population

Australia’s  population of 26.5m grew at the rate of 2.2% (year ending March 2023.) At 2.2% growth rate our current population would increase to 30m within 10 years and double in 31.85 yrs and would reach 150m by 2103, within the life-expectancy of a child born today. Less than 25% of that 2.2 rate of population growth was due to natural increase. Without the 454,361 migration, we would have grown at about 0.55%.

Where To From Here - Victorian Local Government Elections 2024; Save Our Canopy Trees – April 1 Forum; Planning and Heritage Inquiry; Level Crossing Removal FOI; VCAT Protest?; Let There Be Light – Brunswick Residents Have a Win; Planning Scheme Amendment St Phillip St Brunswick East; Guest Speaker at Fitzroy Residents Association; John Curtin Hotel; Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens; Western Port Woodlands Alliance Formed; MAB Attempts to Silence Westmeadows Re

Australia's high density buildings are not designed to mitigate the spread of a virus as they have poor air circulation, insufficient balconies, and are usually designed for people who are away all day and only home to sleep.   Our cities do not have enough open space areas for residents in high density apartments to escape to, yet we are still inundated with business and media statements extolling the benefits of population growth that can be accommodated in ever higher densitie

Any new inquiry into Australia’s migration program needs to assess the full costs and benefits of population growth, especially the costs to our environment and the risks of collapse. I wish I had a dollar for every pro-population-increase article I have read that begins by telling the reader that Australia is a nation of immigrants, with some 25% born overseas and about 50% with at least one parent born overseas.

“About one in 25 Australian homes are at high risk of becoming effectively uninsurable by 2030, according to a new Climate Council report based on analysis by a climate risk assessment group (ABC, 2022).”  (Dr Peng Yew Wong, RMIT School of Property.)

LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL COMMITTEE INQUIRY SUBMISSION

The Planning and Heritage Inquiry submissions are up and running and we are hoping you will be able to add something to this, and/or share with other residents.  Submissions are due by 31 Jan 22. Anyone who wants to contribute to the adequacy on the Planning and Environment Act 1987 and the Victorian planning framework in relation to planning and heritage protection is welcome to make a contribution. Areas covered include population policy, state and local; housing costs, vegetation protection, height limits, Green Wedges, concerns about VCAT, protecting heritage.

Was COP26 a big waste of time? Population ecologist and PM Expert Advisor Prof William Rees weighs in on the major UN climate conference and points out humanity's collective failure to acknowledge and address the root cause of environmental problems: we are consuming more than the Earth can provide.

It is a great irony, if not tragedy, that so many well-intentioned people, especially climate-focused non-government organisations and ordinary citizens wasted so much time and effort at COP26 in Glasgow. It’s not that the official negotiators achieved so little, but rather that climate change is not the real existential threat, OVERSHOOT is.

Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) believes there is nothing to fear from the downward projection of population size in the Inter-Generational Report (IGR) from 40 million to 38.8 million by 2061. National President Jenny Goldie says what is to be feared are the environmental, social and economic cost of adding another 13 million people to the population.

“The IGR fails to take into account the costs of infrastructure which amounts to at least $100,000 in public money for each new person, be they immigrant or born here,” says Ms Goldie.

“The IGR fails to take into account the environmental costs of urban encroachment on natural bushland, threatening iconic species such as the koala, and adding to carbon emissions,” she says. “It fails to address the social costs of crowding, housing unaffordability and longer waiting times that generally accompany population growth.

“Having more people generally means a bigger GDP but not necessarily GDP per capita, which is a better measure of living standards. In fact, GDP is well past its use-by date and, before the end of the IGR time frame, will have ceased to be used. In looking so far into the future, we should be using a range of the newer measures of living standards and well-being.”

Ms Goldie says neither should we fear an ageing population.

“The projection that there will only be 2.7 workers per person aged over 65 in 40 years’ time will probably be wrong,” says Ms Goldie. “In fact, as the working age population shrinks and the labour market tightens, fewer people will be unemployed, and employers will improve wages and conditions to attract job-seekers.

“This will have the effect of drawing more people into the workforce who were not working, or keeping people in work who would otherwise have retired. In other words, the participation rate will improve.”

