(We) can do better

With just six weeks until the 2009 Kobenhavn Climate Conference, the global community has not much time to review and assess the failures of well-intentioned multilateral undertakings, commitments and promises at such global talkfests of living memory:

2008 - Rudd's 2020 Summit - how far are the results along the tri-election-cycled 12 year milestone?
2005 - Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
2005 - World Summit
2004 - Bali Strategic Plan for Technology Support and Capacity Building
2002 - Earth Summit in Johannesburg
2002 - World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD)
2001 - Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs)
2000 - Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety
2000 - Malmö Declaration - first Global Ministerial Forum on the Environment
2000 - Millennium Declaration - environmental sustainability included as one of eight Millennium Development Goals
1998 - Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent
1997 - Kyoto Protocol
1995 - Global Programme of Action (GPA) launched to protect marine environment from land-based sources of pollution
1992 - Rio Earth Summit (UN Conference on Environment and Development)
1992 - Convention on Biological Diversity
1989 - Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes
1988 - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
1987 - Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer
1985 - Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer
1979 - Bonn Convention on Migratory Species
1975 - Mediterranean Action Plan first UNEP-brokered Regional Seas agreement
1973 - Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES)
1972 - Stockholm United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE)

Twenty three very noble and ideal talkfests!
Most of these may be found at:
United Nations Environment Programme

But where are the results of all the undertakings, commitments, promises and hype?

Why are the total costs of these talkfest not disclosed? - the immense public cost of collective high emitting airfares, the extravagance of flying the delegates business class' and five star aristocratic accommodation, plus the salary costs of all involved apportioned to these events, copious catering, one-off extravagant printing, and the many event overheads unquestioned to date? The TOTAL SUMMIT COST is reflective on the authenticity of any such E-summit. Event organisers (politicians) must be held publicly to account for costs and condemned for such hypocritical largesse.

And what's wrong with online conferencing from home - it would probably save the outlay equivalent to the annual GDP of a small third world country!

Each talk fest should be accountable for on ground results and at the very least a positive Return on Talkfest Investment (ROTI) before launching head long into the next extravaganza. Cut the E-hype! Demand results of past promises and start sacking underperforming UN bureaucrats.

Emission Cut Recommendation:
'By 2020, the E-20 (world's 20 top emitters) fully replace their coal-fired power stations with geothermal power stations and use the redundant open-cut coal mines as non-toxic landfill. UN to provide a financial incentive for each country that does so with granting a 100% national debt forgiveness. Only such large scale pragmatic 'do-able' actions will make a noticeable reduction in global emissions.

Poaching skilled workers and removing political activists; dividing and conquering; restructuring communities to remove democratic organisation, multiculturalism as a cover for big business links with politicians

Political outcome of poaching skilled and educated elites

The poaching of skilled and educated people from other overpopulated countries is a way of removing a class of people in those countries, who might otherwise lead their compatriots to struggle against overpopulation and exploitation by corporations and crooked governments and religions.

It serves a base political purpose and helps keep people of the third world in misery.

What is more, when large volumes of skilled and educated people come to a new country, they naturally focus initially on establishing themselves and their families. It takes quite some time to establish oneself materially. They do not tend to focus on the political well-being of their new country any more than they did on the political well-being of their old country. It may not be until the second generation that most immigrants become spontaneously politically active.

If and when they are ready to look at real political integration here, they will discover that their new country is ruled by the same corporate press and the same two 'pretend' political party system as existed in their old country. They will discover in Australia the same globalising, ecociding and populationist policies, the same lack of democracy, the same cynical and evil marketing of water and soil as commodities, and the same breakdown of local networks and self-government in the suburbs where they settle. They will see, if they can see through the political propaganda all around, that Australia is a country on the way down to the condition of the countries that they left. They will see that Australians are being forced into a struggle to survive debt and dispossession that is also taking their energies away from useful political activity.

Australian elites keep new and old Australians apart on purpose

When I said that immigrants are usually not politically active until the second generation, that does not stop them from being organised into silence and against national solidarity for the political ends of the dishonest elite that dominate Australia's media and government. I would identify the daily allegations by the press and by national and state politicians of Australians as 'racist' or 'selfish' as being a calculated way to keep the new immigrants and the native-born apart, thereby atomising any likelihood of national solidarity. As long as new immigrants believe that Australians are racist or stupidly selfish, they are not going to trust us, so they will not help us to defend the nation they have come to be a part of, against exploitation, degradation, poverty and dictatorship. Also, as long as new and old Australians believe what the government and the mainstream media tell them, they will not be able to see what is really happening around them and find common cause with their neighbours and workmates.

How Developers structure political disorganisation

There is a new land-use planning structure which also has the effect of keeping new and old Australians apart and ruining natural organic settlement and social organisation. This is the streaming of overseas immigrants into newly built suburban enclaves. When property is advertised off the plan to people overseas, along with visas and job contracts, you can finish up with entire suburbs where most of the inhabitants are new Australians from the same region, with similar incomes (defined by the cost of the housing), possibly even with similar occupations (suburbs full of doctors, nurses and town planners according to the 'needed occupations stream'), all arriving more or less together, as the houses are built. This is also convenient for politicians who wish to target voters in blocks by identifying common local or ethnic or social concerns. It is convenient for business wanting to build new private schools, swimming pools, hospitals and infrastructure. They know that they will have a captive market. It is essentially a money-making proposition for business and a vote market for politicians. It artificially segregates people from others with common interests.

In the workplace as well, those new nurses and doctors won't dare to speak out for fear of losing their contracts or not being able to acquire citizenship. So once again, you have silenced a community. As for the imported town planners - well, they have probably already been brainwashed by the industry. We cannot expect them to uphold democracy, only capitalism.

(I welcome contact with any planners who can demonstrate support for organic democracy. I will be happy to publicly apologise and to publicly support them. Here is hoping some contact us at candobetter.org!)

Australians need solidarity with new Australians and real democracy

Australians need solidarity with new Australians. This means that the people here need to find a way to identify as a nation despite the political and media classes and to communicate to new Australians that what they read in the papers and hear from our Prime Minister and Premiers is not what is important to the people.

We all have to start to distinguish reality from media production and government spin.

The importance of national identity is the ability to organise to get real rights and real political choices and a real press. This is what the French Revolution got the world. The French Revolution is the basis of modern democracy. Capitalism is not the basis of modern democracy; it did not bring democracy to the USA or anywhere else; it brought exploitative capitalism. Just look at the sub-prime global heist as taxpayers are forced to subsidise banks. That ain't representation! Democracy and capitalism (and communism for that matter) should not be confused, but are, constantly, by the global anglo elite and their colonial and emerging partners in ransacking this planet. (Communism is just a reaction to industrial capitalism, with similar values which include population growth = wealth and centralised authoritarian government in huge polities.)

If we are not a united nation, with clear rights to self-government at all levels, and the ability to control our numbers and the size and impact of our cities, and to choose whether we live as hunter-gatherers, farmers or as industrialised workers in cities, we are not free and we are not a democracy and we have no power to stop what is being done to us.

Structural disorganisation means political disempowerment of grass-roots

A further point is that, apart from the structure of new enclaves, we are being physically disorganised in other ways by mass immigration and by our economic structure. People have little time, due to travel and long hours, to participate in community. Their neighborhoods are being disorganised by infilling, huge highways, winding new roads in new suburbs, and other infrastructure, including things like desal plants and new heavy industry. Even the delivery of services has been disorganised by outsourcing. This has the effect of disorganising political expression about these services.

Our local governments have lost their power which now lies with the State governments and the state governments have been infiltrated and outsourced to property developers. Public servants now serve private interests. The National government takes its cues from banking and big business. The ruling clique - the ALP - owns massive investments in property and banking - set up, amazingly, by our Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swann in Queensland before they entered Federal politics, notably in the form of Labor Holdings P/L and Labor Resources P/L. I don't pretend that the Liberal Party is not underpinned by the same business interests, but they are not as 'successful' as yet. That clique belongs to a bigger mysterious clique which manifests in arcane coalitions, such as the Australian Multicultural Foundation, which has a host of connections which would not be of any interest were it not that its small membership is mostly made up of very high profile politicians from Liberal and Labour - The Hon. Kevin Rudd MP (Prime Minister of Australia), The Hon. John Howard AC, The Hon. Kim Beazley AC, The Hon Mr Simon Crean MP, The Hon. Alexander Downer, The Hon. Robert Hawke AC, Dr J. R. Hewson AM, The Hon. Paul Keating, Mr Mark Latham, The Hon. Andrew Peacock AC... [More interesting membership details and page info reproduced at end of this article.]

These are some reasons why Australians must organise politically outside the established political parties. We need many more independents to form coalitions of common interests and we need to ensure that those independents are not actually fakes, ready to vote with the dominant political parties.

Australia's history of political oppression

It is likely that many of the convicts sent to Australia were in fact political prisoners. Removing them from Britain made it all the easier to keep the British from demanding real rights as citizens. Many other protesters were, of course, executed in England.

This is something that Australians should be able to make clear to new Australians. Our country was founded on political oppression - of the indigenous people and of the first convicts and indentured servants. Unfortunately this condition has continued because of the structure of representative government and the power of the mainstream press to support and manipulate it for economic ends.

We are still a colony and treated legally like colonial citizens. This needs to change, but not through top-down republicanism.

Notes

Do also have a look at this page which shows the Australian Multicultural Foundation in the bigger political and corporate picture.

[Links to information about members are made by candobetter.org and do not appear on the AMF page itself.]
Australian Multicultural Foundation (AMF)
Board of Directors

The Hon Sir James Gobbo AC CVO (Chairman)
Major General Peter Maurice Arnison AC CVO
Ms Carla Zampatti AM
Professor Kwong Lee Dow AM
Executive Director and Company Secretary

Dr B. (Hass) Dellal OAM
Administrative Assistant

Mrs Brigit Murikumthara

Ms Azmeena Hussain
Project Co-ordinator

Ms Athalia Zwartz
Training and Project Development Manager

Ms Lynn Cain

Members of the Foundation
The Hon. Kevin Rudd MP (Prime Minister of Australia)
The Hon. John Howard AC
Dame Beryl Beaurepaire DBE AC [Generally noted for activism in girls' education and women's affairs in Liberal Party and historic involvement in WAAF, but described as company director in the registration of the Foundation.]
The Hon. Kim Beazley AC
The Hon Mr Simon Crean MP
Mr Ivan A. Deveson AO
The Hon. Alexander Downer
Sir Llewellyn Edwards AC
Mr William Charles Fairbanks [?Secretary of Landcare Australia P/L)
Ms Gaye Rosemary Hart AM
The Hon. Robert Hawke AC
Dr J. R. Hewson AM
Ms Vivien Suit-Cheng Hope (Careers and Counselling Centre Tutor, Centre of Asian Students, University of Adelaide)
The Hon. Paul Keating
Mr Mark Latham
Mrs Irene Kwong Moss AO [Home Building regulation]
Mr Robert Brooker Maher AM Executive Director, American Chamber of Commerce in Australia, Paddington NSW and Former board member of The Australian Rail Track Corporation and with the
Ms Wendy Elizabeth McCarthy AO Interestingly, this woman is also a patron of the Australian Reproductive Health Alliance, which has links with Sustainable Population Australia. Interestingly, she is also Chair of McGrath Estate Agents, currently expanding into Australia's iconic Blue Mountains.
Mr Lindsay Gordon Crossley Moyle AM
Professor John Nieuwenhuysen AM
The Hon. Andrew Peacock AC
Lady Stephen
Mr Ross Tzannes AM
Mr George Wojak AO MBE

Source: http://amf.net.au/about/australian-multicultural-foundation/
Further documentation

Also, here is the Memorandum of Association of the Company, known as the Australian Bicentennial Multicultural Foundation Limited.

Dated 1988, with illegible month, it is signed by R.J.Hawke, (witnessed by his senior private secretary in the prime ministerial lodge in Canberra); Sir James Augustine Gobbo (Judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria); Michael George Kailis, Governing Director of M G Kailis Group of Companies, West Australia [Seafood and pearl culture industries]; George Wojak; Lindsay Gordon Crossley Moyle, Chief Executive Officer, State Bank of Victoria, 131 Powlett Street, East Melbourne; Sir David Ronald Zeidler, Company Director, Park Avenue Towers, Parkville, Victoria [Past Chairman of ICI and 1983 - 1988 President of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering];Dame Beryl Edith Beaurepaire, Company Director, Mt Eliza, Victoria; Vivien Suit-Cheng Hope, Careers and Counselling Centre, Tutor, Centre of Asian Students, University of Adelaide, S.A.; Ross Tzarthes, Solicitor, Pryor, Tzannes, Glebe, NSW; Marie Anna Elizabeth Blake, Managing Director Jetset Tours (Old) Pty Ltd, New Farm QLD; William Charles Fairbanks, General Manager, Finance and Management Services, The Australian Bicentennial Authority, Wahroonga NSW; Gaye Rosemary Hart, General Manager Programs, The Australian Bicentennial Authority, Elizabeth Bay, NSW; James Frank Kirk, Chairman and Chief Executive, The Australian Bicentennial Authority, Edgecliffe, NSW; Wendy Elizabeth McCarthy, General Manager Communications, The Australian Bicentennial Authority, Mary St., Longueville, NSW.

Green taxes are well accepted in Scandinavian countries.

Since 1991 Sweden has had a carbon tax of 103 Euros per tonne per taxpayer
It is not compensated in any way and it is not a focus of political protest.

Sweden is proud of the way its towns and cities open out onto green and wild natural spaces.

The tax represents one quarter of the price of petrol and diesel, but most Swedes do not realise this, since the tax is not stated at the pumps.
A litre of diesel costs 1.11 Euros of which 30 centimes is carbon tax.
Driving habits have not changed so much, but domestic heating systems have.
Fuel heating is often swapped for electric heating, with one third subsidised by the state.
The cost of electricity, however, has risen.

Families pay 4 times as much for carbon emissions than industry does, but housing rights are guaranteed and workers have good industrial and unemployment protection and guaranteed rights to free health care.

The government believes that carbon emissions have been reduced by 9% in Sweden due to the tax.
At the same time their economic growth has increased by 40% in 18 years.

Now the average Swedish person emits one tonne less of carbon than a French person, and 16 tonnes less than an American.

Swedish reality is a challenge to the very inferior future that US, British, Canadian and Australian governments and media market to their own populations. Why do we put up with it? Perhaps because we are told that no other way exists.

(Source: France 2 News 26 October 2009)

Population numbers in Sweden

Sweden's population was 8 million in 1974 and reached 9 million in 2004, at a rate which would lead to 10 million in 23 years.

In fact Sweden's population has not increased significantly since 1995, when it began to level out after a steep growth curve.
Most of the increase over deaths is due to immigration from within Western Europe. (Radio Sweden 12 August).

Unlike Australia, the Swedes have learned not to overshoot their carrying capacity and to retain democracy through protecting the established population's networks.
Australia, to the contrary, practices demographic splintering and top-down government, based on an unsustainable extractive commodity and land-speculation economy.

Sweden is able to have a healthy economy and good multi-party democracy where it provides far superior rights to its citizens than Australia does, and in the context of trends to population stability! Compare this actuality to the ideology promoted by the Australian government and the Murdoch media.

In the 19th century, Sweden's yearly population growth rate peaked at 1.2% (i.e. it doubled in less than 60 years), compared to 1% today (migration excluded). This considerable population growth rate led, before the Industrial Revolution, to a pauperization of the rural population, for each generation inherited smaller and smaller shares. Due to years of crop failure in the 1840s and 1860s, the U.S. Homestead Act of 1862, and to a lesser extent religious persecution, emigration started and grew. Between 1850 and 1930 1,050,000 Swedes emigrated (re-migration excluded), chiefly to Canada, U.S. and to Denmark. If they had not left, Sweden's population would have been about 2,000,000 higher today, given that famine and civil war hadn't been the outcome of their staying. (After 1929 the net-migration has been directed towards Sweden.) Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden

Housing Rights

Sweden has a strictly regulated rental market, with laws and taxes that prohibit speculation. (The Australian housing industry would not last a minute there.)
Housing rights are legally guaranteed in Sweden for citizens or legal immigrants. This is also the case in EU countries. (Britain, with an exploitative private housing dominated market similar to Australia's, is going to have a very hard time conforming to this requirement of EU participation.)

Work and standard of living

There is no national minimum wage law. Wages were set by collective bargaining contracts every year. Nonunion establishments generally observe these contracts. Substantial benefits (e.g., housing, childcare) provided by social welfare entitlement programs assured even the lowest-paid workers and their families a decent standard of living. Foreign companies employing workers from their country of origin at wage levels below minimums stipulated in domestic collective-bargaining contracts created frictions in the labor market. For example, in one case, Swedish workers blocked a work site in the city of Vaxholm because construction workers from Latvia, who had been contracted to build a school, did not have collective agreements with a Swedish union.

The legal standard workweek is 40 hours or less. Both the law and collective bargaining agreements regulate overtime and rest periods. The maximum allowable overtime per year is two hundred hours. The law requires a minimum period of 36 consecutive hours of rest, preferably on weekends, during a period of 7 days. The law also provides employees with a minimum of five weeks' paid annual leave. The government effectively enforced these standards.

The work environment authority, a government?appointed board, issued occupational health and safety regulations; trained union stewards, safety ombudsmen, and government inspectors monitored them. Safety ombudsmen have the authority to stop unsafe activity immediately and to call in an inspector. These rules were effectively enforced. Work places were generally safe and healthy. In law and practice, workers could remove themselves from situations that endangered their health or safety without jeopardizing their future employment.

(Source: http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61677.htm)

Pro-population-growth dogma costs Australians dearly

Continuously increasing mass immigration leading to population of 35 million and beyond is now official Australian state dogma. In other words, 14 million people - more than the 12 million that was the population of this country when I was a child in the 1960's - are to be deliberately added. The evidence of harm already caused by past population growth to the existing population, exactly as our normal intuition and common sense would have predicted, is overwhelming:

Our roads are congested, our buses and trains are packed tight, often leaving many waiting at bus stops and stations. The costs of all basic services -- electricity, gas, water, council rates, vehicle registration, parking, etc. -- are climbing through the roof.

Our governments openly justify these cost imposts on the basis that they are necessary to pay for the replacement and/or expansion of existing infrastructure to meet the needs of additional people, but they don't admit that they are responsible for inviting those people.

Where our taxes once paid the full costs of roads and bridges, people are now forced to pay the order of well over a hundred dollars each week to commute to and from work through toll roads, toll bridges and tolled tunnels.

Bligh arguments chase their own tail

Premier Anna Bligh even defends her Government's deeply unpopular $15 billion government asset fire sale on the grounds that it is necessary to pay for population growth. In a letter to me dated 9 Jun 09, the Premier stated:

... a State with a rapidly growing population can't afford to ease off building the infrastructure that supports our economy and community._#main-fn1">1

Yet, the Queensland Government continues to advertise for people to move from interstate and from overseas to Brisbane and, last weekend Premier Anna Bligh actually welcomed the 'challenge' that further population growth would provide.

Absurdistan quality of life in Brisbane

The purchase or rental of secure, free-standing housing in areas close to work and amenities is completely beyond the means of most Australians, even in double-middle-class income households, where wealth has not been inherited.

Many renters have little choice but to share the same roof with possibly incompatible strangers._#main-fn2">2

In one case, during the 2008 Queensland state elections, I even met two Brisbane women who, had not known each other only months earlier but now shared the same bed in a boarding house. The reasons were completely unromantic: Neither could by herself afford to pay the full rental of the one-room furnished accommodation. It was an arrangement of urgent necessity.

Despite the constant mediatised government propaganda that tries to normalise overpopulation, many Queenslanders must have been shocked to read in the papers of as many as 37 foreign students sharing a single house in an outer southern suburb of Brisbane_#main-fn3">3. That story was a chilling reminder of what the government expects ordinary people to put up with in the government-driven competition for space on the rental market.

The cramming of ever more human beings closer together in high rise units in Australia, is even causing residents to complain of being exposed to passive smoking by neighbours smoking cigarettes on nearby balconies.

High immigration pushes wages down and costs up

Instead of business and government sharing the responsibility of training and retraining new workers, the Australian government is making it easier for Australian businesses to import newly skilled immigrants. The cost of self-education is rising like other costs that were previously provided through our taxes. Now mature Australian-born workers, many with degrees, who once enjoyed well-paid occupations, earn marginal incomes in low-skilled jobs, replaced in their old positions by waves of recently skilled young immigrants. Some go into hock to try to keep up, or cash-in their superannuation to retrain, with no guarantee of any job-security.

In an increasingly casualised workforce, the breaking down of Australian conciliation and arbitration law and the state award system, the mass-import of ever more workers from overseas, many studying bogus courses, inevitably pushes wages downwards.

