinct from Lincoln, Carr believed that politics was never solely about the ‘cause’ or the ‘movement’ understood as an abstract or ultimate value.
According to political analyst Tim Soutphommasane, Carr was not driven by a radical reformist agenda. ‘He was no ideologue in office, nor did he claim to be. ‘Ethos is more important than ideology’; meaning that the ends can justify the means so long as political power is exercised appropriately and consistent with one’s philosophical tradition.⁶

Soutphommasane suggests that Carr’s leadership ethos was premised on a stoic ethics philosophy, specifically in the tradition of the Meditations of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. It posits accepting and working with nature and life’s events rather than presuming power entitles one to control nature and shape events. Rational thought and detached decision making in the Marcus Aurelius tradition is good a guide to practical politics to avoid the risks of emotive decision making. Adhering to a stoic discipline was for Carr the vital ethos of a wise statesman.

But in the execution of Premiership, Soutphommasane suggests that Carr was inspired by the approaches of NSW former Labor Premiers William McKell (1941–47) and Neville Wran (1976-86) - deliberately one of moderate change management at a pace modelled on ‘gradual reform and compromise’. Hard-line radical reform was rejected as problematic risk-taking attracting unnecessary confrontation, turbulence and bellicosity.⁷ That both McKell and Wran had in their own ways contributed significantly to environmental conservation for their time, probably also contributed to their historic influence upon Carr.

The well-read Carr learnt from history and from his historic heroes and applied his own unique blended leadership style to his premiership. Trained as a journalist, Carr held a strong personal interest and focus on media communications and so maintained a close connectivity with the ordinary citizen. He recognized the pitfalls of emotive politics and safely adhered to his stoic ethos. Adept at persuasive media oratory he projected a bold Lincoln statesman-like aura, while behind the scenes Carr successfully executed a moderate pace of reform which saw him achieve three straight terms in office.

A main criticism of Carr’s leadership have been that his stoic bookish persona was misread by the media as being aloof, disinterested and even arrogant. Former NSW Auditor, Tony Harris, noted in the lead up to the 2000 Olympics⁸:

“Thanks to a strong economy and the Olympics, the NSW Opposition is likely to remain irrelevant while Bob Carr is Premier. But his arrogance is beginning to wear thin, even with supporters.”

..and on Carr’s gratuitous performance in Parliament:

“Carr's answer had all the ingredients expected of a politician confident and assured in his position. Indifference served with scorn accompanied by disdain.”

Carr’s compromises were criticised by those with political ideologies from all quarters. Carr’s media pronouncements were repeatedly inconsistent with the Carr Government’s policy and decisions. Carr was harshly criticised for moral relativism and political appeasement of key voter groups. Many of his decisions were made relative to the mood of the people at the time, rather on the basis of a conviction to principle. In other words the ends could justify the means if the means involved pragmatic compromises.

Carr professed his ‘green’ credentials calling for global action to curb greenhouse emissions, yet broke his 'ban on woodchipping' promise by implementing Regional Forest Agreements to permit logging of old-growth forests and refusing to rule out building new coal-fired power stations in NSW. On the latter, Carr had argued:

"It's irresponsible to says that we can close out coal-fired power stations overnight, we can't, the whole state would come to a halt…we are going to explore all the alternatives we've got. That's why we're bringing out a new green paper." ⁹

But is compromise the task of a political leader and what is the alternative? Professor Mary Kalantzis said in her centenary Barton lecture that Federation was built on peaceful compromise rather than bloody revolution, and on an accommodation between working and former ruling classes.¹⁰

Carr was also criticised for his abuse of taxpayer funds to allow his government engage in excessive media propaganda, especially in election campaigns. David Penberthy in The Daily Telegraph in 2000 observed,

"Bob Carr’s media machine is spinning out of control with taxpayers now forking out $1 million a year so the Government can manage the news on transport and law and order."¹¹

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4.2 Ministers embarrassing Carr’s leadership

For a populist politician, Carr felt a personal necessity to be popular with the people and to ensure this be reflected in the media. Poor performance and public embarrassments by government departments and by his ministers reflected badly on Carr’s leadership credibility in the media and therefore with the ordinary citizen. This cut into Carr’s core integrity values.

Two years before the March 2003 election, Carr’s Education and Training minister, John Aquilina, in 2001 was accused of making false statements to the media and of political interference in police procedures.

John Aquilina MP

Investigation by the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) found no evidence of corrupt conduct. Having embarrassed the Carr Government, Aquilina was labelled a ‘poor performer’ and relinquished the portfolio in late 2001. He was down-shifted to the portfolios Land and Water Conservation, and Fair Trading.¹²

Also in 2001, NSW police had been discovered giving crooks a free run in return for drug money and there was systemic policing problems in the ‘crime crisis’ in the Sydney suburb of Cabramatta. Constant howls of outrage led by Sydney Radio 2GB's Alan Jones damaged the Government's credibility which again embarrassed Carr.¹³

Radio 2GB broadcaster Alan Jones

Jones had become an influential morning radio announcer on the Sydney airwaves and Bob Carr, a former journalist, was ever aware of Jones’ influence on the public opinion of Carr and the Government.

Police Commission Ryan was held accountable and Carr publicly rebuked his Police Minister, Paul Whelan, accusing him of ‘taking his eye off the ball’. Whelan subsequently ‘resigned’ the Ministry and indeed then stood down from the seat of Strathfield.¹⁴

Carr, reacting to media pressure over the previous two years on both education and law and order, relied on his political regeneration argument that it is:

‘always a good thing in my view to replenish the leadership personnel in the middle of a term.’¹⁵

In late 2001, Carr replaced Whelan with ‘rookie’ Michael Costa in the Police Ministry and Aquilina was replaced by John Watkins in Education.

John Watkins MP

Right heavyweight Richard Amery was moved from Agriculture to Corrective Services portfolio and junior minister, Morris Lemma, had Sport and Recreation to his workload.¹⁶ Costa had come from obscurity to prominence with the support of Alan Jones, dating back to a charity dinner in April 2001 for the Neurological Institute for Schizophrenia and Allied Disorders (NISAD).

Michael Costa MP

Costa had been in Parliament for only 17 days when Carr chose him to replace Paul Whelan in the police ministry.¹⁷ Carr was asserting his authority but he was also reactive to bad publicity led by the media influence of Alan Jones. By April 2002, Costa had removed Police Commissioner Ryan¹⁸ and in doing so set a poor precedent of undermining the independence of the public service from the government of the day.

During 2002, the NSW Department of Community Services (DOCS) had been exposed in repeated controversy over maladministration of child protection, contributing to several tragic cases of child abuse. It too embarrassed the Carr Government.

Carr reacted to the media criticism by removing DOCS head, Carmel Niland, and shuffling Minister Fay Lo Po to the backbench. Carr replaced Lo Po with the younger Juvenile Justice Minister, Carmel Tebitt, again applying his government regeneration argument.

Carr is quoted as saying:

“It is always good in Government to freshen up with personnel, and just as Michael Costa and John Watkins have made a big difference by bringing new ideas and new approaches to education and police. So I think a young woman, Carmel Tebitt, will represent generational change in the Government as well. Useful generational change.” ¹⁹

In 2002, Carr’s Gaming and Racing Minister since 1995, Richard Face, was also set to be put out to pasture. A subsequent ICAC fine against him in 2004 revealed that Face had been under stress and depressed at the time of the 2003 election.²⁰

In the lead up to the March 2003 election, Carr’s Minister for Fisheries and for Mineral Resources Edward (Eddie) Obeid MLC was the subject of controversy associated with what became known as the Oasis Affair²¹ , however, prompt investigation by the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) found ‘no evidence that any donation was made to the ALP in relation to the project’ and…that ‘no findings were made that Mr Obeid ever solicited such a donation’.²²

NSW Labor had gone into the March 2003 election as the incumbent government of two four year terms, ‘popular, cashed up and running on a track record of sound economic management’.⁴⁰ Carr’s personal popularity had polled a 57% approval rating.

NSW Labor’s emphatic electoral win ‘was very much built around the presence of Bob Carr as leader.’⁴¹ The victory was reportedly mainly attributed Carr’s personal popularity in the electorate. But then Labor’s $10.7 million election advertising campaign had well exceeded that of the Coalition and the general indeed public mood was that the Coalition leader, John Brodgen, was considered too young, inexperienced and unknown to contend the Premiership.

John Brogden MP

External factors were also at the time pre-occupying the NSW media- most notably the US war in Iraq, unfolding on nightly television screens.

Yet, NSW Labor’s win firmly entublicly denounced as a "demon" and a "mongrel bureaucrat" by radio announcer Alan Jones.²⁷

Carl Scully MP

Scully himself eventually became the target of the Opposition and the media and so a weak point in Carr’s political armour.²⁸ When Scully on 17th March 2003 (days before the election) released the Government's transport policy without public support of the Premier Bob Carr, it was read in the media and Opposition that Scully had become a liability for Mr Carr's campaign and would be stripped of the Transport portfolio after the poll.²⁹ Scully’s embarrassment of the Carr Government would later contribute to Scully’s failed bid to succeed Carr. A week after the election, Carr handed Costa Transport and a week hence Deegan was ‘removed privately’ on the basis that Costa had “decided to restructure transport and Deegan was simply surplus to requirements”.³⁰

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4.3 Carr purges public service failings

In 1995 when Carr had entered his Premiership, he had inherited the Greiner Liberal Government’s fixed-term contract system of the public service, adopting the United States model. The Public Service Board had been abolished some years prior in 1989. The combined result was that senior departmental executives had become more accountable to ministers for their performance. The authority to appoint and terminate chief executive officers now rested with ministers, so ministers now held greater influence down the chain of command. On the other side of the coin, the independence of the public service from government of the day was seen to be undermined.

As journalist Quentin Dempster noted that by 2003 after eight years of incumbency, Carr had promoted ‘a cult of personality around him, something of a Medici court has developed with its own backbiting, rivalry and competition for access and inside influence...the days of “frank and fearless” independent advice to government were over’.³¹ Public-sector management in NSW had become politicized. If a minister was not comfortable with the department or agency head, that head could roll.

After police deputy commissioner Jeff Jarratt was sacked in September 2001³² while Paul Whelan was Carr’s Police Commissioner, Jarratt successfully won a High Court ruling that his summary dismissal had been unlawful, The Chief Justice, Murray Gleeson, had said the notion of public servants holding office only at the pleasure of the Crown was "difficult to reconcile with modern concepts of government employment and accountability".³³ But Carr immediately amended the Public Sector Employment and Management Act to allow executives to be removed at any time without reason, regardless of performance-appraisal procedures. This measure was described as “Bob Carr’s off-with-their-heads clause”.³⁴

As soon as Carr appointed Michael Costa as Transport Minister on 2nd April 2003, three senior bureaucrats were purged. Michael Deegan, Director-General of the Transport Department and Coordinator-General of Rail was sacked and with Costa’s announced restructure, Howard Lacy, Chief Executive of State Rail and John Cowling of the Rail Infrastructure Corporation were out.³⁵ They had embarrassed the Carr Government over issues of public transport safety and were seen as scapegoats of the failings of Carr’s previous Transport Minister Carl Scully, but Scully was moved sideways into the Housing portfolio.

As soon as Carr expanded John Della Bosca’s ministerial portfolio to Della Bosca's ministerial responsibilities to include Commerce, Finance, Industrial Relations, Ageing and Disability Services, Director-General of Public Works and Services, and Chair of the Australian Procurement and Construction Ministerial Council, Dick Persson, was out.

By November 2005, Labor’s public service purging was rampant as Crikey³⁶ then list of senior scalps reveals:

• Mal Hemmerling: sacked as CEO of SOCOG by Michael Knight in 1997.

• Ken Baxter: Bob Carr hired Jeff Kennett’s top bureaucrat when he won office in 1995 but then fired his departmental secretary in 1997.

• Energy Australia Board: Treasurer Michael Egan sacked all six board members of what was then Australia’s biggest electricity distributor in November 1997 but never really gave an adequate explanation.

• Helen Bauer: sacked in 1998 after just 15 months as head of the difficult Department of Community Services.

• Major General Horrie Howard: Director General State Emergency Service. “Retired” not long after the April 1999 hailstorms debacle but was given a couple of board positions.

• Kaye Loder: sacked by Bob Carr as chairwoman of the NSW Casino Control Authority in April 2000 after making comments on Four Corners suggesting she would prefer drug money went through the Sydney casino rather than interstate.

• Ron Bruce: sacked from his State Rail position in charge of the Tangara train project a few days after the Waterfall inquiry.

• Grahame Bush: stood down as chairman of the South Western Sydney Area Health Service over the Camden and Campbelltown hospital scandals.

• Jennifer Collins: sacked as general manager of the Camden and Campbelltown Hospitals but since exonerated by ICAC and now running an unfair dismissal action.

• Paul Forward: quit as CEO of the Roads and Traffic Authority last week after what Roads Minister Joe Tripodi called “a grave mistake” in not disclosing full details of the financial liabilities for taxpayers in the Cross City Tunnel contract.

• Robyn Henderson: sacked as head of the Deparment of Women whilst on holidays in Portugal.

• Howard Lacy: terminated as CEO of State Rail when Michael Costa became Transport Minister in 2003.

• Jan McClelland: sacked from the Department of Education and Training following Andrew Refshauge’s move from Planning.

• Jock Murray: sacked as director general of Transport under Carl Scully.

• Arthur Smith: former deputy CEO of State Rail was sacked a few days after the Waterfall inquiry.

• Bob Smith: Director general of the Department of Land & Water Conservation (DLWC) from 1995-96 and at the same time DG NSW State Forests, removed by then Minister in 2003 when department merged with Planning and there were some timber supply issues.

• Alex Walker: departed as CEO of Sydney Water in 2003. The Opposition claimed at the time he was “made to carry the can for the board and the government’s incompetence”.

• Ian Southwell: sacked as CEO of the South Western Sydney Area Health Service over the Camden and Campbelltown hospital scandals

• Brain Steffen: sacked as Director-General of the NSW Ministry of Energy and Utilities in February 2004 by Frank Sartor.

• Amanda Adrian: sacked as Health Care Complaints Commission by Health Minister Morris Iemma in 2004 after the inquiry into the Camben and Campbelltown hospitals.

and…

• Michael Deegan - DG, Dept of Transport

• Sue Holliday - DG, Dept of Planning

• Simon Lane - CEO, State Rail

• Dick Persson - DG, Public Works

• John Wynn - Owens Ex Director General, Health

• John Rogan - Ex Deputy Director General, Department of Transport

• John Brew Ex - Chief Executive, State Rail Authority ( before Simon Lane)

• John Stott - Ex Chief Executive, State Transit Authority

• Judi Stack - Ex Chief Executive, Rail Access Corporation

• Terry Ogg - Ex Director General, Rail Services Authority

• Paul Crombie - Ex Director General, Tourism

• Tony Thirlwell - Ex Director General, Tourism ( Crombie’s successor)

• Carol Davis - Ex Chief Executive, AntiDiscrimination

• Ken Cripps - Ex Deputy Director General, Premiers

• David Field - Ex Chairman of Sydney Ports Corporation

• Jane Diplock - Ex Director General, TAFE ( before Jan McCelland)

• Peter Cunningham - Ex Valuer General

• Gary Stainton - Ex General Manager, Business

• Bob Wilson - Ex General Manager, Sydney Water

• Tony Wright - Ex Deputy General Manager, Sydney Water

• Marianne Hammerton - Ex Director General DADHC

• Jane Wolfe - Ex Deputy Director General, Commerce. ³⁷

Such purging revealed the desperate preparedness of the Carr Government to maintain a façade of accountability with the electorate by using ministerial power to scapegoat senior public service executives, instead of requiring ministers to accept responsibility for administrative failure. The scapegoating became rife and arguably institutionalised “as a tactic for short-term gain in media/public perception.”³⁸

Carr’s personal penchant for journalism and media relations evolved into a hypersensitivity about his public image as Premier and his indirect monitoring of Sydney radio broadcaster Alan Jones is well documented. Carr’s autocratic message became clear throughout his Cabinet and right through the NSW public service - that those causing him public and media embarrassment would suffer the consequences. Carr’s autocratic management of the public service had become capricious.

Former NSW Auditor-General, Dr Louise Chappell, highlighted the systemic problems of Carr’s public service contract system of insecurity at senior levels and that it has encouraged public servants to pre-empt the political agenda of ministers rather than concentrate on strategic policy development.

Chappell critiqued the Carr Government’s public service purging:

“When government gets caught on issues management, it fails to recognise systemic policy problems and is unable to develop sound policy solutions. In such an environment, policy gets dumbed down – it becomes knee-jerk rather than a comprehensive, long-term and co-ordinated response to complex issues.” ³⁹

Carr had become distracted by media image and the immediacy of public relations of issues of the moment, to the detriment of building effective long-term public policy and public infrastructure. But by now was Carr concerned with the long term for NSW or for NSW Labor?

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4.4 Carr’s ‘generational change’ incites the Right Faction

Carr's Cabinet following the 2003 Election win

NSW Labor had gone into the March 2003 election as the incumbent government of two four year terms, ‘popular, cashed up and running on a track record of sound economic management’.⁴⁰ Carr’s personal popularity had polled a 57% approval rating.

NSW Labor’s emphatic electoral win ‘was very much built around the presence of Bob Carr as leader.’⁴¹ The victory was reportedly mainly attributed Carr’s personal popularity in the electorate. But then Labor’s $10.7 million election advertising campaign had well exceeded that of the Coalition and the general indeed public mood was that the Coalition leader, John Brodgen, was considered too young, inexperienced and unknown to contend the Premiership.

John Brogden MP

External factors were also at the time pre-occupying the NSW media- most notably the US war in Iraq, unfolding on nightly television screens.

Yet, NSW Labor’s win firmly entrenched Carr’s leadership and his personal power and this handed Carr a sense of electoral mandate for a third four-year term to basically command, steer and reform the government completely on his own terms. It gave Carr electoral legitimacy to purge the poor performers, to purge particularly those who had embarrassed him in the campaign. Perhaps in Carr’s mind ‘embarrassment’ was not the term he would have used, but more a sense of failure of public service and ministers to live up to the high standards of public office. In any case, Carr as leader had borne the ultimate brunt of the media criticism over many failings of the NSW public service. Over many months of media scrutiny, Car would have felt frustrated that time and again the pubic service was failing the public and that senior bureaucrats were being hauled before the ICAC.

In Carr’s position as leader of the government and perhaps as is his prerogative, Carr felt a civil duty to right wrongs, fix the problems and remove incompetence. Carr identified the bad apples and purged. He also purged those who had dared to question his judgment or leadership. Carr was set to make his own new team and to the media he branded his purge strategy ‘injecting new blood and "generational change" into his cabinet.’⁴²

But perhaps Carr’s justification for the purging and changes were not sold to the Party with the same energy and finesse as Carr had done publicly with the media. Was this a tactical oversight? It is likely the Party read, or misread the purging and changes not as in the noble interests of improving the standard of government, but instead as a self-centred outpouring of Carr’s autocratic scapegoating and his personal antagonism to those unsupportive of his political agenda.

By the 2003 election, Carr had for better or for worse created a divisive corrosive culture in NSW Labor – one was either loyally with Carr or vehemently against him. The problem for Carr was that his many purges and changes were regarded as Carr’s scapegoating and this only fueled the factional numbers against him.

After the 2003 election Carr instigated more organisational reforms. But this was to be nothing new from his previous and indeed ongoing ‘reforms’, largely attributed to bureaucratic departments and ministers embarrassing his credibility with the people of NSW and in turn exploited by influential anti-Labor media personalities. Carr after all had entered the Parliament during Neville Wran’s tenure as part of a process of regeneration. Government regeneration became a convenient argument for Carr to justify reshuffling his government, selecting the people of his choosing, as though a factional warlord in his own Right.

While Carr’s media oratory conveyed a sense of personal loyalty to the ordinary citizen, his decade in Opposition, characterised by battling internal party bickering and leadership manoeuvrings⁴³ , left no love lost between Carr and Labor’s factions. People naturally tend to respond in kind to the way they are treated and factional bullying would not have been forgotten.

Immediately after the 2003 election win, true to form, the factional Right sought to reassert its influence. In the wake of what was regarded as Carr’s autocratic stamp of personal power, Carr’s branded ‘regeneration’, there were murmurings of a revolt against Carr, despite Carr’s personal popularity across the electorate being a key factor in Labor’s win.

