Mass immigration, urbanisation, and industrial agriculture
The original article can be found on sinkinglifeboat.blogspot.com.
It was a different world in the 1940s. Nearly half of Canadians and 40% of Americans lived outside urban areas. People grew much of their own food. During the war many had "victory" gardens and my parents had a farm in the Fraser Valley. As a boy my memories were that some things just were not available "out of season". No one expected that the full range of fruits and vegetables now exported from California and beyond should be provided as a matter of right. One other memory, when you ate a tomato or orange, you almost had to eat it over the sink. They were rich and obviously dense with nutrients.
That was a Canada of 10 million people (18 by 1960). Could a Canada of three times that number be fed that way? What happens to agriculture when it must serve an artificially high population base? When 18% of Class 1 farmland is covered with subdivisions to house more people, two-thirds of whom are imported? When to increase the productivity of that farmed land the soils are stripped of nutrients and filled with chemicals? What happens to our food? Thomas Pawlik answers that question in his book The End of Food.
Pawlik notes that since 1950 supermarket potatoes in Canada haven’t contained Vitamin A and their iron content has been reduced by 57%, along with their Vitamin C. Tomatoes have lost 61.5% of their calcium, 35.5% of their iron and 50% of their Vitamin A while gaining 200% more sodium. Of course, what’s got into livestock is an entirely new chapter. Bottom line: I have to eat five times as much of what I did in the 50s to get the equivalent amount of vitamins and minerals. We’re over-weight and yet under-fed.
We must ask some serious questions about agriculture in the face of runaway population growth and the collapse of the oil economy. We expect to feed a country like Canada which has only 5-7% of its land base as legitimately arable, with comparatively poor quality soil in relation to America, Britain and France and a population of 33 million that is currently growing faster than any G8 country. When the oil runs out, Canada and the United States might expect between one half to one third of its population to starve. (cf. Eating Fossil Fuels, Dale Pfeiffer).
According to an analysis by J.R. Wakefield of Komoka, Ontario, a typical Canadian city like London, population 400,000, in the heart of farm country, could not feed itself, despite conscripting all of its labour to replace petroleum dependent farm machinery. 200,000 draught animals would be needed, but even then, productivity per acre would drop dramatically, and of course, food could not be frozen for storage. "Relocalization" for the population we have is, as Wakefield has shown, a joke and a pipedream.
If that scenario is not to your liking, try climate change. James Lovelock says that the United Kingdom, to survive global warming, will have to confine human habitation to one-third the island’s land surface, devote one-third entirely to wilderness, and the last third to intensive agriculture. Here’s the trade-off. One can deliver low-nutrient food to a high volume of people, or high-nutrient food to a low volume of people. It is unlikely that 61 million British people, or more if current immigration rates persist, are going to fed by mechanized, oil-based, soil-depleting methods, so strike off the first option.
Whenever one warns of global warming, of course, Mary Poppins chimes in that this is good news for northern countries who could use a longer growing season. Yeah, but could we use the tropical pests and droughts? Australia is an object lesson on the dangers of letting land developers and politicians determine your population level without bothering to notice how climate change and water shortages will affect agricultural productivity.
In Canada post-carbon agriculture should give us a better product, but not for the market that has been built up the last 50 years. Agribusiness and its criminal mistreatment of the land is but the inevitable creature of the population explosion, not simply an extension of wicked capitalism. Its welcome demise with the death of oil and the re-emergence of small farming and backyard gardens will, like renewable energy sources, not even begin to save the day for the masses. Instead more labour-intensive farming that relies on manure and crop-rotation will provide nutrient-dense food for far fewer people.
We have been living on borrowed time. And some of us will survive to eat the way we were meant to----eating local produce, and eating it in season. Others, like myself, will likely succumb to disease, malnutrition or illness untreatable by a medical system that has collapsed under the weight of too many foreign passengers that developers, cheap labour employers and human rights activists have lobbied to bring to our shores.
Tim Murray
Historic NSW holiday retreat for workers' children threatened by developers
A beautiful and historic holiday retreat for workers' children bought by the NSW union movement back in the '40s in the Ku-ring-gai National Park north of Sydney is threatened by developers, assisted by their bidders at the helm of the NSW government, Premier Morris Iemma, Treasurer Michael Costa and Minister for Planning Freank Sartor. The group Friends of Currawong has launched a public campaign to prevent Camp Currawong being turned into yet another playground for the world's wealthy elite, "something ike St Tropez".
This story will be told on tonight's (Thursday 27 March 2008) viewing on ABC television's The 7.30 report.
Sold for $15 million in February 2007 by Unions NSW secretary John Robertson, Currawong is now in the hands of the developers Eduard Litver and Allen Linz, who are at the same time turning Bondi waterfront into "something like St Tropez". The broker of the sale was one David Tanevski who is also linked by a maze of business deals to Linz, Litver and formerly to one Michael Costa, as secretary of Unions NSW and now NSW treasurer.
Currawong is a developer's wet dream. Or would be, were the beachfront not currently occupied by a charming collection of shacks and a farmhouse described by Heritage NSW as possessing "state historical significance as the most intact remaining . mid-20th century, union-organised workers' holiday camp in NSW and probably Australia".
The developers have persuaded Minister for Planning and Heritage Frank Sartor that Currawong is scarcely worth noticing, much less listing, while simultaneously claiming it is so significant it is a Part 3A State Significant Development Site (automatically suspending all heritage and environmental safeguards).
Currawong is too important and sensitive to be governed by the Heritage Council. Too important and sensitive not to be exploited for a fast buck by ALP-connected developers. And too important and sensitive not to have the minister's personal thumbprint on such development.
Friends of Currawong are still in there fighting to save it. It would take about sixteen paragraphs to tell you about the ups and downs. It is great that (at least part of the saga) is on the 7.30 Report tonight#main_fn1">1.
Our best
Jo Holder & Shane Withington
Co-convenors, Friends of Currawong
Jo - 0406 537933
Footnotes
#main_fn1" id="main_fn1">1 See transcript at www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2007/s2201091.htm
Drug harm minimisation group seeks evidence-based drugs policies
Brian McConnell, President of the ACT group Friends and Families for Drug Law Reform (www.ffdlr.org.au) wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on 6 March 2008.
The Hon Kevin Rudd MP
Prime Minister
Parliament House
CANBERRA ACT 2600
An open letter seeking evidence-based drug policies
Dear Prime Minister,
A number of days ago you said that you were preparing to make an announcement on illicit drugs. You have also said that you are determined to tackle homelessness, mental health, education, child protection, and other social problems and that you would bring evidence to bear in policies of your government.
Evidence shows that drugs are a potent factor in a high percentage of all these social problems. No substantial headway in removing the social problems that you have so clearly identified will ever be made unless drug policy is seriously examined. Priority must be given to improving functionality of people with drug problems. But should not necessarily be making them drug free nor attempting to rid Australia of all drugs.
It is these latter issues that has formed the core of thinking about and the implementation of Australia’s drug policy.
The outcome of that policy has been somewhat different from that which was expected. We now have a very large profitable black market that has more and better resources than law enforcement; we now have more potent concentrated drugs that are easier to smuggle, some of which need to be injected or inhaled for effect – practices that are not without their extreme dangers. The black market appears to be unstoppable and when squeezed responds like a balloon, bulging with a new more potent drug or the emergence of a new, more cunning Mr Big.
There have been costs - financial costs of in excess of $7 billion a year for governments and business. Despite the best evidence saying that $1 spent on drug treatment is up to seven times more effective in reducing supply of drugs, Australian governments spend three times more on law enforcement.
And yet we do not evaluate the effectiveness of our law enforcement approach. The national Crime Authority, shortly before it was abolished, stated that law enforcement only captured about 13% of the heroin that came into the country. Thus failing to capture 87% of the imported heroin in that year. Experts have indicated that a capture rate of better than 60% is needed to have any impact on the drug market – a figure that is unlikely to be achieved under current practices.
Laws have been tightened and harsher penalties introduced and yet we have the worst epidemic of the drug "ice" coupled with the resurgence of heroin. The outcome of those laws has not effected the market but has widened the net, potentially capturing more users, not dealers, and expanding the population of our jails of which about 80% are there for drug related reasons.
But there are social costs also of our present approach to dealing with illicit drugs. There is an incalculable cost to families. We also know that treatment services are needed yet they are under-resourced. The potential clients of those services have been marginalised and ostracized by society such that many are reluctant to use those services. They are treated punitively by many services that should be there to help and often without thought of the consequences – in the case of my own son, at the time a recent university graduate, who had overdosed and awoke in hospital to the police at the end of his bed eager to make a bust. My son panicked, took a hurried holiday and overdosed and died away from the treatment and family support that he desperately needed. It was an opportunity and a life unnecessarily lost. Many families have similar tragic stories.
Prime Minister let me be clear, I am not saying that drugs are without danger. They all have dangers, including alcohol as you have noted. It is simply that our attempts to stop their use has not been as effective as it could be and that our approach has introduced many more dangers, sometimes more dangerous than the drugs themselves. Addictive substances whether they be illicit drugs, alcohol or tobacco are not ordinary commodities and should not be treated as such. Nor am I saying all those who use drugs are saints. Many are foolish or reckless young people. But they do not deserve to die because of our indifference to the need to provide the right services. Nor do they deserve to have their life chances destroyed because they have attracted a criminal record for their foolishness.
I know that finding the right balance of solutions will not be easy. We have yet to find that balance. Illicit drug policies need to be based on evidence and importantly all such policies need to be objectively evaluated from a broad perspective at regular intervals. The results of that evaluation would inform the next iteration of drug policy.
Before making your policy announcement on illicit drugs I ask, no plead that you subject it to at least the following tests:
- Does it provide the best return on investment, in social as well as economic terms, and does it cause the least possible harm to individuals as well as society;
- Has the past primary focus on the elimination of supply been the most effective means of reducing harms or is there a better and more balanced alternative?
- Does this policy response best address problems associated with those who are dependent on illicit drugs and those users who are not?
- Are these measures likely to be most effective in reducing availability?
- Does it adopt different strategies to deal with particular drugs having regard to their different harms?
Prime Minister I am at your disposal should you wish to discuss these matters further.
Yours sincerely
Brian McConnell
President
My close encounter with the most majestic of raptors
Why the Brisbane Mayoral elections should not have been 'boring'
There was a fascinating pay-off in James Sinnamon's predictably unsuccessful bid for Lord Mayor in the recent Brisbane elections. In his "Courier Mail provides 'boring', yet unbalanced, coverage of Brisbane City Council elections"#main-fn1">1 (March 17-20, 2008) correspondence between Sinnamon and Emma Chalmers, the Courier Mail journalist responsible for much of that paper's election coverage, provides a valuable sociological tool for what it reveals about the media and politics.
Teachers, students, and citizens, take note.
Mr Sinnamon's dialogue demonstrates that the Courier Mail does not treat all candidates in an election equally.
In their defense that newspaper might say that equity and fairness are up to the formal process of the election and that newspapers just publish the news.
But some might say that it is the mainstream press that determines the outcome of elections, or at least, who is really in the running, which is not the same thing as who is actually running.
On page 11 of the Courier Mail of election day Saturday 15 March, journalist Emma Chalmers asked: "Have these been the most boring Council elections?"
In response, James Sinnamon points out that Ms Chalmer's coverage of the elections made them boring. He later says that he realizes he cannot hold Ms Chalmers responsible for everything that is wrong in the Brisbane Courier Mail's coverage of Brisbane council policy and practice, but, as he adds, he can only address these problems by asking the journalist questions, taking her work at face value.
Indeed, how responsible is Ms Chalmers for the quality of political analysis in her articles? In an Anglophone world of internationally syndicated political blanding, Emma Chalmer's writing is entirely appropriate. There is a theory (which seems self-evident) that media owners choose media editors and those editors choose the journalists in a self-perpetuating cycle of intellectual and political supineness#main-fn2">2.
If crucial elections are reported in an incredibly boring way, Mr Public will hold them in contempt, and protests about democracy and the information distribution monopolies will remain minimal.
Can others recognize these trends? For so many Australians, compared to television and sports, electoral participation remains a chore of mysteriously over-rated importance because, due to the destructive skill of mainstream media, this supremely interesting area which would normally eclipse Neighbours, since it is about real neighbours, comes across as if it does not concern anyone but a few blandly suited men, who have inexplicably risen to the top of the pile. In the case of the Brisbane Mayoral Elections, only two men in suits were given more than token importance. One looked as if he strayed out of a men's clothing ad, and the other, in shirt-sleeves, a salesman ready for the Saturday morning customers. Apart from these minor differences in style, there was little to tell them apart.
Yes, it was not the election which was boring; it was the exceedingly limited but repetitive coverage.
For this election contained a really new, important 'angle,' indicative of a fundamental desire for political and economic change. And that was that FOUR candidates, not just James Sinnamon, declared that they had policies against population growth.
Of course these candidates for a major policy change ran right up against the big vested interests in a business-as-usual outcome for the Brisbane Council election. Those vested interests are the property development industry and its upstream and downstream dependents, which include the Courier Mail. Many are grouped under the umbrella of The Australian Property Council. Such industries have chosen to structure themselves around continuously increasing population growth, without which most would not survive.
