(We) can do better

Albert Bartlett once spoke about Mark Twain’s “silent lie”. It refers to the habit of lying by not revealing the truth. If I know that someone has planted a bomb in the local subway, but I choose not to share that information with the authorities, by Twain’s definition, I am a liar. But when the information that I withhold is of critical importance to our lives or the lives of innocents, then I am more than a liar. I am criminally negligent. Such is the case with many politicians and environmental leaders. They know that we are facing economic collapse from dwindling oil supplies and ecological Armageddon from over-population, soil degradation, overtaxed aquifers and species loss, but they choose to shield the public from the brutal truth. Several reasons have been advanced to account for their silence. One is ideological. The syncretistic blend of New Left thinking, feminism, cultural relativism, xenophilia and political correctness, sometimes bundled under the rubric of “cultural Marxism” has been a proven reality filter. The stark fact that there is not “enough to go around”, that we are already in overshoot, cannot be acknowledged by ideologues who view the present through the prism of an antique social justice agenda. Their focus is not on stopping growth, but managing and deflecting it. It is not on acknowledging limits, but ‘growing’ them with more efficient use of resources by land use strategies, pie-in-the-sky technologies and Spartan living habits. And it is not about family planning to cap population growth, but granting women reproductive choices even if they those choices result in unsustainable growth. For the growth management syndicate there is never a “longage” of people but a shortage of food. A shortage that can be cured by perpetual foreign aid, political reform or fair and efficient distribution. The notion that modern agriculture will collapse with the demise of fossil fuels or that organic farming or “re-localization” cannot sustain 7 billion people is beyond their comprehension. There is another more mercenary reason for population myopia and green silence, however. Simply put, political parties and mainstream environmental NGOs, for the most part, are paid “not to understand”. Organizations like the Sierra Club, Conservation International, Nature Conservancy and the David Suzuki Foundation, accept corporate money. Some even permit corporate representatives to hold directorships. This comes at a price. What are corporations, and particularly financial institutions all about? Growth and Debt, which go together like a horse and carriage. An apt simile for the post-carbon future that looms around the corner. So we shall have growth, but it shall be painted green. Voila. “Smart” growth. A first class ticket on a doomed ship. But most importantly, corporations crave the certification of social responsibility that environmental organizations can give them. In the 1990s big business felt the winds of change. Environmentalism had gone mainstream. It became evident that opposing the public mood was not a wise business strategy. So rather than war with environmental organizations, it proved commercially advantageous to jump on their bandwagon. If they could gain the environmental seal of approval in exchange for acquiescence to growth, they could proceed with business-as-usual. And just as the Pope sold indulgences to the wealthy benefactors of the Middle Ages, the “Pope” of the Sierra Club, among others, sold ecological dispensation to corporate benefactors. As anointed Green Citizens, “progressive” corporations can count the profits and bask in self-righteous glory as the population grows relentlessly. But this fact raises a more fundamental issue. Proof of this corporate infiltration is available by the mere perusal of their financial reports. So why aren’t the members of environmental NGOs doing their homework? Why do people who would conduct a title search or home inspection when they buy a house, or scrutinize the financial report of their union or strata council, or make the purchase of a car subject to a mechanical inspection not care to apply the same rigor and due diligence to the environmental organizations they support? Why don’t they care to know who is paying the piper? And why do they rely upon the filtered , spoon-fed news that these green organizations dispense rather than do their own research? Why do they delegate their thinking to these kept women of corporate duplicity, their chosen gatekeepers of knowledge? Are people lax, indolent and ignorant? At times, most are. Despite numerous opportunities, I have chosen to be ignorant about the workings of my car, or how to trouble-shoot my computer problems, or even how to fill in my own income tax form. But like other people, I address many areas of my life with earnest curiosity. Many of us effect great interest in proper nutrition, effective exercise, better gardening, shrewd shopping and a host of hobbies and interests. But we are deliberately oblivious to those societal issues which threaten our collective survival. Many adopt the posture of “positive thinking” ---the wilful ignorance of the blatantly obvious. Like those who persisted in playing cards while the Titanic listed, they whistle past the graveyard of a civilization that edges closer to the cliff. The writing is on the wall, but they choose not to read it. While the media collaborates with their self-imposed stupefaction, it only panders to their appetite for escape. There is an insatiable market for denial and self-indulgence. Even news must be entertaining. We are transfixed by stock market quotations, economic indices, sporting events and movie star divorces, but bored with the end of the world as we know it. Of those who read, it is murder mysteries, horror stories, romance novels, tales of the supernatural and pop psychology that seem to command interest. We are literally amusing ourselves to death. Even those nations with democratic levers are captive of an ecologically illiterate electorate. Everywhere we are oppressed by the coalition of the uniformed, who consist of, in the words of Tasmania’s Peter Bright, “People who don’t think, and who don’t want to think; people who don’t know—and who don’t want to know; and those who don’t care, and don’t want to care.” We are fatally flawed. Unfit and undeserving of a better fate than that which awaits us like a black-hooded executioner beside his chopping block, axe in hand. Poetic justice for the architects of the Sixth Extinction, a species that despite its vaunted intelligence, continues to undercut its own life support system like a cannibal feeding off his own limbs. The fossil record is full of failed models like ours. A Greek tragedy in the making. Tim Murray

Developers have, in their sights, a tract of open space in the Brisbane suburb of Milton, formerly occupied by the Milton Tenis courts on which they plan to erect high rise appartments that will house at least an additional 2,000 extra people. The total combined number or residents and workers that would be jammed into the suburb of Milton, from this and an existing proposal for residential and commercial development above Milton Station, could be 12,000, that is as many as live in the rural town of Warwick.

Even the Brisbane City Council, well-practised at trampling upon the rights of Brisbane residents to impose infrastructure or residential developments, is objecting to the size of the development. The Westside News of 3 February reported that in 2006 a court approved the application of a residential development with a maximum of eight storeys. Of the current development propsal, Toowong ward Councillor Peter Matic said of the 20 storey development proposal, "I think it's horrendous. When you look at the plans the developer is affecting the flow of traffic on Milton Rd, there's flooding issues and there has been no consultation with local residents".

Of course, the dictatorial planning powers of State Government makes it legally difficult for the Brisbane City Council to block the plan in accord with the residents. Nevertheless, if the BCC had the will to oppose the development it should be capable of showing the leadership necessary to stop it, with local residents so overwhelmingly opposed.

A leaflet publicising the meeting by the group Concerned Residents Against Milton's Excessive Development (CRAMED) listed that group's objections to the proposal:

• This is a huge increase in density for this site. Once this change in zoning goes through there is no way the Council can change it to a lesser density without VAST expense to the ratepayers because of land owners compensation for loss of land value claims.

• Where is the infrastructure for this extra population and where are they going to build it. The water, sewerage, power not to mention telephone infrastructure in this area needs to be updated to cope with the number of people here now, never mind 2,000 more.

• These buildings will be totally out of scale with the surrounding houses and will overshadow just about every building in the vicinity. They will interfere with the prevailing breezes. They will also interrupt many local city views that you have paid thousands of dollars for.

• Traffic which is already an issue in this area will become much worse as will parking. The main exit and entry for the residential component of this development will be onto Haig Road. This will make an already dangerous crossing to the Milton State School even more so.

• It is still zoned for sport and recreation. As we all know Gregory Park is a much loved but over used green space. Both Paddington and Auchenflower have insufficient green and recreational space available to their present population.

• This area is a known flood plain and is clearly marked as such on Council maps. Planners that approve buildings on those sites should be personally liable. Why should ratepayers be paying compensation when those sites are affected by future flooding. To confirm this check the BCC web site at the following URL www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/bccwr/_assets/main/lib927/flooding_milton_flood_flag _map.pdf

• Parts of this site is in a Demolition Control Precinct which appears to mean very little in this case. The majority of these buildings are not sustainable buildings as they are too tall to rely on anything other than air-conditioning.

Since the first meeting, the developer has publicly advertising of the Milton Tennis Court site has commenced much earlier than CRAMED had originally been led to believe thy would now giving them until only 29 April to state their objections to the Tennis Court. Also another development in Milton, that is, for a residential apartments above above Milton Station is to be extended to include a commercial precinct. A further leaflet from CRAMED comments:

What you can do: (1) Attend meeting of CRAMED to oppose these developments at the Milton State School at 6.30PM on Monday 29 March. (2) Attend the protest to save the Koala and to stop overdevelopment at the Queensland Government Growth Summit 11.00AM Tuesday 30 March at the main entrance of Queensland State Library, Southbank.
E-mail: enquiries[AT]cramed.org or phone: 0404 833 057 to become involved in CRAMED.

See also: cramed.org, "The Battle to Save our Suburb" of 15 Mar 10 on wtsag.org.au the web site of the Walter Taylor South Action Group, Transcript of SBS Insight program "Housing 36 Million" of Tue 2 March, featuring CRAMED convenor, Elizabeth Handley.

One's first impression of Earth Hour is that it is a noble but token gesture to try to get the community to jointly recognise the need for global sustainability. The actual impact of turning power off for one hour on a weekend will do squat to reduce the world's greenhouse gas emissions. The physical effect is akin to turning off one light globe while China and the US burn millions of tonnes of CO2 - not even a speck in the universe.

But when one reads about Earth Hour further and realises it is inspired by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to raise global awareness about the impact of green house emissions on the natural environment, one starts to appreciate the significance of Earth Hour. The benefit of Earth Hour is communicating awareness of the problem across ordinary citizens around the world, which is a logical and sensible first step in making change. It also helps raise awareness and respect for what WWF itself is trying to achieve.

The WWF is "one of the world's largest and most respected independent conservation organizations". Its mission is "to stop the degradation of the Earth's natural environment and build a future where people live in harmony with nature." Earth Hour "is a call to stand up, to take responsibility, to get involved and lead the way towards a sustainable future." SOURCE: EARTH HOUR

So what is the scale of the emissions problem that the WWF is trying to draw attention to?

"In per capita terms, emissions from the U.S. power sector are the second highest in the world. Americans’ electricity usage produces about 9.5 tons of CO2 per person per year, compared to 2.4 tons per person per year in China, 0.6 in India, and 0.1 in Brazil. Average per capita emissions from electricity and heat production in the EU is 3.3 tons per year. Only Australia, at greater than 10 tons per year, emits more power-related emissions per person than the U.S. In many developing countries, per capita power consumption is extremely low, and millions of people lack access to electricity at all." SOURCE: Centre for Global Development

"Earth Hour has almost 5 million supporters and a global network in over 100 countries, it’s one of the world's largest and most respected independent conservation organizations. WWF’s mission is to stop the degradation of the Earth's natural environment and build a future where people live in harmony with nature.

In March 2009, hundreds of millions of people took part in the third Earth Hour. Over 4000 cities in 88 countries officially switched off to pledge their support for the planet, making Earth Hour 2009 the world’s largest global climate change initiative."

So in anyone's terms, Earth Hour, is a success in repeatedly raising global awareness about the emissions problem. The next step is those same supporters influencing political decision makers to make the changes each year to reduce human greenhouse gas emissions.

New economic modelling indicates the world has just five years to initiate a low carbon industrial revolution before runaway climate change becomes almost inevitable.

And what is the WWF trying to achieve?

"WWF-Australia believes that in order to stay below a 2 degree Celsius temperature rise, the Australian Government must implement a national plan to reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions.

This plan must:

* Reduce carbon pollution by at least 25% by 2020 and 90% by 2050;

* Implement an emissions trading scheme operational by mid 2011 at the latest;

* Increase to 40% by 2030 the Renewable Energy Target (RET) and modify it or implement a feed-in-tariff to better support emerging technologies like geothermal, wave and solar thermal;

* Provide a fund to encourage landholders to preserve and grow trees to absorb carbon pollution and protect habitat;

* Implement world's best practice for energy efficiency and vehicle emission standards;

* Ensure two to three carbon capture and storage commercial projects are operational by 2015 and that no new coal-fired power stations are built unless they undertake carbon capture and storage; and

* Build on Copenhagen Accord to deliver a fair, ambitious and legally binding agreement in Mexico in 2010."SOURCE: WWF on Climate Change

Meanwhile, on the Friday before Earth Hour I gaze out of the window from a 17th floor Sydney office building and see today another clear blue sky. But at the horizon blanketing Sydney’s suburbs rests a brown murky haze that is pollution from road transport and industry. It happens every day in every city around the globe. Like smoking over a lifetime, the combined effect of those thousands and thousands of repeated days of brown murky haze in every city are taking their toll on the health of the planet.

If Queensland's current runaway population growth continues, furhter encroachments upon the habitat of our endangered iconic koala are inevitible, practically guaranteeing their extinction from South East Queensland. Yet Premier Anna Bligh, by having renamed the 'population summit' to the 'Growth Summit', has told Queenslanders she is no longer interested in considering the one chance we have to save our koala, that is, population stability.

We reprint below a letter from the Save Our Koalas rally organisers

Dear Koala Supporters,

We asked what you wanted to do in response to the Queensland Government's upcoming Growth Summit, and an overwhelming majority of you want to let Anna Bligh know that the Koala is more important than unlimited growth in Australia.

We need to send a message loud and clear to Anna Bligh and Kevin Rudd, that rushed development will have a catastrophic effect on Koala populations in SEQ, our lifestyles and our biodiversity, and that it could cause the extinction of the koala.

Rally outside the main entrance of Queensland State Library, Southbank, Brisbane at 11.00am Tuesday 30th March 2010.

On Monday March 22, 2010 orchardists in Orange began shooting Grey- headed flying foxes in a program sanctioned by NPWS Bathurst office.

Grey –headed flying foxes are a threatened species listed as VULNERABLE TO EXTINCTION in NSW, and in Victoria. They are also listed as VULNERABLE under the federal EPBC Act and are on the IUCN’s international red list as a Threatened Species in decline.

The NPWS Wildlife Atlas shows this threatened species has never been recorded as being present in Orange or the Cabonne Shires, yet the first time they appear in Orange orchardists have demanded through their local member and local tv news to be allowed to shoot them.

NPWS have complied with this demand, and have been signing permits since Monday.

This is despite the NPWS ranger in charge, Steve Woodhall, having no experience or expertise in the Grey-headed Flying Fox, and refusing to insist that alternative non-lethal measures be employed as a first resort.

Yesterday Mr Woodhall said “It is NPWS policy to shoot Grey-headed Flying Foxes,” and that he expected he would receive a reprimand from the Minister directing him to sign permits anyway, so there was no point in refusing the orchardists to kill the bats.

Ranger Woodhall also stated that it took “too long to start a non-lethal program of management”, yet local Bathurst farmers today confirmed the bats have been arriving at in the region for the past two years.

“It is outrageous that NPWS would allow the shooting of a threatened species saying this is first time they have appeared in the region, when landowners have confirmed they’ve arrived in the region for the past two years, ” local ecologist Ray Mjadwesch said.

“A local orchardist appeared on the tv news last week stating he would shoot the flying foxes without a permit. Instead of policing this threat, NPWS condones and facilitates it,” he added.

The Queensland government recently accepted evidence from bat rehabilitator Dave Pinson that shooting bats is unethical and inhumane.

“They banned the shooting of bats after evidence that it can take days for bats to die from non-lethal shots,” Mr Pinson said.

“Then the lactating pups left waiting for their mothers at the camp can take up to 10 days to starve to death.” he added.

On the first day, ecologist Ray Mjadwesch inspected the flying fox camp on the Macquarie River at Bathurst and has found young dead pups hanging in the tree. He also made the observation that with perhaps 100,000 bats in camp, the idea of shooting 600 or so bats to protect apple crops is absurd.

The last survey was done 12 years ago, and an estimated 360,000 GH flying foxes remain in Australia. The trajectory has been downwards ever since, making them more threatened than the koala.

“The decision by an uninformed NPWS ranger to allow the shooting of these animals, without reference to bat ecologists and experts who are experienced in enforcing non-lethal methods of management, is outrageous and should be stopped,” Mr Mjadwesch said

For more information contact Mjadwesch Environmental Services PH: 02 6331 5858 or 02 63315170.

How can this be happening when bats provide such a crucial service to the ecosystem and yet have a highly threatened status? Clearly alternate non-lethal methods of controlling this threatened species is preferable to NPWS issuing permits to orchardists to shoot them.

See http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au (search for 'Best Practice Guidelines + Flying Foxes).

1. ECOSYSTEM SERVICE
Flying foxes act as pollinators and seed dispersers primarily of the genera Eucalyptus, Syncarpia, Angophora, Melaleuca and Banksia, but in some areas they also eat a range of rainforest fruit and consequently influence the reproductive and evolutionary processes of many forest types, including hardwoods. In fact, without bats there would be no rainforests! How critical is that especially considering how fragmented our landscape is becoming due to land clearing? In urban or cleared rural areas, while many bird and insect pollinators are effectively isolated in their fragmented patches of bush, the flying fox is not as they can travel long distances.

2. THREATENED STATUS OF GREY-HEADED FLYING FOXES
Much of our native vegetation has been cleared or disturbed leading to many native plants and animals becoming locally extinct or threatened with extinction. Populations of grey-headed flying fox used to number many millions, but now there are less than 300,000 nationally and on the decline. Since the reproduction of grey- headed flying foxes is a lengthy process starting with 2-3 year old adult, and taking 12 months from conception to independence with a high rate of mortality in the first two years, this makes populations susceptible to decline.

Grey-headed flying foxes are a threatened species listed as vulnerable to extinction in NSW (TSC Act), and Vic and also listed as vulnerable under the Federal EPBC Act and on the IUCN's international Red List as a Threatened Species in Decline. Clearly these threatened species must be managed carefully to ensure their survival.

3. NON-LETHAL ALTERNATIVES TO BAT MANAGEMENT
Here are some simple solutions.

a) EDUCATE PEOPLE TO PLANT MORE NATIVE FOOD TREES FOR BATS so they won't be as likely to eat fruit trees. If people were to encourage flying foxes to their backyard (and councils on council land) by planting native food trees (such as blue gums, blackbutts, turpentines, ironbarks, bloodwoods and angophoras) this would not only minimise bats eating fruit but also help remove flying foxes from the threatened species list. An added advantage would be to give residents low maintenance native gardens with more native birds, butterflies and flying foxes.

b) NET FRUIT TREES with white durable knitted netting 40mm diameter or smaller (not thin nylon monofilament which can injure them) in a way that the net is stretched taut away from the tree and not thrown loosely over trees which entangles and kills them (and also other species like snakes, possums, birds, reptiles). Make sure to check netting regularly for entanglements. Alternatively, drape and peg shade cloth over fruiting trees. Full crop netting is currently the only method proven to be completely effective in deterring
grey-headed flying foxes.

c) GIVE FINANCIAL INCENTIVES TO ORCHARDISTS so they can purchase netting/shade cloth to protect their fruit trees. Alternatively, the government could reimburse orchardists for their losses. The government has the responsibility to protect native species and investing money in nets for farmers is a far better practice than of killing/relocating flying foxes.

4. NPWS PERMITS TO SHOOT FLYING FOXES
The Department of Environment and Climate Change NSW (DECC) provides best practice guidance to land managers and private landholders seeking to conserve grey-headed flying foxes. So why is NPWS not applying best practice to conserve this species? Why is NPWS ranger in charge of Orange Shire, Steve Woodall (who has no experience, training or expertise in Grey-Headed Flying Fox management) refusing to insist on non-lethal measures to flying fox control and caving in to orchardists' demands for permits to shoot them? The destruction of grey-headed flying-fox camps is clearly listed as a threatening process under the TSC Act (Schedule 2, Part 1).

Local farmers know that bats have been coming to the area for the last two years so why is Mr Woodall saying that 'it took too long to start a non-lethal plan of management'? And secondly why is NPWS not policing threats of farmers to shoot these protected species? And while affected orchardists are limited to 25 foxes per permit, how can that possibly be policed? And are NPWS officers actually inspecting properties to ascertain damage has occured or handing out permits like lollies?

NPWS rangers should immediately consult with bat ecologists and bat experts on how to enforce NON-lethal management with this colony. Instead they are handing out application forms to orchardists and encouraging them to pass around to their friends!

SHOOTING BATS IS UNETHICAL, INHUMANE AND INEFFECTIVE
The Queensland government recently accepted evidence from a bat rehabilitator, Dave Pinson, that shooting bats is unethical and inhumane. It can take days for bats to die from non-lethal shots and in the meantime lactating pups waiting for their mother at the camp can take 10 days to starve to death. A more enlightened state than NSW has now banned shooting of bats. When will NSW wake up? Now or when it's too late?