The Right sub-faction known as the ‘Troglodytes’⁴⁴ (or 'Trogs' for short) was led by Amery, who had recently embarrassed the Carr Government by poor performance of his Corrective Service portfolio.

Richard Amery MP

Amery was supported by menagerie of disaffected MP's headed up by Obeid and Aquilina of the opposing Right ‘Terrigals’ subfaction, both whom has similarly embarrassed the Carr Government and attracted the ire of Carr.

A few days after the election, the three ‘Trogs’ instigated an internal revolt seeking to raise the numbers to challenge Carr’s leadership. The Trogs commanded 13 of the 19 cabinet positions and sought promotion of upper house, left-wing MLC Ian McDonald to the Cabinet.

Carr cancelled his scheduled trip to the Hunter region and reasserted his authority and immediately dumped Amery, Aquilina and Obeid from their Cabinet portfolios. By 27th March, just four days after the election, Carr had reshuffled his cabinet, effectively crushing the revolt and holding a media conference justifying the move as reasserted his pledge to inject new blood and "generational change" into his cabinet.⁴⁵ Later that day Obeid released a statement confirming that he was standing aside from the frontbench ‘reluctantly’ hopeful of still having a significant role in the Carr Government's third term.⁴⁶

Scully’s embarrassment of Carr’s Government saw him demoted from Transport to Roads and Housing. Carr added Transport to Costa’s super-portfolio and that afternoon Transport director-general, Michael Deegan, who had been the butt of attacks of incompetence from Alan Jones, had been ‘removed privately’. Then went Howard Lacy, Chief Executive of State Rail and John Cowling of the Rail Infrastructure Corporation.⁴⁷ Also ousted in Carr’s purge were Head of Planning NSW, Sue Holliday; the Public Works chief, Dick Person; and Bob Smith, head of the soon to be disbanded Department of Land and Water Conservation and State Forests. ⁴⁸

Craig Knowles was appointed the new Minister for Infrastructure Planning and Natural Resources.

Craig Knowles MP

John Watkins was moved from education to police. Carr’s Deputy Andrew Refshauge moved from planning to education.

Carr’s purging had not only diffused the Right’s revolt, it was hell bent on removing the non-performers and those who had embarrassed the electoral credibility of Carr’s Government. Many functions of government were chopped and changed, further purging of top bureaucrats continued. Of Carr’s original 1995 Cabinet, only six members remained.⁴⁹ One insider likened the election aftermath:

“like there'd been a change of government..all of a sudden everything was up for grabs."⁵⁰

Carr restructured his cabinet with younger ambitious supporters and since there weren’t enough around, Carr created new super-portfolios. Frank Sartor assumed the super portfolio of Energy and Water Utilities, Health (Cancer) and Science and Medical Research. Della Bosca assumed Commerce, Finance, Industrial Relations, Ageing and Disability Services.

'A ruthlessly powerful group of political hardheads now surround Carr – Michael Costa, John Della Bosca, Michael Egan and Craig Knowles, with Labor Party secretary Eric Roozendaal aboard.’⁵¹

Carr described his political tactic as one of conciliation that would become "the template for driving change".⁵² Carr’s reforms of the public service and his cabinet reshuffle have been critised as:

‘more designed to fit ministers’ personalities and power preferences, media agendas than coherence in governance, policy formulation or operational management.’ ⁵³

Clearly, as an act of political survival in the circumstances of internal revolt Carr had had to quickly assert his authority and the most effective way was to purge the power of the protagonists. It must have been quite Shakespearian. At this point, the threat of mutiny had obviously tested Carr’s stoic patience his and McKellian compromising approach to reform. But Carr didn’t stop there. Trust was critical and with the higher probability of personal loyalty to be found in new blood, Carr maintained the momentum of radical change bringing in his new blood before the enemy could regroup.

But in doing so is purging and radical change also would seed angst and division within the Party.

Carr’s purge of departmental heads executed by his new recruits was seen by many factional discontents as political interference in the independence of the NSW public sector and concerns that this interference had been influenced by the media. The rules were changing according to the political players in power.

‘Carr’s ‘reforms’ were considered by many in NSW Labor, both Left and Right as Carr cronyism “the promotion of a cult of personality around him, something of a Medici court has developed with its own backbiting, rivalry and competition for access and inside influence. The independence of department heads from ministers was seen as compromised. If a minister was not ‘comfortable’ with the department or agency head, that head could roll. ‘Ministerial satisfaction’ became the new imperative and the public service was considered to have become politicized.’’ ⁵⁴

Buoyant from a fresh sense of authority from winning the 2003 election, Carr had secured his popularity with the people and commanded what he must have felt as a personal electoral mandate. But Carr’s personal popularity with the people had been achieved at the expense of many in his government. Carr’s purges had made him irreconcilably unpopular within the Labor Party and throughout the government. Loyalty to Carr survived within his small select Cabinet clique of favourites, outside of which Carr’s alienation had sown the seeds of factional vengeance.

[Author’s note: Without being privy to the internal goings on, one can only gleam the reasons for the purge and the vengeance that followed from publicised accounts. Likely more personal issues were critical contributors to Carr acting as radically he did in the aftermath of the March 2003 election. No doubt it was a time of acute power struggle.]



[Next Chapter ] [Previous Chapter ]

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References

[1] Shelly Savage, 29th July 2005, ‘Bob Carr, erudite and urbane?’, http://www.onlineo??, ABC Radio ‘PM’programme, http://www.abc.net.au/pm/stories/s420125.htm
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Carr
[3] Marilyn Dodkin, May 2003, ‘Bob Carr: the Reluctant Leader’(biography), UNSW Press, https://www.unswpress.com.au/isbn/0868407577.htm
[4] http://yourordinaryday.blogspot.com/2009/06/positive-mental-attitude-of-abraham.html#axzz0rFsjUeTs
[5] http://www.nps.gov/liho/historyculture/legacy.htm
[6] Tim Soutphommasane, University of Oxford,19 December 2005, ‘Bob Carr: Ethos was more important than ideology’, Australian Review of Public Affairs, http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2005/12/soutphommasane.html
[7] Tim Soutphommasane, loc. cit.
[8] Tony Harris, Ex NSW Auditor, ‘Clever Carr', Australian Financial Review, p82,
http://www.sydneyalternativemedia.com/id100.html
[9] ABC Online, ‘Carr's green credentials under fire’, Monday, 15th November 2004,
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200411/s1244099.htm
[10] Tony Stephens, 15th December 2001, ‘Mild with Excitement’, Sydney Morning Herald.
[11] David Penberthy, ‘Carr’s out of control spin, Police, transport cost $1 million(a year)’, 17th July 2000, Daily Telegraph, p. 12 http://www.sydneyalternativemedia.com/id100.html
[12] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Aquilina#cite_note-1
[13] http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/08/02/1028157844696.html
[14] Toni Hassen (reporter), Monday 19th November 2001, ‘NSW Labor Party on verge of reshuffle’, ABC Radio ‘PM’programme, http://www.abc.net.au/pm/stories/s420125.htm
[15] Toni Hassen, loc.cit
[16] ABC, ‘New NSW Police Minister vows to make changes’, Wednesday, 21st November 2001, http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200111/s422174.htm
[17] http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/08/02/1028157844696.html
[18] Quentin Dempster, (reporter), 10th April 2002, ‘Ryan quits as NSW top cop’, ABC 7:30 Report programme, http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2002/s528362.htm
[19] Peta Donald (reporter), ‘Carr reshuffle to push DOCS off front page’, ABC Radio ‘PM’ programme, Thursday 11th July 2002, http://www.abc.net.au/pm/stories/s604698.htm
[20] Geesche Jacobsen and Natasha Wallace, 24th December 2004, ‘Career switch saves Face from prison’, Sydney Morning Herald, http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Career-switch-saves-Face-from-prison/2004/12/23/1103391900347.html
[21] John Stewart, ‘NSW Govt tries to escape Oasis controversy’, 30th August 2002, ABC Radio National ‘PM’ programme, http://www.abc.net.au/pm/stories/s663395.htm
[22] NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption, 27th February 2003, ‘Report on investigation into conduct concerning the Woodward Park project’, p.2
[23] http://www.independent-nsw.com/obeid.html
[24] Quentin Dempster, 14th February 2003, ‘The "revolving door" syndrome in our prisons’. ABC TV Stateline programme, http://www.abc.net.au/stateli??, ABC Radio ‘PM’programme, http://www.abc.net.au/pm/stories/s420125.htm
[25] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenbrook_rail_accident
[26] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_rail_accident
[27] http://www.griffithreview.com/edition-3/116-reportage/490.html
[28] Peter van Onselen, School of Politics and International Relations, University of New South Wales, Refereed paper presented to the Australasian Political Studies Association Conference, University of Tasmania, Hobart, 29 September – 1 October 2003, p.1, http://www.utas.edu.au/government/APSA/PvanOnselenNSWelectionfinal.pdf
[29] http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200303/s809299.htm
[30] http://www.griffithreview.com/edition-3/116-reportage/490.html
[31] Quentin Dempster, 2nd February 2005, ‘Media rules in the court of Carr’, Griffith University, http://www.griffithreview.com/images/stories/edition_articles/ed3_pdfs/dempstered3.pdf
[32] Michael Vincent (reporter), ‘Deputy Police Commissioner sacked’, 6th September 2001, ABC Radio ‘AM’ programme, http://www.abc.net.au/am/stories/s359659.htm
[33] Michael Pelly (Legal Reporter), ‘Sacking of deputy chief unfair, says High Court’, 9th September 2005, Sydney Moring Herald, http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/sacking-of-deputy-chief-unfair-says-high-court/2005/09/08/1125772641079.html?from=moreStories
[34] Quentin Dempster, 2nd February 2005, loc. cit.
[35] Quentin Dempster, ‘The Alan Jones factor?’, 11th April 2003, ABC ‘Stateline NSW’ programme, http://www.abc.net.au/stateline/nsw/content/2003/s829811.htm
[36] Stephen Mayne, ‘The huge list of fired NSW bureaucrats’, 2nd November 2005
Crikey, http://www.crikey.com.au/2005/11/02/the-huge-list-of-fired-nsw-bureaucrats/
[37] Andrew Williamson, ‘Sacked NSW public servants’, 6th November 2005, Crikey, http://www.crikey.com.au/2005/11/06/sacked-nsw-public-servants-for-tuesday/
[38] Quentin Dempster, 2nd February 2005, loc. cit
[39] Quentin Dempster, 2nd February 2005, loc. cit
[40] Peter van Onselen, loc. cit.
[41] Peter van Onselen, loc. cit.
[42] http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/26/1048653746331.html
[43] https://www.unswpress.com.au/isbn/0868407577.htm
[44] http://www.pollbludger.com/nsw2007/mountdruitt.htm
[45] Robert Wainwright and Paola Totaro, 27th March 2003, http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/26/1048653746331.html
[46] Sydney Moring Herald, ‘NSW minister opts out of new Carr cabinet’, 27th March 2003,
http://abc.gov.au/news/stories/2003/03/27/817411.htm
[47] Quentin Dempster, 11th April 2003, ‘The Alan Jones factor?’, ABC TV ‘Stateline’ programme, http://www.abc.net.au/stateline/nsw/content/2003/s829811.htm
[48] Paola Totaro and Joseph Kerr, 3rd April 2003,’Carr's poppy-lopping cabinet’, http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/02/1048962820401.html
[49] ABC News, ‘Carr defends female representation in Cabinet’, 2nd April 2003, http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2003/04/02/822647.htm
[50] Quentin Dempster, 2nd February 2005, loc. cit.
[51] Peter van Onselen, loc. cit.
[52] Quentin Dempster, 2nd February 2005, loc. cit.
[53] Quentin Dempster, 2nd February 2005, loc. cit.
[54] Quentin Dempster, 2nd February 2005, loc. cit.

[online material accessed up to 17th June 2010]

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"Inevitably when a Prime Minister or a Government says or does something there is a political analysis – Why are they doing this? What are they up to? While this is pretty much unavoidable, I think the explanation here is a pretty simple conjunction of the Prime Minister’s own convictions with the views of the vast majority of Australians." (Kelvin Thomson)

Received today from Kelvin Thomson's office were these remarks about the new P.M's opinions on population policy, plus Kelvin's earlier remarks on population at P.M. Rudd's 2050 summit.

"And finally, to yesterday’s dramatic announcement by Prime Minister Gillard that she does not support what has become known as a big Australia – a population of 36 or even 40 million by 2050.

Inevitably when a Prime Minister or a Government says or does something there is a political analysis – Why are they doing this? What are they up to? While this is pretty much unavoidable, I think the explanation here is a pretty simple conjunction of the Prime Minister’s own convictions with the views of the vast majority of Australians.

I have been very anxious to ensure that the debate we have to have about population did not descend into the gutter with allegations of racism and the like, and I have been very pleased that it has not. I have been very clear about my own position on such matters – I have no designs on the non-discriminatory migration policy, I support an increase in our refugee intake, and I support an increase in Australia’s overseas aid to the world’s poorest people to meet the United Nations target of 0.7% of Gross National Income.

I have worked very hard to stay out of the debate concerning refugee and asylum seeker policies during the past year, because the number of people involved is just a fraction of Australia’s migration intake and it should not derail the larger debate. There are some people who want to talk incessantly about boat people and say nothing about the skyrocketing of visas in the skilled migration category, for overseas students who have been able to stay on indefinitely, and the temporary entry visas.

So I will enter the debate about refugee and asylum seekers today to make two points only. The tail has been wagging the dog; we should focus on the debate on the total migration program, not a small component of it. Secondly, I believe there is a large reservoir of goodwill and compassion within the Australian community towards asylum seekers, but one of the things that drains that reservoir of goodwill is the difficulties people experience – cost of living pressures, housing affordability, loss of open space, traffic congestion – caused by migration-fuelled population growth. If we get that under control, then we will find that reservoir of goodwill replenishing itself, and find the policy questions surrounding asylum seekers less emotive and fraught than they are at present.

So I am really pleased by the announcement by the Prime Minister that she intends to take a new direction in population policy, and to chart a course away from growth towards sustainability.

It shows the Prime Minister is on the wavelength of ordinary Australians. 70% of Australians don’t want our population to reach 36 million. When Treasury released its projections of a 36 million population for Australia in September last year, I said this would be too many, and I called for a national debate on this issue.

We have been having this debate. Australians have expressed their concern about the impact of rising population on our food and water supplies, on housing affordability, on traffic congestion, on the quality of life in our cities, on our carbon emissions and on our endangered wildlife.

The Prime Minister has recognized this concern, and I am very encouraged by what this means for the kind of Australia we are going to leave as a legacy for future generations of Australians."

Preceding the above in the original communication via email were the following remarks:

The Inaugural Population Australia 2050 Summit –

Conclusion by Kelvin Thomson, MHR for Wills

I want to conclude my remarks this afternoon by commenting on three areas – the population threat to Australia’s unique wildlife, the issue of urban sprawl, and yesterday’s dramatic announcement by Prime Minister Gillard.

First, the population threat to Australia’s unique wildlife. Eight years ago the signatories to the Convention on Biodiversity, including Australia, made a bold and ambitious commitment to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. We are now in 2010. It is the International Year of Biodiversity. But the rate at which are species are declining shows no sign of slowing down. Let me observe here in Sydney that the greatest bird declines have occurred in the temperate south-eastern regions of Australia, which is of course where most population growth has occurred. A lot of birds are mobile and nomadic, and the destruction of habitat for housing, agriculture, roads, mining and other infrastructure to support an expanding population is destructive of their prospects.

Species like the Swift Parrot and the Regent Honeyeater are now nationally endangered. These birds are highly mobile nectar feeders. The Regent Honeyeater range and numbers have contracted greatly as a result of loss, fragmentation and degradation of habitat, with old trees dying in paddocks and the clearing of native vegetation robbing them of crucial links in the nomadic chain.

If we look at the beaches, we find a species like the Hooded Plover taking a battering due to urban sprawl along our coastlines. People’s intensive use of beaches means the Hooded Plover eggs get stepped on, or fry in the sun when adult birds are drawn away from the nest when disturbed by people or their dogs. Hooded Plovers have almost disappeared from New South Wales.

But it’s not just rare species under the pump. Some of Australia’s best known wildlife – Kookaburras, Emus, Koalas, Lyrebirds, and Platypus – are also taking big hits to their numbers, declining by 30%, or even 50 and 60%, in significant parts of their former range. It would be a disgrace if we were to allow our iconic wildlife to disappear from view in our watch.

Second, urban sprawl. I am more familiar with Melbourne than I am with Sydney, but I suspect the issues at stake are likely to be similar. Recently the Victorian Government, unfortunately with Opposition support, moved to expand Melbourne’s Urban Growth Boundary, paving the way for another 24,000 hectares of urban sprawl for Melbourne. I believe this is a mistake.

Melbourne is becoming an obese, hardened-artery parody of its former self. Extending the Urban Growth Boundary is like a man rapidly gaining weight who thinks he can solve the problem by loosening his belt.

Expanding the Urban Growth Boundary has five strikes:

1. It allows the destruction of nearly 7,000 hectares of volcanic plains grassland, and nearly 1,000 hectares of grassy woodland. Since European settlement over 95% of Victoria’s original native grassland has been destroyed. We should be protecting the less than 5% we still have.

2. The 284,000 households projected in this expansion will, at the present rate of car possession, add another 400,000 cars to Melbourne, many of them trying to get to and from the CBD each day to work. We already have 2 million cars in Melbourne and massive traffic congestion, which urban sprawl will only worsen.

3. The cost of meeting the infrastructure needs of these new suburbs is massive, and new schools, public transport, health services and the rest come at the cost of meeting the needs of existing communities, such as providing a High School for Coburg.

4. Extending the Urban Growth Boundary represents a further breach into Melbourne’s promised Green Wedges. In 2002 Melbourne 2030 went into areas such as Epping North which had previously been set aside as Green Wedges. It promised the non-urban area outside the Urban Growth Boundary would be better protected. In 2005 the Urban Growth Boundary was again extended, removing 11,500 hectares from Green Wedges. This was said to be enough for the next 25 years. Apparently not. Green Wedges should be permanent wedges between growth corridors, not potential urban land supply that is bulldozed as soon as there is a demand for it.

5. Expanding the Urban Growth Boundary contradicts the Melbourne 2030 Plan. Melbourne 2030 was justified in the name of stopping urban sprawl. It hasn’t. Suburbs continue to march out onto the horizon. Property developers are having their cake and eating it too. We’re growing both upwards and outwards.

Five years ago Melbourne’s population was increasing at 55,000 per annum. Now it is increasing at the rate of 110,000 per annum. We are on the way to five million, then six million, then seven million. In my view this will not give us a better Melbourne than the one we have now, it will give us a poorer one.

Kelvin Thomson MP

Now that people have finally accepted that gender is and should be irrelevant in politics (at least in civilised societies like Australia) we can get down to the agenda and actions of Acting PM Gillard's new leadership team.

Sensibly new Acting PM Gillard is distinguishing herself from the unpopular agenda priorities and Rudd's unsuccessful arrogant autocratic style. Gillard's professed consultative style and modest tone signal a quick decisive break from Ruddism. Though still early days since Gillard Coup Date 24th June 2010, just four days ago; Gillard has been lightning quick to announce 'refocusing', 'new directions', 'new focal points', 'new initiatives' and 'shutting down some issues' [Digital Journal]...almost as if it has been planned for some time, perhaps?
What was Labor Right up to and for how long?

De-Rudding seems to be a fast way to work the pollsters to gain quick public relations wins, necessary for any new replacement PM. Rudd's major policy defeats most obviously have been his Mining Super Tax impost, his 'Howard-esk' rejection of asylum seekers and his backdown from his Emissions Trading Scheme. Rudd had many election promises and then he had his 2020 Summit with even more obligations.

The Rudd era is over, so what of all Rudd Labor's election promises?
Where is the electorate at now in its expectations of government?

Gillard has quickly withdrawn the government ads supporting the tax, but has not rejected the tax nor its 40% rate. On the ETS and asylum seekers Gillard remains silent so far.

But good leaders must first get their leadership team in order. Today that happened. Minimal reshuffle, steady as she goes and few changes which reflect internal promotions to senior capable people, sparked by the need to fill Gillard's previous role in the crucial Education portfolio. Simon Crean is a safe choice and if an election is in the air, no need to unsettle the team in the short term pre-election.