All this population growth makes the cost of living (land for housing, housing prices, rent, water, electricity, petrol) outpace any wage rises.

In Queensland, I know of how one cleaning contract company that paid its workers decent wages to clean a hotel a few months ago, lost the contract to another company which employed foreign students at bare minimum wage rates. I have been told that the security at the August Brisbane Royal National Show (aka the 'Ekka') was handled by a contract company that employed students, again at bare minimum wages.

Not surprisingly, as pay is reduced to the basic wage and sometimes even lower in casualised private industry, competition is high for the diminishing number of jobs where the requirement to provide relatively decent pay and conditions remains. In my own experience, even entry-level clerical positions in the Queensland public service now attract large numbers of applicants. Perhaps only those prepared to spend days or weeks arguing on paper their suitability for the job in the arcane jargon of the advertised selection criteria, exhaustively targeting their letter of application, stand a chance. Many who don't have the temperament to repeatedly devote hours of their days to this demeaning and, to my mind, socially pointless activity simply don't bother and miss their small chance in this employment variation of lottery.

Wildlife, green spaces and farmland destroyed for infrastructure and expansion in less-than-zero-sum game

Natural habitat is being cleared to such an extent that the koala, among Australia's most iconic species, is expected to be extinct in SouthEast Queensland in as little as two to seven years. Many other species are also threatened. Farm land is daily sacrificed to more housing. But not only farmland - entire rural communities such as in Queensland's Mary Valley - are threatened with complete destruction through inundation to provide water for our involuntarily growing population. And even then, for all the obliteration of good land, loved wild places, social histories and memorials, the water in the resulting dam - if it even accumulates - still won't do for Queensland's growing population if the government is not stopped from continuing to aggressively invite more people to come and live here.

Where have the people given Governments their consent for massive population increases?

In a democracy the people affected should expect to have the final say in whether or not to continue with such clearly harmful policies. So corrupted have our political institutions become, however, that our official political rulers show no more sign of understanding their obligation to the electorate than their friends in the corporate elites and the newsmedia. The government's obligation is to get the clear consent of the affected taxpayers at every stage of planning massive new developments and if it intends to engineer changes in population growth. Government should not go ahead without clearly informed consent. It is not enough to 'consult' if this only means telling the affected population what you have already contracted to go ahead with.

Instead of accepting the will of the people, however, Australian governments, state and federal, blithely pretend, despite our overwhelming experience to the contrary, that population growth is self-evidently and unquestioningly of great benefit to us all. Not content with dragooning the taxpayer into paying for ever more vast infrastructure and population expansion debt, they also expect us to pay for the coercive spin. An example is the taxpayer funded full page advertisement of 8 December 2005, signed by then Queensland Premier Queensland Peter Beattie, also reproduced here.

This advertisement, "Four million Queenslanders tomorrow," marketed the dangerous ballooning of Queensland's population to 4 million the next day as an unquestionable and incontestably positive achievement, as if it would be welcomed by all. Four million represented the doubling of Queensland's population since 1974.

The advertisement concluded with the words:

To all Queenslanders, I encourage you to warmly welcome our new arrivals.

Who, you ask, other than a life-hating, stick-in-the-mud, could possibly not have been moved by these cheerful words from Queensland's obviously life-loving, well-intentioned leader?

The role of the news-media in packaging and delivering Australian population policy

The implicit unstated lie contained in that advertisement was that the Queensland Government has carefully thought through how they would prepare Queensland to cope with the influx they encouraged. In subsequent years, Queenslanders were to learn to their enormous cost that it had not.

Now, in 2009, many of those same Queenslanders who, heeding their Premier's advice, may have extended welcoming arms to new arrivals from interstate and overseas, find themselves homeless, living in precarity, or on a grind of wage-slavery and debt, even if they are professionals, to pay rising rents and purchase costs. Ruthless landlords have taken advantage of the outrageously increased demand for shelter to regularly jack up the rent and the rhetoric of finance and real-estate media jocks - replacing real opinion - shamelessly inflates the already ballooning cost of housing.

Yes, Australia's newsmedia overwhelms us with propaganda dressed up as news in support of high immigration and population growth. The leading population growth pusher is Rupert Murdoch's newspaper group.

Every Murdoch newspaper doesn't peddle population growth in exactly the same way though.

Whilst the national daily newspaper, the Australian openly proclaims that population growth is inherently good for Australia, its Brisbane counterpart the Courier Mail treats the issue more ambiguously.

Perhaps this is partly because Courier Mail readers tend more to be working class than the Australian's readers, and therefore less likely to celebrate notional investments in the unaffordability of the national private estate. The Courier Mail is also a state paper, concerned with state legislative responsibilities, and these include land-use planning. It therefore is more obligated to report news of the consequences of population growth, which most obviously affect land-use and costs. A few years ago the Courier Mail did stridently beat the drum for population growth. Pretending there was a labour-shortage crisis, it called for more people to move here to work in the mines, orchards and hospitality industry, so that the state could grow faster and faster._#main-fn4">4

The Courier-Mail's implied pretence that Queenslanders cannot question population growth, let alone stop it

The Courier Mail has since changed tack to simply reporting population growth as if it is inevitable.

So, these days, rather than overtly proclaiming massive population growth is inherently good, along with much of the Australian media, the Courier Mail implies that massive and inconvenient population growth is inevitable.

Again and again the Courier Mail's reports include statements that population will grow, exactly as if it were stating that we will all pay taxes and will all grow old and die. In doing so, it dishonestly implies to its readers that population growth is not a result of a decision consciously made by the Australian Federal Government through its high immigration program, with the full encouragement of the Queensland and other state governments, along with Rupert Murdoch himself, to whose tune Governments in Australia seem to have been dancing for years. The Courier Mail avoids pointing out the simple fact that in a democracy, people have every right to expect the Government to change course, should they decide that population growth is not in their best interests.

In "Workers welcome", (15 May 2008), the Australian enthusiastically endorsed Immigration Minister Chris Evan's announced increase in immigration.

"The Government's decision to increase the skilled migration program by 31,000 places a year from 2008-09 is a move to help ease the critical labour shortage in many parts of Australia. Together with a big influx of temporary workers under the 457 visa program, the increased migrant intake should also help to lessen the threat of a wages breakout and inflationary spiral."_#main-fn5">5

A brief pretence at concern for the adverse consequences for housing affordability was made:

More migrants will inevitably cause pressures in other areas of the economy, including the tight housing sector where a shortage of stock is leading to rapidly rising rents.

But that minor concern was immediately swept aside in the next sentence.

But the economic case for more skilled migrants is clear. ...

So the trusting reader is led to believe that the editorial writer has weighed up the pros and cons and worked out that on balance we will be better off. However, as we have seen above, the "pressures in the ... tight housing sector" have since almost literally enslaved significant sections of Australian society. On top of that, the economic analysis that purported to show the benefits of immigration clearly failed to predict subsequent hikes in all kinds of Government charges to pay for the cost of immigration, in addition to the decline in our queality of life all as mentioned above.

Minister Evans's also announced plans to import workers from Pacific islands.

"Next month cabinet is expected to endorse a pilot program based on the New Zealand model for guest workers from Pacific nations. The Prime Minister wants this for foreign policy and economic reasons.

Evans says: 'The debate about temporary migration, quite frankly, is over.' His threshold point is that the immigration debate is no longer just about skills, though skills are vital, but has become a debate about labour. There is an unspoken agenda: aware that the abolition of Work Choices risks higher wage pressures, Rudd and Swan are using higher migration as a device to boost labour supply and limit wage inflation." _#main-fn6">6

The Australian reported a furor of protest against the Pacific Worker plans, but little against the sheer numbers and the uncontrollability of the impacts, on wages and housing costs.

(One can see another angle here. If a paper only reports protests against immigration if they relate to ethnicity or 'race' then this will serve the spin that Australians are racist in their attitudes to immigration but not concerned about any other impacts. This impression should serve to put people off protesting against high immigration from anywhere, for fear of being labelled racist.)

At the time I also posted an e-mail #UnpublishedLetter" id="UnpublishedLetter">included as an Appendix to the Queensland Courier Mail in response to its reporting of that issue. The letter was not published and it breathed no word of any of this furor about immigration policy, presumably subscribing to the illusion that State governments have no responsibility or power in ramping up or stabilising population numbers, which, if you have read this article, or others, such as this one about the Victorian Government, "Melbourne 2008: Life in a destruction zone", you will now realise is not true.

In October 2009 as the Australian stridently once again beats the drum for boosting our population all the way up to at least 35 million, the Courier Mail, this time, has given the issue some coverage, instead of imposing the almost complete blackout that it did in May last year. However the coverage is still relatively low key. One article by Dr. Paul Williams_#main-fn7">7 on Monday 19 Oct 09 was critical of population growth, but by Saturday it had all been forgotten. Oblivious to that and oblivious to reports of chaos, rocketing costs and declining living standards, reported in its pages virtually every day of the week Saturday's Courier Mail editorialised:

While Commonwealth Treasury secretary Ken Henry's pessimism at the thought of a 60 per cent increase in population in less than 40 years (and more than 100 per cent for southeast Queensland) is understandable, we should not shy away from the challenges and opportunities this brings.

If authorities at all levels of government can work together, planning for the required increases in services, infrastructure and facilities, there's no reason the community should not be able to cope with the inevitable demands. ..._#main-fn8">8

'No reason', except for the woeful failure of the Queensland Government to cope with the 'inevitable demands' brought about by the recent population growth it has already imposed on Queenslanders. As Greater Sunshine Coast Council Mayor Bob Abbott commented last week, "You can't go on doing the same thing and expect a different result."_#main-fn9">9

We can only conclude that somehow the 'same result' is fine by the Murdoch Press, Bligh, Rudd and the ALP investments in property and finance, such as Labor Resources P/L and Labor Holdings P/L), not to mention the government's and the Labor Party's corporate friends.

The editorial continued:

... Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is right to say this is good news for the country. Let's work together and make it happen.

Perhaps, instead, it is time we all "work[ed] together" and and let Rudd, Bligh and the Murdoch Press know that they are not acting on our behalf and that they continue to act with such high-handed disregard for our welfare at their own peril.

Footnotes

#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1. #main-fn1-txt">↑ See Appendix 3 of "Privatisation - let the owners decide : an open letter to Anna Bligh" of 3 Jun 09.

#main-fn2" id="main-fn2">2. #main-fn2-txt">↑ See "Shared accommodation a necessity and no longer a choice for many in Brisbane" of 30 Apr 08 for a somewhat out-of-date picture of the problem.

#main-fn3" id="main-fn3">3. #main-fn3-txt">↑ Newspaper stories include: "37 students found living in one house at Sunnybank Hills" in the Courier-Mail of "Raid finds 37 people living in single Brisbane house" in the Age of 16 Sep 09. A story about a pretence by the population-growth-pushing Brisbane City Council of attempting to fix the problem is "Brisbane City Council crackdown on over-crowded housing" in the Courier-Mail of 16 Sep 09.

#main-fn4" id="main-fn4">4. #main-fn4-txt">↑ "The Courier Mail beats the drum for more Queensland population growth" of 30 Apr 08

#main-fn5" id="main-fn5">5. #main-fn5-txt">↑ "Workers Welcome" in the Australian of 16 May 08.

#main-fn6" id="main-fn6">6. #main-fn6-txt">↑ Source: "Open Door" in the Australian of 16 May 08.

#main-fn7" id="main-fn7">7. #main-fn7-txt">↑ "When is too many enough?" by Dr. Paul Williams in the Courier Mail of 19 Oct 09.

#main-fn8" id="main-fn8">8. #main-fn101010-txt">↑ "Challenges of growth" in the Courier Mail of 23 Oct 09.

#main-fn9" id="main-fn9">9. #main-fn9-txt">↑ I couldn't find the story on line, but I read these words from Bob Abbott in a story in the Courier Mail of aroun Thursday or Frday last week. I will endeavour to add taht detail to this story.

#UnpublishedLetter" id="UnpublishedLetter">Appendix: Unpublished letter sent to Courier Mail regarding Pacific guest workers

Emailed: 16 May 08.

If the Pacific Island guest worker scheme works, as Steve Lewis ("Guest workers a foreign policy challenge", 16 May) claims it will, it will, in effect, be an apartheid labour scheme. If it breaks down as many fear, it will result in a further permanent increase to our population and make worse all the resultant problems which fill the pages of the Courier Mail almost every day of the week - traffic congestion, housing unaffordability, the water, health and eduction crisis and the ever growing financial costs of fixing them.

If we accept claims about there being a labour shortage, then why don't, we instead of further degrading our quality of life, change our priorities as a society. For example, must we dig up all of our mineral wealth now, when it is clearly making global warming worse? Indeed reducing our mineral exports and generous foreign aid programs, including aid for birth control, would be far better ways to help Pacific islanders.

To avert catastrophy we need to try everything possible.

Forums happening now!

These potentially crucial forums have been very poorly publicised by the Victorian Government.
We have a report from a community activist who went to one. She said there were about 70 professionals and bureaucrats - all in the population growth as business mode, and thinks that she was the ONLY community representative there.

Although the government has shown itself to be untrustworthy and dishonest on matters of public consultation about how its policies drive population growth, if you can get to one of these 'forums', please do. Quite often there are business people there who are so isolated from the real impacts of their decisions that they are actually willing to listen to some feedback and may then question the modus operandi and the values of the lobby groups which 'represent' their sectors and their 'opinions'. Like the rest of the public, they may actually have been taken in by what the mainstream press misrepresents as public opinion.

So try to get along to one. Take something to hand out if you can. Consider printing out a relevant article from candobetter.org if you have nothing else.

Remember that population growth threatens every aspect of life and democracy in Victoria and Australia. We cannot sustain it. Our systems are already breaking up.

Here is the "http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/DSE/dsenres.nsf/LinkView/2B65B655D17BD98ACA257611001A62114CA023FAC31D9D5CCA256D650016CB01"
link to the relevant internet page on the website of the Victorian Dept of Planning and Community Services which tells you of coming Urban and Regional forums, as below:

"Department of Planning & Community Development is hosting a series of forums across Victoria during September, October and November to present the story behind the Victoria in Future numbers.

This is a DPCD in the community event, during each forum attendees will be given an opportunity to consider and discuss the implications of the population projections and provide any thoughts and comments."

http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/DSE/dsenres.nsf/LinkView/2B65B655D17BD98ACA257611001A62114CA023FAC31D9D5CCA256D650016CB01

For enquiries -
Nicola McCracken, Communications and Administration Officer
spatialanalysis.research[AT]dpcd.vic.gov.au
Department of Planning and Community Development
Telephone 9208 3699 Fax 9208 3335 (during business hours)

You will be told that the population growth will happen and we must accommodate it. Tell them that you know the government is encouraging it and that you don't buy it. Tell them that you have a right to veto such a damaging policy and that it has already gone too far. Tell them that the business sectors have to learn to contain their greed and to maintain what we have rather than to push for overshoot.

Good luck!

The climate crisis is not a negotiable issue and politicians must
start paying attention to science.

British climate economist Lord Nicholas Stern and former UN secretary- general Kofi Annan are among luminaries now saying that no deal is better than a bad deal, ...

CAN we expect decent climate policy when most of the decision-making elite are ignorant of the real scientific imperatives, or believe they can negotiate with the laws of physics and chemistry? The answer is bleak, judging by the lead-up talks to the climate summit in Copenhagen in December. The conference is slated to sign a new global deal on greenhouse gas reductions, but key players expect failure. British climate economist Lord Nicholas Stern and former UN secretary- general Kofi Annan are among luminaries now saying that no deal is better than a bad deal, while European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso warns: "If we don't sort this out, it risks becoming the longest and most global suicide note in history."

Climate politics has become a game of chicken, a planet-crippling procrastination driven by short-term concerns and a striving for partisan advantage. Last year, Ross Garnaut wondered if "this issue is too hard for rational policymaking ... the issues are too complex, the vested interests surrounding it too numerous and intense, the relevant time-frames too long". Copenhagen is likely to confirm his dark assessment.

Climate politics has become a game of chicken, a planet-crippling procrastination driven by short-term concerns and a striving for partisan advantage.

For scientists this is frustrating and depressing, and so more feel compelled to openly enter the political fray. America's best-known climate researcher, NASA's James Hansen, now joins protesters at coal plants and stumps the country in support of the 350.org campaign. This will peak with more than 2000 activities in 150 countries around the globe on October 24.

It's a long way from the politics-free world of the laboratory and peer-reviewed journals, but outside those confined spaces the politics is hard to avoid. In public, scientists are hammered by sceptics, and those on the public payroll find their advocacy regularly restrained by government. And all must choose what part of the vast climate science knowledge-bank they will communicate on any particular occasion.

Some are drawn into making judgments about what may be publicly palatable, concerned by the growing gap between the science and the politics. They want to be relevant and change mindsets, and wonder if they were to spell out the brutal truth - that in Hansen's immortal words, we are "on the edge of a precipice beyond which there is no redemption" - they will not be listened to.

Even the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is conservative, filtered by political considerations: government appointees negotiate and sign off on the summary reports. For two decades, debate has clustered around the politically mediated target of holding global warming to 2 degrees, said to be equivalent to a level of greenhouse gases less than 450 parts per million (ppm). This is the Australian Government's policy, and on Wednesday when some of our leading scientists brief federal members of Parliament, the Government will be looking for a nod towards this target, and for the carbon pollution reduction scheme.

Even the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is conservative, filtered by political considerations: government appointees negotiate and sign off on the summary reports. For two decades, debate has clustered around the politically mediated target of holding global warming to 2 degrees, said to be equivalent to a level of greenhouse gases less than 450 parts per million (ppm). This is the Australian Government's policy, and on Wednesday when some of our leading scientists brief federal members of Parliament, the Government will be looking for a nod towards this target, and for the carbon pollution reduction scheme.

Reporting of evidence given by a number of leading scientists to a Senate inquiry into the scheme in May gave the impression they had given it a tick of approval. Yet in reality it will not reduce Australia's actual emissions below the 1990 baseline for another three decades, instead relying on buying offsets - the antithesis of serious emission-reduction strategies.

The US Government Accounting Office recently concluded that "carbon offsets involve fundamental trade-offs and may not be a reliable long- term approach to climate change mitigation".

The US Government Accounting Office recently concluded that "carbon offsets involve fundamental trade-offs and may not be a reliable long- term approach to climate change mitigation".

The target for industrialised countries to reduce emissions by 25-40 per cent by 2020 is misleading because the IPCC notes that these "emissions reductions … might be underestimated due to missing carbon cycle feedbacks". In fact, the sensitivity of the climate to rising levels of greenhouse gases is likely to double the generally assumed level, a point made by the ANU's Will Steffen in his recent report for the Australian Department of Climate Change.

This means that when long-term effects such as the loss of large polar ice-sheets are taken into account, the Government target of 450 ppm may well produce global warming of about 4 degrees, twice the level considered dangerous by conservative governments.

Even 2-degree warming will take the Earth past significant tipping points. Likely effects include large-scale disintegration of the Greenland and west Antarctic ice-sheets, big sea-level rises, the mass extinction of plant and animal species, dangerous ocean acidification and widespread drought, desertification and malnutrition.

Should this always be an object of unwearied explanation by our scientists, or will political minders always be hassling for a quick media grab about policy "moving in the right direction", so we can move on to other matters, having "fixed" the climate?

It's a grand illusion that that 2 degrees and 450 ppm is a reasonable target.

It's a grand illusion that that 2 degrees and 450 ppm is a reasonable target. Twenty-nine of the world's leading scientists, including Steffen, have specified that less than 350 ppm of carbon dioxide is a "safe boundary" for the planet, in perhaps the most significant peer- reviewed paper of the year.

Our politicians need to hear this, because they are not taking the actions the science demands. The conventional mode of politics is incremental and fearful of fundamental change and the major parties have adopted a traditional policy approach to the climate problem: something for the environment lobby and something for business.

Our politicians need to hear this, because they are not taking the actions the science demands. The conventional mode of politics is incremental and fearful of fundamental change and the major parties have adopted a traditional policy approach to the climate problem: something for the environment lobby and something for business.

But solving the climate crisis cannot be treated like any other issue, with the demands of each side balanced somewhere in the middle. It is not possible to negotiate with the laws of physics and chemistry. The planet cannot be bought off. There are absolute limits that should not be crossed, and doing something, but not enough, will still lead to disaster.

David Spratt is the co-author of Climate Code Red: The Case for Emergency Action, shortlisted for the 2009 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards.

Originally published in the Age of 19 Oct 09. See also: www.carbonequity.info.