Finally, shooting bats makes no sense. if there are an estimated 100,000 bats in the camp, how can shooting 600 bats protect apple crops? Hoping they will just move on when the frost hits is short-sighted as shooting is not an effective method of stopping the bats from eating fruit.

2010 YEAR OF BIODIVERSITY

The U.N. has declared 2010 as the Year of Biodiversity. Every hour of every day we lose between 3-4 species of plant and animal in the world. Australia is party to the Convention on Biodiversity yet we have the worst reputation in the world for species extinctions. HERE IS A PERFECT EXAMPLE OF WHY. Are we going to continue to stick our head in the sand and take the quick way out i.e. a bullet to our wildlife's collective heads instead of relocation or better still, learn to live with our native species?

Soon it will be wall-to-wall humans with nothing left to kill except each other. And then too late to complain when we have no more rainforests, when the whole balance of nature is irreversibly upset because we have destroyed the very fabric of biodiversity on which human survival depends.

Recently I noticed that a new study had been commissioned by the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC) on the subject of animal welfare in the kangaroo industry. The RIRDC kangaroo advisory committee consists primarily of key stakeholders in the kangaroo meat and leather industry such as Brian Topper, Lindsay Packer, Greg Bates and Ray Borda. This committee determines what research is done to make the kangaroo industry develop and become more profitable. Obviously the committee consists of those making the biggest monetary gain from kangaroo exploitation so why all of a sudden do they want to draw attention to the ethics of the industry?

Your average RIRDC study

Studies performed by the RIRDC for the Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia (KIAA) are (partly) funded by the Commonwealth government. Often the authors of these reports are directly or indirectly employed by the KIAA itself. For example John Kelly, the executive officer of the KIAA has written several reports for the RIRDC which he often quotes when defending the industry. Examples of these are the "Kangaroo industry strategic plan 2005-2010", "The kangaroo industry -- its image and market" and "Extending the sustainable management of kangaroos". The latter report is aimed at increasing the land areas that shooters have access to (including the whole of Victoria) or to put it another way, decreasing the number or size of refugia areas where kangaroos cannot be shot. Peter Ampt from the FATE program also bobs up in RIRDC reports such as "Consumer attitudes towards kangaroo meat".

RSPCA Pressure or EU Ban

I cannot find a single study done by the RIRDC in the past that has focused on the welfare of kangaroo joeys. This is despite calls for this type of research from organizations such as the RSPCA and other animal welfare groups since at least 1985. The joey issue has been raised on every committee involved in the creation or amendment of the Australian Code of Practice for the Humane Shooting of Kangaroos (or "the code") yet has never been acted on until now.

At the risk of sounding cynical, I would suggest that this new study has been commissioned by the RIRDC in an attempt to mask the insensitivity inherent in the industry towards the fate of joeys. Could this possibly have something to do with the proposed ban of kangaroo products into the EU? It would appear the RSPCA have finally got the research study they have been requesting for the last 25 years but you have to wonder, why now ? The study does not conclude for another 2 years but the mere fact that it is being done at all gives the KIAA, the RIRDC and the Australian government an opportunity to dampen the issue on the world stage.

I thought the KIAA was happy with the towbar

Back in 2008 when "the code" was being revised the joey issue was raised again by the RSPCA. This time the use of shotguns to kill joeys made the headlines. John Kelly declared that the KIAA was "generally happy" with the new code and defended current killing methods including decapitation of unfurred joeys and a blow to the brain with a metal pipe or vehicle tow bar for larger pouch joeys as "perfectly humane activities". Further he added that "animal welfare is precisely what this code of practice is all about". As Kelly is clearly involved in RIRDC studies involving the kangaroo industry, why has the welfare of joeys suddenly appeared on the radar ?

It may appear that the concerns/demands of the RSPCA have finally been acknowledged but I doubt this is so. Even when the RSPCA openly criticises the code particularly over the joey issue, the KIAA and governments still claim that the industry has broad RSPCA support. In the words of John Kelly:

"the RSPCA itself is on record as supporting the animal welfare outcomes of the kangaroo harvest"

In the broadest sense Kelly is actually correct, the RSPCA has stated that kangaroo culling is a humane practice when done correctly..... the devil is always in the detail. Like Greenpeace, the RSPCA appears to be unable or reluctant to clarify its "true" position on the kangaroo issue in the media. Little wonder the KIAA milk this positive publicity for all its worth.

Anna Bligh doing her bit

The Russian ban on kangaroo meat last year could also be a driving force behind the industry trying to improve its image. The Russian decision however was officially based on public health issues, it had nothing to do with animal welfare concerns. Perhaps Queensland premier Anna Bligh needs that point explained a little more clearly. Earlier this year anti-roo industry activists, kangaroo shooters and even the KIAA itself were understandably puzzled by her "introduction" of a ban in trading of kangaroo carcasses that had not been head-shot. Supposedly, all Australian states with a kangaroo industry have had this ban in place for many years now, she either hasn't got a clue or maybe she knows more than most after her time spent in Russia trying to overturn the decision. In her attempts to get more Queenslanders to eat roo meat she has resorted to publicity shots of herself biting into kangaroo kebabs. This cheap form of publicity was recently used by Canadian politicians when they tucked into plates of seal meat. Perhaps Bligh was inspired by the Canadian governor general who last year ate raw seal heart directly from the carcass of a seal pup in front of the cameras. Monkey see, Monkey do....

John Kelly's definition of humane

The comparison of commercial wildlife killing methods with those used on domestic animals is always a subject that crops up during any kangaroo debate. The herding of sheep or cows followed by queuing for the slaughterhouse is often claimed to be more distressing for the animals involved than being head-shot in your natural environment. The subject of joeys rarely rates a mention when this oversimplified comparison is drawn. It is an argument used by the KIAA and its supporters, many of whom are environmentally aware to a varying degree. Of course this is also a view held by John Kelly and this provides us with an opportunity to understand what passes as humane in his world. Kelly's other interests include a possum abattoir that was secretly filmed in the late 1990's resulting in a legal battle between his company and the ABC. When questioned on the "7.30 Report" about the method used to slaughter brushtail possums in his abattoir Kelly replied :

"We've developed a code of practice to ensure that possums are placed under minimal stress and we believe they are placed under actually less stress than most sheep and cattle processed in a domestic abattoir"

This code of practice involved the stunning of possums in a holding cage before they are thrown down a chute into an area where their throats are cut. At the time of the interview Kelly was unaware of the secret recording. The reporter then played him a copy of the tape and asked him whether the possums that were running along the chute (and on the ground) into the bleeding area were stunned or not. His reply was :

"If an animal moves at the point when it is about to be stunned it can be missed to some extent"

Is leaving a joey to starve to death after its mother has been shot more humane than cutting the throat of a fully conscious possum ? I shudder to think. It does seem obvious that animal welfare is not Kelly's strong point and any sentence uttered by him containing the word "humane" should be treated with due scepticism

.

A RIRDC study on the welfare of joeys is like a tobacco industry study on lung cancer

Which takes us back to this new study being commissioned by the RIRDC and headed up by Dr Steve Mcleod. It appears they will trial the use of spring-loaded captive-bolt guns to stun joeys before they are killed and I assume they are not getting advice from John Kelly to do this. This research is partly funded by the levies they collect from kangaroo shooters for each carcass. I would have thought an independent study more appropriate for this subject as industry based research is conducted to develop an industry, not hinder it. The subject of kangaroo industry RIRDC reports from the past such as those outlined earlier have been carefully selected by Kelly, Packer, Topper etc using the development funds currently available to them. Why would they direct that funding towards an aspect of the industry they would rather gloss over unless they plan to just give it another coat. I was however encouraged by Dr Mcleod's comments on the ABC:

"Because they harvest at night and the young at foot might not be close to a mother that's shot they sometimes might not get seen....... We don't know the extent of that problem and we don't know what actually happens to those young."

By John Kelly's estimate the extent of the problem is that it affects around 0.1% of the kangaroo population. I would suggest that statistics are not Kelly's strongest point either but undoubtedly the cost of Kelly's calculation will turn out to be significantly cheaper than Dr Mcleod's study. Like Anna Bligh, cheap appears to be John Kelly's style.

"We are in the business of selling meat and images of dead animals don't do so" ..... You said it John.

Paul Craig Roberts, who was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy under US President Ronald Reagan and whose distinguished journalistic career, includes 15 years as an associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been banned, so far, for six years from the US mainstream media. He has been banned becasue he questions the myths used to justify US domestic and international policy - that offshoring of jobs and high immigration will bring prosperity to the US and the official account of 9/11.

Originally published on Information Clearing House on 24 Mar 10.

by Paul Craig Roberts

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." George Orwell

March 24, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest.

Today Americans are ruled by propaganda. Americans have little regard for truth, little access to it, and little ability to recognize it.

Truth is an unwelcome entity. It is disturbing. It is off limits. Those who speak it run the risk of being branded "anti-American," "anti-semite" or "conspiracy theorist."

Truth is an inconvenience for government and for the interest groups whose campaign contributions control government.

Truth is an inconvenience for prosecutors who want convictions, not the discovery of innocence or guilt.

Truth is inconvenient for ideologues.

Today many whose goal once was the discovery of truth are now paid handsomely to hide it. "Free market economists" are paid to sell offshoring to the American people. High-productivity, high value-added American jobs are denigrated as dirty, old industrial jobs. Relicts from long ago, we are best shed of them. Their place has been taken by "the New Economy," a mythical economy that allegedly consists of high-tech white collar jobs in which Americans innovate and finance activities that occur offshore. All Americans need in order to participate in this "new economy" are finance degrees from Ivy League universities, and then they will work on Wall Street at million dollar jobs.

Economists who were once respectable took money to contribute to this myth of "the New Economy."

And not only economists sell their souls for filthy lucre. Recently we have had reports of medical doctors who, for money, have published in peer-reviewed journals concocted "studies" that hype this or that new medicine produced by pharmaceutical companies that paid for the "studies."

The Council of Europe is investigating big pharma's role in hyping a false swine flu pandemic in order to gain billions of dollars in sales of the vaccine.

The media helped the US military hype its recent Marja offensive in Afghanistan, describing Marja as a city of 80,000 under Taliban control. It turns out that Marja is not urban but a collection of village farms.

And there is the global warming scandal, in which climate scientists, financed by Wall Street and corporations anxious to get their mitts on "cap and trade" and by a U.N. agency anxious to redistribute income from rich to poor countries, concocted a doomsday scenario₁ in order to create profit in pollution.

Wherever one looks, truth has fallen to money.

Wherever money is insufficient to bury the truth, ignorance, propaganda, and short memories finish the job.

I remember when, following CIA director William Colby's testimony before the Church Committee in the mid-1970s, presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan issued executive orders preventing the CIA and U.S. black-op groups from assassinating foreign leaders. In 2010 the US Congress was told by Dennis Blair, head of national intelligence, that the US now assassinates its own citizens in addition to foreign leaders.

When Blair told the House Intelligence Committee that US citizens no longer needed to be arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of a capital crime, just murdered on suspicion alone of being a "threat," he wasn't impeached. No investigation pursued. Nothing happened. There was no Church Committee. In the mid-1970s the CIA got into trouble for plots to kill Castro. Today it is American citizens who are on the hit list. Whatever objections there might be don't carry any weight. No one in government is in any trouble over the assassination of U.S. citizens by the U.S. government.

As an economist, I am astonished that the American economics profession has no awareness whatsoever that the U.S. economy has been destroyed by the offshoring of U.S. GDP to overseas countries. U.S. corporations, in pursuit of absolute advantage or lowest labor costs and maximum CEO "performance bonuses," have moved the production of goods and services marketed to Americans to China, India, and elsewhere abroad. When I read economists describe offshoring as free trade based on comparative advantage, I realize that there is no intelligence or integrity in the American economics profession.

Intelligence and integrity have been purchased by money. The transnational or global U.S. corporations pay multi-million dollar compensation packages to top managers, who achieve these "performance awards" by replacing U.S. labor with foreign labor. While Washington worries about "the Muslim threat," Wall Street, U.S. corporations and "free market" shills destroy the U.S. economy and the prospects of tens of millions of Americans.

Americans, or most of them, have proved to be putty in the hands of the police state.

Americans have bought into the government's claim that security requires the suspension of civil liberties and accountable government. Astonishingly, Americans, or most of them, believe that civil liberties, such as habeas corpus and due process, protect "terrorists," and not themselves. Many also believe that the Constitution is a tired old document that prevents government from exercising the kind of police state powers necessary to keep Americans safe and free.

Most Americans are unlikely to hear from anyone who would tell them any different.

I was associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal. I was Business Week's first outside columnist, a position I held for 15 years. I was columnist for a decade for Scripps Howard News Service, carried in 300 newspapers. I was a columnist for the Washington Times and for newspapers in France and Italy and for a magazine in Germany. I was a contributor to the New York Times and a regular feature in the Los Angeles Times. Today I cannot publish in, or appear on, the American "mainstream media."

For the last six years I have been banned from the "mainstream media." My last column in the New York Times appeared in January, 2004, coauthored with Democratic U.S. Senator Charles Schumer representing New York. We addressed the offshoring of U.S. jobs. Our op-ed article produced a conference at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and live coverage by C-Span. A debate was launched. No such thing could happen today.

For years I was a mainstay at the Washington Times, producing credibility for the Moony newspaper as a Business Week columnist, former Wall Street Journal editor, and former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. But when I began criticizing Bush's wars of aggression, the order came down to Mary Lou Forbes to cancel my column.

The American media does not serve the truth. It serves the government and the interest groups that empower the government.

America's fate was sealed when the public and the anti-war movement bought the government's 9/11 conspiracy theory. The government's account of 9/11 is contradicted by much evidence. Nevertheless, this defining event of our time, which has launched the US on interminable wars of aggression and a domestic police state, is a taboo topic for investigation in the media. It is pointless to complain of war and a police state when one accepts the premise upon which they are based.

These trillion dollar wars have created financing problems for Washington's deficits and threaten the U.S. dollar's role as world reserve currency. The wars and the pressure that the budget deficits put on the dollar's value have put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block. Former Goldman Sachs chairman and U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is after these protections for the elderly. Fed chairman Bernanke is also after them. The Republicans are after them as well. These protections are called "entitlements" as if they are some sort of welfare that people have not paid for in payroll taxes all their working lives.

With over 21 percent unemployment as measured by the methodology of 1980, with American jobs, GDP, and technology having been given to China and India, with war being Washington's greatest commitment, with the dollar over-burdened with debt, with civil liberty sacrificed to the "war on terror," the liberty and prosperity of the American people have been thrown into the trash bin of history.

The militarism of the U.S. and Israeli states, and Wall Street and corporate greed, will now run their course. As the pen is censored and its might extinguished, I am signing off.

Editorial Comment: Whilst Paul Craig Roberts' despair expressed at the end of this article is understandable, we remain hopeful that it will be possible for the people of the US, Australia and the rest of will be able to see through the lies and act to stop them from pushig human civilization over the precipice.

Footnotes

1. ↑ Paul Craig Roberts is correct to oppose the scam of emmissions "cap and trade", or what is known in Australia as the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. Nevertheless, to draw the conclusion that global warming is not a threat as many who oppose of the agenda of the world's rulers do, would be seriously mistaken.

Population growth a threat to biodiversity

The Australian Conservation Foundation has nominated human population growth as a “key threatening process” to Australia’s biodiversity under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (the EPBC Act).

“The bigger our population gets, the harder it is for us to reduce greenhouse pollution, protect natural habitats near urban and coastal areas and ensure a good quality of life for all Australians,” said ACF’s director of strategic ideas, Charles Berger.

“More people means more roads, more urban sprawl, more dams, more transmission lines, more energy and water use, more pollutants in our air and natural environment and more pressure on Australia’s animals, plants, rivers, reefs and bushland.

“We need to improve urban and coastal planning and management of environmental issues, but we can’t rely on better planning alone to protect our environment. Rapid population growth makes sustainable planning nearly impossible, so stabilising Australia’s population by mid-century should be a national policy goal.”

The EPBC Act nomination cites many government reports that acknowledge the direct link between population growth and environmental degradation.

The nomination looks at four specific areas where human population growth is directly affecting native species and ecological communities – the coastal wetlands of South East Queensland, Mornington Peninsula and Westernport Bay in Victoria, the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia and the Swan Coastal Plain in Western Australia.

ACF is calling on the Government to set a population policy that will:

* Stabilise Australia’s population by mid-century.
* Increase humanitarian migration and continue to support family reunions, but substantially reduce skilled migration.
* Return Australia’s overall migration to 1990s levels.
* Adequately fund strategies to minimise the environmental impact of population growth.

Source: Press Release Date: 23-Mar-2010

Message sent to growthsummit[at]premiers.qld.gov.au on Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 1:57 PM by Daniel Boon

Subject: Re Anna Blighs 'Foreword'

Queensland is unique and does have a diverse landscape; however, it doesn’t have a strong economy (otherwise income producing assets wouldn’t be for sale) as a failure to balance the budget indicates; our community identity is fragmented, given the influx of 2,100 people every week.

If, over the next 20 years, Queensland’s population does rise to 5 - 7 million people, then we are in for a harried life style similar to that of Sydney / NSW. The 'growth from record levels of overseas migration and to a lesser extent higher fertility rates' is something the State government does have some say over; an infrastructure fee should be levied on all new arrivals to lessen the environmental, financial and social impact of those incoming people.

Our population growth provides great financial benefits for corporations that fund the major political parties; short-sighted property sellers fail to realize that more land and nature surrounding their property will attract a premium in the not too distant future; however, continued growth will further over-burden our already stretched resources and infrastructures. Public works may create jobs in the short term, but in the long term, they just pose more financial burdens - as liabilities - on the populace.

The first challenge may be perceived providing places for people to live, work and play, but in reality, the Qld Labor Party - with unchecked growth - will see the eventual demise of the koala in Queensland as humans squeeze flora and fauna out. Building an additional one million dwellings will sorely test the forests and other resources and increase greenhouse gas emissions that the Labor government crows so much about introducing policies to decrease.

Population growth and preserving our environment, a classic oxymoron.

Queenslanders are among the highest consumers of energy and producers of waste in the world and our per capita consumption and waste is increasing each year and this is because despite claiming to have sustainable housing criteria, our houses consume more energy in construction and on-going running costs than homes in far colder / hotter climates; in other words, our houses are energy inefficient and that starts with a lack-lustre builder education process by organizations such as TAFE who employ staff with no real idea of what makes a house energy efficient; its far more than a batt of insulation and a mercury injected CFL light.

The 'global financial crisis' will continue regardless, mainly because governments spend more than they ‘earn’ to present a façade of successful management meanwhile spending our children’s future now.

The only option of the Bligh government is to stay within its earnings budget; however, past performance proves beyond all reasonable doubt that it neither has the ability or knowledge to manage in good times or the current situation, let alone plan for growth.

Every decision that involves spending more than one has will compromise everything we once loved about Queensland. Rather than a strong foundation, the Bligh / Labor government undermines our very future. The ‘grand plan’ - allegedly supported by 10 other regional plans across the state and covering about 90% of our population - was drawn up by what I call 'corporate government', corporations that direct the State government; and is not supported by thinking born and bred Queenslanders.

Bligh is right about one thing, it isn’t a one-way street, as our population increases our unique environment diminishes irreversibly. There is no such thing as sustainable growth because growth doesn’t understand the concept of balance.

The Queensland Government’s Growth Management Summit is a farce and the spin words ‘stronger, greener, smarter, healthier and fairer’ are the opposite of what will happen. Queenslanders wince noticeably when Laborites use the terminology 'smart state'.

See also: Queensland Government Growth Summit web-site at growthsummit.premiers.qld.gov.au.

Despite Southern Bluefin Tuna (Thunnus maccoyii) being endangered, the Australian Government continues its weak policy of appeasing the Japanese - the main poachers and customers of Bluefin Tuna.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora is abbreviated ‘CITES’. The Australian federal Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts. Government is a signatory to CITES and since and CITES international trade regulations have been enforceable under Australian law since 27 October 1976. Every signatory to CITES is required to designate a management authority. In Australia this is effectively the Threatened Species Scientific Committee.

On 7 September 2005, Australia’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee concluded that the Southern Bluefin Tuna (SBT)... “continues to be overfished despite the international management arrangements which have been formally in place since 1994.”

“The parental biomass is currently in the order of 3 to 14% of that in 1960 (its unfished size). In addition, BRS has classified SBT as being 'overfished' every year since the first BRS fishery status reports were first produced in 1992.