Now what about Gillard fulfilling Rudd's electoral promises? These comprise Labor's electoral moral contract and on such basis Labor has an electoral mandate. But if all the electoral promises have gone with Rudd, then Gillard has no electoral mandate.

Gillard's approach of 'coordinated media releases' sounds good for public communication of Government. Headlines need substance otherwise it won't be long before electoral cynicism emerges.

But Gillard's personal credibility is undermined by the fact that she has been Rudd's deputy and part of Rudd's 'gang of four' and so presumed by most to be complicit in Rudd's choice of government priorities, agenda and decision making, and at all times loyal and supportive. Gillard's credibility is also undermined by that fact she back-stabbed the elected leader through the factional influence of the Labor Right, which we know is backed by massive financial donations from unions, developers and big business.

Acting PM Gillard is not an elected representative of the people of Australia outside the safe Labor seat of Lalor in Melbourne's outer south-western suburbs; that is until she calls a general election. These days Lalor, encompassing outer urban centres of Melton, Altona, Werribee and Hoppers Crossing is in the grip of Melbourne's urban sprawl, with any 1970s 'green belt' notion bought out by housing property developers and their ilk.

So on what issues and promises did Rudd Labor win the last election and so comprise unfinished obligations to the Australian electorate? These are what Labor is accountable to the electorate to deliver, but when?

On 27th June, Gillard publicly rejected Rudd's 'Big Australia' quest by maximising population growth. So what has Gillard actually said?

"Australia should not hurtle down the track towards a big population," she told Fairfax. "I don't support the idea of a big Australia with arbitrary targets of, say, a 40 million-strong Australia or a 36 million-strong Australia. We need to stop, take a breath and develop policies for a sustainable Australia. I support a population that our environment, our water, our soil, our roads and freeways, our busses, our trains and our services can sustain."

But Ms Gillard says that does not mean putting a stop to immigration all together. "I don't want business to be held back because they couldn't find the right workers," she said. "That's why skilled migration is so important. But also I don't want areas of Australia with 25 per cent youth unemployment because there are no jobs."
[Gillard shuts door on 'big Australia', ABC 27-6-10.]

Is Gillard playing more politics and having a bet each way - sustainable immigration without denying businesses ready workers? But then what is the Education Revolution all about? Addressing Australia's 25% youth unemployment? Matching workplace skill demand with local vocational education for Australians?

But renaming Tony Burke from Minister for Population to Minister for Sustainable Population is hollow.

Meanwhile how much developer donations are flowing from members and sympathisers of the powerful Urban Taskforce Australia, which consistently lobbies on a national scale for a larger population for Australia. The disingenuous spin touted to government is that a larger population "increases the tax base to fund improvements to infrastructure and welfare services." Can Gillard see through this developer self-centred profit propaganda?

If Gillard is to be credible on curbing Australia's population growth without harming its economy, the tests for the Gillard Government are:

1. End the Baby Bonus

2. End the Subclass 457 – Business (Long Stay) Visa Scheme

3. Restrict all work visas to Employer Nomination Scheme Occupation List (ENSOL), which requires each applicant to be nominated by an Australian employer to fill a position in an occupation that appears in the ENSOL and for the applicant to demonstrate that they have the necessary skills (including conversational English skills).

4. Match vocational training of local Australians to industry demand cycles and focus on the under 25s, and lower-socio-economic groups including Australia's indigenous and rural communities. This would be a real education revolution for Australia.

Bring on a general election!

Last year Russia banned the import of kangaroo meat because of health concerns. The European Union President is also advocating a ban on kangaroo meat, but for wildlife preservation and cruelty reasons. Australian AgForce and the Australia-Russia Business Council have got together with the Queensland government to try to reverse this situation and they have been strongly courting the Russian meat trade again. In early June the Russian Trade Minister Yuri Aleshin was toured around Western Queensland with this trade in mind. Ironically he was recorded on an ABC radio broadcast posing the question regarding the kangaroos..."but where are they?" Obviously he had not seen the 'hordes' that are so often said to exist.

Last year I visited a kangaroo rehabilitation center in Queensland where orphans are raised by the remarkable Anne Maree Dineen. I was struck by how small the kangaroos there were compared to those I see on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria. Anne-Maree told me that the average life-span of a kangaroo in Queensland is about 2 years, since so many are shot. The big ones are shot first, then the trade goes after the little ones. Their normal life-expectancy can be 20 years plus under other conditions. I also noticed the extreme nervousness and vigilance of these small kangaroos there, which was also in contrast to those in relatively safe conditions in Victoria - albeit the Victorian ones are being starved out by development, harassed by farmers and killed on roads there, as safe havens go under tarmac.

Today, in a press release titled, 'Change of direction on 'Big Australia', Kelvin Thomson wrote: "I am really pleased by the announcement by the Prime Minister that she intends to take a new direction in population policy, and to chart a course away from growth towards sustainability." At candobetter.org we are delighted to be gob-smacked. Here's a pod-cast of the recent Insiders (ABC) program on the change of P.M. for those who are keen to hear more.

KELVIN THOMSON MP
Federal Member for Wills
MEDIA RELEASE
Sunday 27th June 2010

Change of direction on “Big Australia”

I am really pleased by the announcement by the Prime Minister that she intends to take a new direction in population policy, and to chart a course away from growth towards sustainability.

It shows the Prime Minister is on the wavelength of ordinary Australians. 70% of Australians don’t want our population to reach 36 million. When Treasury released its projections of a 36 million population for Australia in September last year, I said 36
million would be too many, and I called for a national debate on this issue.

We have been having this debate. Australians have expressed their concern about the impact of rising population on our food and water supplies, on housing affordability, on traffic congestion, on the quality of life in our cities, on our carbon emissions and on our endangered wildlife.

The Prime Minister has recognised this concern, and I am very encouraged by what this means for the kind of Australia we are going to leave as a legacy for future generations of Australians.

What immoral hypocrisy we have in Australian Government when one department legitimises mass kangaroo slaughter as a 'kangaroo industry' and promotes 'kangaroo harvesting', while another department promotes the kangaroo as its 'hopping icon.'

Tourism Australia's latest marketing campaign claims to be based on the '#FF0000">core truth'.
Well how can it be truthful? Tourism Australia needs to drop the kangaroo logo from its advertising while the slaughter continues or else drop its core truth campaign.

Kangaroos are indeed what is 'unique and special' about Australia. It is immoral to slaughter wildlife. It is hypocritical to promote wildlife values while also promoting its slaughter.

One arm of Australian Government condones kangaroo mass slaughter

What immoral hypocrisy when one arm of the Australian Government (Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) legitimises kangaroos wildlife slaughter as a 'kangaroo industry' and promotes 'kangaroo harvesting' on the backward colonial excuse that it 'provides jobs'. The Department claims this wildlife trade provides "over 4000 jobs mostly in rural and remote areas."

It claims "of the kangaroos that it allows to be slaughtered 60% of kangaroos are sold as pet meat "mostly for the domestic market." The remainder is exported for human consumption earning $27 million and 30% of kangaroo skins are used domestically with the rest exported as hide, skin and leather worth around $22 million."

The Australian Department of Foreign and Affairs and Trade) likewise advocates kangaroo commercial slaughter, which it euphemistically labels as 'harvesting.' It immorally tries to justify this wildlife slaughter as "due to the introduction of European farming methods." It boasts that "today kangaroo meat and skins are exported all over the world"..the meat exported "to more than 55 countries." - mainly the European Union and Russian markets. As for Kangaroo skins it argues ..."it is ideal for use in the manufacture of high-quality leather goods, including footwear. Because of kangaroo leather’s high tensile strength, it is also suitable for the manufacture of sporting footwear.

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Another arm of Australian Government promotes the kangaroo as its 'hopping icon'

Meanwhile, another arm of our Federal Government (Tourism Australia) has the tenacity to adopt the kangaroo as its logo for its national tourism campaign and refer to the kangaroo as 'a hopping icon'?

Tourism Australia's corporate marketing brochure boasts the new campaign is "based on the '#FF0000">core truth' ...that people travel to experience difference" and so the campaign’s advertising is focused on what is unique and special about Australia.

The campaign research found that the Australian tourism industry said to "show the icons, show the animals, make it fun and friendly."

Australia's tourism industry said 'show the animals, make it fun and friendly'

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'Core Truth' campaign under scrutiny

But how can we show Australian animals and at the same time condone killing them by the thousands?

How can the kangaroo be an icon for Tourism Australia when 100 of them were slaughtered under approval by the Department of Environment and Conservation on 5th May 2010 at Preston Beach Golf Club near Mandurah, Western Australia to make way for a golf course development?

A kangaroo joey decapitated by authorities to make way for Prestons Golf Club, Perth

How can the kangaroo be an icon for Tourism Australia when 4000 of them were slaughtered at Belconnen and Majura, near Canberra in 2009 to make way or housing development?

Part of the Fitzgibbon Massacre at Majura and Belconnen outside Canberra 19th May 2009

Australian Tourism can't have its icon and eat it!...not if it is beholden to the '#FF0000">core truth'.

Tiger Quoll
Snowy River 3885
Australia

Kangaroos grazing at Majura outside Canberra before the mass slaughter

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Further Reading

Majura Kangaroo Story

Agforce calling for juvenile kangaroos on the menu

Preston Beach Kangaroo Cull

Yet another kangaroo cruelty case

Kangaroo Meat - confessions of a wildlife serial killer

The Kangaroo Industry: Weapon of Choice

Tourism Australia's tormented kangaroo exhibit in Beverley Hills

Kangaroo: The Other Grey Meat

Dame Judi Dench stands up for kangaroos - UK and EU

Our State government appears to be on a campaign to eradicate native wildlife from Victoria, especially kangaroos

Kangaroo Meat Export - ban it and follow the European Parliament's lead on fur seal products!

New Sustainability report criticises kangaroo culling in ACT - says kangaroos protect land from fire

National Code of Practice for the Humane Shooting of Kangaroos and Wallabies for Commercial Purposes

Planning to run for city council? Then you need the verbal building blocks for vapid growthist discourse--- standard phrases prefabricated for easy insertion into empty rhetoric. Here are the top ten pat clichés that constitute the filler of civic speech-making, falsehoods that by mere repetition become conventional wisdom because they are never challenged.

1. “People are our greatest resource.” Alternatively, “Our greatest resource are the people who have chosen to make this wonderful city their home.”
2. “Children are our future.” Or try, “We must ensure that our community continues to be a wonderful place for our children to grow up in.”
3. “We must build a vibrant community.”
4. “We must attract talent and investment to this city to ensure its prosperity”.
5. “We must grow our tax base to offer taxpayers a level of services which they deserve.”
6. “We can grow sustainably in such a way that we can protect our natural treasures while continuing to enjoy a high quality of life.”
7. “We need immigrants to revitalize our city and support our aged population with the services they need.”
8. “Diversity is our strength”.
9. “We are a nation of immigrants.”

And now for the biggest lie of them all. The one that cannot be told often enough. The staple of nearly every successful bid for civic office:
10. “We need growth to reduce unemployment in this region.”

Now for the facts:

1. If people are our greatest resource then too many people can be our greatest albatross. There is an optimal population level for any locality. Beyond a certain point, the economies of scale become diseconomies of scale. A community can become too large and complex to govern, and a growing tax base cannot catch up with growing costs, growing crime, growing traffic congestion. Then the city becomes unattractive to the people who make it run. Qualified people with important skills find greener pastures and capital follows them.

2. “Children are our future.” Now that is a novel insight. Gee, and I thought that each generation was immortal. The little known fact is , however, those people under 25 actually impose higher costs in child care, education, medical services etc than those over 65. Just as too many retirees can place a burden on taxpayers, too many children can as well. Early retirement, not an aging population, is our major challenge. Older folks are healthier and more fit than ever before, and their knowledge and experience needs to be exploited much more than it has.

3. We must build a vibrant community. What other kind of community is there? Communities must consist of living people, and if people are alive, they are, by definition, “vibrant” (refer to the Latin roots of the word). ‘Vibrant’ is code language for “The locals here are too boring. This town is too dead. We need action, man.” Well, many towns have got their wish. Along with the vibrant entrepreneurs and vibrant job-seekers they have vibrant youth gangs, vibrant drug-dealers, vibrant crime rates , vibrant traffic problems and vibrant affordable housing shortages.

4. “We must attract talent and investment to this city to ensure our continued prosperity”. Like I just said, along with the sunshine comes a lot of rain.

5. “We must grow our tax base to offer taxpayers a level of services that they deserve.” Problem is, the cost of providing infrastructure to new subdivisions and business parks is higher than the tax revenues they provide. Rarely does urban growth pay for itself. Development requires water, sewage treatment, road maintenance , police and fire protection, garbage pickup, and these new costs are not offset by the bounty of new tax revenues that are supposed to cove r them. As a rule, the larger your city gets, the higher the taxes you must pay.

6. Ah yes, “sustainable” growth. What’s next, “sustainable” extinctions, vegan carnivores, virgin births? On a planet of finite resources growth cannot be sustained, no more than bacteria in a Petri dish can sustain its growth indefinitely. Planets, nations, provinces, states and cities have limits. And those limits are about to close in on us---rather dramatically. The loss of affordable oil, natural gas, phosphorous and the minerals vital to an industrial economy will see to that. In a post-carbon Canada, cities will need to be much, much smaller.

7. “We need immigrants to revitalize our city and support our aged population with the services they need.” And who then will support those newcomers when they get old? An even larger base of newcomers, ad infinitum? At some point this pyramid scam would collapse, with most of us holding the bag while those who made their profit from selling more real estate and employing cheaper labour are foot loose and fancy free to set themselves up in sunnier climes. The truth is, immigrants are on average, not much younger than the native-born population, whose potential is still very much untapped. The money needed to service newcomers can be more effectively spent on training locals to perform local jobs.

8. “Diversity is our strength. Unity in diversity”. In actuality, several academic studies would suggest otherwise. Irenaus Eibi-Eibesfeldt, Pierre van den Berghe and Harvard’s Robert Putnam have correlated growing diversity to declining trust, making a formerly homogeneous population less willing to vote for redistributive social programs that benefit those not like them. Bob Birrell of Monash University also found that the more culturally diverse a community is, the lower the rate of civic volunteerism becomes. It is therefore apparent that there are both benefits and costs of diversity. Variety may be the spice of life, but too much spice may give a society ethnic indigestion. Cultural cohesion is every bit as important as cultural pluralism. “Diversity” must be taken for what it is---a neutral term without either a positive or negative connotation. I have a diverse number of insects and pests that inhabit my home. I am afflicted with a diverse range of medical ailments. And I have a diverse number of creditors on my back, and it isn’t shrinking my total debt one bit. Personally, I could do with a little less diversity in my life.

9. “We are a nation of immigrants”. In point of fact, even in countries that receive the highest per capita immigrant intakes, the vast majority of the population was born there. Thus, eighty per cent of Canadians and seventy-eight per cent of Australians were born in the country they call home. Of course, our ancestors were immigrants. But that is true of every nation on earth. Even the ancestors of Canada’s “First Nations” came across the Bering Strait. And many tribes who lay claim to their “ancestral lands” at some point displaced a tribe formerly resident there by ethnic cleansing or warfare. Chalk up this statement as one of the most meaningless of all pat clichés.

10. “We need growth to reduce unemployment in this region”. Growth can indeed reduce unemployment in the local region, but seldom does it reduce the unemployment rate. Job opportunities attract outsiders seeking employment. A great many of the new jobs that are created are taken up by these applicants, so that while the population has increased by the influx, so have the number of those looking for work. The sum total of added economic activity is offset by the drain on social and income support services from added unemployment. Growing the economy to mop up unemployment is much like a dog chasing its own tail. The Holy Grail of full employment and affordable housing for all is an elusive target, and at the end of the chase, taxpayers are left exhausted and developers and cheap labour employers are left richer. Bigger is not better. Cities and nations cannot grow their way out of inequity or grow their way out of biodiversity loss. We can grow up or grow out, but in the end, few profit and most pay. It is difficult to imagine any problem that has been solved by more growth, as Dr. Albert Bartlett of the University of Colorado has famously observed. FYI, check this out:

http://forums.bowsite.com/tf/bgforums/thread-print.cfm?threadid=365159&forum=1

Tim Murray
June 23, 2010

Rudd's Ministry after being sworn in on 3 December 2007

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Irrespective of Rudd's failings, and we should not understate his leadership in saving Australians from the demise of the GFC; no leader deserves a factional coup d'etat.
Sudden leadership spills are unsettling to all concerned. What happened to Rudd was equivalent to a CEO being suddenly escorted from the company premises.
It was an humiliating and disrespectful act characteristic of oppressive regimes and revolutions, both uncharacteristically Australian. In the interests of good governance, probity, electorate accountability and civility, the process of leadership replacement needs review. What would have been wrong for instance with a two week notice period allowing for civil measured transition? What was the rush? We are not at war.

The process of leadership replacement where a political party can suddenly replace a Prime Minister or a State Premier without electoral involvement is undemocratic. Political parties are elected on the merit of their leader. That merit earns an electoral mandate. If that mandate is not fulfilled, it is for the electorate to judge.

Australia now has an unelected prime Minister and an unelected Premier of the country's most populous state, NSW - both appointed by the Labor Right factions. Irrespective of the personalities or gender of these two leaders, that they may be seen as factional appointments should be cause for concern by Australians that a undemocratic process and an unaccountable political group can control government at federal and state levels simultaneously. Where does the real power and control lie?

Such power must be realised, then properly curbed and restored to the people, even if such a leadership change were to be trigger a compulsory election. Until there is a general election Gillard's Government is not credible.

On the back of these two issues, Australia has its first female Prime Minister in Julia Gillard. This is an historic achievement, but it shouldn't be. What has take us so long? This is 2010 and all Australians are supposed to be equal and feminism has been fighting since the suffrage movement on the 1880s. Gender shouldn't even be a factor in a mature civilized society, just like ethnicity or age. It is an indictment on Australians that few indigenous people are in politics and that it is probably many generations away before we can celebrate an Aboriginal woman as Prime Minister.

That our socio-political mindset is so hung up on the abilities and performance of one person in the role a leader is a rather vulnerable insecure position for the electorate and the media to be in. It means that the success or failure of the entire nation hinges on the whim of one personality. In Rudd, we trusted him on his promises, but even though he was quickly distracted by the GFC and then lost focus on key issues, he didn't end up being an axe murderer, luckily. American voted for George W. Bush and look what they got - someone who condoned torture and sent Americans to invade another country!

Our dependence on one person to lead the nation poses an unnecessary 'key man' risk. It is the Government and specifically a Cabinet team of ministers who should be running the country, not Rudd, not a gang of four, not just Julia Gillard. Running a country is immensely complex. It is a shared responsibility that of course demands leadership, but for effective delivery requires layers of delegation and good governance.

Gillard would be wise to better utilise the talents of her elected representatives than trying to do everything herself like Rudd tried to do but failed. Gillard should be about leadership of the Cabinet. Gillard's Government should be about managing the national interest as directed by Cabinet. The two functions are distinctly different. Rudd' experiment with autocracy should be learnt from. He started off with a progressive approach to listening to the electorate in his 2020 Summit. Perhaps his incapacity to interpret criticism constructively saw him become insular - lessons we can all learn from.

If we consider some of our more longer serving leaders at both federal and state levels who were popular with the electorate and not divisive, we may learn from what works for Australian political stability. Deakin, Menzies, Hawke, Wran come to mind. Liberal and Labor are ideologically the same so it matters little which is in office. Listening and consultation followed by decisive action is a good start and this is one of the first indicators of Gillard's style she announced on taking the helm.

I wish her new government well. It would be reassuring for voters to think they can look forward to a long period of political stability in Australia, without the usual cycle of new leader euphoria...disappointment...complacency...anger...contempt...followed by let's give the Opposition a go.

But we must have an election soon. Until we do, Australia does not have a 'government of the people, by the people, for the people.' [Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address, 19th November, 1863, Pennsylvania, USA].

http://www.growthcentres.nsw.gov.au/strategicassessment-94.html

This is very late notice, but public comments close tomorrow (Friday 25th June) at 5pm on a very important NSW Government Report. This report authored by the NSW Planning and DECCW is required by Peter Garrett's Environment Dept who is doing a Strategic Assessment of the Sydney Growth Centres. The Strategic Assessment if approved by Peter Garrett means that development proposals affecting matters of national environmental significance will not need to be referred to him for approval. It is a broad brush approval to 27,000 hectares of Western Sydney and replicates at a Federal level what NSW has already done with their Biodiversity Certification of the Growth Centres.