The following disturbing article was found on the ABC website: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/10/01/2701495.htm?site=news "Farmers are illegally slaughtering thousands of wombats in South Australia, a nature group says. Brigitte Stevens from the Wombat Awareness Organisation says burrows of southern hairy-nosed wombats are being bulldozed or blown up on Yorke and Eyre Peninsulas and in the Murraylands.

She says farmers can get permits to destroy a few wombats, but that it not a licence to wipe out the entire population.

"There's not enough or not good enough regulations on what actually happens to the wombat if those numbers are being killed," she said.

"Now I know it's difficult because I know you need a lot of staff to be able to do that. But it's really hard for us when we're trying to stop people killing them illegally - if it's allowed by the government through permits, how are we going to stop it?"

Ms Stevens wants the Department for Environment and Heritage (DEH) to act on evidence the group has gathered.

"We've also got evidence, photographic, and also I've kept all my correspondence with DEH, the RSPCA about places that we've reported that have ended up having destruction permits, but we've got evidence the animals are being buried alive, the entire population is being killed on that particular property," she said.

Department for Environment and Heritage chief executive, Allan Holmes, says it will act when enough evidence is provided.

"You need to know where it's occurred, when it occurred, it's about providing evidence that will stand up in a court of law," he said.

"Again the issue for me is at the moment these claims are largely unsubstantiated.
"If the evidence is provided we will investigate them."

Mr Holmes says mass killings with petrol bombs or bulldozing will not be tolerated.
"The only way that you can legally destroy a wombat is by shooting with a particular calibre rifle," he said.

"And, as I said, given the evidence we will prosecute with the full force of the law."

Photo: Rally participants

The National Kangaroo Awareness Day Rally, yesterday, 24th October, 2009 was organised by Gail Browning and attended by about 100 enthusiastic people, with many passers-by also stopping to listen to the speakers during the 2 hour rally in Belmore Park, NSW. Many people also took literature and signed the petition. All stickers and almost all t/shirts were sold.

Photography by Wildlife carer Anne-Marie Dineen of "Ash", a kangaroo she rehabilitated who returned to visit with her joey, "Charcoal", recently.

MC, Anna Warick's speech revealed that she had put a lot of time and energy into her research for the kangaroos. She was able to add more information on several issues in between each speaker. Wildlife activists commented that she could have been mistaken for an NGO activist herself, due to her amazing knowledge of the kangaroo industry.

Nikki Sutterby impressed a captivated audience with her review of the facts and figures.

Extraordinary act of social altruism by male kangaroo

People in the audience wept openly at her passionate account of a male kangaroo trying to save the little joeys by herding them all towards a hole in the fence, during the massacre in Canberra recently. Ms Sutterby gave a shockingly detailed account of what lies behind Australia's worst wildlife massacre in the world.

John Lyle, the carer of the only surviving joey from the Bathurst Mount Panorama massacre, spoke with powerful emotion. There were shocked faces in the audience as he described the senseless killing of so many kangaroos.

Greens Member of Parliament, NSW, Lee Rhiannon made a spontaneous appearance and gave a very disturbing speech on the business between the Labor Government and the Shooters Party. The Shooters are being offered a deal by the Rees government for hunting to be allowed in 13 national parks, in exchange for the support of the 2 Shooters Party MPs in the Upper House to pass government legislation. We should all ask what this legislation is that it requires the Rees government to stoop to such low and unAustralian manoevres. John Lyle and other people who were at the rally will be attending the Greens and WLPA Protest against shooting in our National Parks, this Tuesday 27th October, at midday, outside Parliament House.

Speaker Carol Maroun has witnessed first hand what it is like to be in a National Park while shooting is taking place. Her account was alarming.

In Britain, Philip Woolley had publicised our rally on behalf of the Australian Wildlife Protection Council, for which he is the English representative.

Although Foxtel, SBS, and photographers from Associated Press and Reuters attended, the successful rally which was an important political marker, was not well reported in the mainstream press. This is not surprising because the mainstream press, whilst sometimes doing cute and cuddlies on wildlife, tends not to empower the public with useful information about how to protect it. Typically the many attempts of wildlife activists to stop wholesale wildlife destruction are very underreported. The press supports property development above all and property development is anti-wildlife. The Sunday Telegraph for South Sydney, for instance, reported on its front page "Treasury boss predicts we'll 'roo the day", with a small photo of Ken Henry and two joeys, an article against the commercial culling of the kangaroos, but nothing about this very newsworthy rally and important protest.

Rally organiser, Gail Browning, said that the rally proved that, "no matter what your academic level, your class or your race, we can all manage to unite to make people sit up and take notice of the ugly truth behind the worst wildlife slaughter in the world of our national icon, the kangaroo.

Here is most of the speech she made:

"Gail’s Speech for 24th October 09, National Kangaroo Awareness Day.

Welcome to everyone who has made the effort to unite here today, to make a difference for an Australian animal who without our support and caring attitude, could become extinct. Today , the Australian Society for Kangaroos, Animal Liberation, Humane Society International, World League for the Protection of Animals, Sydney Wildlife , DABS, and Sydney Pet Rescue, have all come together on this Historic Day to explain to the Australian public, exactly what is happening to our precious own unique animal, the kangaroo.

Our kangaroos are an Australian National Icon. They represent us on our Coat of Arms, our Australian football Team, our Cricket team, our Qantas airplane and many more Australian products. Our kangaroos are Australia’s unique tourist attraction, nowhere else in the world is there a beautiful animal, who nurtures her young in her pouch, and then has her joey stay with her for 10 months after leaving the pouch for feeding purposes and protection.

The mothers and joeys hug each other, kiss each other and console each other, just as we humans do. The alpha male is the Leader of “The Mob”, or Extended Family, in human’s terms. He is targeted by shooters due to his size. Without him, the entire structure of “the Mob” becomes confused, scared, and the structure of the whole family is sent into a panic. A kangaroo can die from sheer stress. This family unit then disintegrates. The gene pool is then upset, which can lead to kangaroos being in even more danger of becoming extinct.

It is therefore up to all of us here today, caring Australians, to speak out for our kangaroos, and to say “Don’t eat us, Love us”. We must stop using the kangaroo for a Resource for human consumption, pet food, skins and shoes. Tourists would much rather come to see our kangaroos alive, hopping around our beautiful country side, and our rugged outback, instead of dead, under plastic wrap, in butchers, pet shops, or supermarkets. It is time to tell the media and the Government, that enough is enough. Stop killing of these wonderful animals. We can make money from them by leaving them to live where they were meant to live, FREE in their natural habitat. That is what people want to see when they come to Australia. Kangaroos are part of the Australian Landscape.

Steve Irwin was our Greatest Australian Wildlife Warrior. Steve said, and I quote “ It’s embarrassing for Australia that we eat our own wildlife. Do you think the Americans would eat bald eagles? I’m a wildlife warrior, and I’ll fight… fight to the death, for our wildlife. Every person can make a MASSIVE DIFFERENCE to global conservation.”

SIMPLY, DO NOT USE OR EAT KANGAROO PRODUCTS.

Last but not least, thankyou to everyone who has helped make this day come together, with out all of your support throughout the past 6 weeks of organizing this rally, we would not be here today fighting for our precious kangaroos.

Please don’t walk away empty handed, take the literature and make sure you sign the petitions. Buy a t/shirt, and a sticker THANKYOU."

"No apology"!

Is this "Newspeak" for a decision the Australian PM feels uncomfortable about?

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says he makes "no apology" for believing in a "big Australia". he also said " I make absolutely no apology whatsoever for taking a hard line on illegal immigration to Australia."

But Mr Rudd should apologise !

Rudd is socially-engineering Australia's population growth

He presides over a massive rate of population growth which his government has engineered. He should apologise to the present population and also to the future population that will be so much worse off than we are now as the Australian environment inevitably declines . Australia's environment right now suffers from population overload. It's the number of us and the way we live, the way waterways are interfered with for human activities, the way natural habitat is taken over for human habitation, the impact on our environment of human wastes both domestic and industrial, mining extraction and agricultural..... the sheer scale of our activities !

Optimism without foundation may doom Australians

Rudd's optimism reported by the ABC at the growing population seems to be founded on no real data. It appears as rhetoric, no more than a declared belief. The serious concerns of continuing population growth expressed by Treasury Secretary Dr. Ken Henry - water availability , biodiversity welfare of wildlife are waved away by Rudd as mere "challenges" (in "Newspeak" challenge =problem)

Australia is the driest inhabited continent on Earth with thin fragile soils and relatively little arable land.
Australia's environmental indicators- climate,waterways,land and biodiversity indicate stress right now from increasing human impacts.

.......but Rudd has set his reckless course and will not be diverted.

He makes no apology.

by Helga Vierich

Abstract:

Fire has long played a part in the ecology of the Kalahari Desert of Southern Africa. Among the Kua of the south-central Lalahari the power of natural and man-made fires is well understood. These hunter-gatherers use fire to control ticks, increase plant fruit yields, alter the species composition of wild plant communities, influence the movement of game, and to attract specific animals into snares and traps.

Introduction

I first met Hank Lewis at the American Anthropological Association Meetings in San Francisco. It was during the mid-seventies -1975, I think- and my first reaction was amazement: “I thought you were dead!” I had confused him with Omar Steward (who was dead). Both Steward and Lewis had assumed legendary stature in my mind at that time, since I had been reading everything I could get my hands on about the human use of fire as a tool for shaping the ecosystems. The Proceedings of the Tall Timbers Journal were like sacred works to me. Both Steward and Lewis were among those who had published on early human use of fire as a tool for environmental management. Lewis had reported ethnographic work among Cree and other groups of native hunter-gatherers in Northern Alberta. Steward had documented much the same in a more general way for all of North America. Their work was a revelation to me. Fire - something mentioned in the usual scenarios of human cultural evolution only in relation to cooking and comfort - was revealed as a tool of immense scope and power for managing entire ecosystems - a tool, moreover, easily accessible to hunter-gatherers long before actual domestication of plants and animals was even thought of.

Hank Lewis forgave me my gaffe. We found some coffee and a quiet corner; and settled into one of those long breathless talks that you can only have with someone who shares a mutual obsession. Hank had also written another paper of particular interest to me, on the possible role of controlled burning in the origins of farming in the Middle East. We talked for hours. I was enraptured by the idea of duplicating his observations on the use of fire among other hunter-gatherers. I also thought that the transition to agriculture could be better understood as a move from merely burning to burning and then planting. Hank Lewis was one of those at the very cutting edge; in fact, it seemed to me he had been one of those who had cut the edge. When I told him about wanting to follow, as it were, in his footsteps, he didn’t waste time being flattered. He told me two very important things that day: first, to collect as much information as possible about how the knowledge of burning was transmitted; secondly, to try to get concrete data on what effects fire actually produced in terms of plant productivity.

Less than eighteen months later, I found myself in the Kalahari.

I was extremely lucky in receiving twin blessings in the form of a wonderful thesis supervisor in the person of Richard Lee, and in that I had been funded by the National Research Council of Canada to study fire ecology among hunter-gatherers in Botswana. Then my luck ran out. In the weeks prior to my arrival, the Botswana government had been winding up a lengthy campaign to stop bushfires. Why? Well, Botswana had recently gained markets in Europe for its beef. Now cattle posts were rapidly expanding into the Kalahari as new boreholes made water available in the amounts required by cattle.
Fodder in the dry season was a major limitation, as hay was not generally cut and stored. Thus the dry wild grasses had come to be seen as a vital resource and the widespread practice of burning the dry veld was being widely condemned. Even in small villages, extension agents from the Ministry of Agriculture had announced that burning was now illegal. Fines and even prison sentences were to be given to anyone found guilty of setting fires in the bush. I had not known of this campaign before I arrived, since my correspondence had all been with the Ministry of Local Government and Lands, under whose authority fell all matters touching on the San -or BaSarwa - as the hunter-gatherers are called within Botswana.

For the next two years, no one would talk to me freely about the usefulness of fires set deliberately in the Kalahari - not the local farmers and cattle owners, most of whom were either Batswana or BaKalahadi; and certainly not the San, who in many cases worked for them as field hands or livestock herders. Among the San who were living in areas remote even from the cattle posts, people were still cautious. It was only after months of work on other topics that I was to gather information on indigenous knowledge of fire ecology.

This paper, for the first time, reports the results of these efforts. It is fitting that I write this in honour of Hank Lewis.
Helga Vierich

The People and their Setting

During the next three years, I surveyed the San who lived throughout the Kweneng district in the south eastern part of the Kalahari desert. Most of my more intense fieldwork was carried out among a group of people who call themselves the Kua. The region they inhabit includes part of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and part of the northern Kweneng District of Botswana (Map 1). In the late 1970s they numbered some fifteen hundred, most of whom were still living entirely or seasonally by means of hunting and gathering.

There were varying degrees of employment in the farming and herding economy of their neighbours, the BaKalahadi and the BaKwena. Most of this work was for payment in-kind, in the form of cereal food, milk, and/or meat. Employment tended to take the form of traditional contractual arrangments, and was mutually opportunistic. It was clear from the employment histories and life histories collected that long-term relations between employers and employees were rare, in spite of the fact that the relations between San and these other ethnic groups had been previously described in the literature - and indeed by the employers themselves- as a sort of serfdom. It was also clear that the Kua, despite living for some centuries on the very edge of the ethnic boundary, had remained very flexible. In a lifetime, people might move back and forth between various economic options many times. Sometimes they spent a few years working as herders at cattleposts, and then returned to the life of independent hunter-gatherers. Often the change was occasioned by marriage or by changes in residential arrangments, rather than by any concerns of job availability or peaks in local supplies of wild animals or plants.

More water, more cattle, more ecological change

Many new boreholes have been drilled for water in this part of the Kalahari since 1950. With the securing of new and reliable water supplies came the cattle. Overgrazing has caused ecological change.

Since the push for more boreholes into the remoter part of the Kalahari, there has been an ongoing replacement of open grassland with thornbush within a five to ten kilometer radius of the waterpoints. The wild edible plants and animals preferred by the Kua already showed rapid decline in these areas by 1976. It was in such locations that the Kua found their options beginning to narrow. Even the cattle were regularly trekked out beyond the thornbelt to graze. At Dinonyane, one of the older boreholes, cattle were brought back to the borehole only every second day. Dew on vegetation was their only water for 48 hours.

Sand creates natural water lenses

The Kalahari has been shaped by a pronounced shift between a wet and a dry season, imposed on a stratum of red sand. Dunes and broad, desiccated river valleys dominate a landscape dotted with salt pans. In rainy season these pans fill with water often only a foot deep, teeming with tiny shrimp. Some big pans, like the great Makadikadi pans of north-central Botswana covering hundred of square miles, fill with nesting flamingos and pelicans. Most of these pans are dry within weeks when the rains stop, and there are no streams or rivers flowing all year round[1]. But the sand has a secret. It is very deep - hundreds of meters in many areas - and rainwater seeps down into the sand until air pressure from air trapped in sand below overcomes the flow of water downward between the grains. This process forms water “lenses” which support a rich diversity of plant life. Rather than a sandy wasteland, the Kalahari is a kind of visually stunning open parkland, with beautiful groves of trees set at intervals over a rippling carpet of grasses and shrubs.

A rich ecosystem

This is an immensely rich ecosystem. It is full of tasty and nutritious fruits, nuts, vegetables, and tubers. It is home to over a dozen species of antelope, two species of rhinocerous, six species of cats (from lions to the ancestor of our own housecat), two species of hyena, several species of monkeys, three species of canids, a host of rodents and lagomorphs, as well as elephants, common zebra and cape buffalo; and about a billion birds, large and small and everything in between -including a few found nowhere else in the world. In the region occupied by the Kua, buffalo, elephants, and rhino had disappeared in living memory but had never been common.

Zebra were rare. The children were no longer aware of the word for some of these animals, but the adults told me that their word for the zebra was quag-ha - essentially the same as the word in the extinct language of the Cape Bushmen for their extinct form of zebra, a word we know in English as quagga. Many of the larger herbivores are migratory, as are many species of birds. The herds and flocks flow into the Kalahari during the rains, deeper and deeper as the landscape greens and becomes dotted with temporary waterpoints.

They flow out again as the seasonal drought advances, retreating to the more permanent rivers that flow on the edges of the Kalahari. A few antelopes remain year-round, like the gemsbok, the hardy little duiker, and the sable and khudu.

In the dry season the land is still fruitful, however, if one knows where to look. Many plants have stored up water and starches in their roots, bulbs, corms, or tubers. Even at the height of the dry season, a few hours walking and digging could yield 10-25 kg of such food, much of it surprisingly nutritious as well as flavorful.

Wild berries and tree fruits which survive the attentions of birds and eager human hands tend to dry up on the stem and take on the flavor and consistency of currents, edible well into the dry times.

As well, many plants produced seeds packaged with a dense energy supply to sustain germinatio - in other words, nuts. The Kua, like humans everywhere, know exactly what to do with nuts; and they live surrounded by some of the best nuts that have so far escaped the notice of the rest of the world. Chief among these are those produced by two closely related plants, the one a shrub, the other a vine, about which more will be said when we move on to consider the influence of fire.

The Kua camp in small groups comprising one to five families. I say camp to impress upon the reader the fluid and temporary nature of their traditional residential arrangements. The huts are small and made of local materials (branches and grasses). The people can move camp in a day, as the huts are easily built in a few hours. These arrangements suit the mobile way of life of the hunter-gatherer. When people are working for months or, occasionally, years on end for some family of BaKalahadi or BaKwena, they may stay put for the duration. In such cases they tend to make their camps larger and their huts bigger and more sturdy. Of such camps they say that they are building, not “BaSarwa” but rather “BaKalahadi” style homes. There was clearly a kind of ethnic identity emerging out of their dealings with other groups, for the Kua were quite explicit about what constituted a BaSarwa cultural trait or artifact as opposed to the things and customs and languages of their Bantu-speaking neighbours. Note that they spoke not of things Kua but rather of things BaSarwa, a kind of identification with other Koisan speaking peoples. This conception is remarkable in that in some cases they could not even speak to these other San, as in the case of their immediate neighbours to the south, who spoke a completely different Koisan language, !Xo. So when the Kua did start to speak of BaSarwa uses of fire, I paid attention.

Kua Uses of Fire: Informants’ Testimony

The Kua are adept at life in a harsh Eden. It soon became clear that they also were well aware of the potential benefits of controlled burning to keep it productive of the plants and animals they found most desirable. This use of fire appears to a form a traditional knowledge that children of both sexes are shown and taught by both parents. Knowledge of the use and effects of fires in the environment was part of general knowledge; and even though the sexes tended to use fire differently, girls did not acquire separate kinds of knowledge from boys. There was considerable flexibility about both genders learning all the important subsistence tasks. For instance, there was one young woman who ran an active trap line, as she had been shown by her father and brothers. She also used the knowledge of how fires affected animal behaviour, which she had learned from both parents. Most girls did not do this. They were not interested.*

The information and observations recorded below were collected in the final eight months of fieldwork among the Kua, and cannot possibly exhaust the scope of their knowledge or extent of their practices. They fall into two rough categories: men’s fires and women’s fires. Men’s fires generally were intended to attract game and lure animals to specific traps, snares, or ambushes.

Women’s fires were generally set to keep plant communities stable (inducing a fire climax?), to increase the yield of specific plants (especially nuts), and to thin out the undergrowth in areas frequently walked - so that thorns were not constantly getting caught in toes, and snakes and scorpions were easily spotted - and to control biting insects like fleas and ticks. The bigger the fire’s spread, the more people were involved in monitoring it. So sometimes almost everyone in the camp group would be involved in monitoring a fire, no matter whether it was a man’s fire or a woman’s.

Monitoring a fire usually involved keeping the fire within bounds, especially if the wind turned the fire toward another settlement or towards one’s own camp. Fires were very carefully monitored if set in the dry season (rare) and less so if set in the early part of the rainy season (most common). All of these activities took place against a background of natural fires caused by lightning, which became more frequent in a pattern that followed behind the frequency of human-set fires; in other words, more and more often as the first big thunderstorms heralded the beginning of the rains. The most dangerous natural fires are those that started during a “dry” thunderstorm in early spring (September/October). Even these were not the disasters seen in heavily forested areas in other parts of the world, since most fires in the Kalahari travel along the ground by jumping through little clumps of grass. It is easy to simply step or hop over the fire. The wild animals and the livestock know this and simply move quietly ahead, around or through the path of a fire.

Visions of large game being stampeded into hunters’ traps did not survive my first Kalahari fire. The Kua howled with laughter over the very idea.