To this end they naturally prefer mayors and councilors who will not seriously challenge their objectives. "Can Do" Newman has been giving them what they want and telling Brisbanites that this is what Brisbane needs, for years now, in what the Property council of Australia describes as the "Council's high quality working relationship with the State Government" and "the cooperative relationship between the State Government and Liberal Lord Mayor Campbell Newman."#main-fn3">3
The other candidate taken seriously by the press, Mr Greg Rowell, a retired professional cricketer, and the ALP counterpart to Campbell Newman, has been employed by the Property Council of Australia as a 'senior policy advisor' since 2005, working "extensively with the State Government and Brisbane City Council." #main-fn4">4
The Property Council sent questionnaires to all the candidates, promising a later press release. The questionnaires were, not surprisingly, looking for supporters of more and more development, with fewer restrictions and fewer costs to developers.
Four candidates openly stated they opposed the unfettered development resulting from the turbo-charged population growth which blights Brisbane and costs ordinary people money, time and comfort, ruining amenity and the natural environment, raising the cost of housing, water and land.
Four candidates lined up to represent the side that opposes growth.
Yet Newman and Rowell were promoted as the only show in town through mainstream media's extremely boring treatment of this potentially riveting, not to say crucial, election.
Ms Chalmer's view of the Brisbane elections gives almost no coverage to anyone other than what she calls, the 'major contenders'. She writes, "we have an obligation to adequately scrutinise the promises being made by the major parties and major contenders." But not the major issues, apparently.
Democracy in Paris and in Brisbane: two different systems
Brisbane can't hold a candle to the recent mayoral elections in Paris. There the press treated respectfully a 27 year veteran street mendicant in the swish suburb of St Germain des près (6th arrondissment), and he actually retained 3.7% of the votes.
That is, at 577 out of 15,000, slightly fewer than James Sinnamon, who, with almost no publicity, achieved less than one per cent of the Brisbane vote.
The big difference for these two unknowns was in the attitude of the press and the public towards democracy and values over social and strategic position.
French mainstream media has nothing like the connections to property and population growthism that afflict Australia and other Anglophone countries. The French electoral system also permits many more parties and individuals to make a running.
This is perhaps not surprising in the country which symbolised a successful revolution by storming the Bastille in 1789, only one year after Australia became a penal colony for political prisoners of poverty. Child of the revolution, himself, politician and author Victor Hugo wrote Les Miserables, in which escaped convict, Jean Valjean, imprisoned for stealing bread, becomes Mayor by popular demand because he is so good and kind.
Here is how TFI, French television online, reported on the person and policies of Jean-Marc Restoux, street-dwelling candidate for the Parisien mayoral elections:
"Even if he doesn't have the political bearing, he has the rhetoric and the determination. His remarks are well thought out, his words are well-chosen, his ideas considered. [They quote him:] 'Today, in the 6th arrondissment, buildings are resold to luxury brand-names, rather than being made into public housing. There is nothing left here except luxury businesses'.(...). 'Exorbitant rents push old people out. We must, at all costs, maintain the local businesses, in the knowledge that wealth lies in their diversity', he exhorts, wishing 'to show another way to people' and to integrate into the social dialogue more people who, like himself, survive precariously . Among his ideas is one of encouraging people to mentor and assist people in difficulty. 'That those who are able to, assist the homeless by offering them a place to live with low rent and help with administrative tasks, providing a leg-up for them. It should not be forgotten that accidents in life can happen to everyone.' #main-fn5">5(My translation)
James Sinnamon's program#main-fn6">6 was not dissimilar, but received no similar interest from the Australian media of course.
A different land-use planning and housing system
At least in Paris property speculation is severely hampered by speculation and inheritance taxes and the state has an obligation to see that everyone is housed. This year it became possible to sue a European state if you are homeless. Paris does not have the insane problem of out of control development and mass immigration from other states and the rest of the world, albeit it does have a problem with family reunion and a stock of 'clandestins' which ebbs and flows with the seasons. Not only are citizens owed shelter by the State but so are any legally present immigrant workers. Population-building for the simple purpose of enriching land-owners would cost too much to publicly funded programs for ordinary citizens to allow it to happen. Paris real-estate does have a problem of its capacity to attract the rich, chic business and the corporations, which have an upwards impact on rents. But France and Paris ceased to pull down buildings to intensify development when they abandoned their costly policy of population numbers-building in 1973. Since then the accent has been on restoration and structural insulation. In fact, over the period 1973-1975, due to the pull-back by the state from the policy of expansion and intensification of development, many developers and builders went broke. Those who survived adapted to a relatively steady-state situation. No major influence in France developed power through population building in the past 35 years.
Australian information production, treatment, and distribution
In Australia a few semi-dynastic media owners have obtained from successive leaders what amounts to a license to control the distribution of most of the information in the country and to decide what will be treated as important and what and who will be sidelined or ignored.
Our political, legal and business figures depend on those media-organs for almost all their profile and influence. By providing the powerful with a voice, the media derives more power through their authority. From this arises a situation where the public has been educated to take seriously only candidates who have press profile. To gain that profile, public figures (with the possible exception of notorious criminals) are generally notable for saying nothing which will make the media look upon them unfavourably. This seals the situation where the media confers authority upon certain ideas, individuals and industries, in a rim of brilliant limelight, whilst casting a shadow over most of the rest of the planet and its people, plants and animals.
This might not be so awful, were the media merely a dynastic system, ruled by variously colorful or petty kings. The problem is that the media is a monster network of corporations of which newspapers, television, radio and digital media are only the face and mouth. Behind this public façade are financial, land and commodity interests permeating every facet of human enterprise. Perhaps the most fundamental and far-reaching of these interests is the property development empire that the great bulk of Australian print media is intimately involved with.
Whilst many readers probably are aware that newspapers carry huge amounts of real-estate adds, and those readers may assume that those papers are therefore reliant on the patronage of property marketers, few realize that the situation goes much further even than this.
The fact is that Australian newspaper corporations now own and control the bulk of Australian property marketing on an international level. Our newspapers do not rely on getting advertisements; to a large degree they control the Australian portal to the entire world property market because they control the distribution and diffusion of information about this market and for several years they have been in the business of actually marketing the property market itself at local, national and global level.
This 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.
In a document called its "Report Card," summarising policy, the APC demonstrates nationally coordinated planning and international objectives, and massive reach for political power in every area of Australian politics. It is clear from this report that the APC believes it is responsible for major press articles and detailed government policies in areas of tax, planning, trade regulation, and international borders (to name just a few big areas). What is still not clear is whether there are any direct business links to media ownership or control. #main-fn7">7,#main-fn8">8
With knowledge of the evolution of this system of corporatised government and media, one finds oneself wondering if the Australian Property Council (and its dependents, allies and similars) run Brisbane (among other states) and the Courier Mail helps them. Unless it is that the Courier Mail (News Ltd/Murdoch) runs Brisbane and the APC helps it. If this is the case, with the entire city and region given over to aggressive property development, one cannot help but wonder if any real government or citizens remain, or whether the whole Brisbane region (and indeed Australia) has simply been transformed de facto into privately owned, publicly managed real-estate, inhabited by renters and rate-payers with no more real say in government than feudal serfs.
I should conclude by saying that I do not think this situation is hopeless. I do not for a minute believe that the property development lobby groups and the media are consciously homogeneously malevolent forces. What I do hope is that, by bringing the impact on government and the environment of their perseverative success to public notice, I will stimulate a conscientious response to solving this problem. It will take serious electoral coverage and voter involvement on the one hand, careful government and law-making, and serious cultivation of overlooked principles of ecological and democratic well-being by the property, finance and media industries. For the good of Australia and for the good of the world, the Australian property industry and its dependents, must turn off their overly successful money-making machine and start to plan for the winding down of business to one of consolidatory long-term infrastructure maintenance in a consolidated democracy. It is time to stop growing bigger and taller. It is time to grow up and become responsible and kind.
Footnotes
#main-1" id="main-fn1">1. See candobetter.net/node/371
#main-2" id="main-fn2">2. "The House of Representatives Select Committee on the Print Media report, News and Fair Facts The Australian Print Media Industry (March 1992) acknowledged the importance of editorial independence, but rejected calls for legislative requirements for mechanisms to support it." Kim Jackson, "Media Ownership Regulation in Australia," Analysis and Policy, Social Policy Group, Parliamentary Library, Australia, http://www.aph.gov.au/library/intguide/SP/media_regulations.htm
#main-3" id="main-fn3">3. pcalive.netattention.com.au/act/page.asp?622=280779&E_Page=17720
#main-4" id="main-fn4">4. www.qld.alp.org.au/01_cms/details.asp?ID=37 as retrieved on 16 Mar 2008 19:26:19 GMT.
#main-5" id="main-fn5">5. See tf1.lci.fr/infos/elections-municipales/0,,3721508,00-clochard-qui-voulait-etre-maire-.html
#main-6" id="main-fn6">6. See candobetter.wikispaces.com
#main-7" id="main-fn7">7. In its report card, which summarises policy, demonstrating nationally coordinated planning and international objectives, and massive reach for political power in every area of Australian politics. It is clear from this report that the APC believes it is responsible for major press articles. What is still not clear is whether there are any direct business links to media ownership or control. www.propertyoz.com.au/PowerHouse2010/Congress2007_Reportcard.ppt
#main-8" id="main-fn8">8. In its online policy publication, "Powerhouse 2010 advocacy priorities, 2006/2007", www.propertyoz.com.au/PowerHouse2010/Congress2007_Reportcard.ppt, APC National President informs members that "In our tenth year as the Property Council, your association's political influence continues to grow and pay dividends in advocacy wins. 2006/2007 sees a big focus on economic development, infrastructure, tax and cutting red tape." The claim is borne out in this remarkable document, which indicates that the APC takes responsibility for stimulating various state governments to engage in what the many environmental and democracy activists would call extreme levels of development, debt and population growth.
Here are some extracts:
"Governments will cut property taxes when presented with persuasive arguments for economic growth.
Over the past two years the Property Council negotiated close to $1.7 billion of property tax cuts with state Labor governments. The Property Council's goal is to increase the tax savings pyramid every year.
"Kick starting the growth debate
Ten years ago, urban strategies, economic development and infrastructure were off the agenda. Now they will dominate political debate for the next decade"
"Long term growth strategies
After months of lobbying, the Sydney metro strategy has been released incorporating three quarters of our recommendations, along with draft plans for other regions and key regional cities."
"Plan to Deliver Melbourne 2030
The Property Council stepped in to fill a policy vacuum in the Melbourne 2030 debate by releasing the discussion paper, Plan to Deliver Melbourne 2030. We are now in discussions to make these recommendations a reality."
"Melbourne 2030 demonstration projects"
Melbourne 2030 gained momentum after the Victorian Government agreed to Property Council calls for the development of demonstration projects, such as the Dandenong Transit City."
"Increase use of borrowing
The Victorian Government almost doubled borrowings to deliver much needed infrastructure. The Government's recognition of the benefits of sensible borrowings comes after years of campaigning from the Property Council."
"Land Tax thresholds increased
The Property Council has ensured that the State Government honour its commitment to increase land tax thresholds for individual land tax payers in line with rising unimproved values, saving private investors hundreds of thousands of dollars in land tax each year."
"Water reform
Representations, submissions and public comment by the Property Council have resulted in the State Government acknowledging the need to reduce the considerable water and sewerage infrastructure backlog and undertake structural reform of these council owned businesses."
Do claims of higher immigrant wages answer objections to record Australian immigration levels?
Rupert Murdoch's Australian Newspaper in an article Migrant workers scoring top pay" has made use of figures which which purportedly show that immigrants earn more, rather than less than their Australian equivalents, , as if to answer any possible objection to Australia's current record high rate of immigration.
SKILLED temporary migrant workers are earning on average $15,000 more than their Australian counterparts, undermining trade union claims that the system is being abused to undercut local wages.
Figures obtained by The Australian show that holders of 457 visas, which allow temporary skilled migrants to work in Australia for up to four years, are earning more than the average salaries of local workers across all industries in which they are employed.
The figures have reignited the debate over the use of foreign workers, with the Opposition seizing on the data as "dispelling the myth" that temporary skills workers are driving down wages, but unions and the Rudd Government insist that many visa holders are exploited by unscrupulous employers.
Of course, notwithstanding these purportedly average figures, there still remains many documented examples of ruthless exploitation of immigrant workers, and their depressing on the value of the labour of many in Australia's current workforce and this remains a valid reason to oppose high immigration.
However, even if it were not true as the figures in the Australian purport to show, the case against immigration should not begin and end with that question alone, rather it should most of all concern what serves the best interests of the existing inhabitants of this country. Displacing existing workers by immigrant workers, whether those workers are paid more or less is not in their interests.
If we are to believe the free market economists, then the unstated conclusion to be drawn these statistics is that immigrant workers are paid better because they are more productive and skilled than their Australian counterparts.
However, other factors may help increase the amounts that skilled immigrants earn. One would be that they are inherently more mobile and hence more able to move to where better wages are on offer.