Within the Growth Centres nearly 1900 ha of veg listed on Garrett's EPBC Act is to be bulldozed therefore requiring his consideration of that destruction

The documents on the Growth Centres website are massive but from what we can see we must reject what is proposed outright

Some of you may recall that the NSW Gov had committed $530 million to a Growth Centres Conservation Fund with 25% to be spent within the Growth Centres and 75% outside but within the Cumberland Plain. We were promised this would herald a new era for conservation on the Cumberland Plain (Western Sydney). This report however has suddenly shifted the goal posts and appears to be cynical move by the NSW Gov to win approval from Peter Garrett for the Growth Centres development. Suddenly 70% of the 75% (some $280 million) is going to be directed towards protecting only matters of national environmental significance (EPBC listed veg). This means that thousands of hectares of bushland that is not listed on Garrett's EPBC Act has been abandoned by the NSW Gov, areas such as the Castlereagh Woodlands claimed by the Deerubbin Land Council (who wish to develop these areas)

The double whammy is that this report now makes a huge emphasis on taking that funding outside the Cumberland Plain and spending it protecting bushland in the Sydney Bioregion. Meaning hundreds of km's out of Western Sydney and even across the Great Dividing Range. The report is arguing that protecting Western Sydney veg including Cumberland Plain Woodland (which is EPBC listed) may be too expensive and best value can by obtained outside the Cumberland Plain. They then argue that Grassy Woodlands within the Sydney Bioregion are scientifically similar to CPW.

This report is a disaster for Western Sydney and you need to send an urgent email to: [email protected] with subject draft Sydney Growth Centres Strategic Assessment Report and draft Sydney Growth Centres Program Report

Simply state;

* I oppose the report.
* The ecological assessment of the Growth Centres by the NSW Government is flawed and grossly inadequate
* The Federal Environment Minister must demand the Growth Centres be properly ground truthed before making his decision
* The Federal Environment Minister demand that all Western Sydney Priority Conservation Lands by ground truthed before making his decision
* That all of the $530 million Growth Centres Conservation fund must be spent within Western Sydney protecting the DECCW Western Sydney Priority Conservation Lands as per the draft Cumberland Plain Recovery Plan
* That the NSW Government use compulsory acquisition as a means to conserve Western Sydney Priority Conservation Lands
* That the Federal Environment Minister not be party to using Growth Centres Conservation funding to protect matters of national environmental significance outside the Cumberland Plain. The offsetting of the clearing of EPBC listed vegetation within the Sydney Growth Centres is to occur by protecting Western Sydney Priority Conservation Lands
* That the NSW and Federal Govt's ensure the protection and conservation of the former Crown Lands claimed by the Deerubbin Local Aboriginal Land Council

Anything you can send will help

Regards
Geoff

Overcoming Population Myopia and gaining an holistic perspective Like grief, overcoming PC is a process of stages. But whereas grief recovery is characterized by nine emotions, political correctness defends its hold by only one—denial. Stage One: You deny the economy is a subset of the environment. You believe that you live in an “economy” and not a biosphere and you are mesmerized by statistics like GNP, per capita income and the balance of payments, thinking that to be the measure of reality. You think that the environment is an entity outside of us that is nice to have, if we can afford it. But we can’t afford t, or clean it up, unless we have lots of “economic growth”—the very thing that despoils it. We can’t build a new medical treatment centre for lung cancer patients unless a thriving tobacco industry funds it with tax revenues ! And we can keep all of our toys and the good life because there is something called “sustainable growth”. Stage Two: You come to the realization that we and all of our economic activities are, after all, a branch plant of the environment, and so must limit and stabilize them to keep it alive and healthy. But you deny that population growth plays a crucial role in environmental degradation. For you, it’s all about reducing our “footprint”, our per capita consumption. The number of “per capitas” doesn’t concern you. Stage Three:You finally accept that halting population growth is key to stopping GHG emissions and biodiversity loss, but you deny it is a local or national problem. You insist it is a global issue, and that allows you to throw up your hands, focus on the trendy Green mission of reducing your individual environmental impact and avoid uncomfortable confrontations at home. Step Four: You agree now with Garrett Hardin’s observation that over-population is really just the sum-total of local and national problems. Population growth begins at home. Especially in North America, Britain and Australia. But analogous to the denial of Stage Three when you denied the role of population growth in environmental degradation, you now deny or ignore the role that the nasty and inconvenient “I” word---immigration---plays in population growth. Instead you continually harp on fertility issues. Step Five: At last you accept that population growth in Anglo-America, Canada and Australia is immigrant-driven, but you deny that the ethnic and religious composition of immigrants has any bearing on the environment. Only numbers are relevant. Step Six: You examine the comparative fertility rates of migrant and native residents in North America and the UK. And you note the absence of a conservation ethic in those not of Northern European ancestry in North America as measured by wilderness park visitation and membership in conservation organizations. Then you understand that the source of migrants is as important as their number. Culture matters. Step Seven: You are now ready to take a holistic approach to environmental issues. Population is paramount. Technology won’t save us. Nor will greener lifestyles. Economic growth is not “sustainable”. And cultural and religious values are fair game. No tolerance for what is killing us. Congratulations. You have been scanned and cleaned of the PC virus. You are now free to criticize Mormons, Catholics, Muslims, the open borders American Jewish Committee, trade union leaders, the environmental establishment, Greens, Trotskyists and the human rights industry. In short, all those who play a role in promoting runaway population growth. Don’t worry, the easy targets of multi-nationals, cheap labour employers and developers are still available for the faint of heart. Now you can piss the world off, one identity group at a time. Your only goal is to build bridges to the truth, not to people. For the truth changes sides frequently. Political parties and organizations are only vehicles, not shrines to be worshipped long after they’ve betrayed their original purpose. They should come with an expiry sticker. Better ecologically correct than politically correct. Tim Murray

Urgent Appeal to all Victorian activist groups

Planning Backlash is joining Protectors of Public Lands and Green Wedge Coalition to oppose Amendment VC67, which is being brought to Parliament by Justin Madden (Minister for Planning) on June 22.

This amendment must not be passed.

Please join the rally 1 - 2 PM

June 22

On the steps of Victorian Parliament, Melbourne.

Details from Protectors of Public Lands:

Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc. has joined with the Green Wedges Coalition Inc. and Planning Backlash to hold a protest SAY NO TO VC67 PLANNING AMENDMENT - STOP URBAN SPRAWL, GREEN WEDGES DESTRUCTION AND HIGH
RISE ON TRAM/BUS ROUTES. It is not exaggerating to say that, if ratified by Parliament, this amendment could signify a catastrophe for Melbourne - the face and fabric of our city will be changed irrevocably forever. We are, therefore, inviting member groups, friends and supporters to our protest:

Rationale for Rally:

It is expected that, at this next sitting of Parliament commencing on 22 June 2010, Planning Minister Madden will be putting a resolution to the Upper House for ratification of VC 67 Planning Amendment. This is to approve extension of Melbourne's urban growth boundary involving alienation of Green Wedges and will also increase density (Government lingo for high
rise) of residential development, including along tram and bus routes.

We need you to write to Coalition (Liberals and Nationals) Members of Parliament plus the DLP Member Peter Kavanagh urging them to take a last stand and vote no on VC 67. It would be helpful if you wrote to the Greens commending the Members for their stand opposing VC67. (I will send email addresses in my next communication. Also some extracts of VC 67.)

The maps showing the new Urban Growth Boundary and affected shires were only made available by the Department of Sustainability at the request of MPs late on 9 June. See VC67 at link here.

The Chinese Government is buying Australian farms to directly feed its population. Farm buy-ups were not referred to the FIRB unless they were worth more than $320 million! So, unless the farm property is under this amount, it just becomes "international" land! Unease about global food shortages in the next 20 years - and long term agricultural market opportunities - have made Australia and areas of South America prized targets for foreign government-aided enterprises and private investor groups.“Racism” is justified sometimes
Now is the time for some real and justified "racism"! 
The Chinese Government is buying Australian farms to directly feed its population.
The purchases are not monitored by the Foreign Investment Review Board, according to Senator Bill Heffernan. Farm buy-ups were not referred to the FIRB unless they were worth more than $320 million! So, unless the farm property is under this amount, it just becomes "international" land!

The highest bidder should be scrutinised!  Any agents for the Chinese government or nationals should be rejected.

Just how many farms are worth more than $320 million anyway? What about our food security in the face of climate change threats, which Kevin Rudd has dismissed?

In March, 2009, visitors on temporary visas, such as business owners and foreign students, were allowed to purchase any home to live in, land to build on or new dwellings for investment purposes.

The change saw Chinese money in particular being poured into blue-ribbon Melbourne real estate, as both a way of safeguarding wealth and advancing hopes of migration. Suburbs such as Elwood, Hawthorn and Caulfield North all returned to the $1 million median price club and experienced quarterly growth in excess of 20 per cent. Although the Government announced in April this year that it would adopt a more stringent approval process, experts claim the latest changes will have little effect on the market. Opposition finance spokesman Joe Hockey said it was clear that foreign investment was having an upward impact on housing prices. The same will happen with farming land prices, and food!

China land grabs

Unease about global food shortages in the next 20 years - and long term agricultural market opportunities - have made Australia and areas of South America prized targets for foreign government-aided enterprises and private investor groups.

Africa has also been the focus of a significant land grab, particularly by overseas government-owned investment corporations from China and the Middle East.

So far there were only anecdotal reports of Chinese agricultural investment but Senator Heffernan quoted research by Professor Zhangyue Zhou of the School of Business at Townsville's James Cook University. He believes the produce would be sent back to China from farms now being purchased.

There are reports of significant Chinese interest in Tasmanian dairy farms. The Chinese would never allow this in their own market!

Japan

The key focus of foreign investment has been China in the past two years, but direct investment from Japan to Australia hit $36 billion in 2008, up more than 50 per on 2006 levels, and is predicted to keep growing. A table of Australian acquisitions by Japanese companies compiled by law firm Blake Dawson lists 25 major plays since the start of 2007, totalling almost $18bn.

The two largest investments were Japanese brewing giant Kirin's takeovers of Lion Nathan ($3.3bn) and National Foods ($2.9bn). (The irony is not lost that our "National Foods" is not owned by our own nation!)

Others in this sector included Asahi's takeover of Schweppes and Suntory's takeover of Frucor.

Corporate heavyweight Mitsui paid $100 million for a 49 per cent stake in Australia's fourth uranium mine. Mitsui also owns the Bald Hills wind farm in Victoria. They are not likely to be concerned about losing Australian wildlife, like the Orange-bellied parrot!

India

In the 1970s, India dramatically increased food production, finally allowing this giant country to feed itself. But government efforts to continue that miracle by encouraging farmers to use fertilisers have backfired, forcing the country to expand its reliance on imported food. The overuse of one type - urea - is so degrading the soil that yields on some crops are falling and import levels are rising.

In Western Australia we've got an Indian-government backed company planning to build a fertiliser plant which will be committed, as part of its financial arrangements, to sending 90pc of its production back to India.

In 2006 India invested $2.2 billion in Australia, up from $1.1 billion in 2005.
Hindalco Minerals, a subsidiary of giant Indian conglomerate Aditya Birla, bought Western Australian copper miner Western Minerals. Aditya Birla Minerals Limited is now listed on the Australian stock market.

Another Indian group, Bhushan Steel, holds a 10 per cent stake and a board seat on Queensland coal miner Bowen Energy.

The difference is that the Indian companies are privately owned while the Chinese investors have a much more opaque relationship with China's government.

Lack of patriotism

This is a direct result of Australians not sticking up for Australians. It is high time we had a more nationalistic agenda. If farms are being sold 'cheap' it is all thanks to the ALP in various states, devaluing the farmers hard work and assets. Add to the fact the total lack of reliable services in rural areas, like water, electricity and health hardly attracts people to the bush. The Chinese take, take, take from the Australians thanks to our weak leaders like Kevin Rudd and now its just like that old adage....give them an inch and they'll take a mile.

The irony is that thousands of farmers are walking off the land, due to financial difficulty because they cannot compete with cheap imported food, so the Chinese buy up our land grow huge amounts of food, ship it off to China and most likely export it back to Australia and in turn more Australian farmers walk off their land and most likely sell it to the Chinese again.

For the first time in history we have a Chinese-Mandarin speaking Prime Minister more focused on helping China's growth and food security than actually helping Australia! Ironically, farmers are also being forced to sell their land due to sky-rocketing rates to make land available for property developers.

Wildlife

'Modern' Australia has the worst record in the world for species extinction. According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, there are more endangered plants and animals in Australia than most of the rest of the world. Records of recently extinct species in Asia show 71 species that have disappeared in the wild. Examples include the Yunnan lake newt (Cynops wolterstorffi) from China, the Bonin thrush (Zoothera terrestris) from Japan, or the redtailed black shark (Epalzeorhynchos bicolor) from Thailand. They are hardly going to have any concern about our so-called "pest" Australian native species!

Looming food crisis

We need to increase food output by 70 per cent by 2050 to meet the global food crisis.  There needs to be money for helping farmers to adapt and manage climate change, and for meaningful water initiatives.

Professor Cribb,  Science writer and former head of CSIRO media, told a recent Senate enquiry in Canberra that the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation last year revealed investments in the order of $80 billion a year in agriculture were needed to help meet the needs of a global food challenge.  By 2050 there will be about 10 billion people on the planet to feed!

We seriously lack patriotism and vision in Australia and we are too willing to the highest bidder - something we will regret!  It is time the taboo on "racism" be lifted to protect Australian interests.

Our future?

Population growth is being used as an industry to keep our economy strong through building up the property markets. What happens when all our mining resources finally run out? With almost no manufacturing sector, all our farms foreign-owned, will we turn into a third-world economy overnight.

China will have a perfect pretext to attack and invade Australia in order to allegedly protect its legally purchased acquisitions and the Chinese people who now own them.

Why spend so much on Defence when the potential enemy is already invading by stealth? Australia will become an economic subset of China and Chinese citizens will be given unlimited access to move to Australia to look after their interests and eventually, if Chinese buy even more Australian assets, and they have the money to do so, what is to stop Australia will becoming a Chinese province?

Contact Senator Bill Heffernan

On 18th June, the ACT Government advised that areas within the Canberra Nature Park would be closed from 19 June to 31 July 2010 to allow for the controlled culling of 'over-abundant' Eastern Grey Kangaroos. The sites closed were Callum Brae Nature Reserve, Crace Nature Reserve, Goorooyarroo Nature Reserve, Jerrabomberra West Nature Reserve, Kama Nature Reserve, Mount Painter Nature Reserve, Mulligan’s Flat Nature Reserve and unleased territory land adjacent to Kama Nature Reserve.

This makes a mockery of 'nature park' when there is supposed to be a higher level of protection for native animals than in National Parks. It also makes a mockery of democracy when there was no public consultation on the cull. It also makes a mockery of science when the ecological benefits of native species is totally disregarded.

The purpose of this cull is to 'maintain kangaroo populations at appropriate levels to protect the integrity of ecosystems, several of which contain endangered flora and fauna such as Grassland Earless Dragon, Golden Sun Moth, Striped Legless Lizard, Perunga Grasshopper and threatened plants such as the Button Wrinklewort (a perennial herb).'

Apparently they are worried that the grasslands and woodlands will be overgrazed by kangaroos and threaten species and ecosystems. Yet where is the proof of this? I would like to see before and after photos. Since when do kangaroos create excessive soil loss and destroy habit for ground-feeding birds? That is something sheep, cows and humans do, not native species.

The cull is part of the recently released Kangaroo Management Plan (KMP) which sets out the ACT Government’s approach to managing the environmental, economic and social impacts of kangaroos to ensure their numbers are maintained at a sustainable level into the future.

I wonder when humans are going to maintain their own species at a sustainable level? It's obvious that the greatest threat to our native grasslands and woodlands is not kangaroos but human activity.

Apparently relocation (a compassionate approach) has been ruled out because 'that would be offloading the problem to another location' and lead to their starvation. How considerate of them. Killing them is better than saving them.

Why do we continue to close off green corridors with new housing estates and expressways that fragment Nature Parks leaving wildlife with nowhere to go? Until the government acknowledges this, the bloodshed will continue until kangaroos are no longer on the face of this continent. The relentless slaughter of healthy kangaroos is creating an ecological depression* which could very really push kangaroos over the edge of the precipice to extinction. We can already see signs of that at http://www.stopkangarookilling.org

(Flier: Sylvia Raye)
The RSPCA has failed abysmally to point out the sheer cruelty of the way joeys are despatched. Until a truly 'humane' way of killing baby kangaroos can be found no further slaughter should be allowed by anybody.

When a female kangaroo is shot, any 'in pouch' babies are killed by bashing their heads in. Also, as shooters have difficulty locating 'at foot' kangaroos (these are baby kangaroos still dependant on their mothers), whose mothers have been shot, these babies will most likely die a slow painful death from starvation, dehydration or predation.

ACT Hypocrisy
Does the ACT government really think we have not noticed their hypocrisy? On the one hand they blame kangaroos for damaging grasslands and endangered species while themselves approving environmentally destructive projects such as:-

- 73 hectares red/yellow box to be destroyed in West Hume
- Canberra Airport runway extension dissecting Earless dragon colony
- Canberra Airport freight, shopping and office hubs built over and dissecting grasslands
- Proposed Cowan Expressway dissecting grasslands
- New and extended AFP training facility over Majura grasslands
- Dept of Defence Majura Training Area extended due to the increased volume of Defence training and traffic
- Symonston Long Stay Caravan Park debacle where land of high grassland value was sacrificed as compensation to developer
- Lawson Housing estate to be built over endangered colonies in the water tower section of the BNTS site
- Decontamination earthworks at the BNTS site wiped out tracts of grassland
- Irreversible damage done to BNTS grasslands by vehicles driven continuously across the grasslands to round up and slaughter kangaroos in May 2008
- New mega-housing estate at Downer destroying more grassland/woodland habitat that backs onto Nature Park
- Where are the 'Friends of Grasslands' and 'Limestone Plains Group of Scientists' on these issues? We haven't heard a peep.

Australia's Culling Territory
Cull after cull, the ACT is gaining the reputation as the Australian Culling Territory.

Why the obsession with exterminating kangaroos? In May 2008, 514 kangaroos were killed at Belconnen Naval Transmission Station and the reason given by the ACT Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment was:-

'At BNTS the natural temperate grassland is the habitat of the perunga grasshopper (which the Minister, on the recommendation of the Flora and Fauna Committee, has declared to be a vulnerable species), the golden sun moth and the ginninderra peppercress (both of which the Minister, on the recommendation of the Flora and Fauna Committee, has declared to be endangered species). Another vulnerable species, the striped legless lizard, has been found outside the secure area; however, it was most likely present in the secure area at BNTS in former years. Under the EPBC Act the golden sun moth is listed as critically endangered and the ginninderra peppercress and striped legless lizard are listed as vulnerable.'

The advice of experts who recommended against the cull was not taken into account. The offer to professionally relocate these kangaroos was rejected. As if that was not enough, because toxic contaminants were found in the soil at BNTS the remediation of the land naturally caused massive damage to all the above species and was not even questioned.

After the slaughter 4 wheel drives turned the place into a dust bowl. Then in came the earth movers to take out the toxic soil remediation required for the area to be a new housing estate. So much concern for endangered species or grasslands. The legless striped lizard, golden sun moth and ginninderra peppergrass were all buried without any further ado.

The construction of new housing estates immediately adjacent to the area gave no concern to the government. What about the dust and fumes from cars and trucks, the footsteps of people plodding through BNTS walking their dogs, playing with their children, and their cats killing fauna, wouldn't that have a damaging effect on endangered species?

There was no evidence that kangaroos threatened any endangered species but plenty of evidence that humans did.

Majura
Since Belconnen there have been several other large culls. In May 2009 over 7000 kangaroos were killed by the ACT government at Majura Firing Range once again on the grounds of 'degraded grasslands'. Once again, only junk science to back it up. No other options considered, no conservation experts bar Don Fletcher and RSPCA who know nothing of marsupials (their specialty is cats and dogs). Our experts were not called in but they were discriminated against because they have the best interests of the kangaroos at heart.