“Stock assessment models have shown a significant historic decline in the biomass of SBT. The mature population of SBT has declined significantly over its last three generations (since the 1980s) and is currently at a very low level.

Therefore, the species is eligible for listing as endangered under Criterion 1.”

The Threatened Species Scientific Committee recommended this to the Australian Government.

Australia’s then Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator the Hon Ian Campbell decided against listing the species under the EPBC Act…“as it may weaken Australia's ability to influence both the management of the global fishing effort and the global conservation of the species.”
SOURCE.

CITES COP15 DRAFT RESOLUTION March 2010 on Bluefin Tuna (Thunnus thynnus)

* Fishing capacity is at least double that needed to catch the current legal quota and that recent estimated catches have been four times greater than the maximum catch recommended by scientists to prevent the collapse of the population.

* A 78.4% cut would be needed in the fishing effort by the fleet targeting East Atlantic and Mediterranean Atlantic Bluefin Tuna

* East Atlantic and Mediterranean stock status, fell by 80% in the southern Iberian
Peninsula between 2000 and 2006

* The loss of groups of older fish in the shoals present in the Eastern Atlantic and
Mediterranean fishery and the drastic fall in the reproductive biomass, which is currently only 36% of the level that existed at the beginning of the 1970s, are clear symptoms that this population is in imminent danger of collapse.

CITES has recommended to:

a) establish a science-based recovery plan for the East Atlantic and Mediterranean stock
... and to ban industrial fishing – particularly purse seining- during the entire spawning season (May, June and July)

b) establish immediately an interim suspension of the East Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin tuna fishery

c) permit resumption of fishing activities only according to the strict science-based ICCAT population-recovery plan

d) set up protection zones for spawning grounds in the Mediterranean, including the waters within the Balearic Sea, Central Mediterranean, and Levant Sea, during the spawning season

The Japanese, consumers of 80% of the world's Bluefin, have rejected the ban and the recommendations, while Australia has not accepted the ban. Australia's federal minister for the environment etc, Peter Garrett, has refused to join the United States and the European Union in seeking a trade ban.

READ: 'Garrett rejects bluefin trade ban' in the Sydney Morning Herald, 13-Mar-2010.

Call to Boycott Japanese Cuisine:

Japanese cuisine includes sashimi, which typically is Bluefin Tuna. Bluefin is the raw fish used in Japanese 'maguro', and 'o-toro' dishes and in many sushi combinations.

The Australian government may pasty to the Japanese, but that doesn't stop ethically driven citizens boycotting Japanese restaurants and sushi shops, which sell raw fish which is typically the critically endangered Bluefin Tuna.

It's time to send a blunt message to the Japanese that their fettish for Bluefin is backward! Some are labelling the plight of Bluefin SUSHICIDE.

Click on image for more on locality and handlers

Original story from Beverley Hills observer

The footage here and the story below were posted on January 18, 2010 by Geekylie. Editorial comments, contact details of people responsible, and links to sites and films where you may learn useful things about kangaroos and see lovely photos are below her story.

"Saturday 16 & Sunday 17 January, 2010 Venue: The Paley Center for Media, Beverly Hills:

Tourism Australia had a huge kangaroo on the concrete - on a busy busy footpath, it even started raining. The kangaroo was next to (8 to 10 feet away) from a busy busy street and was so traumatized it was rocking back and forth over and over again. On Saturday it was running around and round in circles, chasing its tail in a craze.

Sunday (when a friend and I took the pics & video) a Tourism Australia Employee just stood around rolling their eyes while bystanders were clearly disturbed.

I am not affiliated with any activist groups, I am just someone who works in Beverly Hills,and had to walk past this atrocity two days in a row. At one point one of the Australian Tourism worker rolled her eyes and called me 'pathetic' for caring about the animal that was clearly in distress.

I have contacted all local & Australian media and US Animal right groups, including PETA, SPCA, The Humane Society and Animal Liberation. The Police, Fire Dept, and Animal Control are also aware of this disgusting act of cruelty in the name of Tourism Australia. I am also sending all this media to Travel Agencies, Hotel Chains, and also NZ Media outlets, who I know will love to get some bad press on terrible Aussie tourism PR practices.

Is this REALLY going to get people to go to Australia?
It REALLY gives new meaning to the lyrics "Tie me kangaroo down Sport" doesn't it?

To express your disgust, please contact: MHatch[at]tourism.australia.com or email or call any of the numbers at tourism.australia.com. This is a very busy footpath, and the HUGE ADULT kangaroo was there for over 5 hours, running around and round in circles, chasing its tail - it was sooo traumatized that people were leaving in tears."

Official description of the 'event':

"Angelenos are invited to experience a little slice of Australia in the heart of Beverly Hills. A program of multimedia events from wildlife and music to "walkabout" travelogues and cultural performances will ensure that there is something for everyone. Visitors will take a journey through some of Australia's iconic landscapes as well as its undiscovered gems with interactive displays and destination showcases. Visitors can also hear from special speakers, including National Geographic photographer Annie Griffiths Belts. Sunday will feature a special wine tasting event with Wine Australia, open to the public.

The event is open to the public from 10.30 am to 3.00 pm with ticketed KCRW events following each day:

KCRW Music Showcase with DJ Jason Bentley will take place Saturday January, 16 at 3.00 pm.
KCRW's Good Food Live event featuring KCRW's own Evan Kleiman will take place Sunday January, 17 at 3.00 pm. The event will feature Australian celebrity chefs including Curtis Stone and Pete Evans."

Editorial Comment

Thank you Geekylie for exposing the bear-baiting mentality of ?official representatives for our country. They deserve to be exposed in the same way as the kangaroo, which did not, of course.

This is unfortunately a really good example of how governments and commerce in Australia regard kangaroos and other wildlife - as unfeeling novelties to be used, abused and make money out of. These people do not represent thinking Australians and one hopes that Americans will realise this.

Only people truly deprived of knowledge, joy and empathy would find this kind of thing acceptable. That people 'marketing' Australia should be so unaware of the impact of their 'event' shows that 'enlightenment' is really just an illusion still in some quite influential circles, notably the commercial ones.

The kangaroo is an animal that lives in families and clans, associated with larger mobs. They have strong family hierarchies and take comfort and joy from each other. Whoever put this animal by itself in this situation - which would threaten a domestic dog or a child - needs to leave the city and go and learn about the natural world and the sentient creatures that inhabit it. The best film we have ever seen about kangaroos is called Faces in the Mob. After you have seen it you will understand and know many more things about kangaroos and ourselves than most people ever realise. You can buy it in NTSC and Pal format here.

If you want to support Australian Wildlife, here is a place to start: The Australian Wildlife Protection Council. Note also that a new political party has just formed to defend wildlife and domestic animals in Australia. It is called The Animal Justice Party.

Please let us know what happens to the kangaroo

We would like to hear about where the kangaroo went from here and whether it has companions of its own species. How did Australia allow a kangaroo to be exported to the US in such circumstances anyway? One assumes that kangaroos sometimes go to zoos in the US (even though this is a horrible fate for a wild social animal), but how do they get from the zoos to Tourism Australia?

Who is responsible?

Who is responsible for this kind of attitude? Martin Ferguson (Email: Martin.Ferguson.MP[AT]aph.gov.au ) is the Federal Minister with the Tourism Portfolio, which Tourism Australia, reports to. Tell him what you think and get him to investigate this situation where kangaroos are manhandled, isolated and exposed in another country.

"Tourism Australia is a statutory authority of the Australian Government, which promotes Australia as a tourism destination internationally and domestically and delivers research and forecasts for the sector. Tourism Australia reports to the Cabinet Minister with responsibility for tourism, the Hon Martin Ferguson AM, MP.

Established on 1 July 2004, Tourism Australia brings together the collective skills and knowledge of four separate organisations: the Australian Tourist Commission; See Australia; the Bureau of Tourism Research and Tourism Forecasting Council. The main objectives of Tourism Australia under the Tourism Australia Act 2004 are to: * Influence people to travel to Australia, including for events; * Influence people travelling to Australia to also travel throughout Australia; * Influence Australians to travel throughout Australia, including for events; * Help foster a sustainable tourism industry in Australia; and * Help increase the economic benefits to Australia from tourism.

Tourism Australia is a statutory body subject to the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act 1997 (CAC Act). This recognises the commercial focus of the new body and the need for it to operate flexibly in a commercial environment."

Personally I thought Steve Irwin did it much better.

The kangaroo does need help, like wildlife everywhere. In Australia kangaroos are victims of developers(film) and our development and population growth mad and corrupt governments. There are some sick sectors in our society and it seems that Tourism Australia may be right up there among them.

Friends interacting - photo by Brett Clifton

Sane Australians, however, want to cherish these amazing creatures. Have a look at Brett Clifton's photographs of generations of kangaroos on his land, which he sends out daily to people all over the world.

You can read a lot more about kangaroos here.

There are also nine ten-minute documentaries on kangaroos - mostly interviews with ex-butcher, Pat O'Brien on the roo meat industry, the problem of human expansion for kangaroos, the way that statistics are collected about them, and of how Steve Irwin found Pat O'Brien and funded his life-long work of kangaroo protection. Pat O'Brien's site is http://www.kangaroo-protection-coalition.com/index.html.

Late 2008 a school teacher helped worried children in Epping write to the Minister for the Environment, Mr Jennings, asking him to help kangaroos marooned by development and battered by traffic. Why did DSE allow Wildlife Victoria to spend time and money on a plan to relocate the 21 remaining kangaroos to safe territory, but then secretly kill the kangaroos in a unilateral decision in January this year? Why did DSE, which is also responsible for planning, allow development to trap the kangaroos? A memorial protest will be held for these kangaroos on Sunday 28 March at 2pm at Oleander Drive off McDonalds Rd in South Morang.We the People can do more about this - see inside! See also "Children in Epping tread where politicians fear to go" and "Our State government appears to be on a campaign to eradicate native wildlife from Victoria, especially kangaroos"

Mill Park/South Morang kangaroos

In late 2008 a school teacher helped worried children in Epping write to the Minister for the Environment, Mr Jennings, pleading for his department to look after kangaroos in the area,[1] which were landlocked by Government policy to artificially stimulate human population growth and the associated commercial and housing development.[2]

The children were especially distressed by the frequent sight of injured kangaroos on roads which they tried to cross in efforts to find food and water.

To our knowledge, the Minister never answered the children's emails, but the schoolteacher and children were silenced. Obviously one would write more about this except that it would not be in the interests of the children and their teacher. Why this should be so in Victoria in 2010, I leave to the reader's imagination.

Wildlife Victoria searched for kangaroos which DSE has shot without telling them

McDonalds Rd., South Morang and Bunnings, Mill Park, Feb 13, 2006 (Google Earth) with Inset of local kangaroos caught in further commercial development (Photo Fiona Corke).

Note that this area has changed enormously since the latest google-view of Feb 13 2006, such is the forced pace of change in Australian cities. South of McDonalds Road is where the mob was, and that is now quite heavily built on, with commercial development, including Bunnings. North of McDonalds Rd is largely overtaken by residential development, but there are also kangaroos over there, particularly near the two water tanks that can be seen on the top right hand edge of the area. There are not as many as there used to be. Wildlife rescuers are trying to ascertain with regular monitoring how many may have disappeared from there as well, and if any of these may have been killed. The kangaroos can get some passage through up into the northern area and beyond. Alas that takes them into farming areas where they are likely to also be shot with permits issued by the DSE to farmers.

The Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) dissolved the South Morang Kangaroo Working Group Committee last year, but DSE told Wildlife Victoria that they could submit a relocation plan, although it clearly stated that the plan would have to meet all recommendations. So far these recommendations have all been met and the plan is currently under review with an Ethics Committee that is chaired by a DSE employee.

On Friday 19th March 2010, however, after being questioned by Wildlife Victoria about the disappearance of kangaroos under focus, the Department put out a media release, stating that the kangaroos had been shot in January. The DSE employee who was left continuing to chair the ethics committee had not been informed either.

The grounds given for killing the kangaroos were that development was reducing them to starvation, but Wildlife Victoria says that recipient sites were available for them. Yes, there is land available, because of the depletion of populations due to last year's bushfires in other areas. This relocation option was to be presented before the ethics committee for approval next week.

Why did DSE, which is also responsible for planning, allow the situation which preceded this final tragedy to arise in the first place? Why did they also allow Wildlife Victoria to spend considerable time and money on a plan to relocate these animals to safe territory, then secretly kill the kangaroos in a unilateral decision?

Substantial Wildlife Corridors are still possible and must be created

It would still be possible to create corridors to safeguard Victoria's kangaroo population if it were not for the attitude of the commercially obsessed and development-mad Victorian Government, which seems to intend to get rid of every kangaroo in the State without letting anyone know what it is doing. Since similar attitudes prevail in other States, it seems possible that Australian governments could have plans which will make the kangaroo extinct, for all the public knows.
See also "Children in Epping tread where politicians fear to go" and "Our State government appears to be on a campaign to eradicate native wildlife from Victoria, especially kangaroos"

Secretive elimination of wild kangaroos in South Morang and Mill Park

The Sth Morang kangaroos that people have fought so long to save have been secretly killed by commercial shooters contracted by the Department of Sustainability and Environment.

The kill happened in January, although their relocation was and theoretically still is under review by an Ethics Committee. The chair of that Ethics Committee is a Senior DSE Wildlife employee who was not informed that the kangaroos had been killed.

21 remaining members of the original mob of 30 (depleted by road accidents), which rescuers had been focusing on, had been missing for weeks. Wildlife Victoria Members, Fiona Rowley, Narelle Smith and their northern network, Wildlife Rescuers, had been searching the area. All the while they suspected that the kangaroos had secretly been killed.

After Freedom of Information (FOI) notification and recent questions from Wildlife Victoria, the DSE issued a media release dated 19 March 2010.

The DSE media release [cited below] uses the fact that property development in the area was eliminating these animals' habitat and that they would starve to death to excuse the unilateral kill and implies that relocation was too unsure and costly an option to consider.

Kangaroo defenders say, however, that Wildlife Victoria’s submission to relocate the kangaroos was panning out well. Fiona Rowley had been an effective advocate for a rescue plan and both she and Narelle Smith had been involved in key aspects of the relocation plan and submission, and were keeping up monitoring of the area. The City of Whittlesea and Westfield Shopping Centre were prepared to cover the costs of the relocation, according to Fiona Rowley.

DSE "Out of touch" on wildlife issues

In response to the DSE press release, a distressed Fiona Rowley said:

“No proper study of the effects of relocating kangaroos has ever been undertaken, so how do they know it’s not possible. We were prepared to undertake one and the relocation project was pending approval via an expert panel.

"Money has been spent on statistical consultants, having site assessments done on recipient sites and it was determined by these consultants that the sites were suitable and could accommodate this mob of kangaroos with little to no environmental impact.

"Furthermore the City of Whittlesea and Westfield Shopping Centre were also supportive in relocating the kangaroos and were prepared to cover the costs of this project. The DSE are out of touch with wildlife issues and don’t consider what the community wants or expects in these situations.”

Ms Rowley added:

"In the South Morang Kangaroo Working Group Committee that many of us were involved in over the past few years the DSE admitted to being afraid of public backlash and noted the media attention when hundreds of kangaroos were killed at the Belconnen Naval Transmission site in Canberra 2 years ago. They also admitted on a number of occasions during the working group meetings that they were opposed to relocating these kangaroos as they did not want to set a precedent of relocating kangaroos in Victoria. DSE finally agreed that a relocation plan could be submitted and that it would have to go through an animal ethics committee for approval.

Why is the Department of Sustainability and Environment so cruel, callous, devious and incompetent?

The Department of Sustainability and Environment may have perceived an interest in defeating Wildlife Victoria's attempt to relocate kangaroos because, had this attempt succeeded, it could have been the first of many. The Department would then have been forced to admit that their duty of care towards these indigenous animals involves finding them alternative habitat or ceasing to grant new building permits in affected areas.

There are many groups of kangaroos in similar man-made predicaments - more every day. Kangaroos are high visibility animals (unlike some solitary, smaller creatures which often die unnoticed). Relocating kangaroos requires very noticeable efforts and organisation, drawing even more attention to their plight and government responsibility, cruelty, and over-release of building permits.

The public get very upset when they are confronted with the merciless impact of population growth and development on wildlife and the last thing that DSE wants the public to realise is the extent of the suffering of kangaroos and other wildlife through its already unpopular and unnecessary population growth and development objectives. The public really need to know about this, however.

DSE Victoria is already in trouble for failing to collect and maintain competent wildlife statistics, which means that it has failed to identify threatened and endangered species, let alone fulfill its international obligations to draw up plans. A recent auditor general's report on the matter estimated that it would take the Department nearly 30 years to catch up with its obligations if it continued to allocate so few resources to the task.

The Department of Sustainability and Environment is in charge of all the planning in Victoria and responsible for releasing too many building permits and inviting too many people to come and live in Victoria. To allow the DSE to be responsible for the welfare of kangaroos is like putting the fox in charge of the welfare of hens, a maniac in charge of a child, or a drunk in charge of a bar.

DSE should reimburse Wildlife Victoria and Volunteers involved in relocation efforts for their time

Is DSE going to reimburse the many weeks and months which volunteers have spent doing the department's work for them in researching relocation options and plans? In my view, the volunteers deserve the same hourly compensation as DSE managers would expect for undertaking similar responsibilities. If DSE is prepared to pay shooters rates to kill the kangaroos, it can pay volunteers for their time that it has wasted.

Reimburse Stress and suffering for Wildlife volunteers as well

Some also speak of compensation for pain and suffering - the awful stress of putting yourself out - literally for years - to find a solution for wildlife to a problem caused by incompetent planning - only to be assaulted with the information that the department was apparently not even attending to your input. Those months and years of forgone income, time with children, time maintaining home and fitness, in order to put in time for kangaroos with the Department of Sustainability deserve full compensation, including holidays and penalty rates and medical expenses for stress.

There is a lot we can do about all these wrongs!

Complain

Write a supportive comment under this article.

Email Ron.Waters[AT]dse.vic.gov.au to voice your protest
Email Gavin Jennings, the Minister for the Environment gavin.jennings[AT]parliament.vic.gov.au to let him know how disgusted you are. His phone number is (03) 9888 1910.

Send us copies of emails you send to politicians.

Change your vote!

Join the Animal Justice Party, which is a new political party in Australia that is seeking members in order to become an effective voice for all creatures great and small in every state of Australia.

Alternatively, join one and or vote for both (using preferences) of the two parties which intend to reverse government policy for rapid population growth in Australia. After all, population growth and development are the greatest cause of suffering for our native fauna. The parties are The Stable Population Party of Australia and the New Australia Party. Support Federal ALP member, Kelvin Thomson's population reform plan and vote for him if you are in Thomson's Federal electorate (Wills), which borders on the areas discussed here. You can contact him at (03) 9350 5777 or email him at Kelvin.Thomson.MP[AT]aph.gov.au Tell other MPs that they should get behind Kelvin's plan.

Get the relevant State and Federal Members of Parliament to put pressure on the relevant ministers

The area in question falls under two different State electorates - Yan Yean (administered by Danielle Green MP - danielle.green[AT]parliament.vic.gov.au Phone: (03) 9432 9782) and Mill Park (administered by Lily d'Ambrosio MP - lily.d'ambrosio[AT]parliament.vic.gov.au Phone: (03) 9465 9033 . These members need to tell the Minister for Planning to refuse any new building or clearing permits for the area and to provide safe crossings for animals in extant roads and to stop inviting immigrants to Victoria because there is no room.

The Federal member responsible for this particular area - Scullin electorate - is ALP member, Harry Jenkins: Harry.Jenkins.MP[AT]aph.gov.au Phone: (03) 94678055. He needs to tell the Prime Minister to cut down Australia's immigration because it is causing kangaroos to suffer by driving housing and infrastructure development on indigenous habitat.

Memorial Protest for these victims of DSE and Victoria's overdevelopment and lack of fauna management

A memorial protest will be held in honour of these kangaroos, who became the innocent victims of development and lack of native fauna management by the government department responsible for their wellbeing. It will be held next Sunday 28 March at 2pm at Oleander Drive off McDonalds Rd in South Morang.

Please – tell everyone you can, it’s really important that as many people attend as possible.

Enough is enough; this war against our wildlife has got to stop!

Kangaroo and Wildlife activists and carers hope to see many Victorians there from city and country areas.

The Department's media release in March about the shootings in January

The Department of Sustainability and Environment Media Release re the
"South Morang Kangaroosof 19 March 2010, [3] (reproduced in the "Notes" section of this article), was two months after the event.