At this moment in time the Australian economy is hardly a typical economy by world standards. The ever-escalating level of exports of our finite endowment of mineral resources as well as the subdivision of bushland and agricultural land for residential development means that there is a wealth available for those with the niche skills required for this economic activity that would not be available in other economies. It should not be altogether surprising if much of this finds its way into pockets of skilled migrants, but this economic activity is unsustainable in the longer the longer term, and the wealth generated is at an unacceptable cost to the environment and future generations. Without these distortions in the Australian economy the picture would be very different.
Wherever the ultimate truth may lie in claims and counterclaims about relative wage levels in Australia's highly dysfunctional economy, this article is typical of the shallow self-serving treatment given to the complex and socially divisive issue of immigration by the Murdoch press. Amongst the many other questions not even acknowledged here or in any of its other pro-population-growth propaganda is the well understood effect of population growth adding to housing hyper-inflation, traffic congestion, destruction of bio-diversity, water shortages, demands for services that our governments can no longer meet and the ongoing decline in our quality of life.
See also Immigration myths demolished by economics journalist, Immigration as the quick fix
Can Canada's health care system survive mass immigration?
If the Canada of 1965 could have been preserved in aspic its medicare system might have been viable. But how is it now to contend with the massive numbers who make major claims on hospital services? Tim Murray, Director of Immigration Watch Canada describes the strains that runaway immigration levels have placed on Canada's health system.
A cynic might characterize Canada's medicare system as the universal, free, democratic and egalitarian access to a two-year waiting list. You jump the queue only if you have the bucks and the referral to jump over the 49th unless a life-threatening emergency sends you to the OR.
America's health care system on the other hand is discriminatory and expensive, but it offers immediate access to the best medical treatment in the world.
In both cases timely care for everyone is an elusive goal.
In any event Michael Moore's take on Canada is superficial, euphoric and unrealistic. New technology, abuse and the insatiable demands of an ever expanding clientele of elderly relatives sponsored by Third World immigrants is breaking the bank. It has been calculated that each sponsored immigrant in that age group will cost the Australian medical system $250,000. Since roughly 75% of Canadian immigrants and refugees, drawn from largely "non-traditional" sources, in fact consist of their unskilled dependent children, a terrifying portrait of the toll that Canadian immigration policy is taking on medicare could no doubt be drawn.
A recent article featured in the London Free Press (Thursday, March 13, 2008 "Hospitals forecast deficits") recognized population growth as one principal reason why the Canadian health system was on the brink of deficit financing, with half of Ontario's hospitals facing service cuts to meet the legal requirement for a balanced budget. Seventy percent of Canada's population growth is driven by immigration.
It was economist Milton Friedman who commented a decade ago that "It's just obvious that you can't have free immigration and a welfare state." As Robert Rector explained, to be properly understood, Friedman's observation should be viewed as applicable to the entire redistributive system of benefits, subsidies and services that lower income groups disproportionately enjoy at the expense of higher income groups.
Unfortunately this superstructure of benefits and services rests not only on an economic foundation but a cultural one as well. A people that is very much alike is more inclined to trust one another, and this trust translates into a willingness to vote for redistributive policies. But we are no longer a mostly ethnically homogeneous society with a shared respect for institutions and a shared sense of civic obligation. When a significant portion of the population is from another hemisphere, another culture or even another generation with different values, the welfare state is perceived as an unlocked candy store with services to be exploited to the maximum.
Redistributive policies like medicare are inversely correlated to cultural diversity. Rather than confront this reality, Canadian leftists demand yet more financial IV injections into the morbid body of the health care system. They refuse to acknowledge that even the Swedish Social Democrats, their role models, were forced to discover the "Laffer curve". That is, push the tax rate up beyond a certain level and tax revenues fall in response. Tax payers will not keep working and producing if they can't keep enough of their income. There are limits to what can be funded.
The Canadian model is not sustainable. It works only if there is enough public money to fund it and not enough patients with doctors to help them abuse it.
Those days are gone forever
Topic:
Courier Mail provides 'boring', yet unbalanced, coverage of Brisbane City Council elections
Brisbane's Courier Mail newspaper recently posed the question "Have these been the most boring elections?". This triggered an exchange of e-mails which began when Independent Mayoral candidate James Sinnamon wrote an open letter to the Courier Mail's City Hall reporter. See further below for Emma Chalmers' #reply1">reply and James Sinnamon's further #reply2">response.
Dear Emma Chalmers,
On page 11 of the Courier Mail of election day Saturday 15 March, you asked:
"Have these been the most boring Council elections?"
Given that your newspaper has systematically excluded any views which clash too markedly with the orthodoxy of the Courier Mail's editorial writers, is it any wonder?
And given the striking similarities between the policies of both the Labor Party and the Liberal Party, I would have thought that the Courier Mail, if it had wanted to inject any excitement into the campaign, let alone be objective and balanced, would have given more coverage to alternative views about how our city should progress.
As far as I can tell, all that Brisbane residents were able to learn from the pages of Courier Mail newspaper of my policies was contained within one sentence at the end of your article "Newman wary on rates as Rowell dithers on costings" of Friday 14 March#main-fn1">1 :
"... Mr Sinnamon ... wants a population cap."
Have I missed something?
It's not as if I had not provided you with material about me and it is not as if I didn't have something to say that was not relevant to the campaign or that was not different to what had been said by others. I sent you two media releases including links back to my web site (candobetter.wikispaces.com, candobetter.net #main-fn2">2). You interviewed me at City Hall on Thursday 14 March and you would have heard my contribution to the debate amongst the candidates.
Why was it not possible for your articles not to have fleshed out my views a little more? As examples:
- Why couldn't you have reported my point, backed up by the views of the Local Government Association, that it would have been impossible for Greg Rowell to keep his promise to keep rates at less than the rate of inflation without sacrificing current service levels service if population growth continues#main-fn1">3?
- Why couldn't the point I made during the debate on Friday, linking of Brisbane's current crisis of extreme housing unaffordability to Queensland's population growth, recklessly encouraged by Lord Mayor Campbell Newman, the BCC Labor Councillors, the Queensland State Government and, I would add, the Courier Mail, itself, have been reported in Saturday's Courier Mail#main-fn4">4?
- Why couldn't the point raised by members of the audience, and taken up by me, about Campbell Newman's failure to honour his 2004 election promise to Cannon Hill residents to save Minnippi Parklands, have been reported?
I will concede that I have been far less prolific than I wanted to be, due to time constraints, but I still believe that what I did provide you with certainly warranted considerably more than less than half of one sentence of coverage.
I believe that Lord Mayor Campbell Newman's unprecedented personal triumph of yesterday owes much to the Courier Mail's unbalanced reporting of the campaign and its unbalanced reporting, in past years, of issues at stake in Saturday's election - the North South Bypass Tunnel, the Hale Street Bridge, population growth, clearing of bushland, the water crisis, housing unaffordability, the second airport runway, the proposal for a new passenger ship terminal to cater for luxury passenger cruise ships, the bizarre proposal to entomb one third of the Brisbane River adjacent to the North Bank under concrete, etc.
As a result, Lord Mayor Campbell Newman intends to take this result as a mandate to continue with his extravagant plans to construct an alternative transport network underground and many other plans which, if not stopped, will destroy what remaining quality of life Brisbane has left to offer and its long term sustainability. Mr Newman's road infrastructure plans, given their ever-escalating costs and the ongoing depletion of the world's stocks of petroleum, make as much sense as the construction of pyramids by the Mayan rulers in the midst of the growing ecological crisis which was to ultimately destroy their civilisation.
The Brisbane residents will learn, to their cost, of the mistake they made on Saturday, and, when they do, I think many will reflect upon what factors influenced them to vote the way they did on Saturday.
As one intending to stand for office in 2012, I will have a lot to say about this in coming years. Will the Courier Mail be prepared, from now on, to report more objectively on these issues than it has in the past?
Finally, I have posted this to my web site. If you don't believe I have been fair to you in this letter, you are welcome to state why. I will post any response from you immediately below this letter, if you wish me to. Also, please feel welcome to phone me about this.
yours sincerely,
James Sinnamon
Footnotes
#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1. See "Newman wary on rates as Rowell dithers on costings", Courier Mail, 14 March 2008. I would also like to point out that I don't think the photo of me does me justice. I did cooperate with the cameraman by looking down at him at an odd angle. I would have with appreciated either being advised to pose differently or having a better photo of me selected.
#main-fn2" id="main-fn2">2. The domain names begining with 'candobetter' predated any thoughts of my challenging 'Can Do' Campbell for election as Lord Mayor of Brisbane. I would have chosen 'wecandobetter.net', but that was taken. Nevertheless, I believe that Brisbane residents would have found the domain name to have been true of myself had I been elected.
#main-fn3" id="main-fn3">3. For further information, see, also, my response to the questionnaire from the Property Council of Australia.
#main-fn4" id="main-fn1">4. See "Newman's Liberals close on Brisbane majority", Courier Mail (online) of Friday 14 February. This story was at the URL www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,23376890-952,00.html, but is seems that the story at that location has been over-hastily removed and replaced with the story Landslide means Campbell Newman must deliver promises of Saturday 16 March.
#reply1">
Emma Chalmers response of Monday 17 March
Dear James,
Thank you for taking the time to put together a comprehensive email.
From what you have written it appears that you have already made up your mind about the reasons you feel that you didn't get adequate coverage during the election, so I don't feel that there is much I can say that will change your view.
As you would appreciate, we have many demands on space in our paper and, while a number of mayoral aspirants around Queensland would have liked greater coverage, we have an obligation to adequately scrutinise the promises being made by the major parties and major contenders. I note you secured 700 votes on Saturday.
As you would also appreciate, even if you were to be elected Lord Mayor, the agenda of one of the major parties would end up prevailing because you would not have the numbers on the council floor to push through your policies.
I will point out that you did manage to get your photo prominently in the paper on Thursday, a feat not managed by the bulk of the mayoral aspirants in Queensland, let alone in Brisbane.
Kind regards,
Emma Chalmers, City Hall Reporter
#reply2">
James Sinnamon's further response of 20 March to Emma Chalmers
Dear Emma Chalmers,
Firstly, thank you for having taken the time to read my e-mail and respond to it. I have posted it to my website, immediately below my original letter. Please let me know if that is not OK. You are, of course, welcome to respond further, as is anyone else who wishes to either defend or criticise the Courier Mail's recent coverage of the Brisbane City Council's elections.
You wrote: From what you have written it appears that you have already made up your mind about the reasons you feel that you didn't get adequate coverage during the election, so I don't feel that there is much I can say that will change your view.
I believe that, to the contrary, I can fairly state that I am always open to persuasion by the evidence. I try to live by Keynes' dictum:
"When the facts change, I change my mind."#reply-fn1">1
At the moment, the overwhelming evidence is that, for the past four years at least, the Courier Mail has not provided balanced coverage of the issues at stake in last Saturday's elections. These include, as referred to in my earlier e-mail, the North South Bypass Tunnel and the Hale Street Bridge, in favour of which the Courier Mail has repeatedly published editorials, ignoring mountains of contrary evidence provided by experts, concerned citizens, and affected residents. I will pursue this further below.
You wrote: As you would appreciate, we have many demands on space in our paper and,while a number of mayoral aspirants around Queensland would have liked greater coverage ...
If you had only slightly reduced your newspaper's lavish, uncritical and fawning coverage of almost every word coming from Campbell Newman's campaign machine, I believe that you could easily have found the the space to give the independents more reasonable coverage.
Whilst I appreciate the Courier Mail's efforts to cover all of the local Government elections in Queensland, the Courier Mail is principally a Brisbane newspaper. So I would have thought it should have been able to manage, at one point over the past four weeks, to print a modest profile of each of the Mayoral candidates. If the local newspapers, B magazine, Qnews, with much more limited space, could have managed to do this then why not the Courier Mail? Certainly this could have been done with utmost ease on-line.
You wrote: ... we have an obligation to adequately scrutinise the promises being made by the major parties and major contenders. ...
But the fact is you did not. A case in point is the story of Thursday 13 March "It's plane to see, this Mayoral race has gone green" with a photo depicting Lord Mayor Campbell Newman accompanied by Virgin Blue flight attendants in front of a aeroplane pushing trolleys with seedlings . That planting a few trees around Brisbane can in any way offset the destruction of vegetation caused by land-clearing and infilling residential developments in the suburbs of Brisbane, let alone Mr Newman's efforts to make Brisbane more car-dependent than ever before, is hotly disputed by many. This is classic greenwashing. In case you wish to better understand how corporations and governments employ greenwashing in order to cover up their environmentally harmful activities, can I suggest you read the transcript#reply-fn2">2 of Radio National's Background Briefing documentary "Greenwashing" of 10 February 2008. The point made by Cannon Hill residents and myself during Friday's debate about Campbell Newman's failure to honour his 2004 election promise to protect the Minnippi Parklands was certainly relevant and, I believe should have been reported on those grounds alone.
In regard to the Hale Street toll bridge, far from scrutinising the case for the Hale Street Bridge, the Courier Mail has enthusiastically clamoured for the bridge to be built and has systematically censored from its pages nearly all views critical of the bridge.