Instead, they showed me how it was really done, if one wanted to use fire to hunt. These were generally men’s fires. If a person found a small area that had burned naturally or created one, then snares could be set along game trails leading to this area. Animals, it was explained, liked to come to a recent burn. They came to lick ash (most antelope, especially duikers), to have their young (sable antelope), and to eat the new growth of grass and other plants that tended to follow within a week of the fire (all herbivores). Of course, if snares were set they had to be closely monitored since all the predators also knew about the attraction of herbivores to recent burns. Next, if one found a tree that had had the misfortune to be struck by lightning, or if one found a dead tree and set fire to it oneself, one could set snares all around the tree. The man who told me this was then persuaded by his wife to take me out to his latest set of snares set around such a tree. If a camp was abandoned after someone died there -people were buried in the sand under their hut- the huts were usually burned. This practice was known to attract ostriches which liked to bathe in the dense ash piles where the huts had stood. Snares could be set to catch the birds by their feet; or better yet, by their necks, since an ostrich can often batter a snare to pieces with its powerful legs. To catch an ostrich by the neck one put a charred white piece of bone in the circle of the snare (photo). Ostriches in the Kalahari are always on the lookout for hard chunks of material like this because they need it to help grind up the food in their gizzards. There are few rocks to be had, save the hard white kernels of calcrite that work their way to the surface at pans. In the area where I was shown the bone snare, the nearest such pan was ten kilometers away. Aside from the fact that the snare did in fact have a strangled ostrich in it the next day, I must admit reflecting on the way that ostriches are often presented in cartoons - as creatures with a strange habit of swallowing all manner of unlikely materials like tin can and shoes. Is it all to do with an unhappy gizzard?

Women going out to gather often took along some hot coals wrapped in damp leaves if they anticipated having to light a fire to cook lunch on the road, so to speak. This only happened when the foods they were after were located more than a few hours from camp. In the way it was explained to me, it was most often on these occasions, at the end of the dry season, that they might set fires to specific areas to encourage higher yields, the germination of particular food plants, or the discouragment of undesirable plants*. The particular plants at the heart of these activities were two species bearing nutlike beans, Bauhinia esculenta Burch. and Bauhinia macrantha Oliv.. B. esculenta grows as a vine; and has an underground storage organ that is also a prized food item when found on a young plant.**

B. macrantha is a low shrub which has no tuber. Both species produce large leathery pod contianing up to ten hardshelled nuts.

These are flattened ovals; dark brown in colour when roasted, and are extremely high in protein and fat. These plants are critically important food sources during the dry season. Fire, I was told, could improve the yield of both plants. It also improved the visibility of the seed pods in the case of the vine. Recalling Hank Lewis’ suggestions, I resolved to investigate further.

Effects of Fire on B. esculenta: Field Observations

In the course of my travels along the bush tracks, I frequently came across areas which had burned on one side of the track and not on the other. Frequently, this afforded an excellent opportunity to measure the effects of the fire on an identical plant community, with the burned and “control” areas seperated by the track. There were also areas where the fire had died after burning a small area along and even across the road, leaving part of the same plant community untouched. I took the opportunity afforded by these examples of “burned” and “control” zones to record the immediate and subsequent effects of the fire on the plants.

I decided to limit my observations to areas in which fire had occured in and near Bauhinia macrantha stands. Three meter square parcels were marked off a random number of paces from the road*.

This procedure was done in pairs, one on the burned and one on the unburned area. I counted the number of plants but also the number of white blossoms and seed pods on each plant. The results were tabulated in terms of the number of blossoms and pods per plant, not per plot.

The results showed a striking difference between the fruitfulness of plants burned and unburned. The plants in burned parcels showed a 2 to 23% increase in pods and flowers. The average was close to 12% if the lowest and highest scoring plots were ignored (Table 1).

Unfortunately my sample size was small (only five areas and only twenty sets of plot counts) but time was short as I was coming to the end of my fieldwork. I also began to doubt that the results would be typical because of the lack of rain that year. The burning tended to coincide with the end of the dry season and the beginning of the rainy season. That year (1979/80) the rains failed. It was one of the lowest rainfall years since records began to be kept in Botswana (Diagram 1). Also, my time was limited as I had been hired by the Botswana Ministry of Agriculture to undertake a survey of the effects of the drought on the welfare of people in the Kalahari. This task was especially urgent because the Kweneng District, where I was doing my fieldwork, was one of the areas hardest hit.

Conclusion

I offer these results, however, for what they are worth. I know Hank Lewis was intrigued because we talked about my findings when I first came to teach at the University of Alberta in 1989/90. He also felt, as I did, that both the numbers and the circumstances of my study limited the usefulness of my findings. Nonetheless, having seen much of the literature on hunter-gatherer use of fire for environmental manipulation, I must admit that I do not think these observations quite deserved to languish in the obscurity to which my earlier, more critical self had consigned them. I only wish this work could have been a more worthy salute to the man whose influence inspired me to do it in the first place. In fact, I wish that Hank was still here.

----------------------------------------------------------------

NOTES
[1] Except for the Okavango, a vast inland delta far to the north. In some areas the Kua told of places where there had been year-round springs attracting large herds as the dry season set in, but all of these had been occupied for generations by “people of the cattle.” The seasonal hunting bonanza such locations would have afforded to hunter-gatherers were long past..

*[2] I asked them. They mostly rolled their eyes and giggled in disbelief: “me? hunt? it’s too hard - let the boys do it.” (rough translation of the guist of their replies) In fact the teenaged girls seemed for the most part, quite uninterested in anything but their social lives. They hung out together and gossiped about boys, oiled each other’s skin and distained helping their mothers with the foodquest. They often had to be shamed into doing any work. Teenaged boys, like the girls, tended to be preoccupied with affairs of the heart, but they did seem to take a more enthusiastic view of learning hunting skills. This is not, I suspect, due to the inherently more exciting nature of hunting. Older men often told me that hunting was a boring, generally unrewarding task. You walk all over the place all day and were often hungry.
Only one hunt in four was successful and hunters were not accorded any special status. But the boys viewed learning to hunt as a welcome relief from babysitting in camp under the eye of their grandmothers while their mothers and teenage sisters were out gathering - or worse, being cajoled into coming along and helping gather wild plants.

*[3] which they called by the same word, meaning weeding, that the BaKalahadi used to describe the more usual practice of weeding their gardens ..

** [4] Older specimens can weigh over fifty kilograms but are too tough to eat, although they are sometimes used in tanning leather.
*[5] I put pieces of paper marked with number (multiples of five) into a hat and shook and withdraw at each location anew.

Orderly immigration or Organised invasion?

Would someone please fill us in about this claim that Australians have agreed to what seems to many to be an organised invasion of legal immigrants for the profit of the housing, finance and infrastructure moguls?

Sheridan writes,

"Paul Kelly argues in his The March of Patriots that there is a bargain between the Australian people and their governments. The Australian people accept a big, diverse and in many respects generous immigration program, so long as it is orderly and well controlled by the government." (Population growth lobbyist, Greg Sheridan, The Australian about his 'esteemed colleague' and fellow population-growth barracker, Paul Kelly of the Australian.)

I don't know anyone who was actually asked and the subject wasn't on the menu during the elections (which were mostly conducted by the mainstream press as usual).

This article "Boatpeople paint PM into corner" by Greg Sheridan is a rich source for a researcher into population growth lobby tactics and media propaganda.

Boat people and racio-ethnicity line a distraction from oversized legal immigration

Firstly we should note that boat people are again hitting the headlines, just at the time when MP Kelvin Thomson and others are coming out criticising high legal (but undemocratic) immigration and its unmanageable and disorderly consequences.

We've been here before.

This is probably no coincidence. It is useful to take our minds off the real issues.

Sheridan's article manages to talk about immigration at length as if the only real problems associated with it might be those related to asylum seekers arriving by boat. Never does it mention the terrible human overpopulation and infrastructure expansion stretching Australia's natural systems to breaking point. The comments allowed under the article favour the racial-ethnic criticism line, which sophisticated readers might be able to work out is a way for the growth lobby to stigmatise most discussion about high immigration as motivated by racial intolerance. That is, if you only publish comments objecting to the racial or ethnic composition of Australia's immigration stream, then you can give the impression that only racist Australians object to high immigration.

In other mediums like candobetter.org, there is, however, plenty of evidence of political and environmental pressure in response to high legal immigration rising like a bubbling stream of magma seeking the surface. The Australian, however, gives very little exposure to comments and protests about these impacts of legal population growth, thus giving a false impression to readers.

How to tell the difference between Rudd's and Howard's policies

Apart from the fact that Kevin Rudd and John Howard look different from each other - a child could probably tell them apart physically - the average adult might already have some trouble telling their asylum-seeker policies apart. In his article, Sheridan sets about trying to establish some difference, but the words are clumsy and unconvincing:

"Rudd is absolutely right to take a tough line against illegal immigration. Those who criticise him for doing so and saying so, such as the normally sound Labor MP Michael Danby, or those who cannot bring themselves to embrace the Prime Minister's language, such as Foreign Minister Stephen Smith in a remarkably evasive and feeble performance on Lateline, merely show how much better, shrewder and braver than the Labor Party Rudd is.

There is a reason this government is so dominated by its PM."

It doesn't matter if the job is hard and the materials poor. If you repeat that Rudd is 'right to take a tough line against illegal immigration' often enough, people will begin to think that this is somehow the crucial point of Australia's population policy.

There is a gem here, though, which you might miss if you began to nod off before you got to the end of the article (and who could blame you)?

Right at the end, Sheridan writes this amazing assertion, that Rudd is

"much better, shrewder and braver than the Labor Party"

What does this tell the alert observer? Well, it sounds to me like a message to the old Liberal-National voters who worry that the ALP has got in and that dear old Howard got the boot. It's telling them, "You don't need to worry. Rudd isn't really the Labor Party. It isn't really a Labor Government as long as Rudd 'dominates' it.

Clearly the Murdoch Press is pleased with Kevin Rudd's performance to date and they don't regret the departure of Howard, although they know that some of their readers still do.

On the other hand, what should Labor sympathisers think about this?

In my opinion, they should be worried! If they weren't already. But not because of Rudd's attitude to asylum seekers. They should be worried that Rudd is overpopulating this country legally to the satisfaction of the growth lobby. As if that were not bad enough, he shows contempt for refugees by allowing a gigantic stream of legal immigrants in but almost no refugees. If that doesn't tell you that the main interest the growth lobby has in immigrants is their money, then you are not reading the signs correctly.

At the same time we can see that Mr Sheridan has become an apologist for geographically distant refugee determination detention facilities because Mr Rudd is running into problems accommodating asylum-seekers.

"There are hard truths in this debate. Let me confess my own sins. When the Howard government introduced the Pacific solution, I was virulently opposed to it. I thought it was inhumane and wouldn't work. In fact, it did work. It also became clear to me the vast majority of people intercepted were not refugees but illegal immigrants."

Mr Rudd is also running into problems accommodating Australians, so perhaps we will soon hear that a few gulags will be built to house the more unruly homeless and unemployed, not to mention those who demand democratic government, under those Howard government terrorism laws that the Rudd government also embraces.

Make Poverty History aims to halving global poverty by 2015 and achieving the Millennium Development Goals by:

Sub-Saharan Africa is headed for a "population emergency" according to a new French NGO analysis of demographic trends.

Africa takes up more than 12 percent of the world's population, while its Gross Domestic Products (GDP) accounts for a mere 2 percent. With a population growth of 3 percent annually and an agriculture growth of 2.5 percent, the continent can hardly feed its increasing population. The words ‘population explosion’ are hardly ever heard nowadays, even though Africa’s population is still doubling every twenty-odd years.

The population of the continent south of the Sahara, decimated by the slave trade and colonization, stood at 100 million in 1900. It had grown more than seven-fold to 770 million by 2005. By 2050, it will grow by as much as 2.6 times above that level, to 2 billion. Abnormal climate and natural disasters have resulted in the emergence of a new kind of "eco-refugees."

Campaigns promoting the balanced family such as those successfully run in other developing countries (Bangladesh, Jamaica for instance) have never really been implemented in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Today, two out of three inhabitants of this large region of Africa are under 25 years of age (twice the number prevailing in Europe) and, with 32 inhabitants per km2, Sub-Saharan Africa is more densely populated on average than Latin America (28 inhabitants/km2).

Band Aid was a supergroup founded in 1984 by Bob Geldof and to raise money for "Famine relief" in Ethiopia. In 1950 the population of Ethiopia was just 16 million. According to the nation's only census, conducted in 1984, Ethiopia's population was about 42 million. By 2005 it had increased to nearly 78 million and is forecast to increase a further 80 million over the next 25 years.

The UN has admitted that it won’t meet its Millennium Development Goals in Africa but fails to explain the underlying causes for pessimism. Africa has had more than ten times the Marshall Aid given to Europe since the Second World War - a trillion dollars, or $5,000 for every African alive today. Yet many African countries are poorer now than in the 1980s.

According to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation, the world faces the challenge of producing 70 per cent more food for another 2.3 billion people by 2050. Meat production will need to increase by more than 200 million tonnes on the current 270 million tonnes by 2050. Unrealistic Western livestock-based diets means that grains fed to livestock could be distributed more equitably throughout the world to avoid some of the starvation.

In Australia, Make Poverty History is a coalition of more than 60 aid agencies, community groups and religious organisations. Make Poverty History has some lofty aims, but ignores the impact of Western diets, makes no mention of family planning or contraception schemes, or even population growth. Unless the people of Africa take some ownership of their own destiny we could be trying to fill a bottomless bucket! Neither will the campaign be achievable until we recognise the threat to our planet and humanity due to runaway global population growth. World poverty (like climate change) is unavoidable whilst governments, including ours, willfully encourage unsustainable population growth. Growing our own population will do nothing to alleviate the portion of the world's population that is already starving, and violence will escalate as resources diminish. Immigration globalises overpopulation.

Increasing population might seem to be a way of growing the economy in the short term, but in the third world it is only likely to lead to even greater poverty.

Photo of Ken Henry engaged in wombat care was adapted from the original here.
Candobetter has used parts of an analysis of Ken Henry's speech by Mark O'Connor, co-author of the rivetting book about how Australians are being lied to about overpopulation and what is causing it, Overloading Australia (2009) now in its second edition and available from EnviroBooks Australia.
See also the You-Tube promotion by Bob Carr
Listen to audio on ABC radio.

IN HIS SPEECH YESTERDAY (22 October 2009), "The Shape of Things to Come: Long run forces affecting the Australian economy in coming decades", Australia's Secretary of the Treasury, Ken Henry, expresses serious concerns about our growing population numbers. The speech was to the Queensland University of Technology Business Leaders' Forum.

Note that the Australian Academy of Technological and Engineering Sciences is a very strong advocate for overpopulating Australia and has teamed up with the Scanlon Foundation and the Australian Multicultural Foundation in a worrying report that looks like a blueprint to create our current burgeoning problems.

He starts with what seems like the conventional business lobby line about the worries of an ageing population, yet the graph he offered (Chart 2: Participation rate [not available here]) showed the percentage of Australia's population in working years (aka. the participation rate) falling "steeply" over the years till by 2050 it is just below what it was in 1980. In other words, it is currently close to an historic high, as we escape the years of having far too many persons too young to work, and move towards having too many old people. (This is on the assumption that we will always need a lot of human labor). (Page 4ff of the speech.)

How will our cities cope?

He then expresses strong concern about the fate of our overcrowded major cities if they are required to double their populations. (Page 6).

"How will Sydney cope with a 54 per cent increase in its population, Melbourne a 74 per cent increase and Brisbane a 106 per cent increase? Surely not by continuing to expand their geographic footprints at the same rate as in the past several decades. Surely not by loading more cars and trucks onto road networks that can’t cope with today’s traffic."

We don't know how we might sustain 35 million people in Australia

He expresses great pessimism about the environmental consequences: (Page 7)

"Are Australia’s natural resource endowments, including water, capable of sustaining a population of 35 million? What are the implications for environmental amenity of this sort of population growth? Must it mean an even greater loss of biodiversity difficult as that might be to imagine, given our history of species extermination?"

"We don’t know the answers to these questions, even though all of us would have opinions. My own opinion on the last of these sets of issues and I must stress that it is a personal view, not to be taken as a Treasury view is pessimistic."

Henry then spoke of the kangaroo industry:

Commercial slaughter of 49.9 million kangaroos

"In the last decade, permits have been issued to allow the commercial slaughter of 49.6 million kangaroos primarily to give household pets a bit of variety in their diet. That is but one instance of a set of behaviours that suggests that, with a population of 22 million people, we haven’t managed to find accommodation with our environment. Our record has been poor and in my view we are not well placed to deal effectively with the environmental challenges posed by a population of 35 million."

After this he spoked about climate change, before returning to more conventional economic issues.

Concerned about mineral resources, but vastly overestimates durability of supply[1]

On p.18 Ken Henry remarks:

"And Australia is considered to have a high level of remaining reserves of key mineral commodities, with iron ore reserves currently expected to last another 65 years, black coal another 90 years, alumina another 85 years and brown coal another 500 years."

Mark O'Connor, co-author of O'Connor and Lines, Overloading Australia, suggests correctly that these figures must be based on constant rate of extraction rather than on the ever-increasing rates of current trends and based on the anticipation that coal will be used to replace falling supplies of other fossil fuels.

Population Ageing overshadowed by Overpopulation

In his conclusion Henry remarks:

"Population ageing will have an even more pronounced impact on GDP per capita growth over the coming decades; and the prospect of a much larger than previously forecast population raises some fundamental questions about where Australians of the future will live, how governments will interface with them, and the large scale economic and social infrastructure investments that will be required to sustain economic and social activity. A larger population also raises some confronting questions relating to environmental sustainability."

"... all of these changes will test the limits of sustainability; economic, social and environmental. It will only be by recognising those limits and adjusting policy accordingly that this generation will be able to say with confidence that it will hand to its children and grandchildren an even higher level of wellbeing; an even greater capability to choose lives of value."

Does Ken Henry mean, by "adjusting policy" that we should stop growing the population or does he mean that we should squeeze down human rights to fit the business case? This needs more clarification.

More extracts and editorial comment:

"Population Ageing"

"Most of you will be familiar with the changing age structure of the Australian population, driven by the collapse in the birth rate in the 1960s and 1970s, as the baby boomers decided to have fewer children than their parents, and accentuated by increasing life expectancy."

Ed. The reader should be vigilant to the Secretary of Treasury's language here. "Collapse in the birth rate" is a sensationalist exaggeration of a slowing down from a sudden pronounced rise in marriages and birth rate that coincided with cheap fossil fuel in the post Second World War era, which could never be sustained indefinitely.

"To recap, the proportion of the population aged 65 and over has increased from 8 per cent in 1969 to around 13 per cent today. By 2049 we think this figure will rise to 22 per cent a little over one in every five Australians being aged 65 or over 40 years from now. By any measure, this is a dramatic change in the age structure of the Australian population. Perhaps even more remarkable is the projection that, by 2049, 5 per cent of the population - one in twenty - will be aged 85 and over, compared with around 1.7 per cent of the population today."

Ed. If our population is unable to support a five per cent rate of dependency, then there is something very wrong with the economy. I know what the problem is too. It is that the high cost of land - which has been artificially inflated by political stimulation of rapid population growth and too big a population - makes the cost of living so high that little is left over for the ordinary responsibilities of society towards its young and elderly.

The Treasurer notes, however, that old people are not useless people, even in terms of the Greedy Domestic Product measurement:

Population Aging causing positive GDP

"As the population ages the share of the population making itself available for employment - what economists call the participation rate - will fall, increasing the dependency rate (which measures, broadly, the number of people not working per person in the labour force) and exerting a drag on potential per capita output growth. What many people might not realise is that over the past several decades, this same population-ageing process has made a strong positive contribution to GDP per capita growth rates.

That is because the proportion of the population of prime working age has been increasing through all of that period, boosting the participation rate.

The Global Financial Crisis hit the Australian economy just as the proportion of the population of prime working age was about to reach its highest level. By the time the Australian economy uses up all of the spare capacity generated by the recent slowdown, and gets back to potential output, we will already have passed that peak and be on the downward slide."

[Chart 2: Participation rate]

"The looming prospect of this population slide, and its implications for GDP per capita performance, several years ago motivated an interest in policy reforms to drive stronger contributions from the other two ‘Ps’ of participation and productivity. Notwithstanding that motivation, in the years before the crisis hit, we were dealing with an extremely tight labour market, with skills in increasingly short supply, and productivity outcomes that had been disappointing. The case for securing better outcomes in workforce participation and labour productivity, already strong before the crisis hit, will be sharply more apparent after it has passed.

Ed. Nothing here about how Australian and state governments have failed shamefully to train and educate Australians to enable a functioning economy rather than the sham real-estate economy that we currently support with taxes and debt.