Ms Goldie says rising health expenditure, while a problem in narrow fiscal terms, is actually a good thing, by keeping people happier and healthier for longer, and by reducing human suffering.

I think it is timely to highlight the fact that HRH Duke of Edinburgh appears to have had a pretty good understanding of environmental issues and the role of human population numbers in environmental degradation.[1] His reputation for having a curmudgeonly persona went before him, and possibly gave him licence to blurt out his thoughts, uncensored by notions of political correctness. His gratuitous remarks to more or less strangers, regarding their appearances, or rude questions, characterised his multitudinous "gaffes". He was refreshingly "un careful" and honest in interviews, so he spoke of what many refer to as "the elephant in the room" - human population numbers - as though this reality was indeed not only visible but very obvious.[2] He remarked in one interview that where humans are, there is nothing else (!) He was unmeasured in his comments, so his message was clear. He also remarked, in one interview, that no-one wants to talk about it [population]. I have not, so far, found an interview where any interviewer delves deeply into this with him.

Other conservationists will speak of population as being the huge problem, but it is inserted, rather that the key message, e.g. David Suzuki and David Attenborough. The Australian Conservation Foundation, of which Prince Philip was once president (1971-76), now refuses to discuss population, although it is the biggest, if not the sole, threat to wildlife and biodiversity in Australia. ACF have made a statement https://www.acf.org.au/acf_statement_on_the_passing_of_prince_philip and credit him with seeding the idea of creating this body, but they do not mention his stand on global human population. Here is one of the prince's statements to People Magazine:

“Human population growth is probably the single most serious long-term threat to survival. We’re in for a major disaster if it isn’t curbed–not just for the natural world, but for the human world. The more people there are, the more resources they’ll consume, the more pollution they’ll create, the more fighting they’ll do … If it isn’t controlled voluntarily, it will be controlled involuntarily by an increase in disease, starvation, and war.”

Prince Philip was in a privileged position which may have, in a different personality, stifled self expression, but it seemed to have given him licence to make utterance on the subject that others would have steered clear of. It was his choice to speak out, and his good fortune to have a ready audience.

The question is, has it done any good? The world's human population is steaming ahead and, at the last count was around 7.9 billion. When Prince Philip was born, nearly a century ago, the world population was around 1.9 billion. Did Prince Philip not say it loudly enough or often enough? Or would it have made no difference if he had saved his breath?

He has apparently passed on his concern and viewpoint to his son, Prince Charles, and also to his grandson, Prince William. Although they will probably make no difference, there is some satisfaction and comfort in knowing that a few individuals, who hold positions of respect in the realm, are conscious of the perilous position of life on Planet Earth. Although they, as individuals, are not in immediate peril, they must realise that, ultimately, the demise of the biosphere will affect them too. They certainly are not exceptions to the need to protect each other and the rest of the population from Covid-19. It is ironic that the bluntly spoken duke once said that he would like to be reincarnated as a virus to control population! [3]

NOTES

[1]#10;https://www.jstor.org/stable/1971611?seq=1">
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1971611?seq=1
[2]https://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/1095825/prince-philip-overcrowding-prince-william-prince-charles-kate-middleton-royal-news-spt

[3]https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/prince-philips-deadly-virus-quote-comes-back-to-haunt-him.html/

Amazing isn’t it? The federal government sets immigration policy. And yet the immigration minister can’t even answer the most simple of questions.

In Part Two, Liam Bartlett again takes Alan Tudge to the Woolshed:

Liam Bartlett: “So, when are we going to hit 30 million”?

Alan Tudge: “We outline a 10-year, for example, infrastructure pipeline”.

Liam Bartlett: “Great, so where are we in 10-years?”

Alan Tudge: “In part we’re going through a process”.

Liam Bartlett: “30 million? 35 million? 40 million? Stop me when I am getting close”

Amazing isn’t it? The federal government sets immigration policy. And yet the immigration minister can’t even answer the most simple of questions.

Well done 60 Minutes.

Van Badham, the author of an insulting Guardian piece against Dick Smith, (Thursday 7 September 2017) parades the usual cliches about 'educating women' to deal with population growth, despite the obvious fact that although women in Australia still have relatively high rates of literacy, our population just keeps growing faster and faster. Not because Australian women are having huge families, but because mass immigration from overseas contributes 60% of Australia's population growth. How is education going to fix that, Ms Van Badham? [16 September 2017: See new footnote #5.]