The Courier Mail did not publish the media release#reply-fn3">3 of 24 February from the "Stop The Hale Street Bridge" group nor did it publish the informative and well-written feature article "What price for City Hall accountability?"#reply-fn4">4 submitted by Darren Godwell, President, West End Community Association on 5 March. Moreover, David Bratchford of the "Stop The Hale Street Group" tells me his letters are not published, including one in response to an editorial in favour of the Bridge.
Whilst the Courier Mail does, on occasions, carry stories about some of the more overt adverse consequences, including the traffic chaos anticipated in the Hale Street Bridge's construction and cost-blowouts, they seem to be quickly forgotten by your editorial writers or when pro-bridge propaganda from Mr Newman is reported.
The case for these extravagant white elephants in the face of looming world-wide depletion of petroleum supplies simply does not exist. I believe that if the Courier Mail had scrutinised Campbell Newman's case for these projects and his overall record, as you claim to have done, he could not have won last Saturday's election and those who had unambiguously stood against these polices would have received a much higher vote.
These examples are only the very tip of the iceberg of the Courier Mail's unbalanced reporting in favour of Campbell Newman.
You wrote: ... I note you secured 700 votes on Saturday.
As of now, it has reached exactly 800 votes#reply-fn5">5. Still, at only 1.5 per thousand formal votes cast, I won't attempt to claim that that was a resounding vote for me. However ...
My point of contention still stands. I had views which differed substantially from those of the major candidates and I believe that the Courier Mail should have reported those views, especially as you, yourself, had correctly observed how boring your unbalanced focus upon the major candidates, with little tangible policy differences, had made your coverage of the campaign. Had this happened, I believe my vote would have easily been much higher.
You wrote: As you would also appreciate, even if you were to be elected Lord Mayor, the agenda of one of the major parties would end up prevailing because you would not have the numbers on the council floor to push through your policies.
Thanks. I greatly appreciate that you have taken the trouble to speculate on an outcome that may not have been likely last Saturday. Had I had been elected, I think it would have also been likely that City Council would have consisted of many councillors other than those from the major parties. If, to the country, the council were to have been dominated by the major parties, I would, nevertheless, have continued to argue within the council and publicly for policies I believe to be in the best interests of the people of Brisbane. In such an unlikely scenario, I would hope that my views would be reported by the Courier Mail. As I believe my reasons to be sound, I see no reason why I would not have gained broad public support, in which case there would be no reason to assume that the Councillors could not be convinced to support my policies.
In contrast, I believe that if Campbell Newman's polices of the past four years had been truly in the interests of the people of Brisbane, then he would have had little difficulty in overcoming what he has labelled as 'obstruction' on the part of Labor majority leader David Hinchliffe. In most cases the reasons for Hinchliffe's 'obstruction' was well-founded community opposition to his white elephant projects, which, as I repeat, was not fairly reported in your newspaper. I believe that Lord Mayor Campbell Newman can count himself lucky that, instead of standing up for the affected communities, Hinchliffe gave in to him. I don't believe Campbell Newman would be Lord Mayor today, had David Hinchliffe stood his ground.
You wrote: I will point out that you did manage to get your photo prominently in the paper on Thursday, a feat not managed by the bulk of the mayoral aspirants in Queensland, let alone in Brisbane.
Of course I am grateful, but I had expected some publicity in return for my effort to be at the City Hall for that event. However, I was, frankly, aghast when I saw how that photo#reply-fn6">6 turned out. I did not recognise myself until after I had read my name under the caption under the newspaper. Others, who knew me, tell me that they were barely able to recognise me either. Perhaps, I have to get used to the fact that my thinning hair doesn't always lend itself to the photographic portraiture I would wish for, However, the Quest Newspaper photographer took some effort to make sure the photo he took turned out well. If your photographer had let me know how looking down at such an odd angle but not at the camera in the way I did had affected my appearance, I would certainly have posed differently.
I also believe that words describing what I stood for would have been more helpful to me than even a photo which had turned out well.
Finally, I realise that you may not necessarily be personally responsible for all of the matters of which I complain. Nevertheless, I have to deal with these issues at face value.
I still greatly appreciate the time and effort you have taken and your courtesy.
Yours sincerely,
James Sinnamon
Footnotes
#reply-fn1" id="reply-fn1">1. See en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes
#reply-fn2" id="reply-fn2">2. See transcript of Radio National's Background Briefing documentary "Greenwashing" of 10 February 2008 at www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2008/2155943.htm.
#reply-fn3" id="reply-fn3">3. See "Hale Street record set straight in runup to Gabba ward election" of 24 Feb 08 at www.stopthehalestreetbridge.com/downloads/media releases/HSL_media_release_240208.pd, candobetter.net/node/336.
#reply-fn4" id="reply-fn4">4. See "What price for City Hall accountability?" of 5 Feb 08 at www.stopthehalestreetbridge.com/downloads/media releases/OpEdPieceFeb2008.pdf, candobetter.net/node/337
#reply-fn5" id="reply-fn5">5. See www.ecq.qld.gov.au/elections/local/lg2008/BrisbaneCity/results/Mayoral/summary.html
#reply-fn6" id="reply-fn6">6. See www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,23369923-3102,00.html
THE UBIQUITOUS RATIONALE OF GROWTHISM Vancouver and Melbourne victimized by the same sophistry
OVERPOPULATION AUSTRALIA 2008 - Surprising admissions in McDonald & Withers latest beat-up for mass worker immigration
Immigration as the quick fix
The World is under attack! by Tim Murray, Canadian activist
Rent gouging threatens Brisbane inner city retail community
Article also published on candobetter.wikispaces.com web site for James Sinnamon's campaign site or Lord Mayor of Brisbane
It is not only renters and home buyers who are suffering from rising land values these days.
Three years ago Latrobe Street Paddington was run down. However, a number of hard-working local businesspeople have set up retail stores there and, in doing so, changed its character. Businesses include the Urban Grind coffee shop, which attracts loyal customers from as far away as The Gap, the Green Tangerine women's accessories store, the Mary Rose Gift Shop, Pet Supplies and the Biome organic life-styles store. These businesses have striven to sell locally produced products in preference to cheaper overseas imports. They have worked cooperatively and have been in the practice of making joint trips interstate in order to obtain merchandise.
Now, as reported in the Westside News local newspaper of 20 February 2008#main_fn1">1 these businesses have become victims of their own success. Landlords have recently demanded rent increases which have forced four of these businesses to close down and threatened the viability of two more. The annual rent of Urban Grind, which will be closing down, was increased from $42,420 to $59,943 in one hit. Another's rent was raised from $54,000 to $90,000 and the rent for a business in nearby Given Terrace was raised from $89,000 to a staggering $228,000. Local real estate agents have actively encouraged landlords in raising these rents.
This business community fears that this will be the start of a trend which could see the whole character of Latrobe Street changed as chain stores move in.
A group to fight to preserve the Latrobe Street retail community has been set up, but will not be able to save four of the businesses from being closed down. Whilst legal avenues to challenge these sudden rent increases exist, they simply did not have the resources to utilise them.
How to end fleecing of small businesses by landlords?
At a public meeting at Bardon Hall on 20 February, all three local candidates contesting for the Brisbane City Council Ward of Toowong expressed sympathy and pledged to do what they could to help. Sitting Liberal Councillor, Peter Matic, somewhat at variance with prevailing philosophy of the Liberal Party, suggested that the businesses form a union. Other local government candidates in attendance who showed sympathy for the Latrobe Street retailers included Yvonne Li from the Labor Party and Anne Bocabella from the Greens.
However, how these businesses can ultimately hope to prevail against the economic forces that are increasing the value of the land under their feet is hard to envisage unless legislators are prepared to tackle those forces head on.
The rent hikes faced by the traders are part of the price to be paid for the runaway property boom of recent years. The wealth gained in this boom did not fall out of the sky. Rather, it had to have been taken out of the pockets of other Australians.
Objectively, property speculation is of no benefit to the Australian community as a whole. Accordingly, Brisbane City Council, as well as state and federal government policy, should be aimed at reducing, rather than increasing its scope within our economy. Furthermore, they should cease actively fuelling real estate hyper-inflation by allowing record levels of overseas immigration. Whilst immigration proponents like to pretend that they are motivated by lofty motives of compassion for new arrivals seeking to begin a new life, the reality is that they want high levels of immigration#main_fn2">2 to drive up the demand for real estate.
Interim measures to mitigate the effects of rising land values could include:
- Local, state and federal governments becoming the landlords themselves and cut out from the equation, private landlords. Governments, as far a possible, must retain every piece of property they currently own with a view to making these available to suitable small businesses.
- Set up a Council funded fighting fund, so that businesses, such as Urban Grind, which do have good prospects of legally challenging excessive rent increases within relevant government jurisdictions, can do so.
For my part, if elected on Saturday 15 March I will adopt these and whatever other other measures I am able to in order to curb such excesses on the part of rapacious landlords.
James Sinnamon
Candidate for Lord Mayor of Brisbane in the 2008 elections
Footnotes
#main_fn1">1. Boom to Bust, Westside News 20 Feb08, page 1
#main_fn2">2. For example, refer to "An inconvenient truth about rising immigration" by Ross Gittins in the Sydney Morning Herald of 3 Mar 2008.
Bartlett calls for Government Inquiry into wool industry bribe allegations
Media Release from Senator Andrew Bartlett 8 March 2008
Queensland Senator Andrew Bartlett has called on the federal Labor government to set up a public inquiry into allegations of bribery and intimidation by Australian government and wool industry officials.
Newspaper reports say many large clothing retailers in Sweden have banned Australian wool products; Sweden's Minister for Agriculture Eskil Erlandsson has urged consumers to boycott Australian wool and there are alleged bribes by a representative of the Australian Wool and Sheep Industry Taskforce, accompanied by an Australian Embassy official.
"These are serious allegations which need to be openly investigated," Senator Bartlett said.
"It is bad enough that people from taxpayer backed bodies and industries are alleged to be trying to silence animal welfare activists who want to expose cruelty to Australian animals. But the allegation that an Australian Embassy official in Sweden has also been involved is extremely serious.
"Australian Wool Innovations has a history of intimidating those who try to highlight the cruelty involved in mulesing of sheep and the live export industry, including trying to misuse the Trade Practices Act to run drawn out and expensive legal action against ordinary Australians."
"The live export industry has also used disinformation as a regular tactic for many years to try to deflect repeated evidence of immense cruelty.
"Despite these practices and the continuing animal cruelty, both major parties have continued to support government resources being put into maintaining and growing these industries.
"These industries and the federal government have the right to put an argument as to why the cruelty involved in the industries might be justifiable. But they should not be trying to silence those who disagree, particularly at the taxpayers' expense," Senator Bartlett concluded.
Media contact - Tracee McPate - 0417 607 655
t: 07 3252 7101 local call cost (Qld): 1300 301 879 f: 07 3252 8957
e: senator.bartlett|AT|aph gov au web: www.andrewbartlett.com
New South Wales Greens demand residents have a say in who runs their Councils
These articles came to me by way of the NSW Greens E- brief from the NSW Greens Office. To receive a regular e-brief, email andrewm AT nsw greens org au
Residents must have a voice in who runs their council
With local government elections scheduled for mid-September this year, the state government has been busy sacking councils to try to divert attention away from its Ministers’ relationships with property developers. The State government has ignored the democratic right of residents of Port Macquarie and Wollongong to elect the people who represent them on local councils, and instead imposed an Administrator who is totally unaccountable to the local community. With elections only a matter of months away, if genuine incompetence and corruption has occurred, it would have been appropriate to appoint an Administrator until the scheduled elections, but it is totally inappropriate for that Administrator to hold power until September 2012.
See also NSW govt sacks Port Macquarie Council
Royal Commission needed into relationship between Labor donors and ministers
Sylvia Hale called this week for a Royal Commission into
the relationship between property developers, their political donations and the decisions of Labor government Ministers. See also SMH story Sartor and One Burwood project of 27 Feb 08.
Independent Mayoral candidate calls for root cause of housing unaffordability to be tackled
Independent Mayoral candidate calls for root cause of housing unaffordability to be tackled
Media release 3 March 2008
by James Sinnamon : Independent Candidate for Mayor of Brisbane>
2008 Brisbane City Council Election
James Sinnamon, an independent candidate for Lord Mayor of Brisbane, called upon Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to tackle the real cause of housing inflation rather than to apply band-aid measures at the expense of taxpayers.
"When all policy is supposed to be driven by hard economics, it is astonishing that the added demand for housing caused by record high immigration is barely discussed," said Mr Sinnamon.
"Back in 2004 when profits from property investments momentarily slumped, the property sector demanded, and got, from Prime Minister John Howard, record high immigration[1]. As a result, Australia's population has risen by a further 1.2 million in just four years[2], housing costs have hit the stratosphere, and housing repossessions have reached 800 per week with a further 300,000 households at risk with the latest threatened interest rate rise[3]."
"Property investors have got their wish," said Mr Sinnamon, "and the rest of us are paying the price."