Overpopulation a much bigger worry than Ageing population

"Until recently, we had been thinking about population dynamics in terms of ageing and a rising dependency ratio. But last month the Treasurer shone a light on a whole new dimension of our thinking when he announced that, since publishing the Intergenerational Report 2007, our long term projection for Australia’s population had increased from 28.5 million in 2047 to more than 35 million people in 2049.

This 25 per cent increase in our 40 year projections reflects the combined effect of higher net overseas migration and a recent pick up in the fertility rate of Australian women.

Today’s population is about 22 million. So we are now projecting an increase of 13 million people, or around 60 per cent, over the next 40 years.

A population expansion of this order has a host of implications for the Australian economy and society; and it raises a number of profound issues for economic policy.

First set of issues:
"Where will these 13 million people live in our current major cities and regional centres or in cities we haven’t yet even started to build? We have given this matter some thought in the Treasury. On quite reasonable assumptions, we can imagine Sydney and Melbourne growing from 4½ and 4 million people today to cities of almost 7 million. Brisbane will, we think, more than double in size, to be 4 million people 40 years from now. Among them, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth will have almost as many people as the entire Australian population today.

"How will Sydney cope with a 54 per cent increase in its population, Melbourne a 74 per cent increase and Brisbane a 106 per cent increase? Surely not by continuing to expand their geographic footprints at the same rate as in the past several decades. Surely not by loading more cars and trucks onto road networks that can’t cope with today’s traffic.
However our cities do cope, they will have to find ways of securing a sustainably higher level of investment in public infrastructure.

Second set of issues:
What sorts of jobs will this larger population want? How will they acquire the skills they need to do those jobs?

How will the location of the jobs be reconciled with preferences about where people want to live?

Third set of issues:
What types of services will our governments of the future need to provide to their citizens, both young and old?

Fourth set of issues:
Are Australia’s natural resource endowments, including water, capable of sustaining a population of 35 million? What are the implications for environmental amenity of this sort of population growth? Must it mean an even greater loss of biodiversity, difficult as that might be to imagine, given our history of species extermination?

We don’t know the answers to these questions, even though all of us would have opinions. My own opinion on the last of these sets of issues and I must stress that it is a personal view, not to be taken as a Treasury view is pessimistic.

In the last decade, permits have been issued to allow the commercial slaughter of 49.6 million kangaroos in the last decade1 primarily to give household pets a bit of variety in their diet. That is but one instance of a set of behaviours that suggests that with a population of 22 million people, we haven’t managed to find accommodation with our environment. Our record has been poor and in my view we are not well placed to deal effectively with the environmental challenges posed by a population of 35 million [See http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/trade-use/wild-harvest/kangaroo/stats.html

Whether you share that pessimistic view or not, and whatever your opinions on the other sets of issues I have outlined, one thing on which we will all agree is that substantial additional investment, in both private and public infrastructure, economic and social, will be required to support our larger human population. We should also be able to agree that quite sophisticated infrastructure planning is going to be required if we are to address these questions in a way that improves the well-being of the Australian people in a sustainable way."

Be wary but keep looking

Ed. Be wary. Look at that last paragraph carefully: "Whether you share that pessimistic view or not, and whatever your opinions on the other sets of issues I have outlined, one thing on which we will all agree is that substantial additional investment, in both private and public infrastructure, economic and social, will be required to support our larger human population. We should also be able to agree that quite sophisticated infrastructure planning is going to be required if we are to address these questions in a way that improves the well-being of the Australian people in a sustainable way." Then consider that similar infrastructure-friendly foundations also underpins the Howard and Rudd policies. In fact the big link is probably here: "Scanlon report underpins threat to Australian democracy".

We could read Ken Henry's speech as one that is telling the growth lobby that they are going to have to chase up more investment money to keep growth going. Where Ken Henry mentions the slaughter of all those kangaroos, it looks as if he cares, and probably that is how it is supposed to look, but he is still expressing himself as if growth is going to go ahead and as if, despite the concerns he flags, it might still somehow be 'sustainable'. In fact, apart from what he has to say about kangaroos, his speech isn't much different from Bernard Salt's article in the Australian - (Links here: http://candobetter.org/node/1538. )

The Scanlon report also flags this 'need' for sophisticated infrastructure and it isn't too fussed about democracy.
The message is always: "More infrastructure to cope with more population".

But then again, Could Henry could have signalled his reservations with population growth any more clearly and still have kept his job? Henry is also the Australian Treasury chief who took 5 weeks off once to go and look after endangered hairy-nosed wombats. (I wonder if Candobetter can get an independent report from Wombat carers about his performance there.)

Stay tuned to Parliament and occasional speeches like this to see if there is anyone in Australian mainstream politics with a backbone, who doesn't talk out of both sides of their mouth at once, apart from Kelvin Thomson.

[1] Durability of supply of black and brown coal in Australia and the world will be affected downwards by the ongoing expanding need to replace declining cheap petroleum in the context of exhaustion of easily exploited wells and the world's huge population and intensification of industrial production of consumables. See Seppo Korpela, "Coal Resources of the World", in Sheila Newman (Ed.) The Final Energy Crisis, Pluto Books, UK, 2008. It is also likely to be affected, for the same reason, by declining supplies of uranium, if the technological hopes for breeder reactors using thorium are not fulfilled - which is quite likely.

US citizens deserve better than the third-world US health-‘care’ system

The French News reports that in the United States more and more people are out of work. A sign of this is the number of people who cannot access medical and hospital treatment.

When North Americans lose their work, they usually lose their health insurance.

Some clinics have been willing to treat people for free, but now they are overwhelmed by the numbers of people seeking help.

Apparently some clinics are now running lotteries to choose who to treat in parts of the USA.

The report showed a line of 75 people without work or health insurance, presenting to be part of a lottery for free treatment, in Darlington, Virginia. Among those lining up was a diabetic, a woman with a thyroid deficiency problem and an out of work teacher with cardiac insufficiency. Apparently some in the queue had cancer.

We saw one woman ‘winning’ the right to treatment on this occasion.

Apparently those who did not win would be able to try in another lottery after 15 days!

Clinic spokespeople say that they are trying to manage the best they can.

What a failure in a country with the pretension to being the most powerful in the world, and whose banking CEOs have recently netted even bigger bonuses than they did prior to the Global Financial Crash.

Just at the moment the USA is debating about its system of health care.

Source: 8pm France2 News October 21, 2009
See also Wikipedia on Michael Moore’s film, Sicko, and for more about the United States health care ‘system’. There are excerpts on you-tube if you cannot get hold of the video.

And to think that the United States pretends to bring ‘democracy’ to other countries. Don’t tell me that US style capitalism is democracy. More like corporate feudalism.

MEDIA RELEASE
22 October 2009

MORE REFUGEES - FEWER SKILLED MIGRANTS

Were Australia a compassionate nation, it would be taking in more asylum seekers and fewer skilled migrants, according to Australia’s only environment group dedicated to lower population, Sustainable Population Australia (SPA).

SPA National President, Ms Sandra Kanck, says Australia could double the number of refugees it accepts, providing that at least as many, if not more (which is SPA’s preference), were cut from the skilled migration program.

Australia's humanitarian program is currently 13,500 annually, while skilled immigration for 2008-9 is 115,000. Total net overseas migration, however, for the year ended 31 March 2009, was 278,200 persons. As well as skilled migration, this includes family reunion, New Zealanders and those on temporary visas.

“We have no moral obligation to the people coming here under the skilled migration program – they are not fleeing from war-torn states," says Ms Kanck. "They are taking places we could make available to real refugees.

“With 22 million refugees in the world at the moment, Australia cannot take them all, but we can accept more than we currently do – provided we reduce the skilled migration intake," she says.

Ms Kanck says that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s rebuffing of asylum seekers and attacks on so-called people smugglers are a diversionary tactic.

"Mr Rudd is responsible for one of the highest immigration rates in decades so his line on the current influx of asylum seekers is simply a smoke screen to avoid public discussion on the bigger issue of the immigration blow-out.

“Refugees have to wait in long queues for places to become available, while at the same time Mr Rudd has an open door policy to people who want to come here for purely economic reasons.

"Surely Australia can supply its own skills and not poach from other countries," says Ms Kanck. “If we got rid of the baby bonus we could put that money into training/retraining our current population and thus decrease our reliance on the skilled migration program."

Ms Kanck added that a multi-pronged approach was what was required in dealing with refugees. Diplomatic efforts could often diminish conflict that cause people to flee.

"For instance, what is Australia doing to ensure that the Sri Lankan Government is treating the Tamils fairly and humanely?" she asks.

Emergency Protest: Stop shooting National Parks

.

12:00pm, Tuesday 27th October 2009
Outside NSW Parliament, Macquarie Street, Sydney
Bring your signs. Bring your friends.
Speakers include Greens and environment groups.

Tell the Rees government that you won't stand by as they sacrifice our national parks to blood sports. Shooters are not conservationists. Killing native wildlife is their form of recreational pleasure. Only the power of public opposition will remove this legislation from the negotiating table.

National parks preserve our native animals and our heritage. They deserve the highest order of protection. The Shooters' Party is only interested in protecting its own interests, not conservation or the greater public good.

Please email the following MPs and express your strong opposition to any deal that would allow shooting in national parks:
Premier Nathan Rees - thepremier[AT]www.nsw.gov.au
Environment Minister John Robertson - office[AT]robertson.minister.nsw.gov.au
Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell - LOP[AT]parliament.nsw.gov.au
Shadow Environment Minister Catherine Cusack - catherine.cusack[AT]parliament.nsw.gov.au
Christian Democrat, Fred Nile - F.Nile[AT]parliament.nsw.gov.au
Independent, Gordon Moyes - gordon.moyes[AT]parliament.nsw.gov.au

For more information contact Lee Rhiannon's office - 9230 3551 or lee.rhiannon[AT]parliament.nsw.gov.au

Original source of dog illustration, without caption.

Hyperacusis - a misunderstood source of social friction in a densely packed society

Those who find particular sounds unbearable, but who don't get understanding from their friends and relatives, should find out about the condition of hyperacusis at this hyperacusis site. The website was created through the contributions of clinicians and patients from all over the world, who joined together to establish an extensive source of information to help patients recover from hyperacusis. It was by fully reading this site that I came to some understanding and tolerance of the level of complaint about dogs barking on this forum. The following site has a massive amount of helpful information, including case histories, a self-help treatment option, and specialist referral services. The self-help treatment option (using a cd with 'pink noise') is very low cost (instead of USD $3-4,000) and there are several accounts on-line of how it helped people to easily accomodate common sounds which they previously found intolerable. Even if you are not a sufferer, the syndrome is a very interesting one to read about. In fact all of us, as we grow older, may be at risk of symptoms of the 'recruitment' syndrome described below, although most people will not experience it in a devastating way.

Of particular interest was the page, which gives information about four kinds of hyperacusis, which I reproduce below.

"4 Types of Sound Sensitivity"

"1. HYPERACUSIS: These individuals have a collapsed tolerance to normal environmental sound. The term commonly used to describe this condition is 'hyperacusis'. Hyperacusis can come on gradually or occur suddenly where the patient finds themself in a state of crisis. Patients who have a collapsed tolerance to sound need to have their Loudness Discomfort Levels (LDL's) established by a hearing healthcare professional. Normal LDL's are in the 85-90+ decibel range. Patients with hyperacusis would have LDL's well below that level. The common treatment for hyperacusis is listening to broadband pink noise though sound generators (special hearing aids) which must be ordered through a specially trained doctor or audiologist who administers Hyperacusis (Tinnitus) Retraining Therapy. The therapy often costs $3000-$4000 (depending on the clinician) and typically is not covered by insurance.

There are two basic ways to deliver broadband pink noise to your ears. The best way starts with a clinician who is trained to diagnose the seriousness of your condition, explain to you the dynamics of hyperacusis, test your ears in gentle ways to determine your loudness discomfort levels (LDL), fit you with special hearing aids called noise (sound) generators that deliver broadband pink noise to your ears, monitor your progress and provide directive counseling until you recover. Treatment usually lasts 6 months. Clinicians who administer this kind of treatment were trained by Dr. Pawel Jastreboff (Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia). They are experts in treating hyperacusis and tinnitus patients. Their protocol is called Tinnitus Retraining Therapy (also know as TRT) and it has significantly helped tinnitus and hyperacusis patients recover. To learn more about TRT you might consider reading Dr. Jastreboff's book "Tinnitus Retraining Therapy." A list of TRT clinicians can be seen by visiting this website: http://www.tinnitus-pjj.com/referral.html

The second way one can deliver broadband pink noise to their ears would be to purchase the broadband pink noise CD from the network. Instead of listening to broadband pink noise through special noise generators (TRT), a similar sound can be delivered to the ear by listening to a pink noise CD. With this method pink noise is delivered to the ears through a compact CD player (i.e. walkman). If you use a compact CD player it is very important that you use open air headphones. More detail is explained in the guideline that comes with this networks pink noise CD. Pink noise can also be downloaded from the pink noise CD to an ipod. The only caution here would be that the pink noise be converted to a WAV or AIFF format.

2. RECRUITMENT: There are many more individuals who have recruitment. Recruitment is the a rapid growth of perceived loudness for sounds in the pitch region of a person who has hearing loss. This phenomenon occurs because at some decibel level, the normal hair cells adjacent to the damaged hair cells (corresponding to the frequency of a hearing loss) are "recruited." At the decibel level at which these normal hair cells "kick in," perceived loudness shoots up rapidly, causing discomfort. In other words, at one point the person cannot hear the sound because they have hearing loss (in that frequency), then when the sound reaches a certain loudness and/or frequency the person is blown away. Once they finally hear the sound, it is perceived as far too loud. Recruitment is a common phenomenon in cultures where the majority of their lives have been saturated with too much noise – like our Western culture. Common treatment is the same as it is for hyperacusis unless the persons hearing loss is so pronounced that listening to broadband pink noise would be of no benefit to them.

3. HYPERACUTE HEARING: Then there are individuals who are sound sensitive at birth but it is only specific to certain frequencies heard at loud levels (typically above 70 decibels). It may seem like we are splitting hairs here but remember – the key words with hyperacute hearing are – sound sensitive to specific frequencies heard at loud levels. These frequencies are typically labeled 'problem' frequencies. Autistic children are good examples of this. They can tolerate some sound at normal or even loud volumes but some frequencies are intolerable. Commonly autistic children, children who are marginally autistic, or non-autistic individuals who have hyperacute hearing are treated with auditory integration therapy (AIT). AIT takes regular music and filters out the problem frequencies through a special machine called an audiokinetron. Somehow this therapy seems to 'retune' their ears and normalizes their hearing tolerances. The music is listened to at decibel levels which can peak up to 90 decibels. This creates a problem for the hyperacusis patient. The therapy is too loud and only worsens the condition of the hyperacusis patient whose Loudness Discomfort Levels have been compromised. Hyperacusis and recruitment share part of a common pathway but in some ways we are very different and our retraining therapies run very much a different path.

Phonophobia often develops with an individual who has a significant collapsed tolerance to sound. They not only fear the sound of the environment they are experiencing in real time (right now) they worry about the sound that future events of the day or in the near future will produce. Phonophobia can take over ones life and make one feel they need to isolate themselves to survive. This is a recipe for disaster. It is critical that we keep our ears active to rebuild our tolerances to sound. That is why broadband pink noise is so crucial to bringing us back to the mainstream of life.

4. MISOPHONIA: (dislike of sound) has often been thought to be hyperacusis. This is not true. Let us be clear here. A hyperacusis patient can have a strong fear of sound (phonophobia) or a specific dislike of specific soft sounds (misophonia) but neither one of these symptoms stand alone as hyperacusis.

Hyperacusis is a collapsed tolerance to normal environmental sounds. They hyperacusis patient may or may not have phonophobia and/or misophonia. If the hyperacusis patient IS also dealing with phonophonia and/or misophonia then their clinician needs to address these issues is addition to treating the patient for hyperacusis. It is also important to note that a person can have phonophobia and/or misophonia and not have hyperacusis at all. Sound confusing. Let's talk...

We will discuss forms of misophonia. They are not a separate catagory of sound sensitivity because the issues we are about to talk do not involve loud sounds. Some individuals are not sensitive to loud sounds (in other words they have normal loudness discomfort levels - LDL's) but they are unable to tolerate the sound of people eating or chewing. Oddly enough they have no problem tolerating the sound of their own eating. These individuals have a difficult time eating with their family and friends and some insist on eating all by themselves. They become irritated or enraged at meals and sometimes. This is not hyperacusis. The patients primary goal would be to neutralize or refocus the dislike they have of these specific sounds. Most of these individuals live very normal lives with the only exception of being unable to tolerate all the dynamics of other people eating. Often these individuals have been unsuccessful finding any information about this condition. To the best of our knowledge no articles have been written in any qualified medical journal and no studies or research has been done about this. Patients seeking treatment from their clinician may have to copy the information from this website to help their doctor understand what is taking place here. Treatment for these patients comes from clinicians who have a specific protocol for misophonia. Search the network message board using the word 'misophonia' to learn more about this problem and protocols suggested. Usually these individuals are sensitive to particular sounds which are not loud in volume. For example, some individuals have a hearing sensitivity to certain consonants (i.e. s, t, p, c). Once again, although this is a sound sensitivity issue, this is not hyperacusis. It is misophonia.

Misophonia is a symptom which is misunderstood. The word 'misophonia' was invented by Dr. Pawel Jastreboff to help clear some of the misunderstanding. Aside from a misophonia protocol it is not clear whether broadband pink noise helps the patient improve their dislike of sound. Some individuals with misophonia have been diagnosed with an obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and have sought treatment from a psychotherapist."

"Keep it rural. Say 'No' to suburbia" is their motto."

Macedon Ranges Residents’ Association Inc [MRRA] - www.mrra.asn.au - established in 1995, has been recognised at National level as part of Australia’s social history.

The National Library of Australia [NLA] and State Library of Victoria [SLV] are currently archiving online publications they consider are of National significance. Last week MRRA received a request from the State Library of Victoria for permission to add the Association and its website to the National Library of Australia’s online archives, in perpetuity. This means the Association’s website will be preserved and maintained permanently, including software and hardware updates as these change over time, to allow continued long-term access.

The National Library will catalogue MRRA’s website and add the record to the National Bibliographic Database (shared by over 1,100 libraries nationwide). The record will also be added to the State Library’s own online catalogue.

President Brian Whitefield said MRRA is absolutely delighted at receiving national recognition. “The Association has worked hard at State and local issues in recent years, and we are really proud of receiving this honour. Our little “home-grown” community website began in March, 2005 as a way of communicating with our members. It has grown ever since, with an amazing number of hits.”

Secretary Christine Pruneau said the request for permission to add MRRA to the National Library archives in Canberra came as a complete surprise. “It seems our website was considered a ‘perfect example’ of a community website dealing with topical and controversial issues. It also provides something of a local history of events in Macedon Ranges. MRRA is a very active organisation, and has a heavy workload, including keeping the website up to date. Somehow you forget the slog and the long hours when something as stunning as this comes along. Suddenly it is all worthwhile, and it’s a great incentive to keep going and try harder.”

Brian and Christine don’t just see it as recognition of MRRA. “We get a lot of help and feedback from the local community, so pat yourselves on the back too. True ‘community’ groups are an integral part of Australia’s social fabric, and we feel the recognition given to us also recognises the role played by other community groups like ours who are out there tackling important issues. Our message to them is, never give up.”

(Image adapted from the cover of Signet books edition of George Orwell's 1984)

“It will be those people, who can keep alive, and cultivate into a fuller perfection, the art of life itself and do not sell themselves for the means of life, who will be able to enjoy the abundance when it comes … We shall once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful. We shall honour those who can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well, the delightful people who are capable of taking direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they spin."

So wrote the economist, Keynes, J.M., in “Economic possibilities for our grandchildren” in The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, Vol.9: Essays in Persuasion, London, MacMillan, 1972 [1931]

Then along came the Second World War with its fuel and weapons creation frenzy. It wasn't until the 1960s that people again began to talk hopefully about the great promise of leisure. To combat this trend of thought, the media published many articles about the competition posed by Japan's workers, who were described as incredibly hardworking, disciplined and efficient. By the 1990s working hours, particularly in Anglophone industrial societies, began to rise again and there was no longer any official promotion of leisure.[1]

Now the official message is to work harder to produce more and then to go out and shop to consume more.

In tune with our increasingly humourless and stern paternalistic society, we are cyclically subjected to these media beat-ups about how we are all taking too many sickies, as though we were so many bad children, and the folk in our media, industry and government were wiser and worthier elders - even the 'young turks'. Today it is Australia Talks' turn to get out the whips. As usual we lesser mortals are subjected to the opinions of people deemed 'experts', although if we are quick we might be able to get a short comment in on air.