Callum Brae
And in July 2009 550 kangaroos were 'culled' at Callum Brae, Nature Park in Canberra. The usual story i.g. kangaroos were eating too much grass but nobody talked about the degradation of grasslands by cows or sheep. Most likely the kangaroos at Callum Brae were deemed to be a problem by local farmers. Farmers hate kangaroos. Why don't farmers erect kangaroo-proof fencing instead of killing them on sight? Sheep's grazing pressure is 10-20 times higher than kangaroos so we are focusing on the wrong target.

As usual, it was declared that the cull would be 'conducted in the most humane way with highly trained marksmen using high-powered rifles according to the code of practice including hairless joeys to be decapitated and larger joeys shot at close range or injected.' Even Landcare said they were 'happy' with the 'cull.' What kind of monsters have we turned into?

Ecological benefit of Kangaroos
It's also time the ecological benefits of kangaroos on the land were acknowledged by governments, farmers, ordinary people i.e.
1. Kangaroos lessen the possibility of bushfires by eating dry grass that ignites easily.
2. Their soft padded feet and long tail are integral to the ecological health of the land, as regenerators of native grasses. Any seedling that falls into the long-tapering footprint of the kangaroo is buried into the hole left by the toenail. Covered and with moisture concentrated at one point, the germinated seedling has a chance of survival. Their tail drags along behind them while they are grazing, pressing the ground, rolling seeds into the earth.
3. Kangaroos also help regenerate native grasses (which is their preferred food) by excreting these seeds onto the ground thereby spreading the growth of grasses, undoing the damage caused by livestock which is turning this country into a dustbowl.
4. Kangaroos play an undeniable role in biological diversity and ecological integrity.
5. Their urine and faeces is a natural fertilizer (not excessively high in nitrogen which pollutes ground and surface water like livestock waste), essential to the health of the soil meaning that many species depend on kangaroos.
6. Unlike livestock kangaroos do not produce greenhouse gases (methane, nitrous oxide), drink massive quantities of water, cause soil erosion, loss of soil nutrients and soil ecosystems leading to deserts. Nor do they destroy wildlife like the livestock industry does by shooting, deforestation and habitat destruction. If they were allowed to co-exist with livestock they could undo the extreme imbalance caused by cattle. Government statistics show that kangaroos only exert 1-8% of grazing pressure on land.

Therefore, the more kangaroos, the better for the land.

Kangaroo Extinction Around the Corner?
It's time we had a real government environment department that did proper studies on how to protect our native species from extinction. Australia has the highest rate of wildlife extinctions in the world because our government is in collusion with the Kangaroo Industry, which it subsidises. If it had any economic sense it would be supporting nature-based eco tourism worth $85 billion to Australia (compared to a measly $250 million to the kangaroo industry). A kangaroo is worth more alive than dead.

Take a look at how kangaroo populations have crashed since 2001 on
http://www.environment.gov.au/soe/2006/publications/drs/indicator/162/index.html)
You can see that half of them have gone in less than 10 years. Shouldn't we be taking the precautionary approach, considering the drought and other factors? What would Australia be without any kangaroos? We would have to take the kangaroo off our national emblem, off Qantas jets, we would have to rename rugby teams and every business that uses kangaroo on their logo would have to remove it so as not to have the constant reminder of how we have FAILED to protect these magnificent animals.

It's time the ACT government was challenged on their view that kangaroos overgraze (their own literature shows that kangaroos only have 1-8% grazing pressure compared to sheep and cows - http://www.environment.gov.au/soe/2006/publications/drs/indicator/162/index.html )

Another report from CSIRO shows that kangaroos do not threaten sheep: http://www.publish.csiro.au/paper/WR9740027.htm

I can't help but wonder if in a few short years governments, due to their chronic short-sightedness and predictable mismanagement, will be pleading for endangered kangaroo species whom it helped drive to the state of quasi extinction just as with the Grassland Earless Dragon.

Not only for tourism but consider some of the new information coming out about biodiversity.

It's time people woke up to the horrific way we are trashing our wildlife in particular our national icon. These are sentient beings with feelings we are talking about, not pests to be dispensed with because they are 'in our way'.

Who is the Real Pest?
Kangaroos have been living harmoniously with their environment without driving a single species extinct for at least 16 million years and they are perfectly suited to their natural habitat. Government's speculation that kangaroos are driving other species extinct is a projection on man's part. Only man is causing the 6th Mass Extinction of all species on the planet and that is a scientific fact. Man's insistence on destructive European farming techniques has caused a large part of the problem in addition to urban spread putting too much pressure on native species by destroying and polluting their habitat.

The result of all these cumulative government 'culls' (in addition to the illegal killing, farmers quotas, roadkill, loss of habitat, fires, floods, drought) will lead us to ecological impoverishment.

The Role of Farmers
Additionally the intolerance of farmers towards kangaroos who put pressure on politicians to kill kangaroos needs to change. We need to adopt a mentality of 'live and let live'.

Personally I would like to see the livestock industry fold. There are many other reasons for this besides the threat to any fauna that is not a cow, sheep or cattle dog. The livestock industry causes deforestation (a major influence in causing the drought) and biodiversity loss from loss of habitat for wildlife. It also causes pollution of groundwater and surface water and pollution to the air through methane and nitrous oxide. Then there is soil erosion and loss of soil ecosystems from the hoofed feet and the fact that cows and sheep pull up grass by the roots. Finally the incredible amount of water needed dwarfs all other industries combined. Clearly the only diet for a sustainable future is a plant-based diet. That would take up less land than livestock require and with kangaroo-proof fencing there would be nothing for farmers to complain about. It would be a win-win situation for wildlife and farmers.

Kangaroos are not overpopulated. Sheep are overpopulated (there are 5 times more sheep than kangaroos) and the human race is definitely overpopulated (at 7 billion). Kangaroos were here first remember and should have the simple right to live in peace.

Once again, humans are the main culprit of endangered species and it is wrong to blame another species that has always lived in harmony with the land.

****

* An ecological depression is where a species critical mass is reduced to where the species can no longer survive due to factors such as a compromised gene pool and disease.

Many thanks to Y.IZITSO for her brilliant cartoons.

Click here for radio interview with Julia Whitty on New Orleans radio

Julia Whitty and the "Last Taboo"

Of course we should thankful that the CBC, at last, made the Population Bomb the topic of a 30 minute interview with Julia Whitty, author of "The Last Taboo" featured in Mother Jones. If I was writing for a general audience, I would devote most of my observations to the very many good and important things that Whitty said. I would praise her for putting "Peak Soil" at the top of the list of insuperable problems---a danger that, as she said, has no technological cure. And I would explore the reasons that she advanced for why the subject of overpopulation is still taboo. She was bang-on in identifying immigration and abortion as toxic issues that have intimidated many in North America into silence. Nonetheless I was irritated by some of Whitty's qualifications. Perhaps she felt, with some justification, that it was best to embrace some of the standard anti-Malthusian objections in order to take the wind of out of the sails of critics poised to repeat them. She took pains to characterize Thomas Malthus as a rather unpleasant and callous individual, the one whom Charles Dickens used to construct his fictional "Ebeneezer Scrooge". According to her, Malthus counselled neglect of starving people and opposed contraception, and was of the then commonly held belief that only 'better' people should breed. No doubt she would regard me with the same odium. I believe that it is imperative that we offer no food relief for any population that refuses to implement family planning. And I fully subscribe to the Hopfenberg thesis. Like any other species, we expand to catch up to an expanded food supply.

Malthus and his reputation

Whitty threw two sops to the Monbiotists. She readily concurred with a critic who said that population activists usually want to control other people's population, that is, the population of poor people of colour, rather than our own. The focus on over-population lets the developed countries off the hook for their over-consumption. She pointed out that Americans consume as much as 4.7 billion Indians would, and quoted the Ehrlichs in making the same point. Obviously we must address both issues. If Whitty had not said that, our flanks would be left unprotected. And she did assign importance to suppressing fertility rates in America. But in concluding that "we must consume less to allow more to live" she repeated the core creed of soft green environmentalism. Lester Brown has posed the question, "How are we going to feed 9 billion people?". The real question should rather be, I think, "Why would we try?" Whitty spoke about the prospect of containing our appetites as the greatest challenge yet, greater than curbing our population growth, which she said, we already have by halving fertility rates in recent decades. If we managed to feed another 2 billion people-breeders, how could we make 9 billion people consume less than the 6.8 billion we already have? How can we support them without exhausting the very resources she said are being taxed to the max---land, water and fuel? She did remark, after all, that in 50 years we must feed people on half the existing acreage available to us now. Is the priority to save the number of people who are currently alive today or is it to enhance our prospects of survival as a species? If our objective is the latter, then only a triage approach is tenable. As Garrett Hardin reminded us the same year that Ehrilch's Population Bomb was published, desperate times require revolutionary ethics.

Smaller families or higher consumption?

More disingenuous was her assertion that 'coercive' measures were unnecessary and not particularly effective. The old standby---making birth control available and 'educating' women should do the trick. After all, women do want smaller families given the options. "There is a direct corellate between educating women and fertility decline." This mainstay of current cant suffers from several flaws. One is the question raised by the interviewer, Anna Marie Tremonte. Educated women make for a more prosperous economy. But doesn't this prosperity lead to more consumption, which Ms. Whitty, in repeating the green left mantra, said is now our most vexing nemesis? Nations with stable or declining populations can still exert more pressure on land and water resources through increased per capita consumption--affluence may allow more people to build bigger homes on bigger lots or even acquire second homes, as they have on this continent and elsewhere. Whitty conceded that it was a problem that must be addressed with "balance". Hmmm.

Time constraints

I suppose my greatest frustration in hearing the party line on women's reproductive rights and preferences is that their free and voluntary choices may not, no, WILL NOT, lead to a population decline rapid enough to save us. As Robert Engleman demonstrated in his cross cultural study some two years ago, women the world over want, on average, no more and no less than two children. That is at least one too many. At the bottom of most fem-friendly prescriptions is a vast over-estimation of our carrying capacity. Not many years ago the consensus was that it was around 2 billion. Now those who make more exacting calculations, in the face of looming energy shortages, have it at no more than 100 million people--a level that we must attain before century's end. According to Richard Wakefield's computation, that would mean that we would have to lose a population the size of Toronto's every five days for the next hundred years. That is about two people for every one born. A slavish genuflection to the feminist agenda will not come close to meeting that target. Most population-reduction advocates simply don't have the sense of urgency required to face up this stark truth. It is amazing that Whitty has imbibed the Replacement Rate Fallacy. Mother Nature doesn't give a Tinker's Damn about falling fertility rates. She is more impressed with demographic momentum and the number of people riding on her back. Human beings are not fruit flies. When we are born, our parents don't immediately die to make room for us. Generations overlap. In fact, more and more of us reach adulthood before our grandparents die. Mark O'Connor has spelled that out very clearly. http://www.australianpoet.com/overloading.html#rrf

Two things must be remembered. The predicament of overpopulation is more coercive than any measure proposed to solve it. Nothing that has ever been done in China is as coercive as what the lack of water, energy, food and space will inflict upon more and more people as our numbers continue to grow. Instead of looking for humane solutions, we must look instead for the least inhumane of effective solutions. Ineffective 'humane' or voluntary and democratic 'solutions' are not solutions if they do not do the job. If I develop gangrene in my leg while I am alone with you in the wilderness, you hopefully wouldn't avoid cutting it off to save my life because, lacking an anaesthetic, there is no "humane" way to do it. Quite frankly, I can't fathom the inhumane ethics of so-called humanitarians. It is a moral edifice built upon the assumption of affluence, or the denial of any need to make hard choices. The perverse reverence of the quantity of human life at the cost of its quality, together with the right of non-human species to have a life at all. The first question on the table must be whether rapid population decline is necessary to the survival of our species. If it is not, splendid. Then we can dismiss all the draconian measures that clerics and bleeders find so abhorrent. No one would be happier than I. But if it is necessary, then it is necessary. "Coercion" if necessary, but not necessarily coercion, coercion as a last resort, mutual coercion mutually agreed upon. And yes, I am well aware that making such a pronouncement would hand opponents a stick to beat us with, possibly to death. But what if that is what the doctor orders? I am hard put to understand the value of any moral system if we become extinct by following it. Then again, I don't believe that any portion of us will be raptured to safety. I suppose that makes me one of the accursed ones bound for hell.

One cannot help but notice that people who spend their time denouncing China's one-child-per-family (OCPF) regime happily reap the reward of fewer carbon emissions and resource consumption that this policy gifted to the world. The second thing that I think should be remembered is that one must not confuse reproductive rights with pro-creative rights. To say, rightly, that no woman should be forced to give birth to a child that she does not want is not the same as saying that any woman has a right to have as many children as she wants to. I may have the right to drive a car, but I cannot have the right to drive it as fast as I want to. If women choose to have more children than the environment can bear their 'rights' impinge on the rights of others. I need a permit to build an addition to my house or a licence to catch fish, how absurd is it then the most impactful decision of all---adding another consumer---is treated as a sovereign personal right? Not many fish drive Hummers or jump on a jet to Majorca for a vacation.

Most disappointing was Whitty's failure to mention that biodiversity loss. Instead of holding out olive branches to the fem-left---- the folks who sabotaged the Cairo Summit on world population---- it might be a better strategy to challenge them on ethical grounds. As they mount the high horse of women's rights, they should be asked about whether they think that these rights should trump the right of other species to live. Their conventional "people vs. nature" dichotomy should be countered with the assertion that other species, or more precisely, the habitat that supports them, is critical to our own survival. Betsy Hartmann and her ilk will only treat population stabilization as a welcome or even a neutral by-product of "empowering women'. For them, the goal of achieving smaller population levels is an inconsequential one. After all, there may be 300,000 people starving to death right now, but that is all down to unfair trade agreements, corrupt governments and poor distribution. It is all a matter of effecting political and cultural change. Or so they say. Carrying capacity is a concept beyond their grasp. Someone should break the news to them that the "surplus" of food that they count on as available to the starving masses if we get to the Promised Land of just distribution is an artificial one. It is the consequence of the unsustainable fossil fuel inputs of modern agriculture. We won't even be able to feed our current numbers. As Norman Borlaug himself warned, there never will be another Green Revolution. He was careful to say that his invention would only be a stop-gap, something to buy us enough time until family planning could arrest our growth. Alas, like all efficiency paradoxes effected before controls are first put in place, more efficient use of land only served as a growth-enabler.

Population growth is not just a missing variable. It is a prime driver of environmental degradation, and it will remain so for decades to come, if we make it that long. For too long human rights crusaders and social justice campaigners have held the floor. For too long the focus has been on the inequitable relationships between the passengers on our lifeboat, and not where it should be, on the fact that our boat is overloaded. It is time that we stopped appeasing their obsession and rang the alarm bell of overpopulation even louder. There is no social justice among drowned passengers. We can fight the class war after we make it to the next port safely, comrade sister.

Tim Murray

Thanks to JoAnneMor for the following research and article.

As you all know, the Deepwater Horizon exploded in the Gulf of Mexico 7 weeks ago and has been gushing oil from a ruptured well pipe and creating havoc.

BP and the US Government have both said they are trying everything possible to stop millions of gallons of oil from spewing into the Gulf.

Dispersant Solution
It has been confirmed that the dispersal agent being used by BP and the government is Corexit 9500, a solvent originally developed by Exxon and now manufactured by NALCO Holding Company of Naperville, IL. This chemical holds the oil below the water's surface so it is not visible by satellite. It is supposed to break the spill into smaller pools but we have seen. It is toxic and banned in Europe. NALCO says they are using older and newer versions of Corexit in the Gulf.

There is big money and even bigger players in this scam. While they are letting the oil blow wide open into the Gulf, the stakes and profit rise. Local species such as dolphins, whales, manatees, sea turtles and fish, many of which are endangered, suffocate and die.

The coastal regions, salt marshes, tourist attractions and the shore front properties are being destroyed, possibly permanently. The air quality is diminished. The Gulf of Mexico fishing industry is being decimated. For what? All to create a need for NALCO's expensive and extremely profitable poison.

Toxicity of Corexit 9500
A report written by Anita George-Ares and James R. Clark for Exxon Biomedical Sciences, Inc. titled 'Acute Aquatic Toxicity of Three Corexit Products: An Overview' states that 'Corexit 9500, Corexit 9527, and Corexit 9580 have moderate toxicity to early life stages of fish, crustaceans and mollusks (LC50 or EC50 – 1.6 to 100 ppm*)'. It goes on to say that decreasing water temperatures in lab tests showed decreased toxicity, a lowered uptake of the dispersant. Unfortunately, we’re going to be seeing an increase in temperatures, not a decrease. Amongst the other caveats is that the study is species-specific, that other animals may be more severely affected, silver-sided fish amongst them.
http://www.protecttheocean.com/gulf-oil-spill-bp/

About NALCO
NALCO make water purification systems and chemical dispersants. They are based in Chicago with subsidiaries in Brazil, Russia, India, China and Indonesia. NALCO is associated with UChicago Argonne program which received $164 million dollars in stimulus funds this past year. UChicago Argonne just added two new executives to their roster, one from NALCO, the other from the Illinois Dept of Education.

Their stock took a sharp jump, up more than 18% at its highest point of the day today, after it was announced that their product is the one being used in the Gulf. NALCO’s CEO, Erik Frywald, expressed their commitment to “helping the people and environment of the Gulf Coast recover as rapidly as possible.” It may be that the best way to help would be to remove their product from the fray.

NALCO is also associated with Warren Buffett, Maurice Strong, Al Gore, Soros, Apollo, Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Hathaway Berkshire. Warren Buffet /Hathaway Berkshire increased their holdings in NALCO just last November. Interesting timing...

Interesting Links
About NALCO: http://www.nalco.com/index.htm

Goldman Sachs was part of a three-pronged group that purchased NALCO: http://bit.ly/8Z3Ai6

Buffett’s Bet On Water, NALCO (NLC is trade code):
http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewarticle/articleid/3095068

Blackstone, Apollo and Goldman Sachs to acquire Ondeo NALCO (COREXIT 9500):
http://bit.ly/bVHQkR

The Milken Institute - Leon Black of Apollo Management LLC (i.e. NALCO): http://bit.ly/vJLz
BP plc, Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs, NALCO Holding Co., Halliburton Co:
http://yhoo.it/amEhiS

The Chicago, NALCO, Arab, Blago, Rezko Connection: http://bit.ly/d88x31

Obama's Economic Adviser Buffet,= Berkshire Hathaway Inc - NALCO Holding Co:
http://bit.ly/ati3AL

NALCO and the China Connection: http://bit.ly/daKYmk

NALCO eyes doubling of sales in China: http://bit.ly/bi7BZw

Berkshire the second-largest shareholder in NALCO:
http://bit.ly/cvHDAl

Company Profile 'NALCO Holding Co: http://bit.ly/9qeTkd

'96 'partnerships with enviro products thru 2010' - Attendees: Gore M. Strong & NALCO: http://is.gd/ctV7p

Gore/Strong EPA Conference '96:
http://is.gd/ctVfN

Stimulus Money Awards in Lemont, IL
The stimulus contracts, grants, and loans in Lemont. Click on an award to read its description, discuss and vote on whether you are satisfied with it or not. It shows Argonne National Laboratory being granted $163,724,912 by the Department of Energy on May. 22, 2009 - http://tinyurl.com/252mhnh

NALCO is associated with Exelon and Com Ed. Com Ed hired a CEO form NALCO and a director from Dept of EDU.
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=22533

Pay close attention to UChicago Argonne. They control Fermi, as well as other majpr energy industry connections.
http://research.uchicago.edu/uc_anl_centers.shtml
ComED & Exelon are connected to NALCO through UChicago Argonne.
All are connected to Fermilab. That stimulus millions to Lamont is funding all these connections. They even hire each other's executives.

ComEd names 2 new outside directors
(Crain’s) — Commonwealth Edison Co. has appointed two new outside board members as the utility continues to seek to distance itself from parent Exelon Corp. in the ongoing controversy in Springfield over future electric rates.