"Mr Rudd needs to decide whether he will continue to serve the interests of the property sector or whether he will provide ordinary Australians with affordable housing, but he cannot do both."
Contact phone 0412 319669
For further media releases, visit candobetter.wikispaces.com/Media
Footnotes
1. "She's one in 21 million as Australia comes of age", Sydney Morning Herald, 30 Jun 07 and Australian Bureau of Statistics population clock.
2. An economist representing the real estate industry on Radio Australia's "Australia Talks back" of Wednesday 20 May 2004 said repeatedly that increasing immigration would fix the claimed woes of property investors.
3. House Flu , The Age 24 Feb 2008
UK Ministers warned of nuclear 'albatross'
Reality as a linguistic filter of growthism
REALITY AS A LINGUISTIC FILTER OF GROWTHISM
"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end, we shall make thought-crime literally impossible because there will be no words in which to express it." A character in Orwell's 1984.
Acquiring a language I think is like taking a trip to the optometrist. You see the world broadly if somewhat less sharply at a certain range and then the doctor places a lens in front of your eyes. Suddenly what you were looking at becomes clearer. But at a cost. The perimeter is less clear. That lens is your native language and you don't recall the trip to the optometrist because it seems you've always worn glasses.
If you acquire an advanced degree, or pursue a certain profession, you find that another lens is placed in front of that one too. That lens may be the obfuscatory jargon of the law profession, a scientific discipline, law enforcement, or economics, for example. This lens will allow you to see one area of life with even more clarity and precision than commonplace vision, but a cost. Vital information about life will fall out of focus.
If in the pursuit of higher education, or foreign travel, you gain fluency in a foreign language, you find that all these lenses will be cast aside in favour of a new one-the new language. Objective reality may remain the same, but the classification system of each language-its structure, substance, gender, number, time and vocabulary assist the users to perceive the world in a certain way, but also limit that perception. To speak a different language is to think in that language and therefore to think differently because you perceive only what your language allows you or pre-disposes you to perceive. Your language shapes your world view because it acts as blinkers. Speakers of different languages, therefore, have different world views. People do not live in an objective world, but one where we are at the mercy of languages as both as a medium of expression and filters that admit only selected parts of reality into our consciousness.
As a university student I was struck by the fact that students who majored in various other disciplines seemed to inhabit perceptual solitudes that made cross-disciplinary communication difficult at best. It wasn't simply the fact that each sector of students were informed by a different knowledge base, or even that each student spoke the idiom of his field of study, but that that idiom , that jargon, did not give him the conceptual tools to interpret information from another student's area of study. Fostering cross-disciplinary discussion in this academic Tower of Babel seemed a more daunting task than arranging a conference at the United Nations.
It would seem obvious that some languages would be more equipped or more handicapped at describing certain concepts or objects and that if it was an environmental requirement to describe them adeptly a speaker of that language would be able to discern them more ably. He would not only be able to report his experience with the right linguistic ammunition, but experience it differently. This linguistic construction on experience can be illustrated by an example drawn from within a language, that is, between an American and a British dialect. Let me contrast the way I experienced a Wimbleton tennis match , the same match, as mediated by American English and then by British English. Two languages, one event, two realities.
The loquacious American commentators were incapable of saying anything with economy. One sportscaster would spend 60 seconds fumbling for words in an attempt to explain why the favourite was not at the top of his game, while his BBC counterpart tersely remarked "the champion lacks resolve." What was so extraordinary about the British telecast was the silence. Often four, six points would go by before a soft and carefully enunciated crisp British voice would say "extraordinary shot, that", reminding me that there were indeed commentators viewing the action. The long interludes of silence between volleys would allow me to become part of the match. I would hear the swells of crowd noise, the soft pop of the racquets striking the balls and the drama of the event, reminding me of how differently the two language styles could frame the experience. I didn't hear the over-the-top American superlatives. Instead of "blistering returns" there were "imaginative replies", a badly hit shot was "an awkward ball", a "killer" volley was a "clever bit of improvisation" and a temper tantrum was described as "a piece of patented brinkmanship." For Americans, silence is a dreaded void to be filled with flat-screen TVs that pollute every bar. That point here is, the spectator experiences the same sporting event quite differently in the Queen's English than he does in the version across the Atlantic.
The concept of language as a kind of lens or filter, or even straitjacket, cannot be over-stated. Wittgenstein said that the limits of language are the limits of one's world. By that token, bilingual or multilingual people have broader vision. It is not what we look at, the poverty, the injustice, the overpopulation, the environmental degradation, that is paramount. But the linguistic construction built in to filter that reality, to bring it into sharp focus, or make us blind to it.
The question becomes then, whose lens are we wearing? What filter are we looking through? How do we remove it?
In 1984 George Orwell revealed that the purpose of Newspeak, the language of his fictional totalitarian regime, was to rid old English (Oldspeak) of all adjectives and unnecessary words so that people would be not be able to feel or think. If one could not describe sadness, one could not feel it, and if there was no word for democracy or justice one couldn't complain about the government. By eliminating words, Newspeak would eliminate the range of thoughts.
Lancaster University's Professor Tony McEnery concluded that computer games and MP3 players have accomplished much the same thing in teenagers. ("Technology Isolation Syndrome"). His 2006 study of speech, blogs and questionnaires found that teenagers used half the average words of 25-34 year olds and that 20 words accounted for a third of their speech.
It looked for a time that a subtle totalitarian language would emerge from the Human Potential Movement in California in the 1970s. As R. D. Rosen dubbed it, "Psychobabble" was a mode of confession "that confessed nothing" and in its attempt to escape the confining vocabulary of Freudianism it substituted a jargon that had no theoretical roots. But it gave way to a puritanical tsunami that swept over every major institution in the English speaking world. "Political correctness". It's objectives are classically Orwellian. The notion is that if we don't label people or things by conventionally harmful terms, then people will desist from thinking of them in those terms. And if politically acceptable euphemisms are substituted and repeated ad nauseum, the ideological brain-transplant will be completed. Whilst dangerous, some politically correct neologisms can be quite funny.
For example, the homeless are now the "involuntarily undomiciled". And a drunk is "a person of differing sobriety." While a junkie is merely someone with pressing pharmacological preferences. Someone who is untrustworthy is just "ethically disoriented" while a lazy man is only "motivationally deficient". Someone chronically late is "temporally challenged" and a prostitute is not a streetwalker or a whore but a "sex care provider" presenting themselves as a commodity allotment with a business doctrine. As a white man, I am a "mutant albino genetic-recessive global minority", and the diction I practice is in reality just the style and writing imposed upon the world by "patriarchal white lexicographers." Standard English is "capitalistic patriarchal hegemonic discourse."
Each vested interest and lobby now seems to have its own "politically correct" euphemisms. The Pentagon were groundbreakers in this respect. A "clean" bomb was a nuclear device or neutron bomb that kills people but leaves infrastructure intact. Civilian deaths could be disguised as "collateral damage". Assassination is "wet work", bombs that hit civilians as "incontinent ordinance". Dead soldiers are just "non-operative personnel or "terminally inconvenienced" or "non-viable". Bombing an unintended target like a hospital could be dismissed as an "accidental delivery of ordinance equipment." And military failure, like President Carter's ill-fated Iranian desert raid, could be termed as an "incomplete success."
Ministers of Labour, meanwhile call their union-busting legislation "right to work" laws and the scabs that are used to break strikes are accorded a more morally sanitized name, "replacement workers". Trade union officials that haven't the guts to tell their membership that they calling for amnesty for 'illegal' workers instead say they wish to "regularize" them. And they are not illegal, they are undocumented, even though they used forged documents to get into the country. Finance Ministers call the stock market crash "an equity retreat" and warn we may experience "negative economic growth". Couldn't use the word "contraction" if it killed them. Conservation officials call the mass slaughter of wild animals "game management" and the Environment Ministry describes the explosive destruction of a nuclear reactor core like Chernobyl's as a "core management event".
The nuclear industry has conducted its own unique detoxification of plain English. An explosion is an "energetic dissembly" and a fire is "rapid oxidation". Plutonium contamination is "infiltration" and a reactor accident is to be referred to as a "normal aberration". "Spin" is a new breed of deceit three decades in the making which attempts to effect damage control by the use of euphemisms. And what are euphemisms essentially but a kind of linguistic Demerol to diminish painful truth by re-labeling it.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is gifted in that department. They once decided to sanitize their lexicon by banishing the "hazard" because it allegedly triggered panic in the American public. Health "hazards" were not to be mentioned and the Office of Hazardous Emergency Response was re-established as the "Office of Emergency and Remedial Action". And Enforcement Personnel became the more friendly "Compliance Assistance Officers".
But it is in Growthism where language makes it most incursive, dangerous and decisive intervention in the determination of what we perceive to be real today. The ideology that economic and population growth is beneficial, necessary and inevitable prevails, to a large extent, because the language which mediates that message has colonized academic forums, radio and television studios and print media. Consequently the reality of environmental Armageddon is seen by the audience through rose coloured glasses that are worn by the presenters, their guests and researchers and tinted by the vocabulary they use to interpret that reality. The audience therefore never sees or hears that every economic "boom" is an environmental "bust" and only comes to know "growth" via positive connotations.
For example, when Statistics Canada released its Census Report in mid March of 2007, those localities like British Columbia and Alberta which gained people from the previous census, were anointed census "winners" by the media as if a prize was going to be awarded for more pollution, GHG emissions, congestion, farmland and habitat loss. Prince Rupert, BC and Saskatchewan, on the other hand were designated as census "losers" for having fewer people than five years before. Newscasters consistently report that Canada "enjoyed" record growth or that the Maritimes "suffered" a "stagnant" economy with "sluggish" housing starts. The concept that Canadians might "enjoy" a steady state economy that didn't cover arable land and habitat with subdivisions is foreign to news script writers.
The word "growth" itself has undergone many makeovers in recent years to make it palatable to those of us who wouldn't swallow it otherwise. Growth has become "managed growth", "deflected growth", "smart growth", and the ultimate oxymoron, "sustainable growth". It seems that urban planners concoct a new label every year for the same snake oil it. To preserve all those wonderful green spaces that we love, planners propose to cram more and more of us into smaller and smaller urban compartments. But if we don't like sprawl, we like density even less. So Great Vancouver planners tried to package it under the name of "compaction". When ratepayers wouldn't buy into that garbage, planners re-marketed it under the label "Coreplan". No dice. Now its back as "Eco-density". Density with green paint over it. The one name you won't ever hear from planners though is "growth-control". That is outside their frame of reference.
Our culture abounds with so many sweet-sounding buzzwords like "sustainable", "livable". "affordable", "diverse", "vibrant", "inclusive", "pro-active", "choice" ---the vocabulary of deceit. Attach these adjectives to anything you want to sell or run past the planning objectors---any self-serving development scam for example---and you can jam it through as easily as candy down a baby's hatch.
The filter of growthist language in Anglophone societies is combined with the filter of multiculturalism---a smokescreen of left-wing tolerance that cloaks the right wing development agenda. Cultural diversity is much like a leaky air mattress that can only be kept afloat by constant pumping, the air being people from abroad. The language of diversity and tolerance is thus recruited to rationalize the policy of mass immigration and economic growth, always couched in the most positive terms. Growthism and Multiculturalism are a lexical duopoly.
How then do we remove their lens? The first answer is to substitute it with our lens. Ecological economists are attempting to do just that by developing indices of real economic performance, as if the planet mattered. We have to continually challenge media terminology and offer our own. When the CBC boasts that the country is diverse we counter by saying that is culturally fragmented and has lost cohesion. When the CBC says that immigration is the solution we have to demand that they prove that there is a problem. When the CBC states that the population of Newfoundland has stagnated we must declare that it has stabilized.
The second answer is to be found in the pages of Aldous Huxley's "The Doors of Perception": "We can never dispense with language and the other symbol systems: for it is by means of them and only by their means, that we have raised ourselves above the brutes to the level of human beings. But we can easily become the victims as well as the beneficiaries of these systems. We must learn how to handle words effectively, but at the same time we must preserve and if necessary, intensify our ability to look at the world directly and not through the half-opaque medium of concepts, which distorts every given fact into the all too-familiar likeness of some generic label or explanatory abstraction."
Huxley is not suggesting that we abandon symbolic reasoning, but broaden our perception to grasp the real and not just its symbols, so we can appreciate the relationship of words and things. Words are, after all, just a proxy for experience, a shorthand to build or explore new avenues. Better to imagine how a piano could be carried up a staircase than try by trial and error. But conceiving and planning are not to be confused with the actual lifting of the piano. Words are not to be confused with reality, nor lifeless abstractions with life itself. Objective reality is not a linguistic construction.
When I was 19 years of age, under controlled clinical conditions, I walked through one of Aldous Huxley's doors of perception, and I saw a reality that four years of intense undergraduate study had not shown me. The experience was very much like a journey, or "trip" to use the vernacular of the time, and it yielded insights that I have never had before or since. My brother was administered the same psychotropic, and it changed his worldview irrevocably. He abruptly quit his good career and moved his family into a 42 foot boat that he built at the back of his home, abandoned urban life and consumerism and spent the rest of his days close to wilderness. His decision recalled a comment by Carlos Casteneda: "Conclusions arrived at through reasoning have little influence in altering the course of our lives."