Not progress

Most people in Australia and the rest of the Anglosphere are educated to believe in a sort of chronological continuous improvement, which they know as 'progress'. This 'progress' explanation is used to excuse all kinds of costs imposed by change. (We also hear, 'Change is good'). But much coercive and costly change is caused by catering to overpopulation and overdevelopment, and both these ills are engineered by powerful people. Over the last 20 years in Australia, the mainstream media has represented the growth lobby by pushing rapid population growth as an economic norm, as an inevitable demographic fact, and has played its only card - the race card - against the many more rational objections.

Rent a troll

With the rise of the internet, the beneficiaries of engineered population growth use crowds of trolls to defend these costs and the growth lobby's excesses on the internet, so that when critics of rapid population growth go to 'progressive' sites that push growth, they will get all kinds of flack. The trolls are designed to frighten questioners away. People should not be misled to believe that the nasty attacks on people who question population growth are sincere - they are too similar and irrational to be spontaneous - but they do need to be countered.

A recent and gross example have been a majority of comments on an article, "I get why you're angry, Dick Smith. The ABC ignores my ideas all the time," in The Guardian (Thursday 7 September 2017) about Dick Smith's ad against massive population growth. You can see these comments here: https://www.facebook.com/theguardianaustralia/posts/1487301447971603. Many are grossly defamatory. [Revisiting the site two days later, I discover that, thankfully, many of these awful comments have been unpublished by The Guardian.] The article itself, although it is apparently by a professional journalist, is sarcastic, coarse, superficial and ageist, characterising Smith as sexist, a white man abusing his traditional privilege, an elderly xenophobe having a 'brain fart'.

Female education in Australia

The author of this gratuitously insulting piece, Van Badham, then parades the usual cliches [1] about 'educating women' to deal with population growth, despite the obvious fact that although women in Australia have relatively good (if deteriorating) educations, our population just keeps growing faster and faster. Not because Australian women are having huge families, but because mass immigration from overseas contributes 60% of Australia's population growth. How is education going to fix that, Ms Van Badham?

Don't let the facts stand in the way, Ms Badham

Immigration is a factor totally ignored by the so-called Demographic Transition 'theory'. Speaking as a population scientist, I would say that Dick Smith is on the right track and Ms Van Badham is ignoring 60% of the equation. However you will find that most Australian 'population experts' - read professional 'demographers' and friends of the growth lobby - also fall for the Badham arithmetic mistake, although they are all more mathematicians and economists than scientists.[2] They fall for it because they do not test it and they do not read around it or anything not produced in English.

Outside the Anglosphere bubble

It was to educate people with open minds that I translated Etienne Van de Walle's: “French fertility in the 19th century,” which you can read here: /node/4247. Van de Walles was not the only French population historian and demographer to write about how France had 'its demographic transition' before industrialisation, right after the Revolution. The Anglosphere is known for ignoring theories that question its own tenets, however, so no-one hears about it.

One brave American population historian, Paul G Spagnoli, dared to write about this strange turning away from scientific method in the Anglosphere, which is so dominated by political and economic ideology. You can read his paper, "The unique decline of mortality in revolutionary France,"(1997) here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11619481. Almost no-one paid attention to this eminent bilingual historian's significant analysis, because it did not suit the anglosphere bias.

Anyone talking population needs to know this

Seuil, France also published a multi-article review by population theorists which included Dupâquier and other notables, as Communications, 44, 1986. Dénatalité : l'antériorité française, 1800-1914., (1986).[3] The meaning of the title is "Fall in the birth rate: the French precedent, 1800-1914." There was both a fall in the birth rate and a fall in mortality, at the same time as there was a rise in marriages, a fall in age of marriage, and a decline in never-marrieds! Why? Well, the French used contraception - but they didn't need the pill; they used the sheath, withdrawal, and various pessaries. Contraceptives have been known forever,[4] but using them demands a will to do so. In the 19th century, as the state cracked down on use of contraceptives because they wanted more soldiers for war, bands of French activists went round the country selling them and teaching people how to use them, especially poor people in cities. (See Francis Ronsin, La Greve des ventres, Aubier, France, 1980.)