It said that DSE had

'humanely put down a group of kangaroos that had been isolated on land at South Morang.' It said that "The welfare and safety issues associated with the capture and relocation of kangaroos were significant” and that “Finding suitable habitat to relocate kangaroos to is also a challenge.”

The choice of the words 'significant' and 'challenge' is interesting. 'Significant' is a useful term for avoiding quantification, comparison or documentation. Why wasn't the decision on the kangaroos scientifically and ethically informed by the relocation study concurrently being carried out? 'Challenge' is a political word that covers a multitude of omissions, including the fact that there was a choice. DSE chose to kill the kangaroos. It chose to deprive them of life and people working on this problem of the opportunity to attempt to save their lives. Victorian observers could be forgiven for seeing this as expedient or cowardly or callous.

One long-time wildlife campaigner wrote:

"I may be wrong/out of line but as I've said before, probably the only way to save some kangaroos is to dart and move them illegally, at night. Government departments that are supposed to protect wildlife almost never help when we ask them to protect animals and seem to take every opportunity to kill them. I cannot help but wonder if there is a criminally corrupt aspect. Someone's brother may be a 'roo shooter. Wildlife carers get nothing for the work they do, but shooters get paid. What is the going price for shooting 20 kangaroos, I wonder, after you split it with someone in a department meant to help the roos?

Of course there must be people in departments that are supposed to protect wildlife who actually do care about animals, but they have to follow orders and the directions from the top seem to be universally callous."

Notes

[1] "in the area": This particular tragedy came to the attention of the public through a mob of about 30 kangaroos which became trapped behind Bunnings/Westfield in Mill Park. This mob was split as the roads became busier with increasing development and population growth. As the other side of McDonalds road is South Morang, they are known as the Sth Morang kangaroos as they were once the same mob. The mob over on the other side has farmland on the other side of the large residential development, but many have become increasingly locked in there as well under a transmission station and Melb Water land.

There are also other isolated and landlocked mobs in Somerton Rd, known as the Somerton mob, (see video) also pockets in Lalor and Bundoora, which are all in trouble.

[2] Most citizens are not aware of the Victorian government policy to invite immigrants from other states and from overseas to live in Victoria - hence the population growth, which drives undemocratic development throughout Victoria.

[3]

Department of Sustainability and Environment Media Release re the
"South Morang Kangaroos

19 March 2010

The Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) has humanely put down a group of kangaroos that had been isolated on land at South Morang.

DSE Wildlife manager Ron Waters said this was a difficult decision for everyone involved but the welfare of the kangaroos had to come first.

“The health and safety of these kangaroos was at risk. They were facing dehydration and starvation because of the progressive loss of habitat at the site,” Mr Waters said.

“The site is largely private land and there’s no long term future for kangaroos on this site that has effectively become enclosed by roads and commercial development.”

“DSE had been monitoring the group of about 30 kangaroos closely for a number of years and had hoped that they might naturally disperse from the area as development proceeded.”

“It became clear that despite significant and increasing disturbance at the site, animals were reluctant to disperse naturally and DSE took the tough decision to use professional shooters to humanely destroy them before they starved or were pushed onto adjoining roads.

“The welfare and safety issues associated with the capture and relocation of kangaroos were significant.”

“Finding suitable habitat to relocate kangaroos to is also a challenge.”

Jacob Saulwick, in "Libs back Greens call for inquiry into 'big Australia'",
March 16, 2010 Sydney Morning Herald, writes,

'The Greens leader, Bob Brown, said yesterday that the inquiry would hold hearings in every capital city, asking whether Australia had the environmental, housing and transport capacity to meet a predicted increase in population to 36 million by mid-century.
''We don't have the infrastructure to deal with 21 million people at the moment - for example, public transport and water infrastructure - let alone the estimated 35 million people by mid-century,'' Senator Brown said.'
[...]
'The opposition immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison, said the opposition would work with the Greens on the proposed inquiry.
''Australians want to be heard on this issue,'' he said. ''I think Australians are very frustrated by a prime minister who just signs us up to a 36 million population and they don't have any say about it.''
The capacity of state and local governments to provide services for their growing constituencies needed to be examined, he said.
''All of these issues require some very careful analysis to know what our migration intake should be.''
The Greens will move a motion in the Senate in May calling for the inquiry to be set up.'

Dick Smith, however, has suggested that what is needed is a proper risk study, ie. a study which shows what the risks are at various population numbers (milestones) and growth. .... "It could show that with 36 million in 2050 what our risks are and what the chance of those risks of occurring are. Anything like that can be more objective, and allow people then to work out what they think an optimum number may be."

High Rise does not solve population growth problems: State of Australian Cities Report

High rise is often touted as a panacea for population growth energy costs, but the State of Australian Cities Report, which has just been released, shows this is yet another furphy produced by the growth lobby.

The State of Australian Cities Report 2010 has been released, to assist the Australian Government, in cooperation with state, territory and local government, and in partnership with the community and industry, to improve Australian urban policies.

The report is designed to redress an information deficiency about economic, environmental, social and demographic changes, and to reveal trends and provide a platform of knowledge for the development and implementation of future urban policies.

The report found that the past outward urban expansion has meant a greater distance between residential and employment areas with a resultant greater use of cars, higher transport costs, more vulnerability to oil price rises and the loss of agricultural land or habitat. More recently, however, the pattern of growth has seen an increasing proportion of population growth accommodated in existing inner and middle suburban areas, most notably in Sydney.

The level of car dependency in Australian cities has increased at a faster rate than population growth, creating traffic congestion problems as infrastructure and public transport have failed to keep pace with population growth.

Other key findings include:

* Australian cities rank highly on an international comparison, particularly on indices that measure quality of life and global connectivity, and measures related to the social condition of people.There is evidence to suggest that Australian cities suffer with respect to infrastructure. Of concern is the evidence that suggests a decline in international relative performance and perception in the past five years.
* Water restrictions in major cities across the nation saw total consumption by households fall by 7 per cent between 200001 and 200405 despite population growth over the period.
* Residential energy use accounted for approximately 7 per cent of total energy consumption in 200708, but grew at a high rate (2.2 per cent) relative to other sectors over the period. This growth is attributed to population increase, higher ownership of appliances and IT equipment per household, and increases in the average size of homes. Standby power was the greatest contributor to average annual growth in household energy use over the period 198990 to 200607.
* Transport emissions are one of the strongest sources of emissions growth in Australia. Strong growth in emissions from the transport sector is expected to continue, with direct CO2 equivalent emissions projected to increase 22.6 per cent over the period 2007 to 2020 (or around 1.58 per cent a year).
* Climate change is affecting rainfall patterns. Since 1950 much of eastern Australia and the far southwest, where our largest cities are located and the majority of the population lives, have experienced an annual decline of up to 50 mm in rainfall per decade affecting both the availability and quality of water supplies across urban areas.
* Levels of the key pollutants of lead, carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide in the largest capital cities have decreased significantly over a ten-year period. However, particulate air pollution and ozone levels have remained at or above national air quality standard levels over the period and showed no evidence of decline.
* While national recycling rates have increased, total waste generation has also continued to increaseby around 31 per cent from 200203 to 200607 (4 years), exceeding the rate of population growth of 5.6 per cent over the period.
* When both direct and indirect environmental impacts are taken into account, higher [per capita?] environmental impacts at the household level are associated with higher incomes and smaller household sizes. Therefore, despite the opportunities for efficiency and reduced environmental impacts offered by more compact forms of urban living, inner city households of capital cities, followed by the inner suburban areas, feature the highest consumption of water use, energy use and ecological footprints even when reduced car use is taken into account.

With northern bluefin populations falling dramatically, a proposal by Monaco to prohibit sale under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species has won US support, but not Australia's. 

The Atlantic, or northern bluefin tuna has lost 72 per cent to 82 per cent of its original stock is under pressure also from illegal or unregulated fishing for the sashimi trade.

(Photo: Northern Bluefin or Thunnus thynnus)

Japanese, Korean, Indonesian and Taiwanese Bluefin tuna fleets use long line fishing which results in the incidental deaths of thousands of seabirds, particularly petrels and albatross.

However, the Australian Government has decided not to support a global ban on the trade of the northern variety of the bluefin tuna. Instead, the Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, has decided to support stronger trade control measures and fisheries management.
 
Japan, the biggest consumer of the fish, has indicated it may not honour the ban on northern blue fin tuna.  Japan says that bluefin is not facing extinction, but acknowledges that recent rates of exploitation are probably not sustainable.  Sushi is a popular dish in Japan, where fatty bluefin – called o-toro – sells for as much as 2,000 yen (£13) apiece in high-end Tokyo restaurants.  The solution, they insist, is stricter management of fisheries, which have consistently exceeded their own quotas.  They feel their "culture is under threat" - a culture of poaching, bullying and powerful lobbying!

The trade ban would allow individual countries to continue to catch atlantic bluefin tuna for domestic consumption.   Imports from the East Atlantic and Mediterranean, which could be completely shut down by the threatened ban, would reduce Japan's sources of bluefin tuna by about 20 per cent.

(photo: Northern Bluefin)

The northern bluefin fishery has a poor record of compliance with control measures, and Japan  consumes  up to 80% of the world's tuna.  Japan holds the line on whaling and they are also sending a signal that limits on bluefin tuna aren't up for debate either.

 Southern bluefin tuna stocks have also been fished to even more dangerously low levels.  Southern bluefin tuna has long been considered endangered and overfished, yet the Australian Government had not reduced the quota given to the Australian southern bluefin tuna industry since 1989.

The Southern Bluefin Tuna is one of the sea's most impressive creatures. A beautiful and powerful fish, it is well suited to a long life endlessly swimming the open seas.  An adult Bluefin grows to around 200 kg and over 200 cm long. Its close relative, the Northern Bluefin Tuna, Thunnus thynnus, can grow to a massive 700 kg.

Glenn Slant, global marine program leader for TRAFFIC, a program of WWF, put the situation more bluntly last year: The southern bluefin tuna is at an all-time low, below 10 per cent of its original population size, and what that means is at any time it could collapse.

Our Government supports Japan's illegal whaling through non-action, and now they will be supporting their on-going cultural pursuit of tuna-based sushi eating  through non-action and compliance. 

The Australian Government continues to sanction fishing of southern bluefin tuna and perhaps is making this decision to block the protection of northern bluefin because it fears embarrassment that we continue to allow fishing of a critically endangered species in our own neighbouring waters. 

Every indication is that the Bluefin Tuna population is crashing toward extinction, said Felicity Wade from The Wilderness Society last October. While it is heartening to see governments finally acting on its plight, the 20% international cut is inadequate for the crisis the blue fin tuna is facing. Australia had the largest quota reduction .

If we were serious about bringing this fish back from the brink, concluded Ms Wade, the fishery would be completely closed while populations recovered.

Sea Shepherd plans to oppose illegal bluefin tuna fishing in the Mediterranean region and will employ the same hard-line tactics it uses against Japanese whalers in the Antarctic waters, Paul Watson said.

The decision by Peter Garrett, and Japan, makes mockery of "fisheries management" and principles of "sustainability". 

When the Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration hearing convened to hear from Peta Duke on 12 March 2010, she did not attend in answer to the summons. She had written the notorious Media Plan proposing a sham public consultation process to earn favour with the electorate. Mr Madden, who had not been summoned, sat in the chair reserved for the witness – his former Ministerial adviser - and said that he would answer questions. This was a blatant attempt to take over the inquiry being carried out by Parliament into his office’s conduct. - Protectors of Public Lands (Victoria)

When the Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration hearing convened to hear from Peta Duke on 12 March 2010, she did not attend in answer to the summons. She had written the notorious Media Plan proposing a sham public consultation process to earn favour with the electorate. Mr Madden, who had not been summoned, sat in the chair reserved for the witness – his former Ministerial adviser - and said that he would answer questions. This was a blatant attempt to take over the inquiry being carried out by Parliament into his office’s conduct.

By his crass tactics in derailing the hearing of a properly constituted committee, the Minister of Planning has tried to frustrate the accountability to Parliament of himself and his office. The Premier and the Attorney-General have supported this tactic.

"Grave abuse of power"

This impropriety strikes at the heart of Parliamentary democracy and is a grave abuse of power.

Julianne Bell, Secretary of Protectors of Public Land, Victoria, (PPL Vic), attended the hearing. She commented:

“The Minister had the opportunity to explain himself during the nine hours of debate on the subject the previous Wednesday but chose not to attend. Why would he expect a hearing now?

Minister failed to use legitimate opportunities to explain himself

Over the last six months PPL has made extensive submissions to both the Planning Department and Heritage Victoria on proposed policy, and on planning decisions, including:
• the Review of VCAT (Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal),
• the extension of the Urban Growth Boundary,
• the Mornington Peninsula Link (through Westerfolds);
• the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show in the Carlton Gardens; and
• the Windsor Hotel development.

Any suggestion that public consultation could be treated as a sham is of grave concern to PPL disclosing as it does a cynical attitude to the people of Victoria. The actions of the Minister have now treated the Parliament, to which he is accountable, and which represents the people of Victoria, with contempt. The community expects our democracy to be respected.”

"Scandalous situation made worse"

Brian Walters SC, President of PPL Vic, said:

“Minister Madden has made a scandalous situation far worse. As found by the Children Overboard inquiry in the Senate, ministerial advisers have no immunity from appearing before parliamentary committees, yet it seems the Government has attempted to direct or advise her to disobey the summons to do so. This undermines the rule of law and Parliamentary oversight. If the Minister’s office is not accountable to Parliament, we have lost one of the most fundamental checks of our democratic system.”

Source: Press Release from PPL (Vic), 14 March 2010

Decades overdue, but, nevertheless, welcome, the Greens are to introduce into the Senate a motion calling for the establishment of an independent National Inquiry into Australia's Population to 2050.

Set population at infrastructure, environment capacity through national inquiry

Media release of 14 March 2010

On Monday the Greens will move a motion calling on the Government to establish an independent National Inquiry into Australia's Population to 2050.

“Australia’s population should be determined by the capacity of our environment and our infrastructure,” said Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown.

“Australia cannot support an increase in population to 35 million by 2050.

“Immigration should not be stopped.

"In fact Australia should increase its humanitarian immigration program, but we need to reduce our skilled migration program and balance that reduction by investing in skills training for Australians.

“National population policy is the responsibility of government; it should be responsive to national and global factors.

“Global population is expected to grow from 6.8 billion people now to 9.2 billion by 2050 and Australia should be taking a lead in finding global solutions.

“That should include increasing Australia's overseas aid budget to 0.7% GDP now with more funding for literacy and reproduction health programs for women and girls.”

Media contact: Erin Farley 0438 376 082

Erin Farley
Media Adviser
Senator Bob Brown | Leader of the Australian Greens
Suite SG-112 Parliament House, Canberra ACT
P: 02 6277 3577 | M: 0438 376 082| F: 02 6277 3185

Editorial comment: If this represents a final departure by the Greens from years of avoidance of this most critical of issues, occasionally interspersed with seemingly tokenistic short-lived pronouncements against population growth, then we welcome it, but we will believe it when we see it.

What you can do: contact your Senators (Qld, NSW, ACT, Vic, Tas, SA, WA, NT) and ask that they support this motion. Please let us know of any responses or lack of. Join, campaign and vote for, a party opposed to population growth (see below). Put pro-growth parties last on your ballot form.

See also: "Greens call for population inquiry" of 14 Mar 10 on ABC news Online, Greens' Senate media page, "Are the Greens a real alternative?" of 9 Mar 10, the Stable Population Party of Australia, the New Australia Party and the Animal Justice Party.

Tasmania's forest industry has rejected a Greens plan to ban logging in high conservation value forests.  The Greens says 300 jobs would be lost but more than 700 created through the strategy.  Even job creation is not enough to move the die-hard destructive mentality.  Both Labor and Liberals support Gunns pulp mill and neither is proposing any new forest reserves.
Trees up to hundreds of years old cannot be replaced overnight, despite how "sustainable" the logging is supposed to be!

Governments fail to see the value of forests when they can't see the trees as anything but resources to plunder, or "manage", for economic benefits and jobs.

Tasmania's forest industry has rejected a Greens plan to ban logging in high conservation value forests.  The Greens says 300 jobs would be lost but more than 700 created through the strategy.  Even job creation is not enough to move the die-hard destructive mentality.  Both Labor and Liberals support Gunns pulp mill and neither is proposing any new forest reserves.

Mr Bartlett signalled that on the hot topic of forestry, Labor wanted to ensure the logging of old-growth forests would continue in the long-term.  I believe old-growth will always be part of Tasmania's (forestry) mix.

The manufacture and sale of high value products from special timbers provides employment for more than 2,000 Tasmanians and generates about $70 million for the state each year.   The vast majority of wood from these forests (approximately 80%) goes into short lived products such as paper and cardboard which decompose and release carbon very quickly. So, carbon storage in wood products can never make up for the loss of carbon storage in old growth forests.

An alliance of forestry companies in Tasmania has launched an advertising campaign warning of the risks to the economy if all old growth logging is stopped.  Forests remain silent inside the consciousness of people who are environmentally illiterate! 

Governments fail to see the value of forests when they can't see the trees as anything but resources to plunder, or "manage", for economic benefits and jobs.

Who will publicise the risks to our heritage, our air, water, homeless native wildlife,  and additional greenhouse gas emissions when old-growth forests are destroyed?  By their very nature, these trees take hundreds of years to replace themselves, yet we, the public, are supposed to be so myopic that the ephemeral financial returns from logging old growth forests should over-ride the value of these ancient sentinels, guarding the wealth of natural ecosystems?

It may appear as if nothing is changing in forests, but countless natural cycles are silently at work every day and night. Old growth forests have a high level of biodiversity, and logging  causes disturbances and destruction.

Conserving the nation's forests and woodlands is one the easiest, cheapest and fastest ways that we can start to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve carbon storage.

Many of the RFA old growth forests protected in Tasmania consist of trees of little use to the timber industry. Despite repeated requests for solid evidence supporting such ‘statistics’ as “90% of the Upper Florentine Valley is reserved from logging,” data and maps supporting such claims have failed to materialise. We do know, however, that most of the ‘protected’ country in the Upper Florentine consists of buttongrass, scrub and high-altitude moorlands, with very few tall-eucalypt forests reserved.  Only 22% of Tasmania’s original tall-eucalypt forests have been reserved. 

Tasmania is the largest exporter of woodchips in Australia, exporting more than all the other states combined. 

This year, ironically, is the UN Year of Biodiversity, and next year is the Year of Forests.

As our population swells, more natural resources such as forests will be considered as assets to plunder for economic benefits!  Our natural heritage, and ecosystems, are continually under threat from industry and developments.

We are already world-leaders in wildlife extermination, and Tasmania is famous for the genocide of its indigenous people, destroying Lake Pedder, exterminating the Tasmanian Tiger and for the current threats to the Tasmanian Devil.   Logging native forests destroys homes, creates stress and robs wildlife of habitat. We humans are not part of their ecosystems, and removing trees increases fire risks.

Unless we declare all our old-growth forests and remaining native vegetation as part of our national park system, the logging mafia will continue to threaten, bully and dominate our State governments.

(Photo: devastation at the Styx old growth forests - Wikipedia commons)

A recent poll shows the Labor government of Premier David Bartlett is in trouble, with the Greens polling well. Unless there is a late surge in support for David Bartlett's Labor or Will Hodgman's Liberals, one or other of them will be governing in minority after March 20, ending 12 years of ALP majority rule.

People can relocate, retrain and be resourced in other industries.  Trees up to hundreds of years old cannot be replaced overnight, despite how "sustainable" the logging is supposed to be! 

(photo: Styx logging sign)

Our old-growth forests do not owe us, non-indigenous people of Australia, a livelihood.   We owe it to next generations a nation with its natural wealth intact and viable through preservation, and honouring our heritage and non-human species.

I =P x A x T

( Environmental impact= Population level times Affluence or per capita consumption x Technology)

I came upon an orchestration, the environmental movement, and all the musicians were playing violins to the tune of “Overconsumption, overconsumption, overconsumption.” They refused to play any other tune or use any other instrument to compliment that narrow repertoire. Apparently some corporate donors were paying them to be a one-trick pony.

So I immediately resolved to sound out the missing tune that would make an effective chorus. It would be “overpopulation, overpopulation, overpopulation”, and I would use my voice to sing that message loudly because, frankly, I can’t afford or take the time to learn to play another instrument. As soon as the Environmental Establishment Orchestra includes my tune in their program, and gives it the prominence it deserves, I will stop singing solo and apply to join them. They after all have the resources to go on the road with their act, while I can only sing in the shower or yell out the lyrics on the Internet.