Will Australia Talks challenge the 'experts' with the real scandal, that Australians are now working more hours for less money, and the promise of a generation ago, that we were going to have much more leisure, has been withdrawn. It has been replaced with panels of authoritarian experts telling us why we must work harder. Will the panel even look at the unpaid work we are forced to do in order to fill out more and more forms or the difficulty many people experience in fulfilling social obligations which are now deemed much less important than activities which make money?

The promotion of the program entitled "Sick Leave" states:

The great Australian tradition of a sickie - or doonah day - is alive and well. Despite the downturn - or maybe because of it - sick leave is on the rise. Why are Australians taking so many sickies and how are we spending them?

The line-up of guests appears one-sided. They are:

• Paul Dundon, Managing Director, Direct Health Solutions
• Cherie Curtis, organisational psychologist, Onetest
• David Gregory, Director, Workplace Policy, Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry
• George McEncroe, Comedian

At least if George McEnroe is, indeed, the comedian that he or she is claimed to be, one can expect of him or her to effortlessly show up the sanctimonious hypocrisy of those who would judge workers for have taken sick days for reasons other than sickness.

I responded early in the Australia Talks guest book:

The real scandal, is why, when we were promised over a generation ago, vastly shorter working weeks and longer holidays as result of improved technology, the exact reverse has occurred for the vast majority of the Australian workforce, whether overtly through award conditions, through subtle blackmail or through economic necessity.

Those who have guided the destiny of our country in this period have brought about a situation where a lot more needs to be accomplished in our own time than what used to be the case. So, for many, time off work for reasons other than sickness has become a necessity.

As so many more are working in dreary low-paid occupations for which we are overqualified, days off work are often necessary to save our sanity.

In my opinion, those who periodically beat up the question of supposed abuse of sick leave are amongst the lowest of hypocrites in our society.

If you also want to help pre-empt a new witch hunt against workers deemed to have taken too many days off sick, please make your views known on the Australia Talks guest book, or phone them tonight after the 6PM news (5PM news in Queensland) on 1300 22 55 76, or add your comments below on the candobetter site.

[1] [1] John Trevor Haworth, Anthony James Veal, Work and Leisure,Routledge, UK, USA, Canada, 2004, pp.24-26

This article was written by James Sinnamon with Sheila Newman

The following article is based on a submission to George Seitz, Committee Chair of the Outer Suburban/Interface Services and Development Committee, Victoria, and was submitted on 19th October by Protectors of Public Lands. Headings inserted by Candobetter editor are preceded with “(Ed.)” Illustrations are from candobetter.org . The rest of the article, unless otherwise marked, is the original text.

Submission to Parliamentary Outer Suburban Interface/Services and Development Committee Inquiring into the Impact of State Government Decision to Change the Urban Growth Boundary

...

Introduction:

I am making a submission on behalf of Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc. (PPL VIC.) I should by way of introduction mention that our organisation, established in 2004, is a State wide coalition of over 80 environment, heritage, resident and parks groups across Victoria. We are dedicated to keeping public lands in public hands and to protecting and conserving iconic heritage places and environmental sites of significance.

Summary of Grounds of Opposition: In addressing the terms of reference we are considering “The impact of the State Government’s decision to change the urban growth boundary on landholders and the environment…” PPL VIC draws the Committee’s attention to the failure of the State Government in strategic urban planning over the last 10 years and in encouraging uncontrolled entry of settlers to Victoria without examining sustainable population levels. We object to creation of growth areas outside the existing boundaries as extending and creating urban sprawl; alienation of established Green Wedges; destruction of the environment and wildlife; loss of biodiversity; creation of “dormitory” settlements without infrastructure and services; likely social alienation of youth; loss of arable land for food production; increasing car dependency; worsening Victoria’s greenhouse gas emissions and contributing to climate change with land clearance, unsustainable housing and reliance on road transport; plus knowingly approving the building of new settlements in fire-prone areas. Additionally we deplore the imposition of a vendor tax on landowners in order to fund the infrastructure of the new settlements and the impetus given to land speculation and “land banking.” PPL VIC supports the submissions made by our colleagues from the “Green Wedges Coalition” and “Taxed Out”.

The grounds of our submission are as follows:

New Growth Areas = Future Urban Sprawl = Major Failure of Strategic Urban Planning:

The Bracks Government guaranteed in 2002 that, under a Labor Government there would be no changes or amendments to the Urban Boundary or to the Green Wedges corridors. The fact that there are now radical changes represents a serious breach of faith with the electorate by the Brumby Government. Melbourne 2030 was considered to be the blue print for future development and was expressly intended to contain future urban sprawl; to prevent urban incursions into rural land; to concentrate residential growth into areas served by high capacity public transport; and protect sensitive environmental zones around the city. Many planners have pronounced Melbourne 2030 dead in view of recent radical departures from the plan.

Before the 2002 election the State Government announced protection of Melbourne’s green wedges from subdivision and inappropriate urban uses. There was bipartisan support - the Opposition supported the green wedge protection legislation when it passed through the Legislative Assembly before the 2002 election.

(Ed.) Path to unsustainable growth paved with broken promises

The Government has additionally broken a 2005 promise when 11,500 hectares was excised from Green Wedges land that there would be no further changes until 2030. The community accepted the excision on this proviso. Apparently, the Minister for Planning gave a number of assurances right up to the announcement of the review of the Urban Growth Boundary that there would be changes to Green Wedges. .

The State Government announced its review of the Urban Growth Boundary in December 2008 when it released the Melbourne @5 million, an update to Melbourne 2030: Planning for Sustainable Development. This signalled the State Government’s plans to open up at least 23,000 hectares – including land in Green Wedges areas - for urban expansion to allow for construction of 600,000 houses with 284, 000 of these to be located in growth areas. It was only apparently belatedly realised by Government advisers and planners that Victoria needs to accommodate another 1 million people before 2025. By 2036 Melbourne is predicted to have a further 1.8 million, twice the number forecast by Melbourne 2030 planners. By anyone’s reckoning failure to predict this massive population boom is a monumental blunder in strategic planning (See also comment under population)

(Ed.) Incremental excisions of natural amenity, wildlife habitat and agricultural land

We can see no improvements under the current Delivering Melbourne’s Newest Sustainable Communities (DMNSC) report on the Urban Growth Boundary Review released in June 2009. PPL VIC was alarmed to see that according to the Green Wedges Coalition the report proposes to excise a further 41,663 hectares from Melbourne’s Green Wedges, nearly twice the area estimated to have been needed in last December’s Melbourne @ 5 Million report.
Minister Madden has added to proposals by announcing on 6 October 2009 that new “Precinct Structure Plans guidelines” were to be added, a kind of overlay for suburbs of 3,000 dwellings or more. These guidelines were drawn up to try to ensure developments avoided becoming isolated, so called “dormitory” suburbs - places where there is nothing to do but sleep. The Age article of 11 October 2009 “Sprawl of the wild” by Melissa Fyfe says “The Victorian Government has discovered sustainable communities. Pity it’s 10 years late.”

On 16 October 2009 Planning Minister Madden announced the draft legislation for Growth Areas Infrastructure Contribution Bill. We have only been given time to make comments until 2 November 2009. (It is not known if the legislation will be introduced to Parliament before this Committee has reported.) The problem is that arrangement to levy the GAIC have been changed or significantly amended. Michael Hocking of Taxed Out says on his website:

“This is taxing the landowner by stealth. The tax is still applied at a flat rate regardless of the sale price yet the land may be twenty years from development. A property owner needing to sell in the short-term will find it virtually impossible to find a purchaser who is prepared to accept a GAIC liability when he sells, meaning the only likely purchaser is a developer not interested in the value of the dwelling and not interested in paying development prices for land that won't be developed for decades.

The Growth Areas Authority assumptions relating to value uplift remain fundamentally flawed and Taxed Out Inc. intends to expose these issues at the Parliamentary Inquiry…In many respects this situation is worse than that originally proposed.”

PPL VIC deplores the fact that the State Government appears to have attempted to mislead affected landowners. We also point out that this debacle over changes to the GAIC further illustrates that our contention that this is planning on the run.

What is a Sustainable Population for Victoria?

The whole rationale for extending the Urban Growth Boundary is to accommodate the unprecedented flood of population to Victoria. It is instructional to Google the “Population Clock” of the Bureau of Statistics. This shows the resident population of Australia which increases by one person every 1 minute and 12 seconds. This projection is based on the estimated resident population at 31 March 2009 and assumes growth since then of:

• one birth every 1 minute and 44 seconds,
• one death every 3 minutes and 39 seconds,
• a net gain of one international migrant every 1 minutes and 53 seconds leading to
• an overall total population increase of one person every 1 minute and 12 seconds

(Ed.) Process of loss of Green Wedges and Agricultural land will be endless

PPL VIC considers that the extension of the Urban Growth Boundary is really the thin end of the wedge. As there are no plans to stop the present high rate of population growth (mostly from immigration) the process of loss of Green Wedges and agricultural land is endless. There will be another extension when the proposed boundaries are seen to be filling up.

The extension of the Urban Growth Boundary does not save private or public open space in the established suburbs - the rate of population growth is so high that Melbourne is getting more urban densification daily as well as urban sprawl. As we have pointed out the State Government is devoid of coherence in these planning matters and its approach to endless population growth.

PPL VIC considers it imperative that the Victorian Government hold a forum to determine the population sustainable for Victoria, especially in view of water shortages and the likelihood of future droughts. (Excuses used have been “immigration is a Federal matter” but State Premiers have influence in Canberra.) At a rally on 14 July 2009 protesting over Planning Minister Madden’s “Cash for Chat” with developers, PPLVIC and allies delivered a set of resolutions to the Minister including the need for a population forum. There were over 500 people at the Rally which indicates the strength of public feeling concerning the issues raised here.

I have a quote here from Mr Kelvin Thomson MHR, Federal Member for Wills who says that:

Everything that makes our city the great place to live, work and raise a family, is potentially under threat if population growth and urban sprawl continue at the current rate. We must implement a strategy to control population growth, urban expansion and development. Our way of life, open spaces and infrastructure cannot be sacrificed on the altar of ever expanding population. We have a responsibility to secure our city’s future by thorough, thoughtful and detailed planning. This planning should not include an expanding Melbourne waistline.” (Source: “Five Million is too many: Securing the Social and Environmental Future of Melbourne” Submission to the Urban Growth Boundary Review July 2009.

Destruction of the Environment and Green Wedges:

The Government must abandon the Green Wedge land grab as destructive of the environment, a threat to wildlife, including endangered species, and as a major contributor to Green House Gas Emissions. Around the urban fringe we have a concentration of some of the most endangered eco- systems in Australia including the Western Basalt Plains Grasslands and Grassy Woodlands in the Darebin, Jackson and Merri Creek valleys, with 400 year-old red gums, and plus loss of habitat for a range of threatened species (e.g. Southern Brown Bandicoot.) PPL VIC supports the submission of the Green Wedges Coalition as being an excellent detailed statement of the threats to significant landscapes, endangered species and wildlife plus indigenous vegetation.

The 15,000 hectares of grassland reserves to be provided over 10 years as a trade-off for grasslands is apparently of poorer quality than the kangaroo (themeda) grasslands to be destroyed

The removal of environmental protection from all areas within the Urban Growth Boundary would seem to indicate that areas such as significant parts of the Merri Creek Catchment will not be protected from environmental damage or even clearing.

Areas for development are clear felled by developers. The loss of trees and other vegetation for housing adds to global warming effect. Is there any provision for conservation?

The proposed high density, low open private space in these outer suburbs means they will be hotter - urban heat island effect - from the lack of the cooling effect of vegetation/transpiration - low ratio of vegetation to concrete and other hard surfaces.

What provision is made for public open space? There is no mention made of public open space for passive recreation as well as sports fields and recreation areas.

(Ed.) Cruel failure to create or maintain wildlife corridors spells slow death for native animals

On past performance, no allowance will be made for wildlife in outer suburban development. PPL VIC has had experience with kangaroos of Somerton and Morang where animals get trapped in developed areas and just left to get killed on roads. The outer suburban interface is considered terra nullius it seems. What of smaller animals/birds what about the grasslands and inhabitants? There appears to be no consideration given to the creation or maintenance of wildlife corridors.

(Ed.) McPhail Report – State of the Environment

The State Government appears to have taken little notice of report by the Commissioner for Environmental Sustainability, Mr Ian Mc Phail, in “The State of the Environment Victoria 2008”. In it he comments:

"Victoria's population growth, increasing affluence and the expansion of our cities and towns has contributed to unsustainable levels of resource consumption and waste production. This has direct environmental impacts through changes in land use from conservation and agriculture to cities and towns. To supply our cities and towns, we harvest water for residential and manufacturing purposes, changed river flows, discharge wastes to land and sea, remove native vegetation and send damaging gases into the atmosphere." (Refer in the report to A Culture of Consumption. Drivers of Change – Population, Change and Settlements Page 9)

The report continues:

“Continuing growth of Victoria’s population will increase demand for land, as well as housing and transport services, potentially leading to more waste and pollution. Extra demand for water is particularly pertinent given the predictive effects of climate change on already depleted water storages.” Mr Mc Phail concludes on a depressing note: "It is currently cheaper to protect the environment to than to restore it but it is even cheaper to degrade it…”

Urban Growth Areas in Fire Prone Areas:

Whether it is advisable settling thousands of people in outer suburban fire prone areas does not appear to have occurred to the Government. These are the outer suburban areas classified as "Growth Areas": Beveridge, Bulla, Devin Meadows, Cranbourne East, Clyde North, Diggers Rest, Donnybrook, Kalkalo, Melton, Mt Cottrell, Officer, Pakenham, South Morang, Sunbury, Tarneit and Truganina.

Councils opposed to the extension of the Growth Areas Boundary and the imposition of the Growth Areas Infrastructure Contribution are Melton, Casey, Cardinia and Mitchell. Wyndham refuses to comment.

It is apparent that these areas are either under resourced by fire services or not serviced at all. We assume this also goes for ambulance and police. Would the State Government be liable if fire services were not provided and a fire went through the settlement?

The Age reported on 4 July 2009 (Lessons to Learn) on the proceedings of the Bushfire Royal Commission and pointed to urban sprawl as one of the “fatal confluence of factors” that led to Black Saturday.

Cost to Victorians:

The cost of building new homes in the rural fringes of Melbourne is double that of constructing infill dwellings in the inner city. This is the hidden cost of suburban sprawl. This is an unacceptable financial burden for Victorian tax payers to shoulder. The added costs include extra infrastructure such as power, water and transport, as well as higher health costs and greenhouse gas emissions.

The report, commissioned by the State Department of Planning and released in July, cites research that found "for every 1000 dwellings, the cost for infill development (in existing suburbs) is $309 million and the cost of fringe developments is $653 million".

It has been stated by Minister Madden in Parliament (and reported in the Sunday Age 11 October that the funds to be raised by the $95,000 hectares Growth Areas Infrastructure Contribution will cover only 15 per cent of total infrastructure costs. The Minister is prepared to sacrifice Green Wedges land that makes Melbourne “livable” and to destroy the livelihoods of many small landowners and farmers for this minor financial return.

Unfair Tax on Land Vendors: The Growth Areas Infrastructure Contribution is an unfair, discriminatory tax on family farms and small landowners, even after amendment by the State Government in draft legislation. As we have consistently maintained, the tax needs to be withdrawn and any charges levied at the point of development, consistent with the approach taken in other Australian states. PPL VIC supports the campaigns of “Taxed Out” and as mentioned above held a joint rally on 14 July 2009 to protest against the Growth Areas Infrastructure Contribution.

Perpetuation of Car Dependency: The plans to construct major freeways/ring roads and the absence of plans for extensive rail networks to serve the new suburbs spells out that the population of Melbourne will remain dependent on cars despite the uncertain future of oil. We are particularly concerned over plans to build the E6 freeway through Woollert. The roadway appears redundant.

Reduction of Arable Land: Given our population crisis and likely food shortages with the drought it is unthinkable that the Government can even be contemplating turning over arable land for housing development. The loss of vegetable farms including prime market garden land in the Westernport Catchment will increase food miles for our produce.

Increase of Green House Gas Emissions: Climate change is the most important moral question of the age and must be at the forefront of our public policy. The State Government appears to have its head in the sand. Compared to other cities in the world Melbourne has one of the highest rates per capita. Our private vehicles and public transport were recently recorded to generate 11 million tonnes of carbon monoxide a year compared with 8.5 tonnes in London. The increase in urban sprawl will worsen our figure.

Accommodation of Population within Existing Urban Growth Boundaries:

No examination has been undertaken of how the increased population can be accommodated in Metropolitan Melbourne.

Suggestions have been made that an inventory should be conducted of development applications which have already been approved by Council within the Urban Growth Boundary but which have not yet been built. Utilizing existing approvals might go some way to addressing the issue.

An inventory also needs to be undertaken of brown field sites and land which could be available for residential development – former transport depots, rail sidings and Commonwealth Government sites eg the Maribyrnong Defence site.

(Ed.) Developers prefer Greenfield Sites because they are cheaper

It is most unfortunate that the practice of “land banking” by developers appears widespread throughout the city. Take for example land on the former Royal Park Psychiatric Hospital site in Parkville which was given to Australand and the Citta Property Group to build a residential development then used for 2 weeks for the 2006 Commonwealth Games Village. The original plans showed a wall of 700 units in a 9 storey block along City Link. The land is still vacant and there have been no attempts to commence building. The developers are said to be waiting until the “market is right.” The truth is that developers prefer green field sites and are unwilling to invest in developing brown field sites.

Request to Committee: PPL VIC urges the Committee to reject approval of the extension of the Urban Growth Boundary and the iniquitous Growth Areas Infrastructure Contribution and to develop recommendations for accommodating increased population within the Urban Boundary plus arriving at consensus for determining a sustainable population for Melbourne.

Submission details

This submission was addressed to:

Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc.

Mr George Seitz
Committee Chair
Outer Suburban/Interface Services & Development Committee
C/- Parliament House
Spring Street, Melbourne
VIC 3002

on 19 October 2009
by

Julianne Bell
Secretary
Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc.
PO Box 197
Parkville 3052

[email protected]

Figures from The Magic Puddingby Norman Lindsay

A Victorian citizens rally cry and lament

People of Australia we’re in trouble to our nuts, it’s five to bloody midnight-no ifs or bloody buts
Its’ time for damned austerity with water, power and perks. So leave the bloody car at home and walk to work you jerks!

People of Orstralia now the water’s all run out. Some blame global warming and some the bloody drought
And some say it’s a bastard but everybody will when they get the bloody info that water’s twice the bill.

The same goes for electric that we get from bloody coal, it’s looking for sequestrum like a rabbit down a hole.
Yet we’ve got bloody solar for ten thousand times our needs and governments do nothing by thought or word or deed.

Fellas of Australia, sheilas, blokes and mates, you’ll go bloody nowhere if you retain the bloody states !
Define the bloody regions, get rid of lines on maps and focus on efficiency in government perhaps.

Females of Australia this is not the knell of doom, but you can’t legitimise your place through your bloody womb.
We all should be more tolerant of lesbians and queens but keep a bloody eye out for the pioneering genes.

Let’s educate our youngsters so they can get the skills to pay the bloody taxes, P.P.P.'s and other bills,
We're behind in infrastructure, schools, hospitals and trains, but the Government's planned nothing, they've got no bloody brains!

Sure, we are girt by sea and girt by c02 and girt by bloody methane to put into the brew.
We're girt by politicians who won't de bloody bate that overpopulation will be our terminal fate
We've species loss, degraded soils and environmental squalor, and bloody blind self serving bastards in it for a dollar!
They want Melbourne at 7 million and Oz at 35 a ridiculous bloody trajectory that Aussie can't survive.

Now Oz has got a statesman who runs the bloody show with 2020 vision and Chinese lingo, don’t you know?
And the sheila there who helps him is as smart as bloody paint and just like bloody Ablett, she’s never where the ball ain't.

But we’ve got bloody Brumby, by default you’d have to say and by default the bloody desal and dredging of the Bay.
But he’ll be Jeffed like Kennett and bloody Howard too. And I’ll be there to wave goodbye. It’s bloody overdue.
People of Orstralia, when the bugle sounds the call, don’t just bloody stand there like you’ve lost a bloody ball.
Heave and strain and struggle with all your bloody might and hope to hell your efforts will bring us to the light.

We must be multipartite on education and health, indigenous affairs and immigration so it’s not approached by stealth.
Let’s get a national anthem that sounds less like a dirge and get a new republic while the folks have got the urge
And get a proper flag as on Eureka’s noble knoll, not a quasi bloody mish mash of colonial control.

And so I ask my Aussie mates before they place their bets to consider the integrity of the “PATH OF NO REGRETS”
Get rid of self indulgence that used to be the way and save old bloody Aussie and the planet I dare say.