Prior to the French Revolution, France's population was either stable or grew very slowly. [5] Although forms of contraception have been available extending back into ancient history, this Ancien Regime population stability is thought to have been due to a different kind of population control, where quite high percentages of people never married, never had children, and where the average age of marriage was quite high (over 25 yrs old). People who did marry and have children averaged above 5 children and life expectancy was low, with many children dying in infancy.

The natural fertility myth and endogamy

The French demography historians, such as Jacques Dupâquier (who calls it a myth) and Henri Leridon, also question the so-called 'natural fertility' concept which Anglosphere demographers believe is demonstrated by the extreme fertility of the Hutterites. See, Bardet and Dupâquier, "Contraception: les Francais les premiers, mais pourquoi?" in the abovementioned Dénatalité : l'antériorité française, 1800-1914. Dupâquier and others refer to the power of endogamy in determining fertility opportunity. The French and most tribal people before colonisation, globalism, and the car, were endogamous. That is, they lived in villages (the equivalent of clans or tribes) where only rarely did anyone marry far beyond the village or tribe. Because of the small range of population numbers within a village or tribe this meant that, like a small game of musical chairs, not everyone would find a marriagable partner, either because they were too strongly related or because all possibles were already married or because they were outside their social class (homogamy).

Another brake on fertility was that lack of housing or a good income made people less attractive as marriage partners.

Transport and the Post-WW2 Baby Boom

The advent of relatively cheap cars brought about a sudden jump in the marriage and birth rates in many countries because people could live in new houses in places that had previously been too far from work and ammenities and they found employment in the post war fossil fuel economy. Hence more people became marriagable. This was called the "Baby Boom." Trains had also made a difference to employment opportunities and the viability of living in once out of the way places. Boats early brought marriagable strangers closer. Planes exploded trans-ocean marriage/fertility opportunities. The latest accelerator of marriage and fertility opportunity is probably the internet which permits romances that are detached from real circumstances.

Colonisation, industrialisation and war accelerate population growth

However the problem of mass immigration remains an accelerant of population growth that is rarely acknowledged, although those who make open borders policy know it well. They just don't talk about it. Just think of how colonisation and war, by exploding endogamous traditions and driving people from their historic villages and tribal lands to cities in search of work has affected India, China, Africa, the Middle East ... Think how it has affected Australia - once occupied by a much smaller lighter footprinted population for 60,000 years. How much difference will the wars pushing people from Africa and the Middle East and the politicians inviting them to enter Europe's almost stablising population make? How much more will the globalisation of everything and open borders accelerate all populations and anihilate all diversity?

About the author

The author of this article, Sheila Newman, is an evolutionary sociologist specialising in population, environment and energy resources. Relevant to the theory expressed here, she has published, Demography, Territory, Law: The Rules of Animal and Human Populations, Countershock Press, 2012 See peer reviews and explanation here) and Demography, Territory, Law 2: Land-tenure and the origins of capitalism in Britain, Countershock Press, 2014 and she is currently working on the third volume in series, Demography, Territory, Law 3: Land-tenure and the origins of democracy in France. Her major thesis in Environmental Sociology, which included oil economics, was The Growth Lobby in Australia and its Absence in France, 2002. For where to buy these see her bio here: /node/1882

NOTES

[1] [My translation]: "In researching factors to explain differences in fertility between different states in India, two authors proposed analyses based on the same methodology, multiple regression, focusing on each state. Zachariah and Patel (1984) concluded that a small number of socioeconomic variables (with the level of education achieved by women at the top) explained 91% of variation in birth rates. Jain in 1985 concluded in a similarly convincing fashion (explaining 90% of variation) that it was due to three major variables: age at marriage, infantile mortality, and use of contraception. Thus, each one could boast of having identified the key variables to Indian fertility, but both lists of variables were completely unrelated! We can understand why: both lists were not independent and the socioeconomic variables identified in the first article affected the variables taken into consideration in the second. Source: Henri Leridon, "Théories de la fécondité : des démographes sous influence ?", Population 2015/2 (Vol. 70), p. 331-373. DOI 10.3917/popu.1502.0331, pp. 336-337.

[2] Henri Leridon, "Théories de la fécondité : des démographes sous influence ?", Population 2015/2 (Vol. 70), p. 331-373. DOI 10.3917/popu.1502.0331, pp. 334, 'Not theories but ideas.'