But until that day, I will specialize in the one half of the equation, population level, without which there can be no comprehensive understanding of our environmental predicament. I will play left wing on a hockey team overstocked with centre forwards and right wingers. Under new management and coaching, perhaps my team, the “IPATs, will demand all-around players—“two way” players who can play the complete game. Like golfers who don’t try to win the match with “hole-in-one” strokes.

It is people who consume, not ghosts. Reduce their numbers and each can consume more sustainably if they recognize their limits and are rewarded for obeying them

Population growth is the great multiplier of evils. Solve it and so many other problems of secondary concern become easier to solve. And it is much easier to solve alone than challenging popular consumptive habits. Many more people can be reconciled to lower fertility and lower immigration than are willing to see their standard of living drop to comply with lower consumption targets. The vast majority of Swedes, the world’s most affluent nation, are wanting to see immigration cut and a low birth rate persist, rather than sacrifice their standard of living. In 2006 the Dyskos poll revealed that 60% of them were not willing to make any material sacrifices to fight global warming. The working class majority there and here, are skeptical and intolerant of environmentalism that speaks with a middle class voice, and uses the same moralizing sermon that that voice gave them in the 1930s and other challenging times. The voice that cried “Hold the line on inflation” , or “suck it up for the boss”. Sermons given by preachers who preached chastity then drove off in a limousine to the whore house. Green yuppies won’t impress the working poor by putting solar panels on their 4000 square foot waterfront homes and taking their hybrid cars to the airport for their annual overseas trips to Mexico or Bali. If you never had to drive a “beater” to keep food on the table you have no moral authority to prescribe a carbon tax or a Prius. And no credibility if you have sired more than two children.

“Too many people consuming too much. consumption. Neglect one factor and you neglect both. You are in denial.” But “too many people” is the Achilles heel of growthism, and the one that deserves priority attention.

Tim Murray,

February 19/09

This planet has a wide variety of life forms and incredible diversity BECAUSE most living things eat other living things, including ones we classify as "animals". Without the predation, there would have been no life, no evolution and no ecosystem. Without bird-shit, phosphorous would not be recycled, without ferns potash would not be drawn up and recycled, and nitrates would not move around throughout the soil without the actions of the vast underground net of the mycelium.

And without animals and their wastes, the nitrates and other complex organic materials could not return to the soil through the actions of earthworms and bacteria... and good soil is in a sense, vastly enriched by worm-poo. Without the predators, the grazers would over populate and starve, without the grazers, world ecosystems would not recycle nutrients as well as they do, nor would individual species of plants get fertilized and their seed
distributed far and wide...

The lion will never lie down with the lamb unless the lamb is dead, and that is how it should be, for the health of both the family of sheep and the family of big cats.

We humans, the compassionate predator, entered into a contract with a large number of species in the course of the past twenty thousand years (some think longer), and species like the wolf (our domestic dogs), Bos Taurus (domestic cattle), Tarpans (domestic horses of all breeds today) and a legion of others entered the relatively new ecological niche created within the sphere of the world's first compassionate predator. Many of these species, of both animals and plants, would never have been as successful had they not entered into the contract.

Let us not be blinded by the evil results of commercialization of this age old contract between us and these other species. Turning everything into money has betrayed these plants and animals as much as it has betrayed all of what is decent and compassionate about the human spirit.

When we turn our backs on the factory farms and the horrors they have unleashed, do not also be tempted to turn our backs on our long history of trust and co-adaptation that created the ecosystem of domestication. It is an
incredibly rich and rewarding ecosystem to live within, and one we have all but lost in our miserably urban wastelands.

Sure, it is hard on the heart to put an animal down to eat it, but it is infinitely better than to let these creatures be abandoned to the "wild". The death and drawnout horror of being eaten alive by parasites or merciless predators without any capacity for compassion is one of the reasons many now think animals like sheep and goats and pigs sought out the human sphere in the first place.

There are some that came early and were always under-appreciated like the cat and the dog, or even reviled, like the mice and the rats. But now we know that house mice by colonizing our ecosystem keep other kinds of mice out of it, like the deer mice that carry the deadly Hanta virus. But now look at how mice and rats have served us in research and still can be delightful housepets... (and the story of the bubonic plague is not nearly as simple as some have previously thought).

And what about house sparrows and chickens and starlings and crows? Pigeons? Even set "free" they congregate around humans.

The most ancient vegetarian cultures in the world revere all these animals, and certainly do not chase the domestic animals within their local ecosystems out into the wilderness or consider it politically incorrect to allow such creatures to breed and raise their young.

Please not be misled by some of the flawed arguments in favour of vegetarianism put by some misguided animal rights proponents. Choosing not to eat meat should not immediately mean you must disapprove of those who do,₁ nor that keeping our place in nature, within a vast ecosystem of symbiosis with numerous other species, must be rejected.

Animals may have chosen to be part of our homes and part of the human ecosystem niche on the planet, and we have no more right to turn our back on them than we have to turn our back on the plight of the whales or the plight of the tuna.

The agenda of the present AR movement is an evil and ugly one. No pets to snuggle in bed with at night, no glorious mornings to see the new calf just born, no milking the cow while the calf takes the other teats, no playing with puppies and mornings awakening to the happy crowing of the the rooster as he calls his flock of plump hens out to feed. No sense of searing tenderness as one is privileged to watch how carefully he attends the hen with the new family of downy chicks, blinking in their first view of the morning sunlight world, and makes sure these littlest one get the first crack at a tasty nest of ants...

Everything neutered. One generation and out. gone. No more poodles, and collies, labrador retrievers, haughty siamese, cosy angoras, athletic family mousers, no more pigs who love their backs scratched. No more omelets, souffles or angel cakes, and no more milk or butter or cheese or yogurt or ice cream. No more children wide-eyed with wonder to see the nest of baby bunnies for the first time, no more horse crazy teenagers or watching your daughter ride her first pony, with an expression of such incandescent joy that it almost hurts the heart to see it--often through tears. Rescued by the rowdy happiness of the pony himself, suddenly so careful to keep the novice safe on board.

Well, it is a long way from weeds and manure but it is all the same thing. I offer it to you all freely. It is not really free, of course. You have to have compassion and all the qualities that brought the creatures to offer themselves to join our world in the first place. Care. Love. Wonder. Gentleness. Courage. All the aspects that hunter-gatherers have, in caring for the animals around them, drawing them as close as kinfolk and often keeping them from harm.

The road that led, in some times and places, to that one further step we have come to call domestication.

There was no point when we conquered nature. We are still in nature.

The AR movement would sever that - or try to. Be very wary of this. It is
the last thing we can afford to do, both for the good of our species and for the
health of the planet.

As an aside to this main note, there is the following information, compiled by a staff writer at the New York Times:

Here is what he writes:

Footnotes

1. ↑ Editorial comment: In my personal experience, animal rights activists and vegans in particular go out of their way not to cast judgement upon those who consume meat and other animal products. - JS

According to an article by Brendan O'Neill in The Australian 13th March, animal activists are thought to be generally caring, ethical and "pure" people, but should remain basically maudlin and ineffective. However, if they actually become a political force they are accused of being a big "threat" and guilty of political blackmail and coercion!

Over one and a quarter million seal pups have been clubbed or shot to death over the last four years during Canada's annual seal slaughter.

Last week 30 Canadian senators, MPs and provincial ministers tucked into a meal of seal meat in the parliamentary dining room in Ottawa in protest against European opposition to Canada's annual seal cull. European Parliament made history when it voted overwhelmingly to ban trade in seal products.

Around 6000 Canadians take part in seal hunting each year along the Atlantic coast, and 25 per cent of their sales came from exporting products to Europe. Ottawa authorises the slaughter of 338,000 seals per season and says the survival of the species is not in danger. But it has faced fierce protests from animal rights groups who say the slaughter is barbaric.

Some fishermen believe that the seals preferentially dine on the nutrient-rich livers and bellies of the cod, leaving the rest to go to waste and requiring more fish to be killed to make a meal. Whales Wars' Captain Paul Watson says that's absurd, and has offered $50,000 to anyone who can provide video evidence of the practice. According to a study by Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans cod are preyed upon by seals at various stages in their life cycle, and also squid, minke whales, halibut, and other cod.

Still, the presence of large apex predators like seals are typically a sign of a healthy and productive ecosystem, and human fishing activity – whether it targets North Atlantic cod or bluefin tuna – is the reason for the collapse of fish stocks worldwide.

If seals were taken out of the picture, the population of squid might well explode, just like giant jelly fish numbers have exploded due to warmer waters and overfishing, and other human activities that have opened windows of opportunity for them to prosper.

The ban of seal skins may have serious consequences for the living standards of some Canadian communities. However, the means, of killing new-born seal pups in front of their mothers, does not justify the end.

The population growth rate of Canada, largely due to immigration, is higher than most industrial countries, and automatically increases human consumption of natural resources. Their east coast cod fisheries and reduction of salmon fishing in Pacific waters no longer contributes adequately to the well being of 6.8 billion people world wide.  Seals are being made a scapegoats for over-eating fish, when it is humans who are guilty.

According to the article, the EU isn't alone. More nations and international institutions now lecture apparently inferior foreigners through the animal issue. Its aim is to assert its moral and ethical authority over what it clearly considers to be a less enlightened nation, and what better way to do that than through protecting cute seals from spike-wielding madmen?. So protecting seal cubs is more about political power and moral superiority than empathy and compassion? Really!

Seals and their pups do not owe swelling human populations a living, and this atrocity is morally unsustainable and unethical.   If animal activists just remained "pure", silent and innocent, then their cries of cruelty would remain ineffective.

Article adapted from original report by Julianne Bell of Protectors of Public Lands.

Hysteria in Victorian Parliament disrupts Hearing on Finance and Administration

In Parliament yesterday (12 March 2010) television cameras from several stations caught a remarkable fracas when Planning Minister Madden gatecrashed the hearing of the Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration. Madden's staff member, Peta Duke, was subpoenaed to attend but was apparently instructed by the Attorney General NOT to attend. ALP MP Matt Viney disrupted proceedings and effectively took over, upon which the Chair Gordon Rich Phillips left and then Peter Kavanagh, which meant that there was no quorum so the meeting collapsed.

What democratic Planning activists said to the Press

Following an interview with Madden there were excellent interviews with Peter Kavanagh, David Davis and Greg Barber. Community representatives, Mary Drost for Planning Backlash, Brian Walsh for Kew Cottages Coalition, and Julianne Bell for Protectors of Public Lands Victoria, made brief statements to the press. They spoke of their dismay at revelations that public consultations over planning developments had been revealed as sham and said that the farcical proceedings at the Parliamentary Inquiry were an insult to Parliament and hence to Victorians.

See the the "Inquiry into Victorian Government Decision Making, Consultation and Approval Processes."

Purpose of the Hearing

On 3 March 2010, the Committee agreed to the following resolution: To inquire into and report on Victorian Government decision making, consultation and approval processes, and any knowledge and/or involvement of Ministers, Ministerial staff and/or Victorian Government officers since 1 December 2006 and, in particular, issues arising from media plans prepared within the Victorian Government since 1 December 2006.

The Public Hearings were scheduled for today in relation to the Inquiry. In particular the Windsor Hotel redevelopment planning process was to be looked into. These hearings were to have included one with Ms Peta Duke, Media Advisor to Planning Minister Justin Madden.

Public Submissions invited until 26 March 2010
For display on Parliament Website

However your submissions are treated in the Inquiry, having them on the Parliamentary Website is your opportunity for a real democratic voice. Tell people what you know and have seen and suffered through the planning and population push by big business and government in Victoria.

The Committee is inviting any individuals and organisations, wishing to express views on the terms of reference. Instructions are on the Inquiry website Guidelines for submissions may be downloaded here. Submissions will close on Friday, 26 March at 5.00 p.m. Once submissions are received, they will be displayed here: http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/council/SCFPA/PC/Submissions/Index.html
Other contact details for this very important inquiry are as follows:

Inquiry into Victorian Government Decision Making, Consultation and Approval Processes
Council Committees Office
Department of the Legislative Council
Parliament House
Spring Street
East Melbourne, 3002
Phone: (03) 9651 8696
Fax: (03) 9651 6799

Parliamentary Press Release 3 March Terms of Inquiry

Here is a press release from the Inquiry dated 3 March 2010. In it we can see that the terms of the Inquiry were frustrated. This may be an indication of what is often said, that Victorian laws make it impossible to get answers from politicians so that corruption is unstoppable unless we change those laws.

Source was: http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/council/SCFPA/PC/PRESS%20RELEASE.pdf
PRESS RELEASE
STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION INQUIRY INTO VICTORIAN GOVERNMENT DECISION MAKING, CONSULTATION AND APPROVAL PROCESSES

The Legislative Council’s Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration today met and resolved to inquire into and report on:
Victorian Government decision making, consultation and approval processes, and any knowledge and/or involvement of Ministers, Ministerial staff and/or Victorian Government officers since 1 December 2006 and in particular issues arising from media plans prepared within the Victorian Government since 1 December 2006.

The initial focus of the inquiry will be on the Windsor Hotel redevelopment process. The Committee has resolved to conduct public hearings and take evidence from the following witnesses:

• Hon. Justin Madden, MLC, Minister for Planning
• Mr Yehudi Blacher, Secretary, Department of Planning and Community Development
• Mr David Hodge, Department of Planning and Community Development
• Ms Peta Duke, media adviser
• Mr George Svigos, Premier’s media unit
• Ms Fiona Macrae, Premier’s media unit

Hearings are scheduled to commence on Friday 12 March 2010.

The Committee has also resolved to seek access to the ‘Minister for Planning Justin Madden Media Plan’ document and similar media plan documents.

GORDON RICH-PHILLIPS, MLC
CHAIRMAN
STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
3 March 2010

Note: This article encompasses and replaces a brief article "Krazy Kevin Rudd video by Cyrius01" by Sheila Newman of 7 May 09. Please find embedded video within this article and brief introductory article below.

In 1996, the incoming Howard Government, 'discovered' a massive budgetary black hole left by the outgoing Keating Government. They claimed and claimed to have no choice but to impose slash-and-burn budgets and asset fire sales. The excuse of the cupboard left bare or crippling debt, supposedly taking all choice out of the hands of incoming Governments, forms part of a tired and recurring pattern in Australian history. Recently, Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey has seized upon the debt created by the Rudd Government's incompetently managed 'stimulus program' -- all supposedly to 'stimulate' Australia's moribund economy, dependent upon immigration-driven property speculation, digging holes in the ground and changing the hotel beds of foreign guests -- as an excuse to resurrect his dream of privatising Medibank Private and wielding the budgetary axe. Is history about to repeat itself, yet again?

The record of the Rudd Government seems so dismal that it is easy for many to forget the relief we felt barely more than two years ago, when we were finally able to vote out the detested Howard Government.

Many had high hopes in the Rudd Government. We hoped that the stranglehold of "free market" economic dogma over Australian public policy would be relaxed, for effective action to halt global warming, for action to fix Australia's dying Murray Darling basin, action against the illegal killing of whales, etc. These hopes have been dashed. On top of that, the Rudd Government has maintained and increased the Howard Government's already record high rate of immigration. Mandatory Internet filtering, which would give governments the power to censor at will any web-site it considers at threat, could become law. Consequently the Federal Coalition that seemed totally discredited not long ago could be the Government again before the end of the year.

Rudd and Swan crow about how their 'stimulus program' supposedly saved Australia from the worst ravages of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) by giving us back some of our own money to buy plasma TV's and throwing away more of our money on mismanaged government programs such as the domestic solar insulation scheme, but all they really did was buy us a small amount of time whilst avoiding confronting the problem at its source.

And to buy that small amount of time, they have taken away from us a range of choices that we might otherwise have had.

When Queensland Premier Bligh announced the $15 billion fire sale in May 2009 and the Federal Government said they had no spare money to help Queensland out of its financial difficulties.

Last Sunday, Joe Hockey on ABC Television's "The Insiders" brazenly told the audience of his plans to impose government spending cuts and his resurrected plans to privatise Medibank Private.

So, almost a year after we were showered with our Federal Government's apparent generosity, we learn that we are going to be sent the bill, after all. Wouldn't we rather have had that choice put to us before all our money was thrown away?

The evidence from "The Latham Diaries" shows Mark Latham's 2004 federal election campaign was undermined by many within the Labor Party, including Kevin Rudd, himself. Apparently many within the Labor Party regarded three more years of misrule by John Howard to be preferable to Mark Latham becoming Prime Minister.

So, would it be that much of a leap to imagine that Kevin Rudd, himself, would not be that personally concerned about whether or not his own Government survives? Many former members of Labor Governments seem to easily find lucrative careers and with his Chinese language skills, Kevin Rudd would surely find little difficulty offering his services to Chinese investors intent on buying up Australian minerals, real estate, farms and publicly owned assets.

Whether the Rudd Government survives or is thrown out, it seems as if the Australian public are being set up, yet again, to be punished for decisions in which they took no part, unless we stop them.

James Sinnamon
Brisbane Independent
for Truth, Democracy,
the Environment and
Economic Justice
Australian Federal Elections, 2010

 

Appendix: Original article of 7 May 09 by Sheila Newman

See embedded video above or view it on YouTube.

Article teaser

Cyrius01 is a brilliant Australian political movie maker with a raw sense of humor who uses satire and - anything that comes to hand really. Take a look at his latest on Rudd and the growth economy to restore your sense of balance in this mad murdochian world.

Krazy Kevin Rudd responds to the Global Financial Crisis

Cyrius01 writes, "After studying all the options, Kevin Rudd has responded to the Global Financial Crisis in the absolute best, most perfect way possible. Go for Growth! By splurging every last cent of tax payers money on property developers and banks, we will have a huge infrastructure that working families can pay off over the next few generations. The most important thing is to restore the economy to exactly the same as it was before the crash - so that we can all borrow more and more money and consume more and more stuff. Growth Growth Growth!"

There are many more videos by Cyrius01 on his channel on you-tube. For a while I thought that his creativity muse had disappeared with the departure of John Howard, but I was wrong, thank heavens.

 

Appendix: excerpt from interview with Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey

This interview is from the ABC Television's "The Insiders" of Sunday 7 March 2010.

Joe Hockey: ... And he said the best way to put downward pressure on inflation is to pare back on the Commonwealth budget. And if you do that that will take upward pressure off interest rates. Kevin Rudd said that.

Chris Uhlmann: Well given then that both sides of politics agree on that theory where would you cut spending?

Joe Hockey: Well firstly we would have spent $20 billion to $25 billion less on the stimulus package. Everyone seems to forget that. That was a substantial decision from our perspective.

Secondly we would pay off the debt faster and the starting point would be to privatise Medibank Private to that you can get $3.5 billion to $4.5 billion of proceeds and use those proceeds to get rid of some of the debt.

The faster we pay off the debt Chris the better our economy is positioned for the demanding needs to fund our growth into the future.

Chris Uhlmann: But selling Medibank alone doesn't get you there. What savings would you make to the Commonwealth Government budget?

Joe Hockey: Well we will outline all of those before the election. But I've already given you two great detailed examples of how we would have done it differently.

Chris Uhlmann: Do you think that it's enough to keep saying that the Government should cut and then never specify where those cuts should come?

Chris Uhlmann: Well we will do that when we have an opportunity to be in government.

I think this mob doesn't know how to control spending. They've had blow-outs on Medicare, blow-outs on the PBS, blow-outs on computers in schools, blow-outs on school halls.

They've had blow-outs on solar panels. They've proven themselves incompetent in running a pink batt insulation program.

How can you trust them with the entire health system of the nation?

Chris Uhlmann: Well let's look at some of programs. Would you cut back on the school spending?

Joe Hockey: Well we will have a good look at all areas of expenditure Chris, all areas.

Chris Uhlmann: So you might cut back on the school spending?

Joe Hockey: Well you know if you're in government you have to have the courage to make difficult decisions that are in the national interest.

And this mob have no courage, no policy courage at all.

(End of Interview.)

Google aerial photo of ADI Site giving an idea of size. Obviously it is surrounded by suburbs. Humans have not been denied species representation here, but, if this site is taken away, they will be denied their natural right to access natural ammenity and wild environment, which we should all be able to do, without compromising it. (Ed.)