By Walter Grahame
For and on behalf of Arthur Cartwright a.k.a J.N. Button

Racism is:

1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race, and that one’s own race is superior, and has the right to rule others.

2 : racial prejudice or discrimination, hatred or intolerance of another race or races

3: a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.

(photo: from Wikimedia commons: Australian Government poster — "The Southern Cross, the call of the stars to British Men & Women" issued by the Overseas Settlement Office to attract immigrants).

Racism is a global phenomenon which is influenced by a range of historical, social, political and economic factors.

It takes different forms in different contexts and as a result has been defined in many different ways. In Australia, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (1998) defines it as:
Racism is an ideology that gives expression to myths about other racial and ethnic groups that devalues and renders inferior those groups that reflects and is perpetuated by deeply rooted historical, social, cultural and power inequalities in society.

Institutional racism (or systemic racism) describes forms of racism which are structured into political and social institutions. It occurs when organisations, institutions or governments discriminate, either deliberately or indirectly, against certain groups of people to limit their rights.

Historical perspective

In May 1901, the Australian parliament met for the first time. Its first major act was to pass the Immigration Restriction Act. Under this policy, people from Asia and other "non-white" people were systematically kept out of Australia. The "White Australia" policy was the product of decades of racist agitation against Chinese immigration.

Henry Parkes, now venerated as the "father of Federation", was often at the head of anti-Chinese laws restricting where they could live. In 1857 his newspaper Empire railed: "Total exclusion of the Chinese from the goldfields should be the law”.

The first identified threat by white settlers was from thieving, dispossessed Aborigines, who were placed in the same category as Australian fauna. Racism included the removal of Indigenous children from their families and the denial of full citizenship rights to Indigenous people.

People with similar backgrounds naturally like to be together. The ideals of multiculturalism were welcome here in Australia when most people were Anglo background, and Prime Minister Bob Hawke promoted it well. Most people embraced it, and we have benefited from immigration both economically and culturally. However, in recent years, the numbers of immigrants has risen so high, a twist of racism has seeped in.

Immigration today

The Australian government, acting on behalf of their mates in the real estate industry, is effectively inviting foreign populations to move in and colonise parts of the country.
Australians are forced to carry the costs. They have to compete with rich foreigners for housing in a country already facing a chronic housing shortage. They have to pay their taxes just so that wealthy foreigners can simply move in and make use of Australia's public services and infrastructure.
(Eye on Immigration: selling Australia)

The Howard government left behind a robust immigration program of more than 120,000 net immigrants a year. The Rudd Government set a target of 190,000 migration places in 2008-09, a 20 per cent increase over the previous year's target. It increased the working visa program to double its size four years earlier. Not a word was said about this during the 2007 election campaign.

Racism phobia

Are we so terrified of the R-word, racism, so brainwashed by the thought police, that no dares mention skin colour any more? Not even the cops when seeking a
crime suspect?
Surely skin colour is just as objective as hair colour?

Hey Hey It’s Saturday ratings success has been marred by accusations of racism after a skit on the Red Faces talent segment featured a group of doctors in black face paint re-enacting a Jackson 5 song. Would a similar skit about ABBA have been racist if they painted their faces white?

Racism today

In the UK, Pakistanis are twice as likely as Indians to be unemployed. Two years ago, their government’s research showed almost half of British Asians and blacks arguing that there are too many immigrants.

Particularly following the September 11 attacks, both Muslim and Arab Australians have experienced a significant rise in Islamophobia and racism.

More recently we have witnessed race-based confrontations in Cronulla and now fears have grown over the perceived violence and gang culture of Sudanese immigrants.

There was a backlash against Sudanese immigrants and a move by our Government to attempt to justify a freeze on our African refugee intake.

Kevin Rudd scrapped the "Pacific Solution", abolished temporary protection visas, and let illegal arrivals get more lawyers. The Federal Police warned that this may increase the number of attempted arrivals to Australia. The dismantling of the Howard government's border protection policies has led to a surge in boats. 255 Sri Lankans asylum seekers, now bobbing off Java, are refusing to leave their boat. They now face detention in Sumatra rather than Nauru. Is it not surprising that Australia is their choice of refuge, knowing that we have the highest migrant intake in the developed world?

Our heavy intake of well-educated and well-off immigrants is a stark contrast to those that are turned away or places in detention.

The recent attacks on Indian students have thrust the issue of racism in Australia into the mainstream news bulletins.

Over populating Australia

Australia's population is forecast to surge from 22 million to well over 35 million in 40 years. . Our population this year grew by 439,000, or 2.1 per cent, the highest in the developed world.

In the past anyone questioning immigration to Australia risked being labeled racist. But now there's a new accusation leveled against anyone speaking against the massive surge in immigration to Australia. Now debate is being shut down by economic and political ‘correctness'.

Modeling by the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University shows each additional one million people adds 25 million tonnes of pollution to Australia’s greenhouse accounts.

“An increase in population to 35 million by 2050 would mean 325 million tonnes of additional pollution, costing us at least $10 billion a year in extra carbon pollution costs alone,” Mr Berger of Australian Conservation Foundation said.

GDP ignores the cost of the environmental damage done by immigration. Head hunting skilled workers from developing countries roughly doubles their greenhouse gas emissions, in the process making it all the harder for us to achieve the necessary reduction in our emissions. Our greenhouse gas emissions are rising, contrary to Kevin Rudd’s climate change commitments.

Immigration-fed growth in the economy is good only if it raises the real average incomes of the existing population. If it doesn't, we're running a high immigration policy mainly for the benefit of the immigrants who are able to earn more in our country than they were in their own country. Sharing finite resources means an erosion of the quality of life.

The
ABC's Four Corners program recently ran a piece on the 'new homeless'; families that couldn't find an affordable house to rent.
What do you do when you've lost your job, lost your home and you have three kids to feed? You end up in a motel cooking, eating and sleeping in one room at the taxpayer's expense. These are Australia's new homeless.

The narrator failed to mention one of the causes of the homelessness - the increased demand for housing fueled by high immigration levels.

Time for debate on immigration

It's time to drop the political correctness that for years has meant anybody who questioned immigration levels was labeled racist, or a supporter of Pauline Hanson!

One Nation was anti-immigration, anti-economic liberalization party. According to their web site, “One Nation is not, nor has ever been, a racist party. We are however a fiercely nationalistic party that puts the well being of Australia and it's people before anything else. It is obvious by the tens of thousands that came out to support us that there is a ground swell of ordinary people in this country who are sick of the self serving, on both sides of politics, that has been passed off as leadership for so many decades.”

There was no hint of racism, just a questioning of our high immigration and how it serves the interests of Australians. Racism was muddied by an immigration debate!
The issue now is not about race.
This is about numbers, and the future. (Herald Sun)

Capitalist leaders have always known immigration was a great way to permanently weaken unions and culture in favour of economics. Are our leaders deliberately diluting Australian-ism, patriotism, so we are accommodated into a global market? Already our real estate, many industries, tertiary education, job markets, consumer items and our population are being quietly globalised.

THE Rudd government must urgently rein in migration or tens of thousands more young Australians will miss out on their first jobs , a new report warns. (The Australian)

Already, 15- to 24-year-old Australians are bearing the brunt of burgeoning migration levels, their unemployment rate rising from 8.8 per cent to 11.7 per cent in the year to September, the study by Monash University academic Ernest Healy reveals.
Cut migrants to aid jobless:

India as a nation is faced with massive problem of unemployment. Unemployment rates for women are higher than those for men. The incidence of unemployment among the educated is much higher than the overall unemployment. If our definition of unemployment is defined to include any job which does not move an individual to living wages within one year, then India’s unemployment is not the official 7-9% but about 26%!

If our unemployed, or underemployed, or students went to India to access their tertiary education system and raided their limited casual or professional job opportunities, surely there would be a "racist" backlash!

Let's get back to some basic good old-fashioned Australian patriotism instead of all the globalisation that is being inflicted on us. Tertiary educational institutions should be funded to educate primarily Australian citizens, not internationals, and jobs should be for Australians, not outsourced overseas or for opportunist students hoping to stay here.

Australia’s population growth has been historically driven by immigration. Now we need to be stabilized and established as a distinct but multicultural entity.

The abuse of the word “racist” is manipulating us into silence and being used to enforce policies that were appropriate and beneficial in past decades, but are not appropriate for Australia in the 21st century.

Illustration: collage of icons from housing and immigration industry sites and Steve Vizard who marketed the Bracks Melbourne Population Summit in 2002
Article by Jonathan Page

The laws regarding foreign ownership were relaxed recently,[1] ostensibly to allow temporary visa holders to buy properties at auction which was previously too difficult.

I was quite outraged after piece after piece appeared in the media with real estate agents bragging about Chinese buyers putting down their money over the phone without even seeing the properties, or purchasing several. These agents talk about how the wealthy investors are speculating on our real estate, and even letting the properties sit empty while waiting for their capital increase.

It is confusing to know exactly what is happening as only temporary visa holders are allowed to buy established properties, and then only a principal place of residence. But we hear of some of these people buying several.

I checked on the FIRB website and established that these practices are in contravention of the intentions of the foreign ownership guidelines. Foreign investors are not supposed to speculate, or engage in activity that would lead to housing stock shortage. It seems that Rudd's plan to keep the housing boom going (and possibly satisfy friends in China?!) has gone too far.

I penned a letter and sent it to all house of representatives members. I have had some good responses so I will wait to see with interest if anything happens.

We are losing prosperity when we sell out to wealthy overseas investors that we can't compete with. On top of the loss of prosperity we lose in many other ways with the associated population growth.

Jonathan Page

LINKS & NOTES BY CANDOBETTER EDITOR

Real estate speculation has been made possible on a level never previously conceived of due to the global Internet, through property dot coms like www.realestate.com.au and www.domaine.com.au, but also through very rapidly converging and mushrooming of industries and professions across government and private sector, so that we have, for instance, on the one hand, at the Federal level, the National Foreign Investment Review Board (NFIRB) positively facilitating foreign investment in local real estate and facilitating purchases by temporary immigrants for high turnover, and, on the local level, realtors touting local property internationally with the assistance of privatised migration agents and local solicitors, and at State level (where land use planning is controlled), organizations like the Property Council of Australia (APC), closely involved with determining government policy.

For more on this see "Bad Australian foreign investment laws marginalise Australians" or, for more detail, S.Newman for SPA VIC First Home Affordability Enquiry Submission, pp 16-20.

Real estate speculation occurs on previously unknown levels via the global Internet, with rapid convergence and mushrooming of of speculative industries and professions across government and private sector. At Federal level, the National Foreign Investment Review Board (NFIRB) promotes foreign investment in local real estate and encourages housing purchases by temporary immigrants for high turnover. Local realtors tout Australian property internationally, using private migration agents and local solicitors. At State level (where land use planning laws are made), organizations like the Property Council of Australia (PCA) are closely involved with determining government policy. The Australian citizen has less and less say in any of this.
Illustration a collation of old icons from sites encouraging foreign investment and immigration.

Consequences for the economy of big rises or drops in housing prices

Various convoluted explanations exist for why high land prices (= land/housing prices) would not affect general inflation. These arguments do not hold, however, when a major factor in inflation comes from outside the local economy. In this article I draw attention to the likely impact of the addition to the Australian property market of more and more home buyers and property investors purchasing from overseas using foreign currency that has greater value than our local currency. Some may be from poor countries but they may also be among the world’s richest citizens.

Australia as a Pacific Island economy with little protection for citizens

The impact ressembles the effect of first world tourists on a third world economy.

Prices go up to meet the pockets of the tourists and locals are priced out of the market and reduced to living from a sort of fringe economy, as the more lucrative tourist economy takes over. Those locals that have held onto property are able to interact with the foreign-based currency holders on a more equal footing, since their assets have benefited from the
inflation. They become the elite. Rentals, like hotel prices, go up way past the affordability of the bulk of the locals, who are more and more marginalised. The rents still seem quite cheap to the tourists and foreign residents as long as these foreign residents hold substantial foreign currency and as long as their currency remains better than the local currency, or they remain wealthy by world standards.

A better system of land-tenure does exist, but we don't have it

The continental European (Napoleonic) system developed in France after the Revolution does protect citizens from this kind of impoverishment.

First world tourists will often complain about the outrageous prices of everything in tourist-affected economies like Noumea, French Guyana, the Seychelles etc. It is not so easy in these places to find little indigenous hotels where you may stay for a
song, and dine at little cost. At least one of the reasons for this is that in the overseas French territories the French system safeguards adequate public housing at affordable prices, as well as prioritising the employment of locals, the education of locals, the health system for locals, and unemployment benefits etc. This means that much of the earnings from foreign currency are passed on throughout the economy and to most of the population. So, whilst prices remain so high that only the rich really tend to stay in French resorts, the locals have sufficient incomes for them to be able to live within that economy without becoming marginalised into a secondary economy. This is a source of frustration to those who expect all resort economies located in third world areas, like the South Pacific and the Caribbean, to provide for cut-rate tourism. It is, however, a great thing for those who actually live on the islands.

Unfortunately Australia has a bad land-use planning system which leaves its citizens vulnerable.

Globalisation of Australian real estate

Real estate speculation has been made possible on a level never previously conceived of due to the global Internet, through property dot coms like the media-owned www.realestate.com.au and www.domain.com.au. This has permitted rapid convergence and mushrooming of speculative industries and professions across government and private sector. We have at the Federal level, the National Foreign Investment Review Board (NFIRB) ramping up foreign investment in local built and off-the-plan real estate and facilitating built housing purchases by temporary immigrants for high turnover. On the local level we have realtors touting local property internationally with the assistance of private migration agents and local solicitors. At State level (where land use planning laws are made), organizations like the Property Council of Australia (APC) are closely involved with determining government policy.

Australians as islanders without effective rights of citizenship

Australian citizens are in the same predicament as the indigenous populations of small pacific island colonies when international developers decide to turn them into resorts and start building hotels and up-market housing. Resources and ammenities become limited commodities which only the rich can afford, and pretty soon the locals are barely subsisting in shanty-towns.

In the late 1980s people started to see that what was happening to Australia was the same thing that happened in Hawaii, where real-estate prices are notoriously high and related to the presence of a high volume of foreign investment capital.[10] During the pre-internet hike in Australia's land/house prices, beginning around 1988 and following the highest total net immigration in Australia prior to the current record-breaking period (2006-), there was an out-cry. The Australian government responded by barring foreigners from purchasing established dwellings in September 1987.

Urban researcher, Peter Rimmer[11] observed, however, that this did not prevent "Australians living abroad, immigrants with permission to settle permanently in Australia, and foreign companies seeking accommodation for executives from purchasing residences."[12]

Continuous erosion of our foreign investment laws

Subsequent amendments to the Acquisitions and foreign takeovers Act (1975) have considerably watered down even these weak protections.[13] The FIRB now seems almost to be leading the charge in touting Australian real estate to foreigners with superior currency.[14] Foreigners on short-term visas, such as students staying for one year, are positively
encouraged to purchase established dwellings, providing they sell them when they leave at the end of one year. Short-term immigrants also provide a good market for rentals. The effect of this rate of turnover on land/housing prices must be hugely inflationary. A strong indication that it is considered a source of big money by the speculative real-estate suppliers to the market is the aggressive promotion of this opportunity for purchasing Australian real estate by migration agents with real estate and legal firm connections on the Internet.[15]

The 1973 Oil Shock

These trends to opening up Australian real estate and other equities began after the 1973 oil shock, in 1975, with Prime Minister Fraser. From less than 10% in 1972-75 under Whitlam, foreign investment in Australia increased to 49% of GDP in 1990-91. By 1986 more than half was destined for real-estate investment.[16] Prime Minister Fraser initiated a long series of amendments of the Australian Foreign Acquisitions and Takeovers Act (1975) with the effect of increasingly facilitating foreign investment in property development and real estate.[17]

In post-oil shock Japan opportunities for newly formed construction companies and developers shrank. Rimmer wrote that those major Japanese construction companies, which had been hurt by policies of zero public sector growth, preference for regional contractors, and sluggish private sector activity in Japan, particularly through fiscal policy in the early 80s, adapted to the situation by seeking work in other countries. They brought with them the funds invested by Japanese investors and banks, offering "the most favourable fixed price" and "to take an equity in the project if necessary, arrange loans at low interest rates from financial institutions in Japan or Australia" and guaranteeing "any money required if the project [went] over cost".

Australia, which was keen to attract major projects during the recession of the late 1980s, largely in the hope of job creation, responded to these inducements. Australian States vied with each other to attract these Japanese construction projects, many of which were in real estate. [18]

Rimmer wrote that "keen for the economic benefits and political spin-offs, the states, as we have seen, are prepared to override the usual planning role performed by local government of directing development into preferred locations to meet economic, social and spatial preconditions."[21]

This obviously remains the case.

The other consequence of concentrating investment on the property development/housing sector is that a growing population provides an easy, constantly increasing market for raw materials produced here, but for cheap imports produced overseas. This perpetuates the many problems associated with a commodity bound economy, dooming us to ever increasing foreign debt, with a widening rather than deepening economy, restricting our skills and systems bases.[22]

NOTES

The notes begin at [10] since this article adapts extracts from another document.

[10] In a land-planning system with many of those hall-marks of the US system.

[11] Peter J Rimmer, "Japanese construction contractors and the Australian states: another round of interstate
rivalry", in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, E. Arnold, London, Vol.12., no.3.,
pp.404-24.

[12] Peter J. Rimmer "Japanese construction contractors and the Australian States: another round of interstate
rivalry", op.cit., p.421.

[13] Information about these changes to The Foreign Takeovers Act )1975), now known as the Foreign Acquisitions and Takeovers Act (1975) over time is available from the Foreign Investment Review Board in appendixes to its Annual General Reports, which are available on internet from http://www.firb.gov.au/policy_pubs/publications/AnnualReports/1999-2000/appd.htm Note that the Act is not confined to property investment but this seems to be a large part of its business.

[14] www.escapeartist.com/australia, which is an immigration and property investment internet site, announces, “Expatriates Build Wealth in Australia - The Aussie dollar is at an all time low against the American dollar and the strong Pound Sterling. Consequently there is strong purchasing power for Expats and UK residents in Australia. Australia welcomes foreign investment in real estate. Overseas investors can therefore obtain the benefit of freehold title. …”

“To take advantage of this, major developers such as Central Equity apply to the Federal Government Foreign Investment Review Board to gain permission to sell their residential apartments to foreign investors prior to releasing their development to the public.”

[15] Here are some examples of these kinds of internet sites. Migrate Australia www.migrate-australia.org/ are owned and operated by My Great Australia Pty Ltd. Like many members of the Migration Institute of Australia, they deal in real estate, finance and conveyancing, as well as arranging all sorts of visas and providing legal advice.

Some others are: www.James Tan Immigration lawyer.htm, www.escapeartist.com/, which has pages for many other countries in the world and www.australiaforyou.com.au. Australia For You has remarkable graphics. In fact many of these sites are graphically innovative, information packed, multi-lingual, specialise in a particular language, may offer a specialty, such as romantic introductions, and seem impressively connected and serviced. They generally lead with the information that they have registered immigration agents on board.

[16] R.H. Fagan, "Foreign Investment", in Australian Encyclopaedia, Terry Hills, NSW, Australian Geographic, Pty. Ltd, 1995, p.1394. For more about the FIRB, see S. Newman, The Growth Lobby and its Absence, Op cit., Chapter 3 heading, “The Residential Construction Industry”

[17] Information about these changes to The Foreign Takeovers Act )1975), now known as the Foreign Acquisitions and Takeovers Act (1975) over time is available from the Foreign Investment Review Board in appendixes to its Annual General Reports, which are available on internet from http://www.firb.gov.au/policy_pubs/publications/AnnualReports/1999-2000/appd.htm or see more current information here. Note that the Act is not confined to property investment but this is a major part of its business.

[18] Rimmer, Op cit p. 405 and 418.

[19-20] These notes are not used here.

[21] Rimmer Op Cit., p.417.

[22] “Going for Growth – Business Programs for Investment, Innovation and Export”, also known as “The Mortimer Report”, to the Federal Minister for Industry, Science and Tourism, Australia, 30 June, 1997. The Mortimer Report drew a distinction between absolute growth and per capita growth. It pointed out that economic growth resulting solely from increased population serves no economic purpose. The true measure of economic progress, the report stated, is economic growth per head of population. That being the case, the Mortimer Report declared its brief to recommend measures that would enhance per capita economic growth.

Taking its data from OECD reports, the Mortimer Report found a negative correlation between per capita GDP and population growth over the period 1970-1995.