[3] Under the direction of the School of Higher Studies in Social sciences - Centre of Transdisciplinary Studies (Sociologie, Anthorpologie, Politics).

[4] John Knowles (Lead author), Report, "History of Birth Control Methods," Katharine Dexter McCormick Library and the Education Division of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, 2012, http://www.plannedparenthood.org/files/2613/9611/6275/History_of_BC_Methods.pdf

[5] Note from Sheila Newman 16 September 2017: I originally wrote that the population of the Ancien Regime 'was also stable for a couple of centuries'; I am ammending this to take into account a revised opinion in France, which is that the population may have grown very slowly. Also, after the French Revolution, France's population did grow, of course, despite a lower birth rate, because of the reduction in the death rate, the increase in marriages and the decrease in celibacy. I have not yet adequately researched whether the role of immigration in increasing growth rates was significant during the Revolution. Note that most documents of the Ancien Regime (such as they were) were lost during the French Revolution and estimating population size during that time, and growth, is not very reliable. With regard to the recent ammendment from two or more centuries of population stability (rather non-growth, due to huge demographic crises such as recurrent epidemics, wars and famines (famines were often related to wars and the depredations of soldiers on local food crops) to 'slow growth'; it is difficult to find the origin of this 'recalculation' and one wonders if it was not a political or a population-theory decision where, on a basis that the leap from estimates of 18-20 or 22m French until 1750 seemed too sudden compared to the first modern census of 1801, which found 29,361,000 people in France. The alternative to this would be to re-guess the population of France under the Ancien Regime at around 25 or even 27 million. This would then run up hard against the 18m estimated by Vauban at the end of the 17th century. That estimate was based on poll taxes by household.

Article by Leith van Onselen. Dick Smith is a national treasure. Yesterday he used his own money to fund an ad in Australia’s major newspapers challenging Lucy Turnbull – the chief commissioner of the Greater Sydney Commission (GSC) – on mass immigration, and asking her what her eventual plans are for the population of Sydney – querying whether it could be 16 or even 100 million.

Below is the ad:

The response from Lucy Turnbull’s office was pathetic. From The Australian:

The Australian sought comment from Ms Turnbull, through the Greater Sydney Commission. Commission chief executive Sarah Hill responded that Sydney’s rate of population growth was the “hallmark of all successful cities around the world”, and the group based its planning on a middle range of growth forecast, prepared by the state’s demographers.

“More than half of this growth is through natural increase,” Ms Hill said. “Our responsibility is to plan for this to make our city more liveable, sustainable and productive, rather than to debate the facts.”

So, “more than half of this growth is from natural increase”, according to the GSC? Not according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). As shown in the below charts, net overseas migration (NOM) into NSW (read Sydney) accounted for 67% of population growth in financial year 2016, and has done so on average over the past 30-plus years:

However, the above charts significantly understate the true impacts of immigration on Sydney’s population growth because “natural increase” captures the children of migrants. That is, NOM brings with it an immediate direct boost to population as well as a subsequent boost as new migrant arrivals have children (subsequently classified as “natural increase”).

For this reason, the Productivity Commission this year estimated that Australia’s population would peak at 27 million by 2060 under zero NOM, versus 41 million under NOM of 200,000 – a difference in population of 14 million! This comes despite only 9 million of this population increase coming directly from NOM. The other 5 million comes from migrants and the decedents of migrants having children (see next chart).

These are “the facts”, which the GSC seems only too willing to ignore: it is primarily mass immigration that is causing Sydney’s infrastructure woes, as well as pressuring housing.

Clearly, the best way for Lucy Turnbull to make Sydney “more livable” is to tap her husband on the shoulder and convince him to rein-in Australia’s mass immigration program.

Because as far as high immigration goes, the buck stops with the federal government. If you are in local or state government then you don’t have much choice but to cope with continuing mass immigration putting an ever-increasing strain on already stretched infrastructure, housing and public services.

Lucy Turnbull is in a unique position to influence federal policy and effect change for the betterment of both Sydney and Australia. But like her husband she is a mouthpiece for the ‘growth lobby’ that gains from never-ending population expansion at the expense of the rest of us.