Geoff Brown
President
Western Sydney Conservation Alliance Inc
PO Box 4134
WERRINGTON NSW 2747
Thursday, 4 March 2010
The Hon Peter Garrett
Minister for Environment, Heritage and the Arts
cc David Bradbury Member for Lindsay

RE: Urgent Ministerial intervention required to halt the clearing of Cumberland Plain Woodland at the former ADI Site – Penrith Local Government Area

Dear Minister,

We have been reliably informed that Delfin Lend Lease is about to commence
clearing Critically Endangered Cumberland Plain Woodland (CPW) within the Western Precinct of the former Commonwealth owned ADI Site. This first 6 hectare subdivision will be one of many out of the total 230 hectares within the Western Precinct. The Central Precinct, some 130 hectares is proposed to be developed in some 5 years time. This combined area of 360 hectares is predominately CPW
Aerial detail of water body at part of the site.
Your DEWHA recently listed CPW and Shale Gravel Transition Forest as Critically Endangered Ecological Communities. It is believed that the basis for the Critically Endangered Listing was that CPW had been reduced in area by some 400 hectares.
Minister here at ADI a developer is allowed to clear nearly the same amount of CPW that justified elevating CPW from Endangered to Critically Endangered and they don’t even have to refer their development applications to your DEWHA to have those assessed against the EPBC Act.

This is [...]

criminal and -->

morally bankrupt and your DEWHA and the local member for Lindsay know that what Delfin Lend Lease is proposing is clearly a breach of the EPBC Act.

The justification for that statement is that DEWHA in 2008 received a delegation from Delfin, Penrith Council and David Bradbury to negotiate changing the National Estate boundaries of the ADI Regional Park. DEWHA told the delegation, and this
was paraphrased by your Adviser Peter Wright when we met him last month, that such an amendment would require Lend Leases 10 year old approval Certification – a dubious certification and assessment issued under the Howard Government – to be reassessed under the EPBC Act. Essentially DEWHA told the delegation that Delfin would not like the outcome of such assessment as it would result in the protection of CPW within proposed development areas and therefore a reduced housing lot yield and lower profits for the developer.

We know that Delfin Lend Lease has some shonky certification from the Howard Govt (see below)

Assessment and approval under Commonwealth environmental law was granted to the entire St Marys development under the former Environment Protection (Impact of Proposals) Act 1974 (EPIP Act) prior to the gazettal of the EPBC Act. Correspondence from the former Environment Australia (now DEWHA) was provided to the applicant in July 2002 advising
that despite the repeal of the EPIP Act and gazettal of the EPBC Act, no further Commonwealth approval would be required for the St Marys property. This certification was provided under the Environmental Reform (Consequential Provisions) Act 1999.

But for your DEWHA and the local ALP Member to hide behind this dubious certification and turn a blind eye to the bulldozing of Critically Endangered CPW is immoral and in reality, when assessed against the EPBC Act, as it should be, ILLEGAL.

Minister we now call on you to urgently intervene and to call in the ADI Site development proposal by Delfin Lend Lease so that Critically Endangered CPW is properly assessed under the EPBC Act. It is clear the current assessment Delfin Lend
Lease has - that gives them immunity from the EPBC Act - is scientifically flawed. The entire ADI Site assessment process under the Howard Govt was dubious and now as the bulldozers are about to roll those wrongs need to be corrected .

I recently emailed and phoned David Blumenthal – with no response - calling for him to act on this issue; we also said the same to Peter Wright last month in Sydney. A failure to protect these last great remnants of CPW at the ADI Site under the guise that legally we have no come back on the developer will not be accepted and viewed dimly by large numbers of voters in Western Sydney concerned with the protection of our Natural Heritage.

Yours truly,
Geoff Brown

Article by Mark O'Connor

Despite The Age's headline, "Populate or Stagnate," (March 10, 2010) most of Saul Eslake's[1] article is about admitting the costs of population growth. He makes some very useful admissions (see the phrases I have marked in bold, below).

Even at the end when he swings round predictably to backing growth, he warns his allies:

"But building public acceptance for ''a bigger Australia'' requires a greater willingness to acknowledge that it has costs, as well as benefits. It also needs more readiness to deal with those problems than has thus far been shown by those most enthusiastic about the benefits of faster population growth."

This is a tactic the growth lobby and our politicians are already following. At the Queensland Property Council's conference last Friday both Anna Bligh and Tania Plibersek repeatedly stated that they understood people's pain, and that they admitted and deeply understood the problems population growth was causing. Yet in the end their solution was to press on regardless and tell people to get used to it. Hence they talked vaguely about how "better planning" or "us in government trying harder" or "letting people see a few iconic examples of good high rise development as soon as possible" would solve the problem. I call this their "Yes, repeat No" approach.

"Yes, we hear your pain and we understand absolutely. No we don't intend to take any notice of your protests."

While this tactic is infuriating, it is also a sign that they know they are in a weak position. It will rapidly become untenable if we articulate (as I have above) what their ploy is, and demand that they stop doing it (or even that they apologise for having tried to hoodwink us with it).

In Saul's case, he hangs almost everything on his argument that if government was prepared to borrow more boldly to provide extra infrastructure in advance of the population needing it rather than, as at present, "in a discontinuous or ''lumpy' manner" ---then the problems of population growth would be solved.

Infrastructure for growth costs vastly exceed benefits of growth

He fails to understand the points made in Jane O'Sullivan's recent article "The downward spiral of hasty population growth"

As she points out, the reason governments can't catch up with infrastructure is that the costs of infrastructure for additional people so vastly exceed the extra benefits that extra people bring. The infrastructure costs can in some respects outweigh the economic gains by as much as 30 to 1.

"Does it make sense," asks Jane O'Sullivan, "that we’re incurring a 25 per cent of GDP cost to avoid less than 0.8 per cent of GDP cost?"

Saul's (and the Grattan Institute's) biases also show when he lists the "dampening" of wages in favor of business profits as a self-evident good.

Mr Eslake seems to have placed the same article in several papers and online forums. Google "saul Eslake" + "Populate or stagnate" for the list.

NOTES

[1]Saul Eslake was for 14 years chief economist at the ANZ Bank. In August 2009 he moved to the Melbourne-University-affiliated Grattan Institute as Program Director for its Productivity Growth Program. The Grattan Institute is part of the growth lobby, or in the more genteel language of the University’s media release “The Grattan Institute is a new think tank aiming to shape the direction of debate on many of the important challenges facing Australia. It was set up with substantial support from the University of Melbourne in conjunction with the Commonwealth and Victorian Governments, and BHP Billiton. Note by Mark O’Connor )

. . .

. . .

Environmentalists might expect Green MLC Greg Barber, to back another environmentalist, Kelvin Thomson, rather than supply quotes that could make him out unfairly to be racist. Wedge Politics we don't need from Mr Barber MLC who represents the Northern Metropolitan Region of Melbourne in the Legislative Council at State level, which Kelvin Thomson represents in the Lower House at the Federal level. What's going on? Are the Greens for real?

Population and Environment and the Greens

Over the years I have had conversations with people about the riddles in the Greens' strangely contradictory environmental policies and their mysterious priorities. Yet there is something of the hearty gym mistress and the scout master about them that inspires us, Charlie-Brown-like, to trust them again and again at the polls. We think, they must mean well, or that they are better than the rest, or ...

Lassie come home

Recently someone said to me that maybe they are just out there to confuse us. Are they, he suggested, really working with the Libs and Labs and Big Media, as a kind of border collie, to keep us sheep from straying too far from the farm? The dog looks friendly and competent. It's cute. We tend to trust it because it doesn't actually own the farm. But it works for the farmer.

During the past two weeks my uncertainty has been overtaken by a feeling of déjà vu.

Wedge Politics we don't need; Mr Barber plays the race-card

Firstly, I read an article in the [growthist] Melbourne Times (Fairfax media), "Welcome to Australia - Now that's enough," by Bianca Hall, (Wed.3 Feb, 2010, p.4.).

The logic of this article is amazingly contrived and reads like an excuse to cite Greg Barber of the Greens apparently slurring the motives of Kelvin Thomson's 'Population Reform' as racist in a most unfair way:

'Mr Thomson argues net overseas migration should be dramatically cut from 2007-08 rate of 213, 461 to 70,000 migrants. To slow down the birth rate, Mr Thomson would cut family tax benefits to new recipients who had more than two children and redirect the money to education and workplace training.

Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows fertility rates are higher for Australian women born in largely Muslim countries, including Turkey and northern African countries. Almost 30 per cent of people in Mr Thomson' electorate were born in non-English-speaking countries.

State Greens MP Greg Barber said the plan threatened to target Muslim families.

"Whether Kelvin understands it or not his policy selectively targets predominantly Muslim people and punishes them for having that third child," Mr Barber said. "We know what gets birth rates down - the empowerment of women, with contraception, access to education and participation in the workforce."'

Frankly I was gobsmacked and furious. You might expect the developers to try something like this, or the Libs, but a Green? You never know, however, when there is a logical explanation, so I decided to write to Mr Barber himself and ask for it. I sent the following on 24-2-2010:

"Dear Greg,

I must congratulate you on your statements in parliament about water reproduced here about bulk water entitlements as well as on your stand against disempowering councils.

I have been a little shocked however to read you as quoted in the article I have reproduced below from the Melbourne Times.
It looks like the worst kind of wedge politics.

1. I would like to know whether you were correctly cited in this article.
2. [name withheld] tells me that you may have been cited out of context - if so, could you explain a little please?

3. This is what the article makes you look as if you are doing, in my opinion:

- trying to knock out ALP competition
- or doing the ALP a favour by playing the race card against someone who is leading the battle for the environment and democracy against overdevelopment, overpopulation, by tagging them with an unfair race-card where the (extremely corrupt and unfair) ALP may not dare to do so itself
- playing to a voting sector which is identifyable as muslim
- stimatising muslims specifically as overly productive of children, uneducated etc
- playing wedge politics
- maybe preparing a seat in the Labor party for yourself

I hope to hear that none of this is true and that you are instead cooperating as much as possible with Mr Thomson, who has shown great courage and leadership.
By the same token, if there is something unfair going on between the two of you and you were reacting, I am sympathetic to an explanation there.
I am trying not to make judgements without full inquiry.
I know how fraught politics and environmental movements are with this kind of thing.

Yours for reform in democracy, environment, population, land use planning and energy policy,

Sheila Newman"

Strange silence from Mr Barber

I never received a reply from Mr Barber, although I spoke to a person at his office several times and exchanged emails with that person, and was led to assume I would at any moment receive a reply. (See below for a very brief response to another voter.) I made it very clear that I was dead serious in seeking an explanation and also that I was absolutely furious that someone was apparently trying to pull the racist card to shut up Australia's perhaps single most courageous, ethical, effective and environmentally literate politician - an ALP long-stayer who was standing up for democracy, despite his party. I said that I would write an article on the subject and so it was important for him to defend himself.

Save the Bush Rally on 24 February

The same morning I wrote to Mr Barber, I travelled to the Save the Bush Rally which took place on the steps of Melbourne Parliament. It was here that I finally lost patience with the Greens.

Speakers included Sue Pennicuick, Greens MLC, Rosemary West, of the Green Wedges, Colin Long, Greens Upper House Candidate, Damon Anderson, of Coomoora Reserve, and Gillian Collins, of the Pines Flora and Fauna Reserve. (Were all of them prospective candidates?) All made speeches about how development was being pushed through by Mr Brumby's government and how this was threatening bushland and how the Greens would provide more public transport.

Complicit Silence on how Overdevelopment has been politically contrived

No scheduled speaker mentioned why more roads or public transport are necessary. The silence on how their necessity had been politically contrived was absolutely deafening. The Greens' failure to expose how the Government is driving the overpopulation it is using as an excuse to force undemocratic development only protects this gigantic dystopic rort.

Sadly, not one Green said anything to the effect of, "We will expose this dishonesty and try to stop the overpopulation of Melbourne."

I know that Gillian Collins and Rosemary West are fully aware of the population growth corporate connection. Yet only one woman, Mara from Banyule, even mentioned that the bush is threatened by population growth. All the honour of the day for honesty and relevance goes to her. She was not even on the written Agenda. She should have been writing it.

The 'green' silence from the rest of them on the government elephant-in-the-room push for overpopulation seemed nothing short of shameful cowardice or cynical complicity. The population cat is well out of the bag, yet it seems that the Greens, of all parties, want to stuff it back in again - at the peril of our wildlife and democracy.

Why? What have they got to gain by protecting the bad guys?

I was furious that I had travelled from an outer suburb and ruined my day for more profitable pursuits only to hear a line-up of wanna-be-politicians using a captive audience to monger motherhood statements which would mostly sit happily on the billboards of new estates and the websites of corporate water-speculators. Many of those assembled in support of the speakers were battle-scarred environmental fighters who remained quiet while the glorified clichés were trotted out for the television cameras. Some dedicated naturalists and ecologists held banners and filmed the event, all of them waiting for some leadership.

They got nothing.

A trial of patience; an abuse of supporters' time

When Sue Pennicuick self-congratulatingly asked the crowd who they were going to vote for (meaning the Greens), an angry spectator called out, "Kelvin Thomson!" There was a murmur of approval from the long-suffering audience.

Another spectator handed round stickers with "Say No to Melbourne at 5 Million" and someone else was distributing leaflets exposing the identities of organisations that push population growth, which included numerous developers and the Victorian Government with its site, "www.liveinmelbourne.com.au". The audience gratefully accepted the leaflets.

There was no-one else there, apart from the speakers, who wanted to keep the lid on the scandal of the population-growth lobby and the government's role in it. A brilliant opportunity was lost to educate the press on the steps and the pedestrians watching from the other side of Spring Street about why the government is corrupt and how the government pushes population in cahoots with the developers, then makes laws to force Victorians to accommodate the interests of this group. (See the Brumby government's links with the Property Council of Australia and the Live in Victoria Government website to attract immigrants at "Living in a Destruction Zone" and Minister Justin Madden's increasingly barefaced attempts to overturn any democratic restraint on the government's development despotism.)

Political corruption in Australia

I rode home on the same train as one of the wildlife activists. On that train there was also a man who had just published a dictionary of Australian political terms. He was a born and bred ALP member and I asked him if he had ever heard of Labor Resources or Labor Holdings. He hadn't. I told him about them. It seemed to me that a faint glint of horror animated his misty eyes for a moment, but he quickly suppressed it.

"They all do it", he replied, like a long-suffering adult on the antics of teenagers. I half expected him to add, "But they will grow out of it."

Yes, all the parties do it. "It" is the use of holding companies for donations which are then declared as coming from the holding companies rather than from their many corporate donors. This is a problem but it is the amount and the kind of assets that the ALP holds at state and Federal level plus their political power and their demonstrated abuse of it which is frightening even to the Liberal-National Party.

I tried to describe how the scale of the corrupt system was beyond any before and now grotesquely magnified by the ALP's dominance over every parliament in Australia. "They are nothing like the Labor Party is supposed to be anymore," I added.

"Oh, but they're better than the alternative," he intoned, reciting his true believer catechism, with a smug smile.

"It's like a religion," said the onlooking wildlife activist. "They are brainwashed from birth."

Politics as religion

She is right. For many people, politics is the same as a religion. You just don't question the church that you were born to: Labor or Liberal: each is better than the alternative.

Or, if you're a bit rebellious, there is the alternative alternative religion - The Greens.

But it seems to me now that they are all different brands selling the same thing. They are all selling overpopulation to the masses, but each of them is selling a different brand. The Labor Party is selling overpopulation as economic growth. The Liberals would be selling it this way but they cannot out-do the ALP at the moment. The Greens are selling overpopulation as Public Transport and the Socialist Alliance is selling it as bicycles. But they are all trying to sell it to us. Like Mr Madden and Mr Brumby and Mr Rudd, they aren't really interested in democracy and what we, the electorate think. They are all seeking niches within the territory defined by the corporate growth lobby.

Mainstream Media role in our loss of democracy

For many years now the extent of this collusion has been kept safely away from public knowledge by the commercial and the public media in Australia. Indeed it looks to me as if the commercial media - notably the Murdoch media, but including the Fairfax media - have been able to shape the policies and and promote the people who have come to form our useless political parties and the corrupt ideology of material progress.

The structure of print, television and radio media has permitted ownership in a few hands which have dominated public information and allowed the entrenchment of corporate interests over democratic rights. For me it is frankly impossible now to see the difference between the Government and the commercial Property, Banking and Media groups (all interchangeable themselves), especially with Stephen Mayne's uncovering of Labor Party investments cultivated with Wayne Swann and Kevin Rudd working for Wayne Goss whilst in opposition in Queensland. Yes, Mayne's investigations were published in the mainstream, but the mainstream doesn't connect the big dots and it won't effectively publicise any alternative parties or changes to the system which might combat the rot.

The situation is like the one in the 16th century, where the Holy Roman Empire had evolved from the Roman Empire and controlled kings, public ideology and institutions. The situation seemed utterly hopeless until the rise of a new technology - printing.

Who will fight the Evil Empire again?

In the 16th century Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses to the Church door at Wittenburg. Soon copies were printed and spread all over Germany.

Unfortunately, with the discovery of technologies for smelting iron directly with coal, new kinds of institutions arose - those of capitalist corporations. The corporations built towns and re-organised people as anonymous cogs, with loyalty to employers overwhelming loyalty to family and friends, isolated from any true community or personal independence. Gradually the corporations were able to dominate human institutions all over again, under the ideology of 'Progress', (See for instance, "Courier-Mail beats up on public for complaining about cost of 'progress'"), ironically taken from protestant values.

Things may be changing again, however. Today the 'common people' - as long as they can read and write and have access to computers - may be able to take back power from the Dark Towers (to use Tolkien's ever-useful terminology for the rise of corporate control) via a new technology - and that is the Internet.

It seems however that we should not rely on the Greens to challenge the dark commercial hegemony of the overpopulation and development lobby.

If Australians cannot place their faith in the Greens, recently some real dissidents have arrived and posted something new on the church doors of the Internet: Kelvin Thomson - a brave leader in waiting for the Labor Party or for a new party or a man who may lose ALP-preselection for his courage and hence could eventually run for the Senate on Mr Barber's turf; the Stable Population Party, the New Australia Party, and the Animal Justice Party.

I will be happy to be shown to be wrong and anyone who feels misrepresented by this article is very welcome to post an article in reply or to comment. I am happy to publish any response from Greg Barber. I will be more than happy to eat every word of criticism here of Greens and speakers at the rally if only I receive an explanation. Candobetter.org is a free press and we welcome true debate.

See also: Greens support Madden's Bad Law VC 71 in black week for Victoria, Australia of 11 Oct 10, "Tasmanian Greens and the terror of coalitions" of 24 Mar 10 on Online Opinion and related discussion forum.

Please attend public forums against population growth, featuring Kelvin Thomson, Mark O'Connor and others. Brisbane: 8:30AM - 12:30PM, Saturday 13 March, Sunshine Coast: 2:00PM-4:30PM, Sunday 14 March.(See article "Sunshine Coast environmentalists condemn sham population debate" for more details.)

In the debate over the The South East Queensland Regional Plan in 2009-2031 on 11 February 2010 Liberal National Party MLA Glen Elmes₁ warned how the vast discretionary powers, given to the Minister for Infrastructure and Planning, Stirling Hinchliffe, with his past history as a property development industry insider, would add to the consequences of SEQ's already shambolic urban planning and environmental management and runaway population growth.

The speech is effective. However, it has shortcomings. The speech appears to accept that continued population growth, even if at a lower rate, is actually necessary and desirable, just as long as it is properly planned and the necessary infrastructure provided beforehand. It also appears to avoid confronting those directly responsible for the current rate of population growth that it otherwise makes abundantly clear is excessive. Those directly responsible are, of course, the Rudd Government with its record high immigration program, that is given every encouragement by the Queensland Government. It is possible to draw the implication from the speech that the harm caused by rapid population growth could possibly be mitigated to an acceptable degree by the adoption of measures such as decentralisation.₂ and infilling.₃

I learned of this speech from the following comment (see also ) made in response to the article, "It's time to fight Bligh's growth" by Bill Hoffman in the Sunshine Coast Daily of 6 Mar 10:

Vanga and happychappy1 may care to go to Hansard Thursday 11 Feb and read Glen Elmes' stirring speech to parliament condemning the government's population strategy for the Coast. At least Elmesy is doing his bit.

The speech, below, is from the Queensland State Parliamentary Hansard of Hansard of 12Feb 10, linked to from Hansard page. I have added subheadings. - JS

See also: "SEQ Regional Plan a travesty against the people of South East Queensland" of 9 May 09 by Dr Jane O'Sullivan, "The downward spiral of hasty population growth" of 8 Mar 10 on Online Opinion by Dr Jane O'Sullivan.