It is ironic that mescaline is classified as an hallucinogenic drug, for surely it is those who believe that infinite growth can continue on a finite planet who are hallucinating. I would speculate that if somehow mescaline was dispensed on a mass scale the grip of Madison avenue would be broken and the concept of destabilizing society and nature to chase higher profit margins would seem absurd. So far, only North American indigenous peoples are permitted the use of peyote to embark on vision quests.
Some might be outraged by any suggestion here of advocacy of pyschodelics. I oppose the recreational use of drugs and would prefer that people employ deep meditation and study to expand their minds. But I suspect that more damage is done by benzodiazepines than was ever done by "acid". Did some have bad trips and go mad?. In my entire campus life I never heard of one, but I'll take your word for it. I have, however, heard of many people dying of an anaphylactic shock from eating a peanut, or of liver cancer from alcoholism, and they all died unenlightened. And I have read of 3-4 billion people who will die in a generation if there is not a radical change of consciousness. No matter, this is quite academic. Mescaline therapy won't happen. The point here was only to say that stripped of language, a new understanding and a set of new insights can be revealed.
There is a dormant awareness that can be awakened, but the filters must first be removed, the lens put aside. It might take a psychedelic experience, an emotional upheaval or shock or a reality-mediated revelation like the long emergency of resource depletions and ecological collapse, but the consciousness which now seems set in concrete and apparently needs a jackhammer to break apart will indeed emerge. Whether it will be in time to save us is doubtful. In the meantime, all we can do is appeal to the limited awareness that people have using an alternative vocabulary to the one they have been given, or in the words of population sociologist Sheila Newman, exploit that "chink left in peoples' consciousness and expose those marketed absurdities as shimmering but empty dust motes in the mad attic of culturally induced agnosia."
Tim Murray
Quadra Island, BC
March 1/08
Port Phillip Bay fishermen dispute dredging's clean bill of health
This was originally published on the www.bluewedges.org with the Title "Fishermen prefer caution". Earlier the Murdoch-owned Herald Sun newspaper, echoing claims of the Port of Melbourne Corporation (PoMC), had given dredging a clean bill of health in the story Port "Phillip Bay given all-clear after dredging" claiming that miracuously that "water is now clearer at Rosebud than before the $1 billion project began".
“With the dredge in the South, the water is getting more murky and cloudy, and there aren’t many fish either”. Mr. Buck has received reports from fellow anglers from as far north as Parkdale that water quality has dropped dramatically since dredging began. “I have also been told about sick and dead penguins and scallops showing signs of obvious distress in the south of the bay. The murky plume is easily seen even from the MODIS website satellite photos, stretching towards the north of the Bay. There’s no doubt it is affecting water quality, but at least it’s not toxic as well as murky - yet. It will be a different story if the dredge starts work on the underwater hazardous waste facility for storing the toxic Yarra sludge” he says.
Mr. Buck says rather than trust the PoMC data he would prefer to listen to the advice of independent scientists such as Mr. Chris Mardon#main_fn1">1 who says:
“Ideally the sediment should not be disturbed at all. Toxins attach to fine clay particles and will be partially released into the water if the Yarra bed is dug up. Many of these particles will be carried down the bay towards Ricketts Point by natural currents. PoMC data indicates beaches from Port Melbourne to Brighton will be affected by the dredging plume.”
“Dredged Yarra sediments will be carried by barge to the proposed dumping ground in the middle of the Bay west of Ricketts Point. Recent experiments where clean mussels were brought from the south of the Bay and suspended over the existing spoil ground showed that the mussels became contaminated in a matter of a few weeks#main_fn2">2.
PoMC’s consultant (Golder) undertook a fish contamination model to estimate likely contamination in a limited number of fish species. Technically, their data met an Australian standard (ANZFA MRL), but that is because that list is limited in its scope. They totally ignored some toxins and one toxin they chose to evaluate is not listed (PAH, or Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons). PAH is both toxic and known to cause cancer.
The Victorian EPA used the US EPA screening values in its recent study #main_fn3">3 into the suitability of fish for human consumption from the Lower Yarra and Maribyrnong Rivers. That study resulted in the Victorian Department of Human Services warning to keep consumption of fish taken from this area to very small amounts, especially for pregnant women and children. If the EPA values are applied to the PoMC’s fish data, (and why weren’t they?) the results ring alarm bells, especially PAH in mussels from the Yarra, Hobson’s Bay and St. Kilda areas. PoMC’s own data indicates the concentration of PAH in fish tissues could be hundreds of times the safe levels recommended by the Victorian EPA and the Victorian DHS (see summary spreadsheet compiled from PoMC data).
The Victorian EPA study found mercury and dioxins in fish from the Yarra, so the absence of mercury and dioxins information in the PoMC data is curious to say the very least. Dioxins are extremely hazardous environmental pollutants which bioaccumulate, attaching to fat cells in the body, and are known to cause birth defects, cell mutations and cancer.
“Why would you want to fish in the Bay if the PoMC ever start the toxic waste facility?” asks Mr. Buck.
Blue Wedges spokespersons: Trevor Buck, John Willis: 0407 053 484, 0427 777 747
Footnotes.
#main_fn1">1. Mr. Mardon is a chemical engineer, who worked in the chemical industry for 5 years then as a research scientist with CSIRO until his retirement.
#main_fn2">2. Bioaccumulation Study SKM April 2006
#main_fn3">3. EPA publication: Maribyrnong and Yarra estuaries: investigation of contamination in fish January 2007
Links
These were obitained with a google news search using the terms:
Port Phillip Bay dredging
Dredging muddies waters: opponents ABC Online - 28 Feb 2008
Dredging off Brighton The Age - 28 Feb 2008
Queen of the Netherlands set for toxic dig Melbourne Herald Sun - 28 Feb 2008
New review planned for dredging The Age - 28 Feb 2008 (Comment: on this issue, the Liberal and National Parties in Victoria are taking a stance in favour of the environment and accountability. For this they should be applauded, whatever might otherwise be critically said of the environmental records of these parties at both the state and federal levels.)
Nationals back Libs on dredgingThe Age - 28 Feb 2008
Conspiracy of silence and exclusion
Seaweek - Sea World and Seagrass Watching
Act now to protect Moreton Bay's endangered sea turtles and dugongs!
Please help Moreton Bay's threatened marine wildlife today. Give 5 minutes
of your time to sign this online letter to the Minister for Sustainability, Climate Change and Innovation asking for greater protection in the Marine Park, then forward to your friends and family.
Over the summer the Queensland Government released a draft zoning plan for Moreton Bay, earmarking a mere 15% protection in Marine National Park zones. These are areas where we are free to enter- to swim, boat, dive, and snorkel - but where all wildlife is safe from harm
While 15% is better than the current protection of less than 1%, it does not go far enough for our threatened wildlife.
Marine scientists around the globe say that it is critical that at least 30% of all ocean habitats, such as seagrasses and corals, are given Marine National Park status.
Our chance to support our turtles and dugongs is closing fast. Public comments are due by 5pm Friday 7 March 2008. Moreton Bay Marine Park is only reviewed every ten years, so this is a once in a decade opportunity.
How you can help
- Click here! Act now and sign the letter;
- Once you have had your say please forward this email to your friends and family asking them to sign and circulate it to their networks.
With overwhelming public support we really do believe that the Government will provide more than just a mere 15% protection for our precious marine wildlife.
Don't let this chance go by. Our turtles, dugongs and other wildlife need your support today. Your grandchildren will thank you for it.
See also:
- www.savemoretonbay.org.au
- Australian Marine Conservation Society (www.amcs.org.au)
- Sustainable Seafood Guide
Queensland Premier incurs Courier Mail's wrath for saving Regent Theatre
This article was also published on qlddecides.com as Saving the Regent - The Sinnamon plan. My response to the choice of that title was posted to that site and is included below.
In little more than a generation, Brisbane's skyline has been transformed into a ghastly inhuman wall of office blocks and high rise residential apartments. Today, much of Brisbane resembles a war zone as established business districts and neighourhoods are further trashed as this process is continued, along with a spate of more recent white elephant infrastructure projects, all at a horrific cost to our local and global environment.
A small, but welcome, pause from this breakneck pace of over-development occurred when Labor Premier Anna Bligh on 23 February, as reported in Brisbane's Courier Mail Newspaper, responded to a public outcry against the threatened destruction of Brisbane's Regent Theatre. The 80 year old Regent Theatre was to be effectively destroyed in order to make way for an AU$800 million 38-storey commercial high-rise at the back of the Regent Theatre. However, Premier Bligh used rarely enacted legislation to stop this. The legislation allows the Queensland Government to force the private developers, Multiplex and ISPT, to keep the Regent cinema operating regardless of whether or not they wanted to.
As welcome as Premier Bligh's stance is, it is sadly out of character with her overall record. Anna Bligh and her predecessor Beattie who have embraced a 'growth at all costs' mind-set which has no regard for the preservation of Brisbane's quality of life or the well-being of future generations. Both the Queensland Labor Government and Campbell Newman's Liberal Brisbane City Council administration have ridden rough-shod over community objections to many other inappropriate infrastructure and housing developments. These include the Suncorp Stadium, the Hale Street Bridge, the North South Bypass Tunnel, the Airport Link tunnel, Brisbane Airport's second runway, the conversion of the publicly-owned Yungaba migrant hostel into a private gated community, Minnippi Parklands, the Traveston Dam, the Wyaralong Dam, etc. In 2005 the residents of Maleny endured an invasion of 150 Queensland Police so that the Woolworths supermarket, opposed overwhelmingly by local residents could be built.
However, on this occasion, instead of ignoring the wishes of the Brisbane community, the Queensland Government has supported them and even the equally pro-development opposition leader Laurence Springborg has endorsed Anna Bligh's stance.
However, another force for relentless over-development, namely Brisbane's Courier Mail newspaper, owned by US citizen Rupert Murdoch, has chosen not to relax its stance and has harshly criticised the Premier in an editorial "Protection in name of popularity" of 26 February.
The Courier Mail editorialists believe that the right of the developers to profit from the further disfigurement of Brisbane's skyline is more important than the wishes of of Brisbane residents to retain what little is left of their heritage. It stated:
... but does that then give the State Government the right to dictate to a profit-driven private sector developer what sort of business it can or cannot operate on the site? Presumably, one reason for the proposed redevelopment is that a 30-year-old four-cinema complex is a less profitable use of the land than a 38-storey office tower.
From the point of view of society at large, few profits are to be had from these projects. Instead, they merely facilitate the transfer of wealth out of its pockets into the pockets of the likes of Multiplex and ISPT, whilst massive quantities of greenhouse gases are pumped into the atmosphere, particularly during their construction phases, and the earth's scarce and diminishing stocks of fossil fuel and metals are exhausted. In no more than a generation, these high rise structures will be inoperable as the necessary fossil fuels become ever more scarce and will stand just as much as monuments to to the folly of today's political and business leaders as do the pyramids built on Central America's Yucutan peninsula stand as monuments to the folly of the leaders of the failed Mayan civilisation.
The Courier Mail editorialist then argues that the taxpayers of Queensland to make up for the shortfall in profits:
Now it is quite possible that the developers might be able to rethink their proposal and decide they can make it work, with the Regent intact. However, if Ms Bligh feels so strongly about preserving the whole of the theatre complex, then perhaps she should be arguing the case for some sort of government underwriting – not something we would support – rather than simply sticking it to the private sector, as it were.
In reality, the evidence shows that it is today's taxpayers and ratepayers, as well as future generations, who subsidise the profits of developers, because they are forced to foot the bill for the infrastructure made necerssary to service such developments.
The editorialist also effectively accused Premier Anna Bligh of pandering to populism, when it asked:
But is it possible that this whole exercise is less about protecting fond memories and more about good old-fashioned, politically motivated playing to the crowd?
The Courier Mail editorialists no doubt prefer leaders who know better than 'the crowd' itself what is good for them, hence their past support for the North South Bypass Tunnel, the Hale Street Bridge, "Work Choices", the privatisation of Telstra and Queensland's Energex electricity company, high immigration, the Iraq war, the Traveston Dam, forced local government amalgamations, etc.
James Sinnamon
Independent candidate for Lord Mayor of Brisbane
Comment posted to qlddecides.com:
Thanks Jason for posting this. The original article is entitled "Saving the Regent Theatre earns Queensland Premier the wrath of the Courier Mail" and can be found at http://candobetter.org/node/342
However, the article is not actually a plan to save the Regent. That appears, thankfully, to have been done by Premier Anna Bligh. I meant to use the occasion to give due credit to a politician in whom I otherwise see very little of merit, also to comment on the anti-democratic pro-developer stance of Brisbane's Courier Mail newspaper.
Whilst normally supportive of Bligh, when she does the bidding of powerful vested interests, the Courier Mail was hostile to the Premier's out-of-character decision on this occasion.