[email protected]

This article, by Leith van Onselen, was first published at http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2016/12/the-turnbulls-population-credibility-collapses-under-dick-smith-barrage/. Republished with author's permission.

"Mark, I am fully aware that your job must be challenging and frustrating at times, but ignoring the elephant in the room – the increasingly obvious negative impacts of population growth - is putting EV and all who care for our environment on a never ending hamster wheel of frustration, disappointment, and ultimately hard earned campaign money down the gurgler. Unchecked population growth is having a ratchet effect, steadily increasing the pressure on the environment and reversing previous efforts to protect it. " (Jenny Warfe)

To: 'Mark Wakeham'
Subject: Population impacts

Hi Mark

Thanks for your recent response to my concerns about Victoria’s population growth being the biggest threat to Victoria’s natural environment, and apologies for my slow reply. Congratulations too on EV’s campaign on moving away from coal.

You made two main points

1.      Population policies are largely set at the national and international level and it is a global issue

2.      Solutions cover numerous issues on which you (EV) are not the experts

My response is:

1.      Population policies are largely set at the national and international level and it is a global issue.

Climate change and renewable energy are National and International issues too, but EV has no problem running effective campaigns on these issues. Of course everything about climate change, energy and water use has numerous variables, but it is disingenuous to ignore absolute numbers of people as one of the most impactful variables. Melbourne’s population is currently increasing by around 2,000 people per week – over 100,000 per annum - (~ 60% of which is migration), so it is ridiculous to ignore this ever increasing, compounding, input and its effect on energy and water consumption and other ecological services.  

I recently gave a talk on sustainability to the Mornington Peninsula Shire and made these points:

·         With the current 2% annual growth, Victoria’s population will double by 2050 – mostly in Melbourne.

·         Victoria has the highest population growth rate of any state.

·         Costs of population growth are largely hidden, and fall disproportionately on local and State governments: roads, drainage, waste management, public facilities, schools, hospitals, etc. etc....

·         This leaves less $$ to protect local biodiversity – an issue which Councils and environment groups keep saying they are concerned about.  

·         Academic research shows that costs far exceed the increased revenue generated by additional people¹

·         Australia’s growth doubled from 1% to 2% per annum in the last decade, so we must now spend an extra 7% of government revenue on  infrastructure just to avoid infrastructure deficit² – let alone what we should be spending to protect the environment and prepare for climate change.

·         Expanding capacity merely to maintain level of service already provided per person provides no net gain in utility

·         All this means that, contrary to the Growth lobby’s rhetoric, population growth is not an investment, it’s a recurrent cost – a drain on local and state government budgets

State and local governments, NGOs and community organisations are left to mop up the excesses of the population Ponzi scheme currently driving our economy. Funding for our task is hopelessly inadequate. I suggested to MP Shire that they should lobby the Victorian government with these facts, and request the Victorian government to lobby the Federal government via COAG and relevant Ministers. State and local governments should also include population facts in locally produced information on biodiversity and the environment. I make that same suggestion to EV.

In our favour, I think the tide is beginning to turn on the until now unquestioned benefits of population growth. The mainstream media has run dead on the issue for a long time, no doubt to placate vested interests, but perhaps they can no longer ignore the failing infrastructure, falling living standards, housing unaffordability and appalling growth in homelessness, etc. etc.  Here are just a few examples of former Growthists changing their tune:

·         Professor Judith Sloan – Economist and contributing Economics Editor at The Australian (!) is starting to talk about the downside of population growth, See: Judith Sloan  

·         Josh Gordon state political Editor, The Age 25^th October 2016 See: Josh Gordon

·         John Masanauskas John Masanauskas City Editor Herald Sun October 28, 2016

·          Productivity Commission  Annual Report 2010-11, and its 2016 report found no economic benefit of high immigration for existing Australians and warned of many down-sides at: Productivity Commission   This quote from the PC Report is relevant:

The broader impacts from any increase in Net Overseas Migration (NOM) also need to be taken into account. Increasing numbers of immigrants can adversely affect the quality of Australia’s natural and built environment unless governments take action to mitigate congestion and other pressures. Even with such action, there are additional costs for the community as environmental services have to be replaced with technological solutions. While there are various estimates of the cost of these solutions, the actual cost can be lower due to economies of scale, or higher if environmental services are currently ‘free’. Moreover, some environmental impacts, such as the recreational value of near empty beaches and the value of biodiversity, are hard to measure, let alone monetise. Yet, such considerations should be part of the broad cost-benefit assessment underpinning decisions on the long-term migrant intake. To inform this debate, the Australian Government should publish projections of the impact of varying rates of migration and population growth on the natural and built environment. This would also help to address community perceptions (as expressed by participants) that debate about the impacts of immigration is lacking

·         The Grattan Institute in 2014 found that the extra money State governments are forking out for infrastructure fully accounted for their burgeoning deficits - You know, those deficits that cause them to cut social and environmental programs. See: Grattan Institute

·         Commonwealth Bank. In its recent paper "How does Australia look on a per capita basis?", quoted at: Business Insider

Note the graphs of GDP per capita, per capita income, labour force participation rates, travel time index, dwelling prices etc.

·         International media is also starting to question population ponzis. Eg: The Globalist  

So, if former “economic rationalists” have even started talking about the financial downsides of population growth without the usual mutterings about racism being slung at them, surely it’s time for us to talk about the ecological downsides? NGOs and community groups who care about our environment are being handed an opportunity to add ecological degradation to the growing list of down sides from population growth. The real issue is about bums on seats, not the colour of them.

Colleagues have suggested a campaign along the lines of “Canberra is the problem”. As we agree it is federal immigration policies out of Canberra driving most of the growth and we are growing by about a Canberra-worth (or maybe Canberra-worthless) of people every year, an advertising campaign could be run showing Canberra’s popping up all over a map of Australia next to already big cities, or swamping our natural attractions, habitat for other species etc. (Just this week, C7 reported on distressed kangaroos becoming common in Melbourne’s suburbs, stating that spreading suburbs are wiping  out their habitat).

Indeed, the Victorian government itself has produced evidence of the negative impacts of population growth in its State of the Environment Reports 2008 and 2013 showing that population pressures were adversely affecting Victoria’s environment. So, it’s hardly fringe opinion that I am propounding. It’s time to remind government of their own findings.  

2.      Solutions cover numerous issues on which you (EV) are not the experts. My response is:  

Non experts influence public debate all the time on a vast range of issues. Politicians aren’t experts in all issues, but they happily pontificate on anything that appeals to their particular world view or party dogma. Indeed their cultural/religious beliefs, which should have no role in good government, are influencing some policies which have a negative impact on the environment. Environmentalists should be naming that problem.  

It is a cop out for environmentalists to pronounce that because we are not say, demographers, we cannot have a reasoned and informed position on human population impacts on the environment – which we purport to care deeply about and may have spent years studying and working in. As long as we are well informed and use facts what is there to be scared of? At least we should have a go in my view.

It’s interesting too,isn’t it, that Bernard Salt is not a qualified demographer but he calls himself one, is considered an expert, and his opinions are widely publicised on a wide range of issues. Conversely, the mainstream media rarely consults Sociologists/Demographers such as Dr. Katharine Betts and Dr. Bob Birrell from The Australian Population Research Institute.

Mark, I am fully aware that your job must be challenging and frustrating at times, but ignoring the elephant in the room – the increasingly obvious negative impacts of population growth - is  putting EV and all who care for our environment on a never ending hamster wheel of frustration, disappointment, and ultimately hard earned campaign money down the gurgler. Unchecked population growth is having a ratchet effect, steadily increasing the pressure on the environment and reversing previous efforts to protect it.

There is no logical end point to infinite growth with finite resources. Unless we address the (irrefutable mathematical) problem of compounding population numbers, we are sitting ducks for exhaustion, disappointment and job dissatisfaction – and of course environmental degradation.

Perhaps a coalition of well regarded community, planning and environment groups could support one another to really get stuck into the issue?

As Paul Ehrlich has said, "Whatever your cause, it's a lost cause if we don't stop population growth". Obviously that applies just as much in our local area as globally.