Mr ELMES (Noosa--LNP) (9.45 pm): ...

Queensland Government's habitual disregard of resident's wishes

I am privileged to rise to speak again on behalf of my electorate of Noosa in this critical debate about our future. My community always worries when Labor starts to plan on our behalf. The forced council amalgamation process of 2006 and 2007 was hallmarked by stripping Noosa and the Queensland constituency of the right to a binding vote on council amalgamations as enshrined in state law. Do you know why, Mr Deputy Speaker? It was because the Labor government knew that a vote would be defeated not by a small margin but overwhelmingly.

We on this side of the House support the planning processes which would, in normal circumstances, lead to the South East Queensland Regional Plan 2009-2031, but these are not normal circumstances. We know that all of the submissions in the world make no difference to this Labor government's approach to consultation. We know that all the wisdom subscribed by the Sunshine Coast Regional Council; the highly respected Sunshine Coast Environment Council; the influential OSCAR, which stands for Organisation Sunshine Coast Associations of Residents; the forensic Development Watch; the EDV Residents Group; as well as the wise council from the Noosa Parks Association, the Noosa Residents and Ratepayers Association and of course the Friends of Noosa, to mention but a few, simply fail to be taken into account by this minister and this Labor government.

How could we expect anything to be different? With a Labor government now more dependent for its political survival on donations from the property development industry than from its traditional labour trade union base and with a minister captive to that same industry for whom he was a consultant and advocate before coming into this place, how could we expect other than what we have got? But the minister monsters any notion of impartiality through the concept of investigation areas and sleight of hand expansions of the urban footprint to appease his constituent urban development lobby.

Reckless disregard of established planning principles

The Sunshine Coast Regional Council opposed the 1,408-hectare Caloundra South extension investigation area on the basis of the loss of the interurban break and the nutrient and recreational use impacts on the Pumicestone Passage. Others opposed other inclusions into the urban footprint as well, but still on he ploughs. But everyone was unanimous in their chorus for the permanent protection of the interurban break between the Moreton Bay area and the Sunshine Coast, for it to be set in concrete, to become an article of faith. This interurban break is prone to flooding.

There simply must be a ban on the continued development of flood prone or flood plain land. The current practice of raising the level of flood plain land above the flood level for development purposes simply makes flooding elsewhere more likely and more severe. It is a 'beggar my neighbour' policy. On the Sunshine Coast we do not want to see the incremental stripping away of the interurban breaks, as has occurred between Brisbane and the Gold Coast which is an interurban break in name only. I strongly oppose this minister having the power to gazette new growth areas without public consultation and the process for declarations to occur.

These regulations will permit a wide range of urban style tourist, recreation, sporting, hospitality and commercial developments to occur outside the urban footprint with limited code and impact assessment requirements and little guidance for local government. Further, I am also totally opposed to the proposed discretion for the minister to declare urban and future growth areas as a master plan area. Given the current minister's strong links to the property development industry, I am greatly alarmed by this proposed power, unfettered by any guidelines or ability to be challenged. This has been fostered by changing the definitions in the dictionary. Long-held definitions have turned turtle. What was forbidden is now at the bidding of the minister. Everyone has to go back to school and learn a new language.

My constituency and their advocacy groups requested the state support regional and local planning based on sustainable carrying capacity which also considers and accepts character and amenity. The Sunshine Coast Regional Council has a powerful electoral mandate for such planning and should be permitted to fulfil that mandate.

Queensland Government accomodates, rather than plans population growth

The South East Queensland Regional Plan proposes 156,000 extra dwellings by 2031, a 39 per cent increase over the 397,000 of 2006. The plan envisages 497,000 people crammed into a sardine city by 2031, 68 per cent more than the 295,000 of 2006. The place we call home and love so much will be loved to death by such an onslaught. The Sunshine Coast Regional Council sought assurance that dwelling allocations be qualified by assessment of development planning constraints--constraints extended by the Sunshine Coast Environment Council and others, all to no avail.

The growth is uneven. Although the South-East Queensland population growth is 1.57 million, Brisbane will grow by some 39 per cent, the Gold Coast will grow by 68 per cent and the heaviest impact will be borne by the Sunshine Coast, with a 76 per cent growth in population. Analysis of state and regional population progressions to 2031 and 2050 clearly shows that these are not sustainable in ecological, economic, financial or social terms. With the population doubling every 25 years and with two-thirds of the population in South-East Queensland, one-third in regional coastal areas and only one per cent west of the ranges, South-East Queensland will have a population equal to the present total state population by 2031 and 20 per cent of that population will be over the age of 65. The state already spends twice as much per capita on infrastructure as the other states and is facing mounting budget deficits and a state debt with a lowered credit rating. It just does not add up.

Here is a case for a state and regional population and settlement policy and strategy.₄ Analysis of the drivers of population growth, which is natural increase, net interstate migration and net international migration, shows that the state has a number of policy instruments at its disposal to deliver a population and growth rate which is determined to be sustainable for the region and for the state overall. Managing international migration to Queensland is obvious, given this has been double the rate of interstate migration in the most recent decade.

The South East Queensland Regional Plan simply accepts population growth as a fact to be accommodated rather than managed. Strategies and then policies need to be developed and implemented by which growth is limited to no more than the sustainable carrying capacity of the Sunshine Coast. A key factor of sustainability in my view is provision of acceptable infrastructure proceeding or in conjunction with appropriate development. I believe that the current government policy encourages this excessive population growth, and therefore policy change can reduce it.

For example, concessional stamp duty for first home buyers in Queensland is a significant incentive for Victorian and New South Wales property owners to relocate to Queensland, particularly in retirement, rather than to relocate within their own state. Limiting the concession to first home buyers generally rather than first home buyers in Queensland, as now, would be a good first step in limiting growth and would send a clear message of intent that population growth for Queensland is not limitless. It should be noted here that the Sunshine Coast Regional Council was elected almost two years ago with an overwhelming mandate from electors to preserve their quality of life, to nurture the area's unique communities, to manage population growth and development and to make the region the most sustainable in Australia. The electors who live on the Sunshine Coast have sent this very clear message which should be informing planning and planning instruments such as the South East Queensland Regional Plan that replicating the Gold Coast on the Sunshine Coast is not acceptable to us.

There is here potential for a clear identification of community areas in which modelling of desirable future living could be trialled. I envisage the greater Noosa area as one which could be home to communities capable of ready adaption to important change. Booking the ClimateSmart Home Service--which is a state government initiative and which I wholly approve of--managing our carbon footprint, insulating our homes, installing hot-water systems and solar power generation, composting and recycling more of our waste, installing greywater systems and harvesting rainwater et cetera are a few examples of some of the myriad ways in which a small engaged community might model solutions to climate change and sustainability. These solutions might then be rolled out across the state when it is clear which approaches work best and how they might be implemented.

We residents of the Sunshine Coast advocate a much less intensive residential development for our area than the currently accepted urban norm of large estate development which requires water and energy to be captured or generated remotely and delivered to these developments and from which waste water and waste is transported to a remote site for treatment or disposal. The current urban model is ultimately unsustainable and undesirable. Greater Noosa, with recognition from UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Program, is, I submit, ideally and best placed to model a sustainable future.

Queensland Government spends on infrastructure for population growth on maxed out bankcard

The truly monstrous failure of the Labor government has been in the provision of infrastructure. With our bankcard maxed out, the capacity for future generations to work through the economic catastrophe facing the state--home-grown by sheer economic incompetence--is hamstrung. Both the plan and the South-East Queensland infrastructure program fail to commit to the provision of the necessary infrastructure to support proposed increases in dwellings and sustainable development. The teaching hospital for the University of the Sunshine Coast--a truly fantastic win-win concept for health services in my region, for infrastructure provision and for education as a hub for economic development--has been put off and put back until it is almost out of sight and out of mind. Why? Because the Labor government has given up even the faintest hope of ever winning a seat on the Sunshine Coast so those electors do not matter anymore to Labor. The Queenslanders in this region of the south-east know who they cannot count on. Redress the wrong, address increases in public and active transport spending, and bring forward as a matter of urgency the coast section of CAMCOS and CoastConnect.

Effects of poor planning on Sunshine Coast

Many rural communities are home to those engaged in lower paid employment who are compelled to travel to work, often shiftwork, by private car. Alternative transport modes must be made available for these workers. It is not acceptable that bulk public transport solutions be provided only in the most heavily populated areas which are already advantaged by a wider range of services under competitive provision.

There are other infrastructure failures which I will only touch on. Education has failed. Schools are being built under a public-private partnership in my region. I am attending the opening of Peregian Springs tomorrow morning at 9.30, which in time will really max out the already maxed out bankcard. Health services fail every day. This is not the fault of the health professionals who struggle to meet the needs of those for whom they care; there are just too many of them to care for.

Then there is water. What do Sunshine Coast residents see? They see paddock after paddock of enormous black pipes just waiting to be laid to suck the lifeblood from the region. Water will leave from where it was harvested via one-way pumps through the infamous water grid, off to Brisbane never to be seen again and for which the reward of recompense has been harvested by this broke Labor government also.

To most constituents, 'infill development' are dirty words but not everyone agrees. Displaying great courage and foresight, the Sunshine Coast Environment Council, for example, has proposed to focus on infill development to take advantage of existing infrastructure and services and the achievement of a more compact urban form incorporating sustainability principles. But this demands that location, scale and design must be sympathetic to the surrounding area and to community aspirations. In short, the local community needs to be engaged in the local solution.₅

The Labor government's approach to planning did not even start from an informed position. There was no review of the performance of the previous plan despite the fact that the 2008 State of the region report showed declining trends in almost all sustainability indicators, most noticeably biodiversity and livability indicators, and many of the plans and strategies that the plan requires for implementation are still incomplete and not integrated. While growth, transport and climate change are acknowledged, no robust solutions are offered. It is almost as if they have conceded that they will not be around long enough to address these problems of their own making, but they do not effectively address or provide solutions to these issues. Finalisation of this plan should await a fundamental review of the carrying capacity of the region. The dreadful lag in infrastructure and services has caught up with even the existing population, and effective performance monitoring, review, resourcing and accountability structures are incorporated.

The South East Queensland Regional Plan will be informed by, and is subservient to, the Integrated Planning Act 1997 and the Sustainable Planning Act 2009. Accordingly, it is of particular concern that the act does not include a prohibition on development applications which conflict with local planning schemes. This deficiency requires any local council to assess an application despite the conflict. Consideration of such applications makes it very clear to the local community that their faith in the local planning scheme, developed following prolonged community consultation, is misplaced. It also highlights for them the significant waste of local rate revenues applied by council to the assessment process and the dilemma which councils face in defending their decision in the Planning and Environment Court should a developer appeal against a refusal. It is essential that this wasteful, resource intensive and unnecessary activity is made redundant by appropriate amendment to the act.

Failure to protect wildlife, agricultural land

While we humans can speak for ourselves, it is also incumbent to protect those who cannot defend themselves, and I speak particularly of the koala--our native icon--threatened with extinction by development, by this Labor government and by this plan in particular. The koala is a key indicator for biodiversity. They will be a lost indicator at the present rate as community groups struggle to offset the failures of this Labor government. The mapping program is inadequate, incomplete and slow, while another aspect of growth is seen with this minister--that is, the growth in loopholes to aid and abet the developer constituency to find legal ways to destroy koala habitat with impunity.

Another aspect that has been largely overlooked is the impact on food production from development. Productive land agricultural pursuits, particularly those close to major urban centres, need to be preserved. This is another failure of the Traveston Crossing Dam--that less than optimum water storage location which sought to flood farm land and deprive Brisbane of a source of food. Let us hope that the remedial work to repair the damage done to the Mary Valley, primarily by the Premier in this case, will focus on developing this food bowl and repairing the other major consequence, which is social dislocation.

There is strong objection to the amendment proposed to the regional landscape and rural production areas, which has the effect of expanding the urban footprint and redefining activities which were previously urban. These areas should be afforded the highest level of protection possible so that food production for South-East Queensland's increasing population can be secured and, simultaneously, natural conservation areas protected.

Reject Queensland Government's "Sardine City" vision for Sunshine Coast

For the Sunshine Coast, we all hope for the sustenance of it being a community of communities. We do not want a sardine city. We want the places in which we live, work, play and grow our families to retain their uniqueness and their individuality. We want them to be the places in communities which attracted us to them in the first place. We do not want to morph into obscurity. We do not want to be harmonised. We want progress without oblivion.

The vision for the future of South-East Queensland and the principles that underpin the plan are generally consistent with those supported and endorsed by Sunshine Coast constituents. However, one notes with concern that the plan and its regulated regulatory provisions have significant flaws which remain to be addressed. The major concerns remain the weak basis in the plan for determining how growth can be managed and the potential inconsistencies that arise between desired outcomes, the lack of infrastructure planning to underpin development and the powers to the minister, who always seems ready to do a stirling job on behalf of his developer mates. It does not bode well for a sustainable future for the Sunshine Coast or anywhere in South-East Queensland.

Appendix: Divided opinions about Sunshine Coast Members of State Parliament

The following are comments in response to the article "It's time to fight Bligh's growth" by Bill Hoffman in the Sunshine Coast Daily of 6 Mar 10.

Posted by vanga from Caloundra, Queensland, 06 March 2010 7:17 a.m.

yet another story bemoaning the imposition of 100K more people on our life styles and still no word from the liberal nationals

Will the libnats ban any greenfield development in south Caloundra?

Will the libnats go with the council on the maximum number of people for sippy downs and maroochydore urban infil?

Hello? Is there anybody out there?

McCardle, Elmes, Wellington, Dickson, Simpson, Powell and the other one I couldnt find - whats your thoughts? A lot of coast residents want to know if you are going to dare to be different or are we stuck with what labour are pushing on us because you want the same or even worse - more people?

Some answers libants - you cant just sit back and whinge about everything the government does - let us know if you will be any different

Posted by happychappy1 from Maroochydore, Queensland, 06 March 2010 7:41 a.m.

No, no, no, no, no. This govt has to be kicked out before our lifestyles are totally ruined. Please LNP, give us your views?

Posted by vanga from Caloundra, Queensland, 06 March 2010 7:43 a.m.

the emails are flooding in

Glen Elmes- not his responsibility - sent my email to Dave Gibson of the Gympie

Powell - and Dickson not in their electorate so they arent interested - suggested I contact Marc McCardle

Peter Wellington - good onya - a politician with an opinoin - dead set against the proposals

Posted by vanga from Caloundra, Queensland 06 March 2010 9 a.m.

happychappy - lnp views as emailed to me

Elmes - not his responsibility - sent my query to the member for Gympie because that member is the shadow minister - so elmes has no opinon

Peter wellington - against the proposals - was on ABC talking about it

Power and Dickson - its not their electorate so of no interest, told me to talk to Marc McCardle
Mccardel and simpson - no response yet

can someone tell the 7 memebrs of the state parliament they are members for the Sunshine Coast as well as their own fiefdoms?

Maybe if they actually spoke with each other they could present a united from for the coast

Posted by carrot from Maroochydore, Queensland 06 March 2010 9:51 a.m.

Vanga and happychappy1 may care to go to Hansard Thursday 11 Feb and read Glen Elmes' stirring speech to parliament condemning the government's population strategy for the Coast. At least Elmesy is doing his bit.

The SCRC (Sunshine Coast Regional Council) has already shot themselves in the foot by caving in immediately to Caloundra South. That set a precedent that informs the state government exactly how spineless they are.

Posted by tonyryan from Maroochydore Bc, Queensland 06 March 2010 1:17 p.m.

This is still a discussion in a bubble.

The predetermining issues are: 'population' and 'rights of the people'.

First POPULATION. Increase is NOT inevitable.

In fact natural Australian population growth went into reverse two decades after we installed statutory livable age pensions in 1946.

The current increase is primarily caused by three million migrants and refugees. Do we have to take them in? No. Australia is a desert continent and we have already reached our optimum sustainable population.

No foreign power can tell us what to do.

The newcomers are straining our water catchments; our rural food-growing zones through enforced urban sprawl; our culture; our national sovereignty and our social integrity.

And to say we must give way to seachangers is nonsense. All human communities in history have reserved the right to repel invaders in order to protect their homes, their incomes and their way of life.

Ignoring official lies, unemployment on the Sunshine Coast is 23% and newcomers compete for the few jobs going. In a sense, they import poverty.

And RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE?

During the past three decades there has been a media-driven viewpoint that we elect representatives to rule over us. This is dictatorial nonsense.

Democracy was clearly defined by the greatest minds in history... Thucydides of ancient Greece, the Irish Monks, Thomas Paine of 'The Rights of Man' fame, Lord Acton... but most lyrically by Abraham Lincoln: "Government of the people, by the people and for the people".

Abe overstated the definition because already, enemies of democracy were subverting the meaning.

In a democracy, councillors, MLAs and MHRs are our elected servants, there for one single purpose, to install the product of electoral consensus.... or in Constitutional terms... the will of the people.

Wellington and Blumell excepted, the rest of our grubby politicians are exchanging election campaign funding for development favours.

This is obviously true of tyrant Bligh and Andrews, but us equally true of the LNP. This is why they are silent.

If you want to save the Sunshine Coast, you will have to do what people have done since time immemorial; confront the politicians en masse.

They will back down, believe me.

Posted by shellsay from Maroochydore, Queensland 06 March 2010 1:46 p.m.

What is so arrogant about the Bligh/Hinchcliff army is that they have totally and utterly disregarded the S/C community and SCRC rights to have an opinion. The whole process of altering the maximum population number of nearly 16,000 set by council, to now become the minimum is outrageous, how can this just happen? Of course you can't stop population growth, but you should be able to stipulate a lot lower figure. And how can all this be approved by these loonies when no effort towards sustainable planning has been taken into consideration, we are talking flood plain land here, has anyone seen the amount of water that is lying on there at the moment. Why arent we utilising further regional areas for development, why does it have to be here, the infrastructure that is in place now can't cope. It is up to the S/C communities to stop this decision now, instead of just blogging about it let's all do something. Developers like Stocklands are way to powerful and have destroyed enough of the coast, they are not ratepayers and don't have a right to an opinion. Send a submission into council, to take a stand on this through the reinstatement of their structure plan, which can be viewed on their web: www.sunshinecoast.qld.gov.au. Sunshine Coast residents have a right to be heard, Bligh/Hinchcliff dont live here we do.

Footnotes

1. ↑ In spite of having made this speech, opinion about LNP member Glen Elmes is not unanimously favourable amongst Sunshine Coast residents opposed to population growth as can be seen below from comments in response to the article "It's time to fight Bligh's growth" by Bill Hoffman in the Sunshine Coast Daily of 6 Mar 10, where I learnt of this speech.

In the past the LNP has been correctly regarded as more the party of big business than the Labor Party. However, that reality appears to have been largely inverted in Queensland in recent years. An example which suggests this is the disturbing fact that on 2 June 2009, only two members of the Parliamentary Labor caucus were prepared to vote, even inside caucus, where they are all supposedly free to speak and vote as their consciences dicate, against privatisation. In contrast, the the LNP opposes privatisation and that opposition appears to be, in large part, genuine. They have repeatedly voted against privatisation and, on one occasion, LNP leader John-Paul Langbroek called on the State Governmet to put privatisation to the people in a referendum. Of course, the ultimate test for Parties such as the LNP is what they do upon winning government and not what some of their members are prepared to say whilst in opposition.

Glen Elmes' seat of Noosa was previously held by Cate Molloy, who was expelled from the Labor Party for her principled stand of opposition to the Bligh Government's environmentally and socially reckless plans to dam the Mary Valley at Traveston. Whilst we urged a vote for Cate Molloy in both the 2006 and 2009 state elections, this speech demonstrates that some considerable good has resulted from that loss.

2. ↑, 4. ↑ This has raised decentralisation as a possible solution to overcrowding of the major urban areas. Noosa Shire Mayor Bob Abbot proposed decentralisation at the Debate at the Conservatorium of Music in Brisbane on Monday 22 February. His argument was that if our Governments had not allowed the infrastructure that serviced Inland Queensland in the firs half of the twentieth century to have been neglected in the second half of the 20th century then there would be plenty of desirable alternative locations for people to live outside the major urban regions. An argument put against this view is that, as a result of mechanisation, there was no longer as great a need for the larger rural workforces that existed back then. Also the lack of fertility and water have defeated past attempts to settle outback regions of the country, most famously the soldier settlers who were given plots of land in outback Victoria after the First World War.