Added to the ComEd board are Edward (Ted) J. Mooney, former CEO of NALCO Holding Co. in Naperville, and Jesse H. Ruiz, partner in the law firm of Gardner Carton & Douglas LLP and chairman of Illinois State Board of Education. The appointments were effective Oct. 16.
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=22533

This is NALCO India. It's in Brazil, Russia & China.= BRIC. There is also a plant in Indonesia. (There are a couple articles at this link.
http://www.topnews.in/companies/nalco

Please note the date of article Nov. 2009. (Timing is everything).
"It is no wonder why Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is the biggest shareholder."
http://dailyreckoning.com/a-few-words-about-nalco/

If you read this article carefully, you will see the Dome they were allegedly using to "try to block the spill" was a lie. It was never intended to stop the oil flow. It was an experiment being conducted for another project.:

Science magazine features Mines hydrates research
GOLDEN, Colo., Oct. 12, 2009 – Science magazine has published a paper by Colorado School of Mines doctoral graduate student Matthew Walsh, and faculty and co-directors of the Center for Hydrate Research (CHR), Carolyn Koh, E. Dendy Sloan, Amadeu Sum, and David Wu “Microsecond Simulations of Spontaneous Methane Hydrate Nucleation and Growth.”

The article was recently featured on 'Science Express' the magazine’s web site that highlights selected articles that will appear in upcoming print issues.

Wu explains gas hydrates as vast untapped energy reserves found in the ocean and the permafrost that are also a potential storage medium for hydrogen fuel or sequestering carbon dioxide. Hydrates currently pose the greatest challenge in the delivery of oil and gas in pipelines, which can be plugged by the formation of hydrates, he said. The Mines research reported in Science helps explain how hydrates form, and could eventually lead to ways to control their growth.

"Methane hydrates form at high pressures and low temperatures, and have an unusual crystalline structure in which water molecules form cages around individual methane molecules, " Wu said. "How such complex structures form is notoriously difficult to study since the process of nucleation is a rare random event that happens in a few nanoseconds and at a random location over a few nanometers."

This study was supported by the National Science Foundation-Renewable Energy Materials Research Science and Engineering Center and CBET Division, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Mines Hydrate Consortium, which is presently sponsored by BP, Champion Technologies, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Halliburton, Multi-Chem Group, Nalco, Petrobras, Schlumberger, Shell, SPT Group, StatoilHydro, and Total.
http://www.mines.edu/Science-magazine-features-Mines-hydrates-research-

Special Report on BP plc, Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs, Nalco Holding Co., Halliburton Co., and Domestic All-Star Paradigm Oil and Gas, Inc. (PDGO)
May 2, 2010 3:01 PM EDT
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA -- (MARKET WIRE ) -- 05/02/10 -- www.EnergyStockAlerts.com is a premier source for microcap and blue chip research and commentary.

The scale and carnage of BP's recent oil spill disaster continues to grow on a daily basis. The Wall Street Journal, citing industry experts, on Friday estimated the size of the continuing oil leak at 25,000 barrels a day (up from the U.S. government's Thursday estimate of 5,000 barrels a day). BP shares have fallen 12% since the disaster.

The accident has forced President Barack Obama to put on hold politically sensitive plans to expand offshore U.S. oil drilling . In March, President Obama unveiled plans for a limited expansion, in part to try to win Republican support for climate change legislation. The White House announced Saturday morning the President will travel to the gulf coast today to get an update on efforts to contain the massive spill.

Yesterday news reports that several banks (including Goldman Sachs, GS and Citigroup C), recommended buying BP shares. They argue investors are over reacting since the April 20 explosion.

Yesterday oil giant BP (BP) released news that it has tested the dispersants (manufactured by Nalco Holding Co. (HAL)), on Friday night and authorized it's use on a larger scale. BP also added, it is looking for additional suppliers to begin manufacturing the material in mass quantities.
http://tinyurl.com/2cache

Alternative Energy Symposium day after rig blew
On April 21 to 22, engineering, government, non-profit and business leaders from across the United States and abroad, as well as local high school and college students, will convene at Chicago’s Fairmont Hotel as the Illinois Institute of Technology and Chicago Council on Science and Technology present the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Grand Challenges for the 21st Century: Chicago Summit 2010. The Chicago Summit is designed to stimulate the engineering, science and policy advances needed to address four key “grand challenges” facing the United States: clean water; carbon, energy and climate; urban sustainability; and global health.

Among the many notables to attend the summit will be U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, assistant to the president for science and technology, Dr. John P. Holdren, and the Haitian Ministry of Health’s Marie Denise Milord.
http://www.wwdmag.com/Chicago-Summit-To-Address-Four-Key-Challenges-newsPiece20381

The summit was held as scheduled: Rig blew April 20, 2010. Summit next day.
http://www.iit.edu/grand_challenges/program/pdfs/GC_Program_Singles.pdf

More Links
http://www.thestreet.com/find/results?q=nalco&search.x=0&search.y=0&ct=&sb=d

Statement Regarding Disclosure Of Information About COREXIT - By GlobeNewswire 05/28/10
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10769717/1/statement-regarding-disclosure-of-information-about-corexit.html

Nalco Releases Additional Technical Information On COREXIT - By GlobeNewswire 05/27/10
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10768572/1/nalco-releases-additional-technical-information-on-corexit.html

Funds for Cleaning Up After BP - By Don Dion 05/26/10 - Cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico is good for business for a diverse collection of companies dedicated to this and other types of environmental efforts.
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10767546/1/funds-for-cleaning-up-after-bp.html

Why George Soros Is Buying Westport Innovations - By Eric Rosenbaum 05/25/10
Westport Innovations nabs a major investor in the first quarter: George Soros.
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10766495/1/why-george-soros-is-buying-westport-innovations.html

Nalco Statement On May 24 EPA Press Conference On Dispersant Use - By GlobeNewswire 05/24/10
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10765543/1/nalco-statement-on-may-24-epa-press-conference-on-dispersant-use-in-the-gulf-of-mexico.html

Professor Buffett's Spring Cleaning - By Don Dion 05/21/10. Buffett has made a few interesting tweaks to his portfolio, including scaling back Berkshire's position in Kraft by more than 20%.
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10763249/1/professor-buffetts-spring-cleaning.html

Nalco Statement On EPA Analysis Of Sub-surface Dispersant Use - By GlobeNewswire 05/20/10
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10762894/1/nalco-statement-on-epa-analysis-of-sub-surface-dispersant-use.html

Got Water? RealMoney.com ($) - PHO offers lets investors dip into one of the most crucial and overlooked commodities in the world.
http://www.thestreet.com/p/rmoney/etf/10763316.html

Nalco Releases Sales Impact Of Gulf Response - By GlobeNewswire 05/17/10
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10758977/1/nalco-releases-sales-impact-of-gulf-response.html

Nalco States Medium-term Financial Objectives - By GlobeNewswire 05/17/10
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10758978/1/nalco-states-medium-term-financial-objectives.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20100419-904462.html - seems the wall street journal is chasing this too

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-0131-confidential-20100129,0,1995965.column

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1829823/posts Pelosi's husband

http://www.nationalsummit.org/speaker-fyrwald

http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=143358

http://www.executivesclub.org/ABOUTUS/ClubLeadership/BoardofDirectors/tabid/67/Default.aspx board of directors of the executives club of chicago

http://www.economics.wsj.com/participants.php?facilitator=fyrwald

Chairman President and CEO, NALCO HOLDING CO (NLC) - Headquarters: NAPERVILLE, IL
Chemicals And Allied Products
In 2009, J. Erik Fyrwald received $5,620,847 in total compensation. By comparison, the average worker made $32,048 in 2009. J. Erik Fyrwald made 175 times the average worker's pay.
http://www.nalco.com/aboutnalco/governance.htm

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/business/nalco-plans-subsidiaries-to-boost-business-diversification_100300968.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/5/23/869241/-BP-Wont-Change-Dispersants-In-Oil-Spill-Despite-EPA

Ying Yeh looks for new challenge, hopes to help clean China - By Zhang Qi (China Daily)
Being in the limelight is nothing new for Ying Yeh. As the first Chinese woman appointed the global vice president of a Fortune 500 company and the minister-counselor for Commercial Affairs in the US, Ying Yeh has received plenty of accolades. But what surprised many was her recent decision to leave behind her successful 12-year career at Eastman Kodak and join Nalco, a virtually unknown US company.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bw/2009-05/18/content_7785331.htm

So there you have it folks.
The wellpipe rupture was a "Convenient" accident. The officials have no intention of stopping that oil spewing into the Gulf. They scammed us with the Dome experiment. They used the Top Kill method as a ruse to make us believe they were trying something. I'm sure they had many calls to use a method that has been around for decades and being used successfully many times. It's all about the profit.

This expose has shown who, what, when, where and why, the dithering. It's about the dispersements, the stimulus, the billionaires who are vested in NALCO, the scientists who are all onboard with the green agenda, Chicago and blatant deception.

Obama blaming BP and orders probe
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/05/20105231713717747.html

Pelosi blaming Bush:
http://tinyurl.com/249e2n2

In the meantime, we all now know the truth. Greed, corruption, conspiracy, fraud and deception are where the blame lies. From the top down is involved. Remember, you cannot redistribute fishing/shrimping industries, tourism, ocean front property, boating. That wealth will have to be destroyed. They are poisoning our Gulf for personal profit!

It's not just about dispersants. It is about the profits, investments, the Stimulus, the short selling of stocks, the chemicals and the greed. There is money to be made in the crisis, not just in the oil. All the players, including BP are into a lot more than oil.

Follow the money!

Click image for film

How long can Australia prop up a declining housing boom?

This film reports on a steep decline in land and housing prices in the US and predicts that they will fall further - by 70 or 80%. It says that if you are investing in a house or simply buying one now, you are going to lose the house because it will lose speculative value. It says that Americans with common sense are simply staying away from buying houses, knowing that they can bring the market to its knees this way. It says that the winners in this will be those who need houses and will soon be able to afford them. The losers - the land speculators; the people who have made money idly out of homelessness; the bankers, the middleclass housing investment wannabes - will lose their money. About time.

Actually, the film says that if you own a house you will lose it, however, if you really own one - just one - you won't lose it. If you are counting on a second or more houses to make you money, it is likely that they won't make what you hoped.

Australian governments, acting against the interests of their constituents, but on behalf of their corporate friends in finance, construction, engineering and property development have propped up the so-called 'boom' in housing with high immigration financed by your taxes, using the commercial media to sell the idea that this is all inevitable and good.

Growth spruikers are to blame

The populations of Queensland and Western Australia are being promoted as being expected to more than double within the next 50 years. Similar false predictions are being made in every other mainland state for shameless commercial interests masquerading as our elected representatives, aided and abetted by spruikers entrenched in many Australian institutions, acaademic ones not excepted.

For instance, Growth lobbyist and demographer, Peter McDonald of the Australian National University has made another press release in a long series of growthist apologies, "Population growth requires a balancing act: Expert Monday 31 May 2010", where he markets as irresistable the idea that the Queensland Government must consider an increase in taxes to manage future population growth, claiming this to be the finding of a new report. The report was commissioned by the Local Government Association of Queensland and claims to be independent, but its use of Peter McDonald has people concerned about population growth calling this claim into question, since McDonald is a notorious growth lobbyist.

Calling himself a "Population expert" and using the authority of his position as a professor at the ANU, Professor McDonald reports that "the inquiry has concluded that substantial future growth is already embedded in the state’s economy and that there appears to be little immediate prospect of current growth rates in Queensland - including those in south-east Queensland (SEQ) - slowing from current levels through reasonable policy initiatives available to the state or federal governments.”

Such a pronouncement conveys the false message that 'growth cannot be stopped' ... ever, and is likely to disarm the public of reasonable hope, empowerment and rational action against the growth lobby.

Talk of 'unreasonable costs' depends on the perspective you take.

Population Growth doesn't pay for itself: you pay for it

Problem is that the costs of growth are already causing unreasonable hardship to most people, by driving up the cost of water, land, employment, services, business, travel and basic utilities. The only people who don't consider the current situation unreasonable are those who benefit from it financially, and they are in the minority. Although they are in the minority, they are covered by the mainstream media as if they were in the majority and as if there were no other way of running a society than through heavy indebtedness to financial institutions invested in the construction and property development industries. It is amazing that so many people have fallen for this childish nonsense just because the mainstream press constantly repeats it and some 'authorities' endorse their message.

Growth can be stopped, quite reasonably and easily

Professor McDonald misinforms the Australian public to their great cost. Growth can be stopped, quite easily, using traditional tried and true methods. Amalgamated councils can control and withhold building permits. Better still, restore the recently abrogated ability for local governments to control the release of building permits. Allow the local community to set population levels by simply withholding building permits within the local water catchment capacity and within limits which will prevent further change to the natural environment and any rise in land-costs due to inflation related to human numbers.

Professor McDonald also said that the inquiry recognised community concerns about the pressures of continuing population growth and impacts on the quality of life. Recognises these concerns and tramples all over them!

He can be contacted at this number: 0400 252 149

To say that we cannot stop growth is like endorsing an addiction to growth and a mind-set like the Titanic heading towards the iceberg, with lemming on it that won't change the course!

If we are supposed to get more "prosperity" from population growth - in Queensland for instance - then why must the Queensland government consider more taxes? What we are seeing is a predictable rise in costs by increasing demand on finite resources - environmental and infrastructure-wise! This ever-soaring demand will spell disaster for Queenslanders' quality of life, standard of living and for its remaining wild koala populations, luxuriant vegetation and beautiful natural surroundings.

What kind of corruption and insanity, what hatred of beauty and life itself, drives this downward spiral for humankind in Australia, based on the insanity of economic growth based on population growth and endless construction?

Consider the US trends.

The 5th of may, 2010 will go down as another dark day in the history of Preston Beach and their love/hate relationship with the local kangaroos. On that day I attended a protest against the Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) sanctioned cull of 100 kangaroos on the local golf course and many passionate wildlife supporters were present. There had been no shooting of kangaroos until that point even though the cull officially started several days earlier. Rumours circulated that the cull had been called off due to the negative media attention the Shire of Waroona and the Preston Beach Golf Club were receiving in the local and mainstream media. Upon returning home however I received a call confirming that the shooting had started immediately after the protesters had dispersed.

The Day After

Early morning walkers in Preston Beach the following day were horrified to find blood stained walkways within the “sanctuary” of nature reserves and Yalgorup National Park. A decapitated female juvenile kangaroo was found within the reserve along with an ex-pouch joey with broken limbs. In the week leading up to the killing it was evident that many female Western Greys were accompanied by dependant ex-pouch joeys. When their mothers are shot they will flee in terror and all too often injure themselves in the process. Unfortunately this surviving ex-joey of the previous nights slaughter had to be euthanised as its injuries were too severe.

After arriving in Preston Beach the next day it became obvious that the kangaroo shooters had not restricted their kill to the golf course. There were fresh tyre tracks snaking all the way through the neighbouring reserve and National Park accompanied by pools of blood and bone.

By mid afternoon I had covered much of the golf course and was about to leave when an RSPCA van arrived. The inspector introduced himself and asked a few questions regarding the cull. He had a genuine sense of outrage as to what had occurred the previous night and was very keen to obtain evidence and speak to witnesses. As he was the first (and only) person from the RSPCA to investigate this incident I pointed him in the right direction and gave him a local’s phone number to call. Of major concern was the fact that nobody from the DEC was present during the shooting. Any kangaroo cull literally within metres of a National Park and residents homes should surely require a representative of the DEC to be present. Yes? Well no actually.

The RSPCA official response

In the local media a couple of weeks later the headline read No Cruelty in Roo Cull. The article stated that
”chief inspector Christine Jones visited the area the morning after the Shire of Waroona’s controversial cull at its nine-hole golf course”

Well I can tell you that his name was not Christine Jones and he didn’t turn up until mid afternoon. When presented with the photographic evidence of a decapitated juvenile kangaroo the RSPCA’s chief inspector then goes on to say that they ”could have been taken anywhere”. A valid point maybe in a courtroom but as these photographs were taken by local residents the following morning next to the golf course you would think the RSPCA would investigate this incident a lot more thoroughly. Having seen the sequence of photographs taken that morning it is clear that the photographer is in the area between the golf courses 5th and 6th hole fairways and Lake Preston. This area forms a nature reserve and Yalgorup National Park. The kangaroo in the photograph is too large to be killed by decapitation according to the “Code of Practice for the Humane Shooting of Kangaroos” so why wouldn’t the RSPCA investigate this? A spokesman for the RSPCA stated that

”decapitation was sometimes the most humane way to end suffering for joeys wounded during culls”

Either he has not bothered to look at the photographs or he is completely unaware that decapitation is not an appropriate form of euthanising an animal this size. In any case why is he commenting on something he obviously knows nothing about? How is it that the RSPCA supposedly representing “All Creatures Great and Small” and empowered to enforce the Animal Welfare Act can be so flippant about the fate of our Preston Beach kangaroos? Why also are the RSPCA lying about how and who performed their so-called investigation?

The bargain basement Preston Beach Golf Club

The Preston Beach golf course is surrounded by Yalgorup National Park. It is unfenced, not reticulated, seeded or rolled and only mowed a couple of times a year. The fairways consist of native grasses and a huge variety of weeds, a natural food source for the native animals such as kangaroos and emus. The golf club itself uses an image of kangaroos playing golf for its logo and promotes the presence of kangaroos on its course in advertisements. Permission to cull kangaroos was sought by the Shire of Waroona (the landowner) from the Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) in the following submission

That Council make application to the DEC issue of the appropriate licences to allow the humane destruction of 100 kangaroos causing damage to the Preston Beach Golf Course and to also allow the destruction of dangerous animals where they pose a threat to club patrons and members of the public” [23.06.2009 Council Meeting]

Hopefully DEC staff were scratching their heads upon reading references to dangerous kangaroos and their justified destruction. What constitutes a dangerous kangaroo anyway? Not a single person in Preston Beach has made a report to Waroona Police or the DEC regarding a dangerous kangaroo. Indeed the minutes of the golf club meeting dated the 10th of May, 2009 (when the decision was made to propose the cull) contain no reference to any real or perceived attack / threat to a member of the public or the golf club by a kangaroo.

The DEC have recommended that the shire commission an ecologist to undertake an independent survey since 2006 to ascertain the current kangaroo population and determine what, if any damage is being done by the endemic wildlife. This survey however was not deemed important enough by the DEC to get in the way of 2 culls it has rubber stamped since making this recommendation. Anyone visiting the Preston Beach Golf Club at night will quickly notice the large numbers of rabbits that dig up the roots of any grasses on the fairways.

Erect a Fence Mr Curley!

The club estimates it would cost the Shire of Waroona approximately $75,000 to fence the course off and therefore exclude kangaroos from the fairways. A modest expense you would think however Waroona Shire Chief Executive Ian Curley disagrees with both the price and its practicality:

”It would keep them off the golf course, but you would have more of them running around the streets”

You would also lose your only drawcard to the Preston Beach golf course, it is after all the only hook they use when promoting the course to outsiders. Believe me there is no other redeeming feature of this course and its got nothing to do with the resident kangaroos. The lack of fencing has a much bigger drawback for the club and that is the ease of access for any idiot in a 4 wheel drive and a belly full of beer. The fairways are notorious for hoons and the evidence is everywhere. Even on the night of the cull the golf course appears to have invaded by idiots. Following vehicle tracks on the 5th and 6th fairways (a few metres from the National Park) the day after the cull were the obvious signs of burn outs from the night before. This was also the area where I found the most blood. The thought of a roo shooting vehicle doing “donuts” on the fairway did cross my mind briefly however I will give them the benefit of the doubt. I would hope that a kangaroo shooter would not want to attract that sort of attention.

In a 12 month period in 2006/2007 Preston Beach recorded the following kangaroo cruelty incidents

• June 2006: Youths in a four wheel drive were seen chasing kangaroos on Preston Beach golf course and trying to run them down
• October 2006: Youths ran over 2 kangaroos
• March 2007: Five kangaroos were run over and deliberately killed
• June, 2007: Witnesses see a four wheel drive running over 3 kangaroos and reversing back over them. A fourth kangaroo was found later with a jaw that had been smashed using a hand held implement. Local Police Superintendent David Parkinson had to shoot the female kangaroo ……10 hours after she had sustained her injury

Of the latter incident, Supt Parkinson had the following to say:

”Some of these people defy comprehension because they are not doing what a normal person does or even a hardened criminal does……. (the kangaroos) are tame, they trust the community, they come up on their lawn and the next minute you get these people who are deliberately killing them”

So where to these sadistic people get their ideas from?