Rotten donations culture threatens Brisbane
- one will be filled with wads of cash by named after actual developers who have donated to the Liberal and Labor Parties
- a second will have a giant question mark as to what donations are coming in right now that the public does not know about
An immigration policy bought and paid for?
Tim Murray, director of Immigration Watch Canada, follows the money trail in the US Presidential primaries.
Note: all dollar figures given in following article are in US dollars.
Also published in Canada Free Press on 11 Mar 08.
Popular opposition to immigration ignored by U. S. legislators
The numbers are unequivocal. For a decade polls have consistently recorded a wide discrepancy between the attitude of ordinary Americans toward immigration and the attitude of those who govern them. And the gap has been growing. In 2002 a poll conducted by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations found that 60% of the public thought current immigration levels to be a "critical threat to the vital interests of the United States," as compared to only 14% of the country's leadership. This 46% gap compared to a 37% gap revealed by a 1998 poll. 70% felt that reducing illegal immigration should be a "very important" foreign policy goal compared to only 22% of the political elite#moneytrail-fn1">1.
Polling done by TM, inc. in October 2006 confirmed these results. While the U.S. Senate passed a bill (S2611) supporting a large increase in legal immigration, 68% of voters thought the number of immigrants, legal or illegal, was too high, 34 times the number who said it was too "low". 71% said that low paying jobs could easily be filled if employers paid American workers decent wages rather than import low-skill labour. And 62% agreed with a statement that Canadian viewers of CBC immigration sob stories have frequently observed, "The media coverage of illegal immigrants is mostly devoted to human interest stories like how illegals risk their lives (to get here), rather than the costs they create and the Americans, particularly low-wage American workers, who may be harmed by their being here."
The polling company Inc./Woman Trend in October of 2006 found 66% in agreement that the population increase caused by the present level of immigration would negatively impact the environment. A Zogbylcis poll of April 2006 revealed that 67% of Americans wanted less immigration to promote the assimilation of those who were already here. A poll conducted a month earlier by the same company found that 60% wanted their congressional representative to support more restrictive immigration policies.
What is interesting about sampling public opinion about immigration is that no apparent or substantial fault lines appear between ethnic groupings. Now it is understandable that African-Americans, given their socio-economic standing, feel the direct brunt of illegal Hispanic labour competition , and would therefore take a severe position on the issue. In fact, 59% of black Californian voters favour imposing stiff penalties on employers who hire illegal aliens, (Field Poll, April 2006), and 66% of them favour building a border wall along major sections of the U.S./Mexico line.
Opposition to immigration embraced by non-European communities
But it would surprise some to learn, especially those like most American liberals, who are ignorant of Caesar Chavez's long standing fight against immigration, that 76% of Hispanics said in a December 2007 poll done by Arizona State University-Southwest that illegal immigration is a serious problem. Or that 53% of Latinos would change the 14th amendment so a child born to an illegal immigrant in America could not automatically become an American unless the other parent was a citizen. Or that 56% of Latinos favour increasing the number of border patrol agents by a third. Unfortunately, as former Mexican government advisor Fredo Arras-King observed, "American Latinos who criticize mass immigration tend not to organize, as they are especially targeted by pro-immigration Latino leaders."
Causes of disparity between attitudes of US citizens and their political leadership
The question that these poll results beg is why? Why the cleavage between leaders and led? The anti-immigration sentiment of America's middle and working class is easily accounted for. According to Centre for Immigration Studies data, in the decade preceding 2003, immigration increased the supply of people without a high school education by 21% and the supply of other workers by 4%. Rudimentary economic theory suggests that the more poorly skilled workers there are, the less money they'll make---a fact confirmed by the National Research Council in their findings that about half the drop in real wages for high school drop-outs from 1980 to 1994 was due to immigration. A report by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Centre found that Americans and established immigrants suffer an 11% wage drop when they work alongside new Hispanic immigrants. Harvard Professor Dr. George Borgias has accumulated similar data and has made the shocking assertion that American workers lose an incredible $152 billion per year in wages from immigration.
Immigration provides a ready-made source of cheap labour, by growing the labour pool it weakens the bargaining power of American-born workers and reduces the clout of their unions, if they still have them#moneytrail-fn2">2. Medical benefits not borne by the employer are subsidized by the taxpayers who also pick up the educational costs of their children. Writer Rich Lowry made the best assessment: "No wonder corporate America loves our open borders: they serve as a kind of rolling reverse minimum wage law." And no wonder the late African-American liberal Congressman Barbara Jordan called for cutting back immigration in the 1990s. She was defending her constituency of low-income black workers, the first casualty of the corporate welfare program of high-level immigration, marketed by the left as "multicultural enrichment". Cultural diversity is the fig leaf of naked corporate exploitation.
So blue-collar attitudes to immigration are easily explained, ordinary people are simply following their class interests. And class interests can explain the open borders position taken up by America's opinion leaders and decision makers too. They are much more affluent and educated than the people they lead and attempt to influence, and feel no threat from the illegal immigrants they hire as nannies and gardeners or tip at fine restaurants. One thing is central to the understanding of the immigration divide in the United States, and that is to divest oneself of the almost universal and persistent belief that somehow the Democrats are white knights who represent the working class, the poor and the environment, while the Republicans are the incarnation of power, privilege and plutocracy. To assist you in this task you should be apprised of the following.
A TM Inc poll of 2006 disclosed that those most apt to be satisfied with the current level of immigration which is killing American working class living standards were 25-34 year old liberal college graduates and professionals who identified with the Democratic Party. The same poll found though that it was 35-44 year old conservative Republicans who favoured large-scale round-ups of illegal immigrants. That profiles the supporters of the pro and anti-immigration positions, but the current party leadership positions could best be ascertained by the fact that as of the end of January 2008, all Republican contenders rejected the legalization of "undocumented" immigrants now in the U. S., while the Democrats continue to support it.
Corporate donations flow toward pro-immigration candidates ...
The true alignment of the Democratic Party with corporate interests can be vividly illustrated by a look at campaign financing. McCain, Clinton and Obama are, to put it bluntly, Wall Street candidates. The big banks, the financial firms, corporate law firms and private equity firms pay the pipers. But, according the Centre for Responsive Politics (CRP) (www.opensecrets.org), the Democrats are the clear favourite. Hillary Clinton took in $106.1 million and Barack Obama $102.1 million for all of 2007. McCain received susbstantially less at $41,102,178. Hillary Clinton received $1.3 million from private equity firms, while Obama received $1 million. McCain finished a distant fourth at $ 395,000. Wall Street promotes the candidates who serve its interests and the Democrats have delivered for them since their November 2006 victory.
Democratic leaders buried a proposal to tax the massive incomes of hedge fund operators at normal tax rates, allowing billionaires to claim most of their income as capital gains taxed at a far lower rate. Clinton and Obama have also refused action on the subprime meltdown that would have threatened big financial interests. Corporate law firms gave Clinton over $11 million and Obama over $ 9 million. McCain only got just over two and a half million dollars, the most for Republican candidates. As of February 22, 2008, bagmen have raised over $138 million for Obama, over $134 million for Clinton, and over $53 million for McCain.
Most interesting is the disposition of "Silicon" money. Between 1998 and 2006 almost $83 million in political contributions in the form of individuals donations, PAC contributions, and soft money were made by 40 technology companies. Amounting on average to just $295,708 per company per year of lobbying, it was money well spent. The concession Bill Gates wanted, the H-1B Visa program that allows cheap technology workers into the country, reaped profits a hundred times that investment. But Microsoft wanted to be more certain the fix was in. Over that that seven year period they gave $5,7888,286, with half of Congress on its payroll it would seem. AT+T donated $3,504,773, Apple $3,620,823, and Vericon $4,237,884#moneytrail-fn3">3. Data for the 2008 campaign showed Obama at $981,459 and Clinton $954,325 as the leading recipients of "computer-internet" donations, with McCain getting a third of their take. To put all of this in perspective, Hillary Clinton, the great white hope of progressive liberalism, received only 11% of her PAC money from labour, but 56% from business. It would be difficult to imagine that the AFL-CIO could match the donation dollars put up by Wall bankers and law firms.
The most revealing fact to be gleaned from presidential campaign donation statistics is one found when donation records are subjected to sector analysis. If one studies 12 business or professional sectors of American society from Agribusiness to Construction to Health to Labour etc., there is one sector that is clearly salient---the "financial-real estate" sector. It has contributed over $73 million to various campaigns, $25 million more than any other sector.
Real estate interests (including mortgage brokers, homebuilders and property developers) gave $4.8 million to Clinton, $2.7 million to Obama and $1.9 million to McCain. The conventional interpretation of their motive is that they want access to the winner when an expected crackdown over predatory lending and a troubled housing finance system reaches the top of the legislative agenda. But there is an alternative, or at least supplementary explanation. One that has been advanced by Australian population sociologist Sheila Newman. The land tenure system that characterizes Anglo-American societies encourages speculation, and much money is to be made simply by population growth. Newman has written extensively to demonstrate that real estate developers are key players in lobbying for mass immigration. US campaign donation records seem to vindicate her hypothesis, as does the fact that a nation like France is close to achieving population stability because the real estate development industry cannot exist as an agent for growth, given that land cannot consistently be reduced to a speculative commodity largely because of the way tenure is arranged#moneytrail-fn4">4.
... whilst anti-immigration contenders miss out
What then became of the candidates who challenged the corporate open borders agenda? Their campaigns died from lack of funds. Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado is a case in point. Wall Street likes pro-immigration candidates for obvious reasons and so they will reward those who sing their tune. Tancredo insisted on singing an objectionable note, like a three year moratorium on immigration. So he paid the price and collected just $6 million dollars or less than 6% of what Clinton received by year's end and was forced to end his campaign. Clinton at that time was Wall Street's anointed one, someone who, in the words of Numbers USA, "consistently pressed for U. S. population growth, immigration and foreign labour importation." But of course such an agenda of unabashed greed needs always to be camoflauged with a politician's candy floss, the spin is what they are purchased for. So Clinton obliged her corporate donors by saying that "we should always be open to legal immigration-it reforms, it makes us better." Well, it certainly makes a few of us richer Hillary, doesn't it, like your donors and supporters, the most well-heeled of either party!
Corporate America gets what it has paid for from open-border legislators
An examination of Clinton's voting record should confirm that big business is getting what it paid for. Clinton was co-sponsor of Bill S-2109 to help employees import cheap high tech workers while the big law firms who give to her campaign are counseling them how to use the legal system to avoid hiring qualified U.S. workers. Her support of Senate bill 2109 helped expedite the processing of the infamous H-1B visas that depress wages and displace workers. She supported an amnesty of illegal agricultural workers (S bill 1340) and another one of a similar nature (S. bill 2137) that would have brought an amnesty to another 860,000 workers not counting family. Clinton's support of Kennedy's bill S 2381 would have meant amnesty to almost all illegal aliens. Her numerous attempts to sponsor "shamnesty" bills is reflective of a comment she made to a man who said that his wife was an illegal immigrant. "No woman is illegal", Clinton replied.
If Hillary's record is atrocious, it is doubtful if Obama's is any better. His positions seem almost indistinguishable from Clinton's, the difference being more one of emphasis than policy. He supports employer verification of employee identity to deter the hiring of illegals, she doesn't. She favours lower legal immigration intakes, he doesn't. Obama's main focus is the human rights and economic needs---of those knocking at America's door wanting to come in and those already in, legally or illegally. On the Senate floor he stated on May 23, 2007 that "Where we can re-unite families, we should. Where we can bring in more foreign-born workers with skills our economy needs, we should." This was an ominous declaration. Since the law was changed in 1965 to create the so-called family re-unification system, "chain migration"---where an immigrant sponsors several others who in turn sponsors several more---has caused the numbers under this category to spiral out of control. In 36 years the number of immediate relatives admitted was over 13 times higher than it was when the law was first enacted to almost one-half million per year.
An Obama policy statement maintains support for "improvements in our visa programs, including the H-1B programs, to attract some of the world's most talented people to America." But H-1B visa holders are not paid as much as Americans, and even Microsoft admits that salaries have not kept pace with inflation. That would do much to explain a so-called labour shortage in the field. As for Obama's goal of attracting the best and the brightest, the vast majority of H-1B holders make in the $60,000 range (Intel's median salary is $65,000), but top talents in the industry capture more than $100,000. And ironically the great majority of awards for innovation have fallen to Americans, indicating that the industry is not shackled by a domestic cognitive deficit that needs relief by a massive injection of foreign Einsteins. The quest for the best and brightest of overseas talent is a smokescreen for the tech corporations' prime motive, the hunt not for the brightest minds but those that come at the cheapest price. And the H-1B program doesn't even require employers to give hiring priority to qualified American citizens, and they have an arsenal of legal measures to reject those who apply. If one is given to wonder why a U.S. Congress would expand the H-1B program in 2000 when their employers, the American taxpayers, most of whom are workers, were not its obvious beneficiaries, Utah Senator Bob Bennett's comment would be informational: "There were, in fact, a whole lot (of Congressmen) against it, but because they are tapping the high-tech community for campaign contributions, they don't want to admit that in public."