A paper correlating population growth rate and per capita economic growth rate was prepared by Dr John Coulter for the 2003 ISOS conference on sustainability. For the purpose of his analysis, Coulter divided the countries of the world into two groups, rich and poor. For each group, he correlated per capita GDP growth with population growth, using rigorous statistical techniques. He found that for rich countries absolutely no correlation between per capita GDP growth and population growth. For poor countries, the correlation is strongly negative: the higher the population growth, the poorer is the country.

For countries like Australia that rely on their resource base for their income, the argument is particularly significant. In 1860 about 70% of the country's exports were mineral and agricultural products. Almost the same ratio applies today. For Australia’s situation, the more specific question than what do countries have to win or lose from population growth is - what does a country with a commodity-based economy have to gain economically from population growth?

The answer to this question lies in the external trading account. For population growth in commodity-based economies:
• almost no relation at all exists between exports and population.
• an almost linear relationship exists between population and imports.

Extreme cases often make telling points. A country which is entirely reliant on commodity exports and has an extreme level population growth may reveal an outcome that a less extreme country might achieve at a more leisurely pace.

Saudi Arabia is an extreme example of a commodity-based economy experiencing excessive birth rate. Saudi Arabia earns over 90% of its export earnings from products based on one basic commodity – oil. Saudi Arabia’s rate of population increase is about 4% per annum. Saudi Arabia’s population is doubling in less than every twenty years. Half the population is under 15 years of age.

For more on this see S.Newman for SPA VIC First Home Affordability Enquiry Submission.

In a letter to the ABC 7.30 Report, former Democrats leader and Senator, Dr John Coulter, describes dismay at the "biased and misleading report on population" broadcast on 13 October 2009. He lambasts the claim that population growth was necessary for economic growth and for raising the 'standard of living': "While Australia has shown a very slight increase in total GDP in recent quarters, its per capita GDP has been negative because total growth has been swamped by population growth." John Coulter, who is Vice President of Sustainable Population Australia, also said that the ABC allowed [ex-Democrat Senator], Andrew Bartlett, "to present and then demolish a straw man without challenge".
Full text of letter sent to 7.30 Report, ABC National Television on 14 October 2009, plus headings and links by candobetter editor:

Dear 7.30 Report,

I am absolutely dismayed at your biased and misleading report on population broadcast last evening. Either you and your journalists are extremely ignorant on this issue or, as appears most likely, you are quite deliberately presenting a misleading account of this vital issue.

Apart from Bob Carr all the interviewees were pro-population growth with a clear vested interest in this position. They were allowed to make quite inaccurate statements without challenge from your journalist. For example, it was claimed that population growth was necessary for economic growth and for raising the 'standard of living'.

No statistically significant link

In industrialised countries such as Australia there is no statistically significant link between either population size or population growth rate, on the one hand, and growth in per capita GDP on the other. Even more simply, and several prominent and conventional economic commentators such as Ross Gittins in the SMH have pointed this out, while Australia has shown a very slight increase in total GDP in recent quarters, its per capita GDP has been negative because total growth has been swamped by population growth. It has been most negative in those states with the highest population growth rates such as Queensland and WA. This is quite contrary to what was stated in your program and without the contrary and true position being put.

No Conservation Position

Moreover, no conservation position was put in relation to limits to population growth. Instead you presented Andrew Bartlett who was allowed to present and then demolish a straw man without challenge.

Your report could not have been more misleading and biased or designed to reinforce the view that population growth was both inevitable and desirable and without serious environmental consequences.

You have brought shame on the ABC.

Dr John Coulter Vice President, Sustainable Population Australia Inc & former Leader Australian Democrats."

In the ABC 7.30 Report of October 13th, which dealt with the absolutely critical matter of Australia's rapid population growth, Channel 2 viewers were served up with the usual homogenised glop of current journalism. Opinions were sought rather than facts and impacts researched and reported. Vested interests were glossed over in the promotion of questionable 'authorities'. Noticeably absent was the one Australian politician who has shown leadership and coherence on this subject - Kelvin Thomson. We can only suspect that the program was yet another countering of his views without allowing him a right of reply.

"Australia's population steeply rising"

This is a review of ABC televisions 7.30 report segment 13 October 2009 on Australia's population dynamics.

Shambolic treament of crucial topic

It's amazing that such a serious topic as the deliberate inflation of Australia's population through high immigration can be treated in such a shambolic way as it was by ABC's channel 2 last night.

Bert Denis - president of the Australian Population Institute was wheeled out to spout the plusses of a growing population- very good for business that's for sure! His business that is.

Bert is Chairman of the Denis Home Construction Corporation - a finance, factory and land-bank rolled up in one.
Was one meant to get the impression that what is good for Bert Denis is good for the country? And then, not to worry about his vested interest, but treat his opinion (that we should power-away at growing the population ) as more worthy of consideration than our own perceptions.

Pro-high-immigration former democrat senator, Andrew Bartlett, went the conventional economics route in advocating high population growth and immigration.

Lord knows what Bob Carr actually said in addition to what was reported, but his voice and opinion about the need for prudence, care and consideration of the environment was drowned out by platitudes and clichés from the likes of Wayne Swan (Federal Treasurer).

Ken Henry (Treasury Secretary) sounded some sort of warning re the "challenges" of massive population growth with regard to economic and social infrastructure, but most cautionary comments got overwhelmed and drowned out by enthusiastic growthism.

Where was Kelvin Thomson?

Why did the ABC not ask an environmentalist some hard questions and then deal with the hard answers ?
Where was the only coherent politician on this matter - Kelvin Thomson? His absence was a glaring omission.

Whatever journalism

Instead Channel 2 viewers were served up with the usual homogenised glop of current journalism: "We'll ask this one and that one what they think (rather than actually examine the facts and impact of population growth), put it all together with a palatable "balance", glossing over the vested interests of those we promote as 'authorities', and there's your show or whatever."

Whatever!

Illustration: "Cage metropolis". The building block for the nightmare city depicted in the illustration comes from stills taken from a France2 (National government) television news report on 9 September 2009. The report showed people living in cages, several to a room, and paying USD$120 weekly in rent.[1]


This suffering is the result of population pressure in a system which does not protect human rights from its impact, in Hong Kong, an ex-British protectorate. We cannot blame it on the recent Chinese government, which has retained the British system. When the British took Hong Kong over, there was no population problem like this. It was a colonial creation which the mainland Chinese have chosen to perpetuate.

Australia's system - like Canada's and most in the USA - shares many of Hong Kong's problems, in part because its land-use planning laws have similar origins, and because population growth is encouraged despite the problems that it causes.

In Australia more people every day are homeless. If you doubt just how precarious many peoples’ situations have already become, have a look at the Four Corners video-report on homelessness, "The Last Chance Motel"

Underpinning the out-of-control cost of living in Australia is the massive rise in land-costs as the principle factor in housing prices and the cost of productive activities. These costs radically reduce the margins for profit in production and the margins for economy among wage-earners, raising costs for Australian small business and consumers.

The Australian Consumer Price Index will not tell you this because it has never counted land in the costs it surveys. The reason is because land is not supposed to be a ‘consumable’, even though the property developers package and market it just like one.

Is this the way we want to live?

Have we even been asked?
Why are we being pushed into this nightmare and who is responsible?
Read on:

Salt with a grain of salt ...

"Where to put the extra millions at the end of the 21st century?" Bernard Salt asks readers of Mr Murdoch’s Australian, September 10, 2009.

What? Doesn't Mr Salt know? I thought he was going to put them up in his lounge room.

Seriously though, Mr Salt, a partner in KPMG, has been doing little else but market rapid and continuous population growth for Australia over the past ten or fifteen years. So, if he doesn't know where to put them, why does he do it?

Recently I heard a radio presenter say, "Demographer Bernard Salt has looked into his crystal ball and has predicted that Australia’s population will grow …"

Mr Salt bills himself as a 'demographer', but I think it is fair to describe him as a property development marketer who describes himself as a demographer and who has used that title to give authority to his claim that high immigration and constant population movement within Australia is natural, inevitable or desirable and that he is a clever spotter of it.
And Mr Salt doesn’t ‘predict’ on the basis of pure statistical trends. Along with other high-profile members of the Growth Lobby, he influences trends. He does this in part by making media announcements as if trends to rapid growth are predictive and then inviting people to invest in the likelihood that infrastructure and housing demand will increase as the population growth does. He also doesn’t just suggest that trends will continue. He is a member of a group which benefits financially from population growth and therefore actually tries to push trends to go upwards faster.

Why is Bernard Salt so important?

Bernard Salt is a spokesperson for the Population Growth Lobby, which I identify as a set of industries which make money out of population growth and organize to promote it.

Whilst there are other media-promoted spokespeople for the Growth Lobby, such as Peter McDonald of the ANU, Salt is one of the most ubiquitous, appearing frequently in most or all forms of the mainstream media. Not only has he recently been featured in long articles in Murdoch’s Australian, he also now has a column in the Herald Sun. He is also quoted by state and federal governments. The amplitude given to his statements by the mainstream media and government means that what he says has massive political ramifications.

Population numbers touch every aspect of society

As the then Senator Barry Jones said years ago, in relation to the 1994 Inquiry into Australia’s population carrying capacity, "Population numbers touch every aspect of society."

Uncontrolled population growth is a juggernaut.

You and I haven’t actually been asked by our governments whether we want to be dragged along in the slipstream of the growthist juggernaut, but we have the right to be asked.

As citizens we should be asked before it continues to go ahead.

It is wrong that government and mainstream media have tried to normalize growthism through repetitive promotion of it, via voices like Bernard Salt’s, before any public debate has taken place. Any so-called debate has been conducted with growth lobby promoters given talking rights as if they were ordinary citizens without vested interests, but also featured as authorities with more weight than citizens, quoted and amplified ad nauseum by the mainstream media, public and commercial. The essence of democracy is that the citizen’s voice has primacy over that of any private institution with vested interests in issues of national and state government, resources and assets. That value is being lost in the public-private production of out-of-democratic-control population growth in Australia.

KPMG and the "Big Shift"

As I mentioned earlier, Mr Salt is a partner in KPMG Australia. KPMG is part of an international accounting company with business relationships with many corporations, whose reputation is not unblemished.[5]

Ten or fifteen years ago I was curious to notice that KPMG Australia was in the business of publishing annual 'population growth trends' in the form of books or folders for businesses that wanted to make money by speculating on where there would be rising demand for land, power and goods. As I recollect, some 15 years ago, these printed volumes cost around $300 each.

When I first noticed KPMG’s role in marketing population growth to business, the internet was not even available for ordinary people. Now Australian property and citizenship are marketed at ever-increasing volume and with almost no restraints over the internet to the world. The profits for those commercial interests which have acquired control over land, water, power and other resources, plus the associated services and infrastructure, run literally to billions of dollars, narrowly channeled to a relative few individuals and corporate streams. That situation has created a political, demographic and inflationary tsunami which threatens to crush any democracy and quality of life in Australia.

Before the internet, Mr Salt himself did not seem to me to stand out from the crowd. He was spotted as a major marketing talent by the Growth Lobby at some stage, however - perhaps because he was waving so hard - and came into focus with his - ahem - wittily titled book, The Big Shift, which came out in around 2002.

Manipulating housing prices and population growth

The claim to fame of The Big Shift was to predict that housing prices (read land-prices) would grow in Melbourne more than they would in Sydney. And you only have to look at Hong Kong where people pay a fortune to live in smaller and smaller places to see that Salt was right on the nose for the money. (See the illustration, "Cage City".) Where there is growth these days there is pain, and someone has to benefit.

Since Sydney was having huge problems expanding, despite the militant growthists in NSW parliament at the time – Bob Carr not withstanding - the Growth Lobby had honed in on Melbourne. The Lobby was marketing population growth and property development there with a vengeance, destroying democracy in the process. (One nightmare event was Mr Bracks' Melbourne Population Summit in 2002, where school children were bused in with organised enthusiasm reminiscent of a Hitler Rally - Lebensraum! Lebensraum! – and addressed by business ‘leaders’ like Richard Pratt and Steve Vizard.) [2]

What’s different about Mr Salt’s recent article?

In his September 10th article, to my knowledge, Mr Salt has taken a slightly different tack. Here he is warning politicians that the population projections they relay to the electorate as 'predictions' to justify their engineering of artificially stimulated population growth will continue exponentially beyond their theoretical statistical boundaries.

He is right. To put it a little more folklorically, these political sorcerers' apprentices have meddled dangerously with demographics and have unleashed an exponentially growing number of angry magic mops - the angry mop being a metaphor for insoluble, compounding problems and the sorcerer’s apprentice a metaphore for Mickey Mouse politics.

Safe to call out "Fire!" after the house has burned down?

Why is Mr Salt only just now mentioning that the consequence of accelerating population growth to the degree that Australian politicians have been doing is dangerous?

This overpopulation has been caused through excessive immigration to a population which, attentive to the signs all around it, was limiting its own growth by slowing down natural increase.

This overpopulation is not the public’s fault, for they have not been given any real role in the political decision, nor have they received dispassionate information about it.

The fault for this lies in the members of the growth lobby who have militated irresponsibly for population growth and in the members of governments which have allowed the lobby’s agenda to run Australia’s politics, sidestepping democracy.

Overpopulation means starvation, thirst, poverty, insecurity, homelessness, environmental degradation, no wildlife, and corrupt and terrible politics. We already have all these things but they can all get worse with more population growth.
When Bernard Salt was marketing his Big Shift book with its socially divisive generalisations about how younger people should resent 'Baby Boomers' a few years ago he didn't have too much to say then about how:

"There is the very real prospect that urban planners will have to manage the development of three Australian mega-regions (Sydney, Melbourne, southeast Queensland) each rising to between five and seven million by century's end. This means Sydney and Melbourne will have to accommodate an extra three million residents, or two million more than current planning has considered."

Pardon? Urban planners managing the very mess they created and which Salt writes that they could not even see coming? Lunatics in charge of the asylum? Mr Salt, it is up to we the people, to manage our own affairs. It is called 'self-government' and 'democracy'. Butt out!

Nor did he say then:

"If Melbourne and Sydney are to grow to seven million and beyond, surely both cities need to consider long-term water and power supplies."

Or warn that we would run out of water and power:

"It may be possible to crib a few extra years of water supply by preservation and pipelines but this will not supply water needs for the two million-plus residents expected in Sydney and Melbourne beyond 2030."

Or tell the politicians:

"I simply do not see the range of solutions being offered as sufficiently robust to accommodate the scale of growth Australia must accommodate this century."

He did not say:

"Urban consolidation is all well and good but it is simply not possible to add three million people to Melbourne's existing urban footprint. Even if it were technically possible, the citizenry wouldn't accept it."

Or add, sotto voce, tongue in cheek ha ha:

"Although I suppose there is the option of enforcing compliance to urban consolidation laws using a special squad of enforcers."

The dangerous myth that we must have population growth

Nonetheless, if the article introduced a few disclaimers this time, Bernard was still back to his old tricks: at pains to reinforce the growth lobby myth of the inexorable:

"Water savings and renewable energy make a great contribution to the efficient operation of our cities as long as the rate of urban growth is not too vigorous or long-lasting. And that's the issue. Australia will be an immigrant nation for our lifetime and for the lifetime of our grandchildren."

(Who says? Bernard Salt says. And the Murdoch press promotes the ideology.)

Then, seizing the territory of environmentalists, he calls for a 'debate':

"What this nation needs is a frank and robust debate about options for population and urban growth on a grand scale and over the long term."

Now, I would just like to point out that the Nation may need a debate, but that debate should be among the people. Corporate spruikers like Bernard Salt and their sponsors – KPMG, Mr Murdoch, Fairfax et al - or their minders and amplifiers – who include, I am afraid, Mr Rudd and Mr Brumby, as well as a raft of other sorcerers' apprentices who started off the magic mop avalanche - don't have the right to a voice in a citizens’ 'debate'.

Why ban Growth Lobby spokespersons from a citizens’ population debate?

Why don’t Growth Lobby spokespersons have a right to a voice in a debate on population growth? Because they don't 'debate'; they market propaganda. They are not acting in the capacity of citizens. They are corporate entity spokespersons. They have narrow profit motives which overwhelm the rights of citizens. Some may actually believe their ideology, but it is a dangerous ideology and should be labeled as such, along with racism. The spokespeople for the Growth Lobby have occupied and taken over the media in every shape and form for years now. They have not just influenced the so-called 'debate' or 'discussion'; they have actually influenced the size of our population and our related fate.

They are in fact responsible for us running out of water, paying unreasonable prices for land, and losing our democracy to laws privileging planning and developers’ objectives over human rights. They have advocated our perilous situation and many can clearly be shown to have done so in the pursuit of related financial benefits, or in order to remain in office in a country where the mainstream commercial media will either ignore you, discredit you or overwhelm your voice with their propaganda, if you are against population growth and have a rational argument. [3]

Indeed, overwhelming of rational argument is what seems to be taking place at the moment in the Press. Kelvin Thomson has come out with sound arguments pointing to the absolute folly of continuing avoidable population growth in Australia. Immediately there is an absolute tsunami of growthist propaganda coming out of every media organ.

And the growth lobby is not going to lose the opportunity to turn the spotlight on growth to their advantage.

There is no place for the commercial growth lobby in this debate

Here's their punchline, in the words of Bernard Salt:

"In this debate I'd put hard questions on the table such as the option of constructing metropolitan dams and nuclear power stations."

Mr Salt wants to ... surprise, surprise... argue a need to build nuclear power plants to supply power for the out-of-control population growth which HE says, "Australia must accommodate this century."

Well, actually, it's not very surprising, because it has been obvious that the business lobby was forcing population growth on Australians so as to have an excuse to 'go nuclear'.

Honestly, I wouldn't be so shocked, except that Mr Salt and his ilk really don't seem to care whether or not it works.

See "Nuclear power, totalitarianism and overpopulation in Australia"
If it doesn’t work, millions of Australians will die because you cannot run a complex society without huge amounts of power and you cannot mass produce food and transport it within such a society without cheap and abundant fuel. Going by the major oil discovery trends and depletion models, access to cheap and abundant fossil fuel is currently on the way out.[4]
Furthermore, if we are to attempt to deal with this terrible problem by using nuclear power, then the people who are expected to continue to suffer for it – Australian taxpayers – must own it and control it. Before any population growth goes ahead, the government should contract with Australia’s citizens to make laws so that those who expect to make a profit out of population growth by building cities around power plants, should be made to pay for that power with their profits in taxes on population growth impact-related profits. Indeed, these laws should apply to anyone making a profit out of any impacts related to politically stimulated or politically engineered population-growth. This would allow for immigration to replace emigration, but not to exceed it until such time as the population had stopped growing.

NOTES

[2] Read more about the cage cities and about how the promise of improved living standards from industrialisation has panned out in Hong Kong. Australia is prey to the same colonial myth associating big populations with wealth. The reality is that the myth justifies a system that exploits people horribly, then chews them up and spits them out. Governments that foster continuous population growth can never keep up with the provision of housing and never have any intention to do so. All policies are palliatives.
Read about it on the Urban Poor Asia: Asian Coalition for Housing Rights. On one page, the Society for Community Organisation (SoCO), reports on a recently finished survey of Hong Kong's street sleepers. "The numbers are on the rise - from 819 in January 2000 to 1,259 in December 2000. .... Not large numbers by Asian standards ... but a rise of 47% .... The surge is attributed to a change in welfare policy and the recession.
Wages for low paying jobs have dropped 30 to 50% over the past 2 years, so many people may not be able to afford housing. Some unemployed refuse to seek the dole (unemployment relief) for fear of being stigmatized. According to the survey there are more younger people becoming street sleepers.
SoCO has urged the welfare department to adjust the unemployment application process to take into account the realities of the poor.
The government according to Ho, have taken up many of the recommendations resulting from the SoCO survey. When the survey was published, one immediate impact was an increase in the government budget allocation for outreach workers.

The SURVEY and other information on Hong Kong's urban poor and Housing Policies is available from SoCO

[2] Pratt and Vizard, together with Tim Watts of OzPop (junior organization to APop sponsored by the New America Foundation), also published the speeches from the event in a book.

[3] How would we prove such a political motive? By showing where the media repeatedly published politicians repeatedly making ideologically-based growthist statements where counter-arguments were put but neither published by the media nor responded to sensibly by the politicians.

[4] There are a great many sources, but I can vouch for Seppo A. Korpela, “Prediction of World Peak Oil production”; Colin J Campbell, “The Assessment and importance of oil depletion;” Seppo Korpela, “Coal Resources of the World;” Michael Dittmar, “Fusion Illusions;” and the articles on Nuclear Fission and on Geothermal power and Australia and France after Fossil Fuel by myself in Sheila Newman, (Ed), The Final Energy Crisis, Pluto Press, UK, 2008

[5] See some more re KPMG in Naomi Klein article ]