Nevertheless, I believe that it is appropriate to carefully examine the capacity of some currently sparsely settled regions to support greater populations. Some factors which could bend the odds more in our favour are (1) The potential of Natural Sequence Farming as well as Permaculture techniques to restore fertility the land, (2) the capacity of the Internet to allow much intellectual work to be perfomed remotely, (3) Cheaper building techniques as described by US architect Michael Reynolds in his video Garbage Warrior.

If it were to be found that some of these regions may be able to sustainably support substantially larger human populations, then decentralisation should be adopted, but only as a solution to relieve the overcrowding of Australia's existing urban areas, rather than as an excuse to furhter increase Australia's population.

3. ↑, 5. ↑ In fact, we would tend to agree that 'infill development' is dirty. In theory infill development could relieve some of the demand for land, but it is not environmentally cost-free. The financial and energy costs of building and operating multi0story dwellings and obtaining food, water and other necssities from elsewhere needs to be taken into account. In practice, it is also very difficult to infull without sacrificing ever more of the remnants of vegetation in city areas. In a context of population stability, some 'infill' development may prove to be a means to relieve the demand for bushland clearing, but, in the current environment of runaway population growth it has just become another means for developers to profit by degrading the quality of life of existing community.

"Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men’s minds, vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds, of a number of men, poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?" Francis Bacon

"Deprive the average human being of his life-lie, and you rob him of his happiness.” Dr. Relling in Ibsen's play "The Wild Duck"

Confession

I have a confession to make. On March 4th, I watched the full 43 minutes of CBC's "The Hour" hosted by the inimitably nauseating "Strombo" (George Strombopolous) and I managed to retain my stomach contents in the process. To be frank, I was transfixed. His first two interviews were gripping. The theme was religion. Was it a positive or necessary force in our lives, or a dangerous and outmoded delusion?

Pope of Atheism

Strombo's first guest was what he aptly described as "The Pope of Atheism", Richard Dawkins. As usual, Dawkins was incisive and entertaining. His message was that evolution was so wondrous that we should stop to bask in its glory and enjoy this life to the fullest rather than invest our hopes in a post-corporeal existence of our imagination. Scientific theory, he argued, is not to be equated with "theory" as understood in popular parlance. It is much more than that. It is not a speculative conclusion to be ranked with equivalent credibility to other speculations. It is built upon evidence that must pass a much more rigorous standard than the assertions of competing beliefs. The ''theory " of evolution, must be granted the same credence as the "fact" that the Holocaust happened or that Dawkins was sitting in a CBC studio in Toronto. Dawkins is right. Fundamentalist Christians, in my experience, seem to think that any scientific "theory" is something that must serve a probationary period sitting in a waiting room until it is anointed as "fact" and given a pass to enter the kingdom of Truth. This attitude reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the scientific process. All scientific theories offer themselves to challenge---they set out a means by which they can be tested and found incorrect. Religions, on the other hand, demand acceptance in the absence of proof.

Atheism and Insomnia

Dawkins was asked if belief in evolutionary theory was enough to "get us through the night". Irrelevant. Whether a belief gets us through the night or not has no bearing upon its truth. I might dispel my worries by fervently believing that following my expiration, I will be resurrected as the taste-tester in a chocolate factory for all eternity, but such a firm conviction does not constitute proof that my expectation is a reasonable one. If 500 million people passionately believe something to be true, that does not make it true. And if just one individual believes something to be true, that alone does not make it false. The arbiter must be evidence that meets scientific requirements. Yes indeed, scientific 'theory' is a different animal than mere 'theory'.

Ideology

Chris Hedges, the next guest, took issue with Dawkins' "New Atheism" however. Just as he found Christian fundamentalists dogmatic in their belief that truth cannot be found in another religious tradition or a humanist realm, Hedges finds the New Atheists dogmatic in their assertion that truth cannot be found in religion. Atheists fail to understand our spiritual needs and affect a confidence in science alone to quantity important things that cannot be quantified. Even Freud, he said, could not define "love". The chocolate heaven that I dream of may be a fantasy, but whether it is or not does not address my inherent predilection to imagine heaven. I think that Hedges is on to something here. I recall that archaeologists once found a Neanderthal grave in Israel where implements that the departed individual had found useful in his life were placed beside him upon burial. In the other words, even these "mentally" handicapped brutes---as we used to perceive them---thought of life-after-death. I don't imagine that chimpanzees or horses have such preoccupations.

Logic

Hedges speculates that sometime in our two or three million year run-up to becoming homo sapiens, we developed this spiritual dimension. It is now part of our equipment--- like it or not. Dawkins may sincerely claim that he has no need of religion to get through the night, but like the rest of us I suspect, along with his thirst for knowledge there is quest for meaning. Can his exploration of nature be explained only in terms of seeking personal "satisfaction'? How can anyone be satisfied with any accomplishment unless one harbours a belief that leaves a durable legacy? Why write a book like "The Blind Watchmaker" or "The God Delusion" if you don't believe it makes an impact of lasting importance? Why would I contribute to the "populista" movement if I didn't at some level believe it important? And is not this belief absurdly illogical? As Alan Weisman argued in "A World Without Us", the human race and its attainments will one day perish without a trace. Books and articles and podcasts included.

Binary tensions

Hedges maintains that religion is not the problem. The problem can be found in people of all religious affiliations, including the New Atheists. The problem is not in an ideology, but in our own minds and 'hearts'. Fundamentalists of all persuasions, humanist as well, have the habit of 'binary' thinking. There is a right and a wrong. Black and white. Good and evil. They all set up a caricature of evil incarnated in an oppositional straw man. If you are a fundamentalist Christain, that straw man is a "secular humanist" or a Muslim. If you are a fundamental Muslim, your straw man is a Judeo-Christian or atheist. If you are a New Atheist, it is organized religion of all stripes and the infantile belief in a Supreme Being or beings who exercise authority over us and the natural world. Hedges finds all of these mental constructions dangerously problematic, because they make real people into abstractions. But then, we are tribal animals, and tribal war demands that we perceive our enemies in a way that firms up our resolution to defeat them. We must in some sense, "de-humanize" them. Hedges should accept that as a fixture of human nature as well, I think. We are 'hard-wired' to love those most like our selves, and to emotionally disengage from strangers who would threaten them.

Hardwiring

I have argued for some time now, that we are neurologically flawed. We are a prototype of a better model that needs an opportunity to roll off the evolutionary assembly line. Our salvation cannot come from a moral revolution, an advance toward rationality or a funadamentally utopian political or economic arrangement. We will not find safety in some kind of socialism or steady state economy. Even if a rump of hunter-gatherers were to emerge from the rubble of overshoot, there is a very strong possibility---no, a strong probability--- that they or their descendants would tread down the same path of unsustainability that we did. Eventually we would once again take the fatal turn toward cultivation agriculture, the root of our undoing. Our flaw is, simply, an inability to acknowledge limits and grasp the long-term consequences of our behaviour. We are greedy myopics by nature, and not one of the "isms" in the marketplace offer an everlasting cure for our nature. While I too am fatally spiritual, I am not in awe of God. If He had been an engineer at General Motors, He would have been canned long ago. Nader would call us unsafe at any speed. We should have been recalled.

No escape

Dawkins error, in my judgment, is his failure to understand that "religion" is ecumenical. It consists of all delusional thinking, not just that found in a mosque, a church or a temple. Succinctly put, religion can be defined as hope without evidence. By that standard, we are all religious. Despite my 'scientific' world view, I persist in the belief that there exists a Ms. Right sculptured like a 30 year old Hollywood movie star who will materialize at the local supermarket and fail to notice my age or my station, despite nearly five decades of experience that argues for the contrary. I also believe that if I buy a lottery ticket I will be that one in 14 million people who wins the jackpot. I even believe that the Montreal Canadiens will win the Stanley Cup, even though they are currently fighting just to get in the playoffs. I have faith, despite a paucity of evidence. But I am not alone. People like Richard Dawkins still believe in Wall Street's man, Barack Obama, to lead us to the promised land. Even a $12 trillion dollar debt does not cause them doubt. Financial planners believe that we can build financial security that will survive the collapse of the oil economy. Cornucopian socialists believe that there is enough to go around if only society was efficiently and fairly administered. Greens assert that if the affluent cut their consumption, enough resources will be available for the burgeoning poor of the developing world. Growthists believe that scarcity will only encourage innovations that will abolish it. Like Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield, they believe that even in the face of collapse, 'something will turn up'. Environmentalists, for their part, still believe that we can "manage" growth, and that there exists a technological fix for mass extinctions and critical resource shortages. And authentic Chrisitians believe that no matter how many more billion mouths set up shop, God will provide for those who believe in Him.

Denial

All of us live in some state of denial. Most of the time, we actually think or behave as if we were not going to die, and that our civilization will endure. But in our sober moments, we know that all good things must come to an end . Nothing you ever accomplished will survive the passage of time. So why then are you happy? Because you are, at some level, delusional. You 'got religion.' You are a true believer. "Positive thinking", as it is called, may be the recipe for personal success, but applied collectively, it has transformed us into blind sleep-walkers racing to the precipice. Nature does not care about our morale, or whether we feel good about ourselves. It only cares if we can limit our numbers and our appetite within its ability to carry us. So far, we flunked the test. Big time.

It is my contention that unless we can reform our brain structure, we will not survive for much longer. We are just too dumb to live.

As you would expect, that thought doesn't get me through the night very well. A clear apprehension of reality is not a proven sedative.

Tim Murray
March 4/2010

Also published on countercurrents.org.

According to the Sunshine Coast Environment Council, the so called "Great Growth Debate" hosted by the Property Council of Australia in Brisbane on Friday 5 March 2010 was rigged in advanced to come out in favour the the continuation of "Business as Usual" rampant population growth that so suited its own members' interests at the expense of the broader community and our environment.

The earlier 'debates' hosted by the Courier-Mail in Brisbane and on the Gold Coast proved to be no less one sided. I intend to cover them in another article. Below, I include the media release from the Sunsine Coast Environment Council. The media release predated the Property Council forum. Please visit links for some media coverage of the discussion.

Sunshine Coast Environment Council Media Release, 4 March 2010 -

Property Council Population "debate" has a Predictable Outcome

The Property Council is holding their "The Great Growth Debate" on Friday 5th March. It is being billed as a symposium on new ideas and solutions to managing Queensland's burgeoning growth rate. This is a veiled attempt to disguise its continued lobbying of the State government to release more land, reduce infrastructure charges and minimise the requirements for valid environmental assessments and protections.

For the developers, there is no "debate" -- just their predictable mantra of encouraging population growth at any cost. Ensuring the greatest yield of their significant land holdings to reap the greatest profit with no consideration of the ecological or social impacts of their decisions and actions remains their agenda.
Narelle McCarthy, Manager of the Sunshine Coast Environment Council believes this is further demonstration of the Property Council's "business as usual" approach of enthusiastically embracing and encouraging the burgeoning population rate to drive up the profits for a small minority. "However," Ms McCarthy said "the communities are the ones who bear the detrimental effects of unfettered population growth. Loss of biodiversity, loss of open space, increased traffic congestion, increasing stress and social dysfunction are just some of the compounding and irreversible impacts. Population growth does not equate to economic prosperity or housing affordability. The SEQ Regional Plan has mandated another 98,000 dwellings be built on the Sunshine Coast thus ensuring a windfall for the developers but condemning the local community to a much degraded lifestyle".

From this orchestrated debate, the Property Council will provide a plan to the Premier's own growth management summit to be held at the end of March. This plan will predictably continue to echo their unjustified call for greater land releases and increased concessions to the development industry. So will the Premier accept the advice of the profit motivated vested interests of a few or the majority of her constituents calling on the government to limit the region's population growth?
To support the views and increased understanding of the community in how it can influence all levels of government in addressing the problems of SEQ's unsustainable population growth, the SEQ Conservation Groups are holding a free community forum on Sunday 14th March at the 2:00pm at the Lake Kawana Community Centre, Bokarina. The entire community is urged to participate in determining the future of the Sunshine Coast and SEQ at this critical juncture.

Originally published on 4 Mar 10 on scec.org.au. See also: Great growth debate slammed (based on this media release) by Bill Hoffman in the Sunshine Coast Daily of 5 Mar 10, Aussie growing pains by Sue Lappman in the Gold Coast News of 6 Mar 10 (includes Federal Transport Minister Anthony Albanese's witty and imaginative quip: "I think Dick Smith should stay out of people's bedrooms."), Dick Smith Joins the Great Growth Debate on the Australian Property Council Web side, "The Great Growth Debate" program (pdf 2.8MB).

What you can do

Attend public forums against population Growth.

Brisbane: 8:30AM - 12:30PM, Saturday 13 March,
Queensland Museum Theatre, South Bank.
Cost $10. Phone Queensland Conservation Council on (07) 32297992.

Sunshine Coast: 2:00PM-4:30PM, Sunday 14 March,
Lake Kawana Community Centre, Bokarina.
Cost FREE. See brochure below.

Photo of big male by Brett Clifton

Preamble

The Animal Justice Party has been formed as a response to growing public concern about the neglect of animals and animal protection issues by political parties. It will give a voice to those who cannot speak for themselves. It will provide a focal point for voters frustrated by the lack of political action and who feel strongly that much more needs to be done through our parliamentary systems to assist the wellbeing of animals. There is a need for laws and processes which recognise animals' needs and capabilities and which protect their interests, whether they are domestic, farmed or wild. The Animal Justice Party will also ensure such laws and processes are properly enforced and implemented to achieve genuine justice for animals.

Our treatment of animals and the environments we share with them are often marred by a lack of understanding, leading to disrespect and cruelty. At a time when the planet’s environment is being challenged on so many fronts, we must urgently act to ensure that all animals that both contribute to and depend on it are respected and valued for their intrinsic and fundamental roles. We need to build a new relationship with the planet that is inclusive of all of its inhabitants. With a fresh approach towards animals and the ecological systems of Earth, humans can create more rewarding and ethical communities and relationships built on deeper understandings and firm principles of justice.

The Animal Justice Party seeks a restoration of the balance between the human, natural and animal worlds which acknowledges the interconnectedness and inter-dependence of these worlds, and respects the wellbeing of animals alongside that of humans, societies, economies and environments.

Vision

A planet on which animals are treated with respect, dignity, compassion and kindness, where they are able to flourish in their respective environments, and where their unique needs and capabilities are recognised and their interests are protected.

Mission

To promote and protect the interests and capabilities of animals by providing a dedicated voice for them in Australia’s political system.

Fundamental Factors

To implement its vision and give effect to its mission, the Animal Justice Party recognises the importance of the following:

• An education system which fosters in its values an awareness of the natural and animal worlds, and of human responsibility to ensure the wellbeing of the Earth and its inhabitants

• A political system in which participatory, deliberative democracy can be exercised so that citizens have the ability to express their true concerns about the treatment of animals

• An administrative system in which governments and institutions deal with animal and environmental issues in a transparent, honourable and accountable manner

• An economic system in which ethics, the protection of the natural world and its inhabitants, and the realisation of capability of all beings are highly valued for their intrinsic roles

• A societal system in which we acknowledge that it is our human duty and responsibility to ensure the wellbeing of all animals

• A robust legal system that recognises and protects the interests and capabilities of humans, animals and their environments

• A population settlement and land use system that is truly sustainable for all its inhabitants and ecosystems.

Principles

In all its actions, the Animal Justice Party will be guided by the following principles:

• Each animal is the experiencing subject of a life. Animals and the natural environment should be respected for their own sake, not merely for their instrumental values

• Animals have their own capabilities which they should be free to realise

• Human interactions with all animals should be based on respect and compassion

• Humans have the responsibility to avoid harm to animals and the environment through their lifestyles, diets and practices

• Policies of other political parties, both nationally and internationally, that advance Animal Justice Party principles will be supported.

Key Goals

The Animal Justice Party seeks the following:

• A legal framework and an administrative system in which animals' status is based on their sentience and capabilities, not their instrumental value

• Constitutional protection of animals and the environment

• A political decision-making process that is more responsive to the needs and interests of all animals

• An end to human practices that cause pain and distress to animals

• An end to the killing of animals for human benefit

• An end to the exploitation and destruction of the natural environment that is the habitat of so many unique Australian native animals

• Adoption by an increasing number of Australians of lifestyles and diets that are more respectful towards animals and the environment

• An acknowledgement that violence and cruelty are not the default settings for society and animals, nor are they solutions for planetary sustainability.

Key Strategies

The Animal Justice Party will:

For All animals

• Develop a new legal status for animals which acknowledges their rights to live protected from human harm

• Ensure consistency in the protection of all animals – companion, farmed and wild – regardless of their commercial or instrumental value, or their geographic location

• Support laws, policies and practices that enhance the quality of life of animals and reduce animal suffering

• Oppose laws, policies and practices which harm animals and their environments

• Support and promote lifestyles, practices and diets which maximise support for, and minimise harm to, animals and the environment

• Support the work of appropriately accredited volunteers who care for injured, orphaned and mistreated animals

• Support commercial and recreational ventures that provide opportunities for humans to spend time with animals on the animals' terms and in their worlds, and otherwise raise humans' awareness of animals, their needs, and their quality of life

• Promote values education that recognises the interests and dignity of animals as individual beings.

For Farm animals

• Support animal-friendly farming practices

• Oppose intensive farm animal production and processes that deprive animals of their basic needs and capabilities, expose them to confinement, painful procedures, temperature extremes and other inappropriate husbandry practices, and generally reduce them to the status of commodities

• Oppose transportation of live animals over long distances or otherwise in ways that cause suffering, or expose them to extreme cruelty at the end of the journey

• Oppose the importation of animal products derived from cruel animal production systems in other countries.

For Animals used in experimentation

• Support non-invasive research methods to improve human health as alternatives to the use of animals and animal products

• Oppose the use of animals in any scientific experimentation that inflicts pain, stress, distress and behavioural deprivation unless it is likely to result in a net benefit to the particular animal involved.

For Wild animals

• Enhance animal habitats and foster healthy ecosystems through dedicated terrestrial and marine parks and wildlife corridors, land revegetation and remediation, and animal-friendly land practices

• Oppose the institutional, commercial and recreational killing of wildlife

• Support the development and adoption of non-invasive and non-lethal methods to control native and introduced animal populations, including fertility control and more appropriate land management methods

• Support commercial and recreational ventures that seek to raise humans' awareness of the intrinsic worth of wildlife and natural environments.

For Companion animals

• Support measures to protect animals dependent on human guardians and to prevent their neglect, ill treatment or abandonment.

For Animals used in sport and entertainment

• Oppose the killing and mistreatment of animals in sport, recreation and entertainment.

To join the Animal Justice Party, click here.
© Animal Justice Party, Australia, 2010. For more information, contact: info[AT]animaljusticeparty.org

“ In sisterhood is our strength” Monday March 8 is International Women's Day. The Rye Women's House at 3 Lyons Street, Rye, Victoria, Phone 59 855 955, on the Mornington Peninsula will be celebrating its silver anniversary. Founded by Elida Radig, It is perhaps the oldest independent feminist institution of its kind in Victoria and it does an awesome International Women's Day. Please come along and experience the intellects, the humour, the politics, the music, the food... They mean what they say when they say, "The microphone is open to all women all day".

MONDAY, 8th MARCH 2010 is INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

We are celebrating it at Rye, just near the beach
at

3 Lyons Street, Rye, Victoria
Phone 59 855 955 "That Purple Place"

Please come and join us!

...

PROGRAM

THE MICROPHONE IS OPEN TO ALL WOMEN ALL DAY

10.00 am *At Rye Pier: Memorial Ceremony of Water & Flowers for the

women who have died. Including victims of war.

10.30 am * Back at the Women’s Centre for scones & cream.

10.35 am * Welcoming & acknowledgment of the Sisterhood of all women

on planet Earth. ‘Wild Woman’ with Shellabelle & wild women.

11.00 am * MORNING OPEN FORUM- Your opinion is important

Issues: “INEQUALITIES IN AUSTRALIA”

Facilitator: Gian Wild

12 noon * INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY LUNCH

Barbecue, salads and cakes under the shade of the Hibiscus tree

1.30pm * VAUDEVILLE HOUR

Carol Jamieson, her guitar and friends

Singers/ Comedians/Jokes.

Belly Dancing with Clara & dancers.

3.00pm * AFTERNOON OPEN FORUM – Your opinion is important.

Issues: “ARE WOMEN CHANGING WOMEN’S ‘ROLE’?”

Facilitator: Lynne Black

4.00pm * CIRCLE OF WOMEN

5.30pm * INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY DINNER

Self-serve yummy left overs.

“ In sisterhood is our strength”