A popular walking trail that follows the boundary of the golf course and the National Park is used by local families, pensioners and tourists. Users of the trail the day after the shooting were horrified to see trails and pools of blood during their walk with some individuals finding dead and injured joeys. There can be no doubt that these culls cheapen the lives of kangaroos and their dependant young in the eyes of some individuals, particularly certain young males. Little wonder that youths in four wheel drives are all too often responsible for sadistic acts against kangaroos anywhere in Australia. Government sanctioned culls only reinforce this behaviour instead of teaching respect for wildlife and the environment.

Combining these sanctioned culls with the RSPCA seal of approval sends a very strong message to the community. Little wonder acts of kangaroo cruelty occur on a regular basis. Only last year the RSPCA prosecuted 2 young males for the mutilation and beheading of a kangaroo. When confronted with a similar incident in Preston Beach they dismiss the evidence and label the act “humane”. The only difference between these 2 incidents is the permission granted by the DEC to the Shire of Waroona. The RSPCA’s interests are not served by openly criticising the DEC or the Shire of Waroona as is evident in the Preston Beach kangaroo slaughter.

Live Sheep Exporters on the board of the RSPCA in Western Australia

The West Australian branch of the RSPCA was featured in a “Four Corners” story in 2004 entitled “A Blind Eye”. In this episode 2 members of the board of RSPCA in WA were exposed as sheep farmers involved in the live sheep trade. Despite this obvious conflict of interest the 2 farmers: Councillor Des Gooding and Councillor Neville Marsh are still on the RSPCA board in 2010. What hope for the kangaroos and sheep of Western Australia with people like these men representing the body empowered to protect them.

Starving Kangaroos?

As is always the case in kangaroo culls without exception, one organization must state that the kangaroos shot were underweight due to the supposed high numbers. This honour went to the DEC in the case of Preston Beach. Despite all the photographs of healthy adult kangaroos and joeys and the presence of several experienced kangaroo carers within Preston Beach, the DEC thought they would throw that one in for good measure. Sound familiar?

Sixth Extinction Event

There is little doubt left in the minds of professional biologists that Earth is currently faced with a mounting loss of species that threatens to rival the five great mass extinctions of the geological past.

Some biologists have begun to feel that this biodiversity crisis — this “Sixth Extinction” — is even more severe, and more imminent, than Harvard Biologist Wilson had supposed in 1993. The current Sixth Extinction is different to extinction events in the past as it is a patently human-caused event.

UN Report on fish stock depletion

According to the  UN's environment branch, if the world remained on its path of overfishing, fish stocks could become uneconomic to exploit, or extinct, by 2050.

Some 30% of fish stocks are estimated to be badly depleted already.  British fish stocks have dropped by 94 percent in the past 118 years and commercial fishing has profoundly changed seabed ecosystems, leading to a collapse in numbers of many species.  British  members of parliament and experts holding talks in London fear that as fishermen seek to feed a growing wealthier population, they will demand to move up the food chain and inevitably there will be a crisis. 

Cod fisheries collapsed in the North West Atlantic in the late 1980s due to overfishing, and have never recovered. A new study reveals that the changes in top-predator abundance were driven by human over-exploitation of large, predator fish species.  According to scientists, fishing quota systems have done nothing to mitigate the fall and underline the need for urgent action to stop the overexploitation of European fisheries and rebuild stocks.

Global fish stocks like bluefin tuna are in decline; in Europe over 80 percent are overfished and a third are outside safe limits. Both Sea Shepherd ships, the Steve Irwin and the Bob Barker, will head for the Mediterranean from the Southern Ocean. The objective will be to intercept and oppose the illegal operations of Bluefin tuna poachers.

We need to bring to the attention of the international public that one of the most unique fish species in the world, the Bluefin tuna, is on the brink of extinction due to the illegal fisheries driven by Japan’s insatiable demand for this expensive fish, says Sea Shepherd Founder and President Captain Paul Watson. Corruption, and the rising market value of the Bluefin is preventing any real conservation efforts.

Economic Stimulus to fish

More than 20 million people employed in the fishing industry may need to be taken out of service and retrained for other work over the next 40 years if the final collapse of fish stocks in oceans around the globe is to be avoided, the UN warned today.

At the heart of the UN's analysis is the $27bn of subsidies it estimates is being injected into fishing every year, mainly by developing countries. Among the most egregious practices targeted by the report are inducements to increase the size of massive trawler fleets that are among the main culprits of overfishing, and fuel subsidies on fuel for fleets. This “helping” the industry is actually making its decline more rapid!

At stake is not just the biodiversity of the oceans, but a substantial chunk of the global economy and the livelihoods that depend on it. However, the argument is cyclic! If we don't stop our population growth, our consumption habits, our raping of the oceans, there won't be an economy or livelihoods to negotiate.

Worst Offenders

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) refuses to name the worst offenders in overfishing, though it says its final report will contain figures that will enable readers to “figure out where the problem is”. The Spanish and Japanese governments and the EU, which have been singled out by environmentalists for criticism, have been sent draft chapters of the report, alongside other leading fishing nations.

Overfishing by Japan, the United States, France, Spain and Portugal are mainly responsible for the decline of the fish.

Spain took a massive 46 per cent of all subsidy payments and France is guilty of using the controversial driftnets banned under EU rules, which reach for dozens of kilometres and lead to large amounts of bycatch.

Victory for Japan

Delegates overturned the protection of the porbeagle shark, agreed earlier this week, and rejected protection measures for other shark species in the closing hours of the global summit in March on trade in endangered species in Doha.

The decisions made in the last hours of the Doha meeting made it a clean sweep by Japan, which had mounted an orchestrated campaign to vote down all 13 marine species proposed for listing under the Convention for the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

Conservationists say the irony is that Japan is hosting the meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity this year but is the country that did the most at this meeting to undermine the protection of marine biodiversity!

The head of Monaco's delegation to CITES, Patrick Van Klaveren, warned the Sydney Morning Herald:
Bluefin tuna: Japan 'lobbying' blasted at CITES talks

It will not be [the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species] that is the ruin of professional [fisheries]. It will be nature that lays down the sanction, and it will be beyond appeal.

Dead oceans, dead planet

Dead zones are occurring in many areas along the coasts of major continents, and they are spreading over larger areas of the sea floor. Because very few organisms can tolerate the lack of oxygen in these areas, they can destroy the habitat in which numerous organisms make their home.

There are 400 dead zones across the globe. They are caused by die-offs of phytoplankton from the surface. These organisms sink to the ocean floor when they die, where bacteria break them down- taking in oxygen and giving off carbon dioxide. High levels of carbon dioxide and low levels of oxygen in the water make it unsuitable for life.

OCEAN 2012

We need to create huge no-fishing zones in the oceans so fish can be offered a refuge for breeding. As well, those who eat fish could also reduce their consumption and base their diets on more sustainable and the wide variety of plant-based sources.
OCEAN 2012 PETITION

"Should I not be Premier by the end of this day, let there be no doubt in the community's mind, no doubt, that any challenger will be a puppet of Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi." ...and with those prophetic words on 3rd December 2009, the next day New South Wales’ second puppet premier Nathan Rees bowed from the public limelight.

---

ABSTRACT:

When unelected political factions become puppeteers of government the people have lost democracy. The Labor Party in Australia's most populous state New South Wales, since before it came to power in 1995 under Premier Bob Carr, has been under the powerful influence of right-wing factionalism, always behind the scenes. Immediately following a 17-year reign under Carr, the rise of the Labor Right has controlled the NSW Government, pre-selected candidates, appointed ministers and propped up successive puppet premiers. The NSW Labor Right has pulled the strings on the government like a puppet show. The influence started before Carr’s ‘reluctant’ leadership and controls the length of string of puppet numero due, Kristina Keneally.

This online paper provides an analysis of political faction influence from the days of Laurie Brereton through ALP’s Sussex Street’s factional machine and to the successive NSW puppet premiers between 2005 and 2010. This paper outlines the cancerous impact that political factionalism is having on democracy in NSW, identifies the emerging multicultural factionalism of NSW Labor, and proposes some answers to remove the factional scourge and to restore electoral trust back into NSW Government.

This online paper is presented in a series of Chapters, starting below with Chapter 1: The Rise of NSW Labor Right.

[Further chapters: John Marlowe's blog on this website]

---

CHAPTER 1: The Rise of NSW Labor Right

Sparked by the political vacuum left by the sudden resignation of long serving NSW Premier Bob Carr in August 2005, the right faction of NSW Labor led by political heavyweights Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi quickly rallied to secure their factional control over the NSW Labor Government.

Along with the then General Secretary of NSW Labor, Mark Arbib¹ , they headed up what has become known as NSW Labor’s right-wing ‘Centre Unity Faction’ or the ‘Terrigal Faction’.

Factional control with NSW Labor has a long history that can be traced back to its origins at the time of the Great War under Premier William Holman when power tensions flared between the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary wings of NSW Labor. In Michael Hogan’s political history paper of May 2009, ‘Template for a Labor Faction: The Industrial Section and the Industrial Vigilance Council of the NSW Labor Party, 1916-19’,

“in 1915 the 'Industrialists', led by the Australian Workers Union (AWU), resorted to a new form of internal party organisation in order to take control of the state executive and conference and impose discipline over Members of Parliament. The virulence of the split in the party over conscription in 1916 was intensified by the activity of this faction. The structure and culture of the Industrial Section, later the Industrial Vigilance Council, set the pattern for later factional organisation in the NSW and Federal Labor parties.”²

In NSW, the Labor Right faction has evolved to be a broad alliance of various right-wing prominent party members known as the ‘Centre Unity’ faction, following a more economically liberal and socially conservative political philosophy than Labor Left. Nationally, the Right has dominated the Labor party since Keating’s Prime Ministership and has held a majority on the party's National Executive.³

In NSW, the ‘Centre Unity’ faction probably dates back to the 1970s where Labor heavyweight, Graham Richardson, was promoted up through the ranks via the time-honoured channel starting off as NSW Labor’s assistant general secretary. ‘Richo’ then went on to serve in the NSW Cabinet and then in the Keating federal ministry during the 1990s. ‘During the 1980s and 1990s Richo was often referred to as a 'numbers man' for the right wing of the New South Wales branch of the Australian Labor Party. He was highly effective in this position and became known as a 'king maker.'⁴

NSW Labor Right factionalism has dominated NSW Labor since Carr led Labor to power in 1995, and likely long before that. Carr had been previously coerced by the right-wing ‘Centre Unity’ faction to stand as a ‘reluctant’ opposition leader. According the well informed, ‘no nonsence’ political website independent-nsw.com, the Terrigals sub-faction was active back in 1996 when a factional struggle ensued between Tony Stewart of the Trogs subfaction and Morris Iemma of the Terrigals sub-faction. Stewart outmaneuvered Iemma at a NSW Labor meeting held at the Lakemba bowls club to form the new Lakemba branch and elect office bearers.⁵

The Centre Unity faction has had two sub factions - the Terrigals run by Joe Tripodi and Eddie Obeid, and the Troggs which was originally run by Richard Amery and Tony Stewart. The Terrigals are so named because Obeid has a house in Terrigal and purportedly staged a factional strategy meeting there immediately after Carr resigned.

Obeid had been Minister for Fisheries and for Mineral Resources in Carr’s earlier cabinet. Following Obeid’s controversy in what became known as the Oasis Affair, despite being exonerated, Carr “had let it be known that he did not want Eddie in his Ministry after the 2003 election”.⁶ Obeid did not contest the caucus ballot for selection of Ministers and he resigned from Carr’s Ministry on 2 April 2003. Perhaps it was this rebuttal, that encouraged Obeid to reassert his power and influence two years later when Carr resigned.

Under the strong leadership of Bob Carr, these two political clans had co-existed in relative harmony, perhaps akin to how Tito, though his shrewd political cunning had managed to hold together the nationalist factions of the former Yugoslavia for so long.

With Morris Iemma's demise as Premier in September 2008, these two sub-factions split. Former Planning Minister Frank Sartor was also a key player up until he was sacked by the new premier Nathan Rees in that same month. Around this time, the right-wing Centre Unity faction has had the support of around 50 MPs, while the remainder have leaned to the Left faction, itself split between the hard left and soft left faction.

The Centre Unity faction split into four groups - the Terrigals, the Trogs, a group aligned to John Della Bosca and a group known as the Macarthur group which (included) Graham West, Phil Costa and Geoff Corrigan.

According to the ‘non nonsense’ website independent-nsw.com the membership of the Terrigals during Iemma’s premiership were believed to comprise:

Co - chairs:
• Eddie Obeid, MLC
• Joe Tripodi, MP

Members:
• Morris Iemma, MP , Premier of NSW
• Kristina Keneally, MP
• Tanya Gadiel, MP – (married to one time Labor Council assistant secretary Michael Gadiel and sister-in-law to Eddie Obeid's chief of staff, Aaron Gadiel).
• Angela D'Amore, MP
• Karen Paluzzano, MP
• Virginia Judge, MP - former Eddie Obeid staffer
• Michael Costa, MLC
• John Della Bosca, MLC
• Eric Roozendaal, MLC
• Reba Meagher, MP
• Carl Scully had been a former member under Carr’s premiership.⁷

Subsequent members added:

• Noreen Hay MP
• Cherie Burton MP
• Matt Brown MP
• David Campbell MP
• Barbara Perry MP
• Michael Daley MP
• Ninos Koshoba MP
• Ian MacDonald MP
• John Hatzistergos MLC
• Henry Tsang MLC.⁸

By late 2003 and the famous Labor Right dinner at the Italian eatery, Al Ponte, at Darling Harbour, almost half of the lower house NSW Labor Caucus comprised the combined sub-factions of the Labor Right - some 24 of a total 55 Labor caucus members dined, vented their factional spleen...and plotted.



[Next Chapter ]

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References:

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Arbib
[2] http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=798230209258658;res=IELHSS
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Right
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Richardson
[5] http://www.independent-nsw.com/MonNewsJUNE14.html
[6] http://www.independent-nsw.com/obeid.html
[7] http://www.independent-nsw.com/MonNewsJUNE13.html
[8] Simon Benson, 25th September 2008, The Daily Telegraph, http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/noreen-leads-once-mighty-right/story-e6frezz0-1111117574517

[online material accessed 4th June 2010].

Sydney's newspaper, the Sun-Herald has just reported that annual catholic youth recruitment drive otherwise known as World Youth Day World, hosted by Sydney in 2008 cost taxpayers of $86 million. The original total cost estimate was $20 million, so it blew out by $66 million.

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The Evangelistic Spin
Held between 15th to 20th July 2008, the forecast attendance of 'pilgrims' for WYD08 was supposed to be some 500,000. It was promoted to NSW taxpayers as promising a 'massive injection' into the Sydney economy...'the single largest gathering of people since the Sydney 2000 Olympics will generate tourism earnings, business opportunities, global brand positioning and cultural exchanges.'[Source: Sydney Chamber of Commerce].

In the lead up planning in 2006, the NSW Department of State and Regional Development (DSRD) had undertaken an Economic Impact Analysis (EIA) in considering NSW hosting the World Youth Day event. DSRD estimated ‘the gross total direct and flow-on value added’ to New South Wales from hosting the event to be $152 million. But it excluded potential benefits from additional tourism, business generated, international media coverage and intangible costs such as business disruption.

NSW Minister for Finance at the time, John Watkins MP, claimed that the event would generate $190m in tourism revenue, and the Sydney Chamber of Commerce projected an even more optimistic estimate of $230m! [Crikey - 'NSW spending too much on World Youth Day? Pope a Catholic?']

Wonderful stuff one we were meant to believe!

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The Reality
Well WYD08 officially attracted 223,000 registered pilgrims. [WYD08 website], even though the unofficial wiki website somehow claims "300,000 young people from 200 countries attended during the week, and more than 1,000,000 came for the weekend." Evangelism or facts?

An independent audit report by the NSW Audit Office into the World Youth Day Co-ordination Authority confirmed that the combined NSW and Commonwealth Government contributions came to $68.8M, while the Catholic Church contributed just $10M. Direct revenue totalled $10.5M.

The catholic event involved taking over Randwick Racecourse not just for the event but for four months preventing racing anytime between 6 September 2008 and 31 December 2008. The racing industry was compensated $41.1 million out of taxpayers money, even though the horse trainers at Royal Randwick had estimated the compensation should have been $50M. Additional costs of turf replacement totalled $2.3M

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The Undisclosed Costs?
Other costs of services provided by other government agencies noted by the NSW Audit Office involved seconded staffing, dedicated policing including considerable overtime, yet according to its audit report "the cost of these services does not appear in the Authority’s financial report as the value could not be reliably determined."

So what were these costs? Why have they not been made public? The whole event may well have cost in excess of $150 million for all we know. Ad despite all promised hype, what was the confirmed value of the so-called "international profile and economic benefits of Sydney's World Youth Day"?

This event imposed a massive impost on Sydney and involved massive public resources for the direct benefit of a church group, yet the full costs and benefits even in economic terms have been covered up by the NSW Government.

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Could the $86M+ have been more equitably spent?
What tangible benefit did that $86M+ contribute to NSW society?
What were the opportunity costs of those millions?

According to a NSW Government Briefing paper on Homelessness in NSW:

"Data from the last Census in 2006 published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in its “Counting the Homeless Report”, indicated that at the time of the last Census, there were approximately 104,676 people who were counted as homelessness, with approximately 27,374 people counted as homeless in NSW. There were also approximately 16,375 people who were “sleeping rough” in Australia on the night of the Census and approximately 3,715 people “sleeping rough” in NSW. The City of Sydney also recently conducted a street count of people “sleeping rough” on 17 February 2009. It found that there were 340 people “sleeping rough” in the CBD and surrounding suburbs, including Woolloomooloo, Kings Cross, Paddington, Glebe, Surry Hills, Ultimo and Redfern."

Compare the self-serving benefits to the catholic church of WYD08 of the $86M+ to what the social benefits could have been dividing the money equally between Mission Australia, The Salvation Army and the Red Cross - each charities providing direct tangible benefits to society's most needy.

New data from The Salvation Army reveals that in the past 12 months, 1 in 5 people (20%) coming to them have never asked for help from the Salvos before.
The Salvos estimate that in the past 12 months they have seen approximately 80,000 Australians in need come to their door for the first time ever.*

The Salvos need to raise $75 million nationally from this year’s Red Shield Appeal including $9.7 million from the big doorknock on 29 and 30 May.

Major Brad Halse, spokesperson for The Salvation Army, said, “Our services are stretched greatly. The demand on our frontline personnel is still huge. Without doubt many, many Australians in the cities and the bush are doing it tough. It doesn’t take a lot to tip struggling families into a situation where they desperately need help." [Source: Salvation Army website]

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It ain't as if the catholic church is 'needy'

BRW magazine's investigative research has shown that churches generated almost $23 billion in 2004, with the Catholic Church turning over almost two-thirds of that.
The Catholic Church is almost five times larger than any other church and dominates the top 20 charities, the magazine says. It estimated the Catholic Church's gross revenue at $15 billion in 2004. The next largest was the Uniting Church with $3.1 billion.

The Catholic Education offices in NSW, Victoria and Queensland made up three of the top four charities. Several Catholic hospitals were in the top 20. BRW estimates the Catholic Church owns property and other assets worth more than $100 billion. [Source: 'Catholics lead rise in charity revenue', 23rd March 2005]

All the while, the catholic church, like all religious groups, do not pay tax. So the $8M+ of taxpayers dollars spent on WYD08 was effectively an annual religious recruitment drive by the catholic church.

'In 2005, BRW research found that the Catholic Church earned the bulk of the more than $23b in revenue earned by the ten largest religious groups - $16.25b. At the same growth rate identified by Adele Ferguson, this would be $20.47b in 2008. If even just 5% of that revenue was profit, that’s more than $300m that the Catholic Church will avoid this year in company tax alone. Ferguson estimated that the Church had more than $100b in assets, the bulk of which would be property – which would mean several hundred million dollars more in land tax that state governments are missing out on.

So, courtesy of our exempting religions from taxation, the Catholic Church alone keeps the best part of a billion dollars a year minimum. Throw in everyone else – the Uniting Church, the Anglicans, the happy clappers and their coffee chains, the Salvos – and we’re talking a billions of dollars a year in tax revenue forgone. The $160m being poured into the Youth Day is small beer indeed."[Source: NSW spending too much on World Youth Day? Pope a Catholic?'Bernard Keane on Crikey, 28th April 2008].