John McCain, the only Republican contender left standing, were it not for his title as waterboy for Iraq, could run for the Democrats. He got the ball rolling in 1986 when he signed the 1986 amnesty for illegals and thereby gave the green light for aspiring border-crossers who knew that American law could be violated with impunity and trespass retroactively forgiven. He ran his nomination race on a full-throttle amnesty platform until he found religion earlier this year and back-pedaled. He has voted for S-1639 to double legal immigration, to continue chain migration and the ridiculous annual jackpot lottery of 50,000 applicants from third world nations called "Diversity Immigration". McCain's problem is that he is a dark horse and Wall Street, while hedging its bets, likes to back winners. So his take of their money is but one-third of Obama's and Clinton's.
Ron Paul is a footnote, like Tancredo. His $32 million was not enough and he is the only one who doesn't know its all over, apparently. Paul's anti-immigration stance has not been as comprehensive or as strident as Tancredo's, but firm nonetheless, as reflected in his statement that a nation without secure borders is no nation at all. But Paul is a walking/talking contradiction. While he favours the the usual gamut of measures to protect American workers from the competition of the illegal invasion---border security, employee verification, no amnesty, no welfare for illegals, no alien birthright citizenship etc.---he is also a libertarian in the Friedman tradition. Leaving the working class alone to fend for itself against an unregulated free market is like trusting a ravenous beast to mind your children. With closed borders and free markets Ron Paul offers American workers a goblet of hemlock mixed with green tea for good health. Paul thus falls between two stools. He's no good for Wall Street and he's no good for Main Street either. A curious fellow.
Failure of immigration opponents to address its causes
The most disappointing feature of the American immigration dialogue is its one-dimensional nature. Two critical elements are virtually absent from the arguments presented by both open and closed borders advocates. One is that both sides talk about what attracts Mexican labour to America, and therefore the measures for turning them away. But no one talks about the conditions in Mexico that drove people to take desperate risks to get to the United States and who is responsible for those conditions. When is America going to look in the mirror and admit that the larcenous NAFTA agreement and rapacious rampage of multinational corporations undercut a viable Mexican economy and the basis for a decent life for so many Mexicans? When are American politicians and opinion-makers going to acknowledge that much of American prosperity is built on the backs of those people and others like them in the hemisphere and the world? All the measures proposed by the anti-immigrationist forces are necessary, but by no means sufficient to defend the borders. America cannot play King Canute and hold back a tide of billions. It must reduce the tide by ensuring that the billions do not want to leave home. Scrap the trade agreements, the IMF, SAPs (Structural Adjustment Policies) and offer restitution to rebuild economies that have been pillaged#moneytrail-fn5">5.
Carrying capacity of U. S. overlooked in debate
Aside from NAFTA, there is another crucial phrase missing from US immigration discussions. Carrying capacity. Each year the United States adds the equivalent of another Chicago. During the Bush administration it has grown by 21 million people. Immigrants, their children and grandchildren will account for 82% of all population growth in the years leading up to 2050, when the country will reach a staggering 438 million if this growth rate is not slowed. Some worry about assimilation, since the share of non-Hispanic whites will fall from 67 to 47%. Obviously the labour market is the focus of most, who would share Samuel Gompers's conviction that "immigration is fundamentally a labour issue." But full employment and economic prosperity in a culturally or linguistically cohesive America would be a pyrrhic accomplishment if such a nation were to rest on a collapsing ecosystem. Can America sustain half its current population when critical resource shortages appear or biodiversity services are compromised ? The works of analysts like David Pimental, Dale Pfeiffer and Richard Heinberg do not inform any Congressional debate about how many people the country should admit. Clearly a Population Plan is overdue.
The American people have spoken on immigration but the political elite will not listen because they are paid by their corporate benefactors not to listen. It is sad to see the world's greatest democratic experiment come to such grief. The Founding Fathers devised a system that they embedded in a constitution with mechanisms to counter-act the natural instinct of the political class to usurp power and exercise it as a permanent elite dominating pauperized subjects on the old European model. They counted on a "vigilant and manly spirit" that animates the American people to breath life and vigour into the constitution. But alas, the Founding Fathers couldn't possibly foresee the power and the scale of Wall Street money.
In America today, anything's for sale, even democracy. I hear a Senator earmarked for the White House can be had, for, oh around 134-138 million. Sound right?
Tim Murray
Quadra Island, BC
February 23/08
Footnotes
#moneytrail-fn1" id="moneytrail-fn1">1. See www.worldviews.org/detailreports/usreport/html/ch535.html, www.cis.org/articles/2002/back1402.html.
#moneytrail-fn2" id="moneytrail-fn2">2. See Tim Murray's article "Is it reactionary to oppose Immigration?" of 16 Dec 2007 at webdiary.com.au/cms/?q=node/2240, candobetter.org/node/284l.
#moneytrail-fn3" id="moneytrail-fn3">3. See chart of political contributions from hi-tech companies at www.news.com/2009-1028-6050978.html.
#moneytrail-fn4" id="moneytrail-fn4">4. Refer to Sheila Newman's 2002 Master's year thesis "The Growth Lobby and its Absence : The Relationship between the Property Development and Housing Industries and Immigration Policy in Australia and France (PDF - 2.6MB) downloadable from candobetter.org/sheila.
#moneytrail-fn5" id="moneytrail-fn5">5. Refer, also to Tim Murray's article "Closing our borders can't mean turning our backs" of 25 October 2007 at candobetter.org/node/228.
Hale Street Bridge record set straight in runup to Gabba ward election
Media Release, 24 February 2008
Members of the campaign to scrap the controversial and discredited Hale Street Link toll bridge project are unhappy about some 'misleading' ALP local government election materials which appear to claim credit for outcomes achieved by the campaign.
"Let's be quite clear about this," said Stop the Hale Street Bridge Alliance spokesman David Bratchford, "every hard won concession gained by the campaign has been due to the untiring efforts of the ordinary citizens who contribute their time to it."
"Our elected representatives only responded to the pressure we placed on them, and should not be claiming credit."
"Among our supporters are members or supporters of all political parties, but our campaign is non partisan and beholden to no political party," said Mr Bratchford.
"Nevertheless we feel it's our civic duty to highlight the differences between the political parties on the Hale Street Link toll bridge project."
"This project is highly unpopular in the inner southern suburbs and is shaping as a key election issue in the Gabba ward."
"When electors decide how they'll vote in City Council election on Saturday 15 March we ask them to compare the policies of the candidates and their parties on the HSL project."
"So far only the Greens#hs-fn1">1 have come out against it."
"It's a pet project of Liberal Lord Mayor Campbell Newman and his backers in the engineering and construction industry."
"And despite some political game playing, the Labor majority in council has voted for it and supported it all the way, even if Councillor Abrahams was allowed to vote against it. The ALP's shameful track record in the council chamber speaks for itself. Talk is cheap; actions speak much louder."
"Before they nominated as candidates in the election both Greens candidate for Gabba ward Drew Hutton and Greens Lord Mayoral candidate Jo Bragg were very active in the campaign to stop this unpopular and discredited project."
"HSL is opposed by the overwhelming majority of locals, with over 90% of the several thousand public submissions on the project received from the inner southern suburbs saying it should not be built, " said Mr Bratchford.
"It's not too late to stop this expensive white elephant - send a clear message when you cast your vote in the 15 March election."
For more comment and information:
David Bratchford - 0403 339 777
About the Stop the Hale Street Bridge Alliance
An alliance of residents, parents, business people and community organisations to raise awareness surrounding the proposed CBD toll bridge. The Alliance's city-wide strategy challenges the spin and questions the claimed benefits of the project.
Footnotes
#hs-fn1" id="hs-fn1">1. In fact, James Sinnamon, Independent candidate for Lord Mayor, who helps administer this site, has long been an active opponent of both the Hale Street Bridge and the North South Bypass Tunnel.
Former Whitlam Government Health Minister says No to Water Fluoridation
With the kind permission of Dr Everingham this recent letter is being forwarded to all Queensland MPs and others by Queenslanders Against Water Fluoridation Inc (www.qawf.org).
From Dr Doug Everingham Federal Health Minister (Whitlam Government 1972 -1975)
As a family doctor and often Acting Government Medical Officer in Rockhampton over in the 1950s I wrote a letter praising fluoridation published in the local The Morning Bulletin. This prompted the late Jack Harding and others to show me books that warned of fluoridation risks. I read those books and have continued to look at reports for and against fluoridation in medical journals and elsewhere.
Reports still not disproved suggest involvement of fluoride medication in contributing after some years of consumption to reduced immunities or increased intensity or numbers of cases of disorders in human and animal development or function of bones, joints, brain, thyroid and other tissues. Many of the water supplies now fluoridated were earlier showing dental signs of fluoride overdose in a significant proportion of their consumers, and fluoridation increases the prevalence and intensity of such dental fluorosis.
Reports criticize poor experimental and statistical methods in most surveys that favor water fluoridation. Official policy promoters overwhelmingly concede that public water supplies with 4 ppm (parts per million) fluoride are a hazard. Lower limits have been suggested for infants, sufferers from certain metabolic problems and persons exposed to hot conditions. No minimum concentration of fluoride in communal water supplies or in individual fluoride intake has been shown as necessary to produce fluorosis-free, cares-free teeth. despite repeated calls for such assessment by official reports.
Many studies suggest that the only proven caries-preventing function of fluoride lies in carefully applying toothpaste and dental therapy to tooth enamel, not in swallowing fluoride. Many authors want all artificial fluoridation stopped and natural water supplies limited to some unspecified fluoride level below 1 ppm.
Such authors include professionals formerly in charge of government promotion or direction of fluoridation. Among these are the former Dean of Melbourne's dental school, Sir Arthur Amies, Dr John Colquhoun of New Zealand; and others in the few countries that still promote fluoridation, as well as many that have abandoned or avoided it.
Associate Professor Hardy Limeback, PhD, BSc, Doctor of Dental Surgery, Head of Preventive Dentistry, University of Toronto and Past President, Canadian Association for Dental Research, is typical of ever more researchers who have turned against fluoridation. In 1999 he apologized for inadvertently misleading colleagues and students, saying "For the past 15 years I had refused to study the toxicology information that is readily available to anyone. Poisoning our children was the furthest thing from my mind."
It thus took that eminent expert 15 years to face plain and crucial scientific facts that were avoided and disparaged by traditional authorities and some industrial sponsors. I took me 10 years after graduating. It is time for remaining fluoridation promoters to get past collecting titles of supporting political authorities and stop ridiculing opponents as if they were all dupes, cranks, quacks or dimwits. They may then make a similar apology.
Member, Australian House of Representatives 1967-75 and 1977-84
Australian Minister for Health 1972-75
Vice-President [West Pacific Region's nominee] at World Health Assembly, Geneva 1975.
Post script from Queenslanders Against Water Fluoridation
The Federal Labor Party has initiatives in Oral Health that they can be very proud of (starting the School Dental Service - Gough Whitlam sent 100 dental therapists to New Zealand for training to get it started quickly) and Labor intoduced the Commonwealth Oral Dental Health Scheme.
The Queensland Government's actions in forcing fluoridation and forcing it based on fraudulent data will never be an action that can be looked back on with pride.
See also Qld Health staff doctored tooth decay data used in decision to force fluoridation, comment NO CHOICE? ... WHY is mass medication mandated.. WHY? of 6 Oct 2012 by jay mark.
Keep Brisbane liveable - stop the destruction of Kalinga Park
Media release by Tristan Peach, Greens Candidate for Hamilton Ward
22 February 2008
Labor and Liberal plans to bulldoze a beautiful stand of mature hoop pines and gums at the eastern end of Kalinga Park are unacceptable and unnecessary, says Green Candidate for Hamilton Ward, Tristan Peach.
The trees are a stunning feature of the area, provide shade for park users, habitat for wildlife and are an excellent carbon sink for North Brisbane. The trees are in the section of park next to the intersection of Sandgate Road and the East-West Arterial.
They are to be cleared to make way for a road tunnel that will destroy communities, increase carbon emissions and add to congestion.
Mr Peach has previously organised a petition to save the park and helped write a submission on the Airport Link impact statement, both of which were ignored by Council and the State.
“These trees are part of the area’s heritage and are highly valued by the community. I am the only candidate who is working to save them, while the other two candidates support their destruction” said Mr Peach.
“I am promoting a solution for North Brisbane that will address transport issues as well as preserve our valuable natural environment,” said Mr Peach.
The Greens’ transport plan for North Brisbane includes light rail along Lutwyche/Gympie Road, improved cross-city bus services and better cycling and walking options. It was released in September 2007.
“People in Hamilton Ward have a clear choice: they can vote Green for a cost-effective transport solution that won’t destroy the park, or they can vote Liberal/Labor for a transport project that will destroy the park and increase congestion on the East-West Arterial, Stafford Road, Gympie Road, Newmarket Road and various local streets,” said Mr Peach.
Kalinga Park is not the only natural area that will suffer – trees and green space along Kedron Brook (behind Kedron State High School) will also be bulldozed to make way for Airport Link.
Contact: Tristan Peach 0416 478 615 hamilton |AT| qld greens org au www.greenupbrisbane.net
Recent comments