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Conclusions and Questions

Not only has this event demonstrated the absolute ineptitude of the NSW Government to even come close to cost estimates for such major events (a four fold blowout), it has failed to publicly disclose the full public economic costs (such as policing and that of seconded agency staff), so the NSW Government has been less than honest with the people of NSW of whom it squandered their taxes.

What were the benefits from additional tourism, business generated, international media coverage and intangible costs such as business disruption?

The NSW Government has close ties with the catholic church and many of its cabinet ministers are catholic. At the time of the staging of World Youth Day, Premier Morris Iemma was catholic, Deputy Premier (and the minister responsible for World Youth Day) John Watkins was catholic, the Minister for Juvenile Justice, Barbara Perry was catholic, Minister for Ports and Waterways, Joe Tripodi, was catholic and the then Minister for Ageing, Kristina Keneally, who met her husband at a previous World Youth Day, was also catholic.

This $86M+ of taxpayers money going to a catholic church recruitment drive and appropriating Randwick Racecourse for a church group was not only a gross misuse of public monies and an inappropriate favouritism by government on a massive scale; it has compromised the democratic principles of separation of church and state. Clearly in NSW the two are not so separate. Imaging the outcry if Iemma and Watkins were members of the church of scientology and they arranged all this the same way!

The catholic church mislead the NSW government and the people of NSW with its inflated estimates of attendees and should be held financial responsible to reinburse the NSW Government for the shortfall. WYD08 only registered 223,000 pilgrims not the promised 500,000.

What 'massive injection' went into the Sydney economy? The NSW Government and the Sydney Chamber of Commerce need to clarify the actual revenues.

What contribution did the catholic church in NSW contribute to NSW society in 2008 by way of charity and humanitarian support in verifiable dollars? How does this compare with the likes of The Salvation Army, Mission Australia and the Red Cross? How much does the NSW Government contribute to these social charities on an annual basis?

How can the catholic church ethically request the NSW and Commonwealth Governments fund its WYD08 recruitment drive to the tune of $86M+, when many citizens of NSW were not asked and many are not catholic, do not want to be and object to their taxes being undemocratically used to fund a church festival?

How can the catholic church ethically request the NSW and Commonwealth Governments fund its WYD08 recruitment drive to the tune of $86M+, when the catholic church has been found to generate $15 billion in 2004 alone?

The catholic church has robbed taxpayers in self-serving recruitment drive , that it could have easily finance out of its bank account.

The catholic church has an ethical obligation to refund the $86 million less its own contributed $10m (so the balance of $76M) to the NSW and Australian taxpayers. The $76M should then ethically go directly to our society's most needy in provide tangible long term life-improving support and the full $76M be independently and publicly accounted for.

Now that would be an ethical use of taxpayers money.

In her book, “Titanic”, author Stephanie Barcszewski described the exchange between Captain John Smith and the ship’s designer Thomas Andrew just over ten minutes after the collision with the lethal iceberg.

“Smith asked Andrews how long the Titanic had left and Andrews did some quick calculations: An hour and a half, possibly two. Not much longer.” That quick calculation was not far off. The ship sank two hours and forty minutes after it hit the iceberg, or roughly two hours and twenty minutes after Andrews made that grim pronouncement.

As there was no PA system on board the ship, Captain Smith issued immediate instructions to his crew to have passengers board the lifeboats, beginning with 1st class passengers of course. The Titanic was, after all, a microcosm of Edwardian society and 70% of third class people never saw a lifeboat that night. But then again, 40% in 1st class did not survive either and I suspect that is a much lower percentage than that will perish in the imminent sinking of RMS Affluent Society. Rich ticket-holders will evidently see off the first lifeboats half empty because they don’t believe in the fallibility of the ship.

But the point is, Captain John Smith sought an honest assessment of his ship’s condition, accepted it, and took whatever action he could to mitigate the scale of the disaster.

Imagine however, if Bernie Siegal, or some such guru of the self help industry, had been captain of the Titanic on the night of April 14, 1912. Assuming that he would have indeed ordered a damage report, rather than blithely persisted in a state of denial by thinking happy thoughts, would he have accepted it? I rather doubt it. Here would be the screenplay:

Thomas Andrews: “Captain Siegal, Sir, the front six bulkheads have risen 14 feet in just ten minutes and at this rate of water intake the weight will carry the ship down within two hours.”

Captain Siegal: “The fate of this ship will be determined by our positive expectations. If as a crew we visualize a positive outcome there will be a spontaneous remission of the flooding waters and the gash in the hull will be healed. Go away. I don’t need your negative energy. I need to work on my nomination speech for the leadership for the Green Party.”

Oh yes. Faith can move mountains, can’t it? That is what all the televangelists say. That is why Tony Robbins makes $30 million a year saying too. That is what Tojo and the Japanese Empire and the Kamakazis said as well, that faith could defeat an American war machine five times its strength. Mao had his troops believing that they could walk into an H bomb mushroom cloud to prove that radiation was a paper tiger. If you believe that renewable technologies will supply all of our current energy demands and that human ingenuity will provide a substitute for oceans of missing fish and biodiversity and depleted soil nutrients then you are indeed a candidate for faith healing. But just try healing Mother Earth. You’ll have as much luck as Captain Siegal would have had healing that gash on the Titanic with his positive thinking.

The infantile disease of religion is still with us. Those who renounce its traditional forms still seek refuge and comfort in polyannyish, unscientific beliefs that do not follow from their scientific analysis. We are still children. We still need faith, apparently. Al Gore, ended his documentary on faith, and on June 7/08, in “The Age”, Maude Barlow was quoted as saying that “hope is a moral imperative”, for without it, there is no will to act for change.

These people confuse their roles. Are they truth-tellers or morale-boosters? Is their role to tell Captain Smith the facts about the Titanic or to sugar-coat them so as to not depress him too much? Are they his emotional care-taker or his reliable reporter?

Some have taken the line that the truth is too shocking for most, so lets dispense false hope to remain in the good books of mainstream opinion, otherwise we won’t get a hearing and none of our ideas will be entertained. I won’t tell you the ship is going down in two hours but could you (whispering politely) remind passengers where the lifejackets are stored?

Former Liberal cabinet minister Brian Tobin was a master at trying to straddle the two fences of defending the environment but not telling the truth about it. He admonished environmentalists for depressing people with bad news when he said, they needed hope. Here I was under the impression that the worsening environment was responsible for depressing people. And that industry, whose portfolio he was in charge of, had much to do with that. MacLean’s magazine heralded his victory as Premier of Newfoundland in 1996 because “Tobin’s optimistic approach struck the right balance between realism and hope.”

A balance between “realism and hope.” Can anything be more absurd? When a doctor gets a lab report, does he want “realism balanced with hope”? When I take my car to my trusted auto mechanic “Mitch”, do I want to hear his realistic assessment about whether I need an engine rebuild or do I want him to “balance” that assessment with his “hopes”? When I go to my oncologist, am I going to a friggin priest, or to a guy who is going to give me a blunt and objective reading of the MRI and lab results together with his unemotional prognosis?

I am not a child anymore folks. I sent Santa Claus packing long ago. Same with his successors and Green wannabees. I don’t vote for political faith-healers. “Believe in me and I’ll make the ecological consequences of overpopulation go away by changing your attitude.” Like Sgt. Friday in the old TV series “Dragnet” used to say, “Only the facts M’am. Just give me the facts.”

Just give me the number of people this planet and this country can support indefinitely at a given lifestyle. And cut the crap.
My state of mind has no bearing on that figure and neither does yours, Mary Poppins.

A common line of argument from those who favor population growth in Australia is that it's all a matter of optimism versus pessimism, and that environmentalists are much too negative. But there are situations where optimism would be better named meglomania.

Picture adapted from William Blake's Nebukadnezar

Last words of the Dodo

Weren’t, “I would rather be an optimist than a pessimist,” the famous last words of the dodo bird?"[1]

In Rudd welcomes 'big Australia'
Rudd talked about being optimistic about Australia's growing population, which he is encouraging in the face of growing democratic panic as the public feel the adverse consequences.

Because of this new parties are forming with policies to stop population growth in Australia.

A common line of argument from those who favor growth, such as economist Glenn Withers, is that it's all a matter of optimism versus pessimism, and that environmentalists are much too negative.

Ex-journalist, now Labor politician, Maxine McKew, recently told the Australian Q & A television show that, since we would all rather be optimists than pessimists, she was going to take the optimistic view on Australia's carrying capacity and on the livability of larger cities, and that to her mind ended the argument.

Optimism or meglomania

Too bad if people in Australia cannot afford water and heating or shelter - let's all remain optimists! What a negligent attitude from a person responsible for the conditions which may lead to starvation and exposure for so many.

"Doomsayers have always been wrong" say the cheerleaders of the growth lobby. Mark O'Connor identifies this attitude as coming from their vast ignorance of human history, and compares their glibness with the glibness of the Chaldeans telling Nebuchadnezzar "O King, live forever" (Book of Daniel, 3.9).

Nebuchadnezzar was an infrastructure and growth obsessed King who believed that his kingdom of bricks and mortar, and their financial foundations, would be eternal. Like Australia's Prime Minister and State Premiers, he thought he had the solutions to everything and that anyone who disagreed was not worth listening to. In the Bible, the political opposition was symbolised as a new religion, whose prosyletisers Nebuchadnezzar put down by various brutal means. The fact that an organised political opposition had formed is indicative that Nebuchadnezzar's wealth and power were based on disempowering his constituents. His key advisors learned to tell him what he wanted to hear or face the consequences. The king had dreams that were interpreted as warning him that his kingdom would crumble as would others that followed. His response was to built a huge gold statue of himself at public expense.

But Nebuchadnezzar's grandiosity was exposed for the madness it was. He was driven out of his own city and spent seven years living like a wild animal. [Ed. Apologies to wild animals who seem to lead blameless lives in reality, especially compared to politicians.]

Mark O'Connor says that one thing experience has taught him is not to trust anyone who seeks to reduce complex factual issues to optimism versus pessimism.

Hope, fear and propaganda

Vlad Stoikovich, who was recently on a population 'debate' on SBS's Insight program writes,

"Population boosters often paint the population debate as being one of HOPE verses FEAR. They, being on the side of hope, see themselves as visionaries with an unshakeable confidence in the creativity of mankind. On the side of fear, they group together -

“the villains”: NIMBYs, bigots, scaremongers and conservationists, people resistant to and fearful of change, pessimists whose innate distrust of mankind is their greatest failing.

To present the case for and against in such a light is clearly just another case of moral manipulation, an attempt by boosters with vested interests to hold the moral high ground at the expense of reasoned, logical debate. So in the interest of fairness let’s reverse their proposition and assume that boosters are on the side of FEAR and population stabilisers the side of HOPE.

Could such an argument be valid?

We only have to analyse booster arguments to deduce what it is they FEAR:

* Boosters FEAR that we cannot maintain economic growth without population growth.
* Boosters FEAR that the personal stake they have in controlling capital, land and business wealth will not be maximized.
* Boosters FEAR that we will not be able to support an aging population.
* Boosters FEAR that we will revert into a bigoted, Anglo-centric fortress Australia, which breeds suspicion and hatred of those different from us.
* Boosters FEAR strategic/military weakness and invasion from foreign powers.

So what do stabilisers HOPE for?

* We HOPE for a world in which our children can enjoy the same abundant natural environment and species that we enjoy today.
* We HOPE for an economic model which takes into account the full environmental, social and cultural impacts of our choices.
* We HOPE for an Australia whose growth is based on doing things smarter, more productively and in a way which gives all Australians the opportunity to participate and prosper.
* And the list goes on!

Boosters believe in the boundless ingenuity of humanity, they put their faith in the great scientists and machines of tomorrow, that will enable us to consume and grow without limits. But ingenuity comes in many forms and it should be recognized that before every great leap of science comes an even greater leap of philosophy . Perhaps the ingenuity they so crave is not to be found in their grand technological visions of tomorrow, but in the simple philosophical shifts now happening right under their noses."

NOTES

[1] Remark made by Robert Jameson on [email protected] on 07/06/2010 13:23

Queensland farming lobby group, Agforce has set up a Macropod Advisory Group to investigate how to sustainably harvest kangaroos. In an ABC radio interview yesterday, Qulipie grazier and Agforce's President of Sheep & Wool Stephen Tully outlined how exactly this group proposes the industry should move "forward". Amongst the mistruths and exaggerations being uttered by this farmer came the proposal that juvenile kangaroos be targeted by the kangaroo industry for their superior meat. Below is a section of the interview:

Question: But if there’s a shortage of kangaroo meat surely the price would go up?

No, but the controls that are in there make it nearly impossible…. for example there’s a minimum weight of effectively 16kg on a kangaroo. That’s taking out 90% of the kangaroos you can shoot, 80 – 90% of the kangaroos you can shoot and if you take out that many kangaroos it makes it actually impossible to reach the quota set by the EPA. So there’s all those sorts of things there that all contribute… we also don’t believe that the count is proper anyhow. As well as that the shooting at the moment is taking out nearly all the dominant males so you just get this enormous number of females that are just breeding incredibly rapidly. That’s just doubling every few years the numbers of roos out there because all you are left with is a breeding population of females.

Question: Well there must be some males or the females wouldn’t be breeding, can you explain what the dynamic is? You take out the alpha males, what does that do to the rest of the population?

Well there is obviously some males there because it’s impossible to shoot out all kangaroos because the states just so big and because the product is fairly cheap at the moment. You just can’t afford to spend miles and miles just driving around chasing one kangaroo and as you know one male can do quite a lot of damage in a rampant female population. You don’t need a lot of males to breed females, we might think so but that certainly hasn’t proven the case before. The whole dynamic of it is that in these dry times we’re just getting migrating mobs of kangaroos. If someone gets a storm, if someone tries to save some of their pasture, if there’s a bit of pasture that has been degraded and the local NRM groups have funded fencing to protect that area, you are just getting these migration mobs of kangaroos numbering tens of thousands that are descending on these areas and just turning them into deserts.

Question: So you want to be able to shoot females as well, is that the issue?

We want to make it so that we can shoot females, males, even the younger animals. I mean the best animals to consume are always mature juveniles, the younger animals that are less than 2 years old. We all eat lamb, with beef they are always under 2 years old, that’s always the best product to sell, it’s the highest quality product. At the moment it’s the equivalent of eating old bulls and cattle, it’s the worst quality product. All of those things are hindering the development of this market.

On the current "high" numbers of kangaroos Stephen Tully had the following to say in another interview

“kangaroo (numbers) used to be boom and bust now there’s not so much bust because we’ve put in so many watering points, they just love them and just breed…..

I think the primary reason (for “high” kangaroo numbers) is because the EPA for some reason nobody can quite understand has brought in this minimum size level……. ......Don’t bring in these silly regulations or what size or anything else, leave that up to the industry. They are by far the best ones to judge and treat it as a resource”

Dr David Croft and the THINKK think tank

Fortunately Dr David Croft was also interviewed and he provided listeners with a few home truths regarding the kangaroo industry and the agricultural lobby group. Dr Croft is a member of a new think tank called THINKK established at the Institute of Sustainable Futures. This group has been set up to undertake independant research on kangaroos and provide unbiased information to stakeholders, government departments and the general public. Dr Dror Ben-Ami's opening statement on behalf of THINKK can be found here.

Agforce will also be busy this week attempting to convince the Russians to reverse their decision made last year banning the importation of kangaroo meat. I can only hope that the Russian Trade Commissioner Yuri Aleshin does not succumb to the propoganda being spouted by Agforce's Brent Finlay and Stephen Tully.

At this point I think it appropriate to remind us of the late, great Professor AJ “Jock” Marshall. In his words:

"……there is nothing sacred about sheep farmers. They, like many other people, are doing a worthwhile job for the nation. They are mostly pleasant and useful citizens, but – let us be frank about this – no more valuable to us than members of a dozen or so other groups within the Australian community. Some of them know a great deal about sheep, but they know nothing about the population dynamics and the ecology of kangaroos. So when we hear pressure groups of these worthy people vociferously exclaiming that kangaroos eat nine times as much grass as sheep, or that kangaroos are in no danger of extinction , they can be ignored. Such statements are so much wind…….

Who would have thought that the Koala – at one time one of the commonest animals in Queensland – would ever be rare, but where is it today? We will then, if you please, pay no attention to the views of sheep farmers. Outside the question of sheep, the annual wool clip and the local bending races, their opinions are worthless."

This is getting to be habitual. Two years ago I wrote a eulogy to explain why three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, David Brower, quit the Sierra Club, shortly before his death. Since the former club director had played a pivotal role in hoisting the club from marginality to a potent lobbyist, I likened his resignation to the Pope renouncing Catholicism and taking leave of the Vatican. Among other things, Brower was very upset over the refusal of the Sierra Club leadership to address the role that immigrant-driven population growth was playing in the environmental degradation of America. As I wrote then,

"... after 67 years this great crusader felt compelled to resign, ‘with no regret and a bit of desperation’. Brower, you see, had a problem. He had a problem with corruption, bribery, political correctness and myopia. He knew that demography drives not only human destiny but the destinies of the species we impact, and that unchanged immigration policies would double America’s population by 2100, or if liberalized, add as many as another 700 million by that time. He also knew that post-1970 immigrants and their descendants would be the decisive force fuelling American population growth. If unchecked, it surely meant ecological Armageddon for the country. In resigning Brower stated that “Overpopulation is perhaps the biggest problem facing us, and immigration is part of the problem. It has to be addressed.”

Following the posting of this fact, Brower's daughter Barbara contested it as a "gross mischaracterization" of her father's position, and insisted that immigration was "a very small" part of his frustration with the Sierra Club. His primary concern was with "the inequitable and unsustainable greed underlying American consumer society.", and while he was worried about " inflating the number of consumers in America his approach was to work on the 'push' factors that drove immigrants to America." It was apparent that her father's unequivocal remark was not convenient for the times or for her social-justice agenda. The David Brower she would like to remember is obviously not the one who praised the lifeboat ethics of Garrett Hardin on the front cover of Hardin’s 1968 book, “The Voyage of the Beagle”.

Now it seems that Phillippe Cousteau Jr. is also distancing himself from a family legacy. One of the more notable things his grandfather Jacques-Yves Cousteau said was the following:

"We must alert and organise the world's people to pressure world leaders to take specific steps to solve the two root causes of our environmental crises - exploding population growth and wasteful consumption of irreplaceable resources. Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today. "

Fast forward to May 28, 2010, and Phillippe Cousteau Jr., appearing in an interview with popular comedian Bill Maher on his program “Real Time”, managed to speak eloquently about the collapse of our oceans without even mentioning population growth. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/28/phillipe-cousteau-jr-to-b_n_594308.html Now, eight minutes is certainly not enough for anyone to catalogue all the environmental dangers that threaten us. And since the interview was prompted by the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, it was natural that the quest for oil and the state of the oceans would be the focus of the conversation. Phillippe Cousteau’s mission had to be make viewers understand that the oceans can’t take it anymore. They couldn’t take it 50 years ago, and it was nonsense to believe that they could take it now. Dead zones are popping up all over the world while a sea of plastic—a petroleum product---is dominating a portion of the Pacific the size of Texas. As he said, we are becoming victims of our self-mutilation, amputing the limbs of our life-support system. Nevertheless, it would not have been too time-consuming for him to mention, just in passing, , that the growing number of humans—particularly in affluent America---- has had at least something to do with the negative human impact on marine biodiversity. Grandfather Jacques thought so. Why don’t the environmentalists of Phillippe’s generation think so----or at least think it warrants mention? Instead they take the safe bet and play to the gallery with remarks such as Phillippe’s: “I think people have too much faith in big business.” Now that’s really going out on a limb, isn’t it? Even a conservative audience would applaud that one.

My, how the environmental movement has changed since the first Earth day in 1970. Population growth was once on centre stage, but now that we have twice as many consumers wreaking havoc upon the world as we did then, it is hardly to be seen on the green radar. Even the sons and daughters of those environmental icons who did take it seriously will not pick up the torch. Their passion is laudable but their comprehension is incomplete. This recalls the generation gap that nineteenth century Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev wrote about in his classic, “Fathers and Sons”. The young man accuses the middle-aged man of having content but no force, but the middle-aged man counters that the young man has force but no content. Things haven’t changed much since then it seems, as the cycle repeats itself at the most critical phase of human history.

As George Bush the lessor might have put it, I think we have a Zeitgeist-change situation on our hands here. This is a generation gap that we can’t afford.