Cheers,

Jenny Warfe

1.      For example: O’Sullivan JN (2012) The burden of durable asset acquisition in growing populations. Economic Affairs 32 (1): 31–37)

2.      Pers comm. Dr. J O’Sullivan Senior Research Fellow UQ. http://researchers.uq.edu.au/researcher/4920

All five ACT electorates to be contested by Sustainable Australia. Sustainable Australia’s first state/territory campaign will see the party contest all five ACT electorates, represented by a diverse range of candidates from an Indigenous Elder to a 20 year old ANU science student.

Sustainable Australia (ACT) president John Haydon is representing the party in Kurrajong, and says he's delighted to have all five electorates covered in the party's first non-federal campaign.

Mr Haydon says, "Our campaign will focus on three key points: Save Canberra from overdevelopment; Lower rates; and Protect our trees."

"We will provide for proper community consultation in all development applications across the ACT.

"By slowing population growth, we relieve the ACT of the need to build and/or retro-fit so much budget-breaking complex infrastructure - like ever more trams, hospitals and schools. This budget relief will achieve lower rates than would otherwise be the case.

"And by saving Canberra from ever more sprawl and infill overdevelopment we are the only party with a sustainable plan to protect our trees and green space."

Ngunnawal Elder Violet Sheridan is standing for the party in the seat of Yerrabi, covering Gungahlin.

Ms Sheridan says, "It is important to provide better education opportunities for Aboriginal youth and all young Australians, as well as housing affordability for first home buyers and renters. I'm also passionate about protecting the ACT's Aboriginal and European heritage from overdevelopment."

The party's Ginninderra candidate Martin Tye obtained a Bachelor of Applied Science in Geography from the University of Canberra, and also has an extensive background in small business, running successful retail outlets for over 30 years.

"My extensive campaigning around Belconnen has told me that many voters are tired of the same old political choices, and want something different. Most voters want a common sense party from the political centre, and support our aim for an economically, environmentally and socially sustainable ACT," said Mr Tye.

Mr Tye's son Oliver is also running for the party, in Kurrajong in which his university sits.

"I'm loving studying science at ANU but would go to part-time study if I had the privilege of representing younger voters in the ACT Legislative Assembly," said Mr (Oliver) Tye.

Full details on the campaign can be found at our website:

http://www.votesustainable.org.au/act

Policy Platform - Sustainable Australia

In the article the writer questions the whole idea of governments making top-down decisions about the size of a country's population.

A question that often comes up when discussion population related matter is, "What should the population be?" or "What level of immigration/growth do you think is suitable?". I don't have an answer to that question, and I don't intend to provide one.

At issue: Is population size really a matter for the state?

In "What a Population Policy means to a People" we discussed the dangers of having a population policy. A government which imposes a population policy is doing more than simply deciding how many people exist within the geographic areas that it governs, its also making a determination on the composition of the population, which becomes unavoidable when any other population target than that which would have been arrived at naturally must involve. As we are subject to population policies which seek to increase the population, this means that the immigration program must unavoidably act to the detriment of the original populations, diminishing their representation and power in order to achieve an abstract target. The issue isn't whether a government decides to increase the population, decrease it, or keep it constant, the issue is the belief that the government has a right to decide this matter in the first place. The issue is the belief that population size is a matter for the state, and like interest rates, tax rates, tariffs and the number of taxi licences issues, is a matter for a bureaucracy to decide.

Also flawed is the idea that a government can set population targets democratically, if it puts forward its policies before the electorate and allows the population to vote for one which they prefer. This assumes that there are sufficient options put before the public, that the parties are given equal treatment in the media, and that the population vote according to their own interests and reason, instead of how the establishment pushes them with scaremongering and propaganda. This isn't what we observe, so if our democracy is anything less than perfect in offering a full spectrum of choices, each of which stand a change, we can't rely on a vote. But even if we were to vote, we still have a population policy in the first place. We still legitimise the right of the state to set a policy, which can very quickly and easily turn pathological. Even a sensible population policy doesn't solve this problem, as we are still ceding to the state the right to manipulate us, to displace and diminish us, or otherwise make judgements on the suitability of us as the population of the nation.

People vote democratically with their wombs

The alternative is to allow the population size to be set by the people by the most democratic means available, the individual reproductive choices that we all make. With cheap and readily available birth control, we more or less are capable of choosing or ourselves how many children we have. The birthrate of the nation is therefore nothing more than the accumulative decision making of all people manifesting itself. If people think the population is too low, they will choose to have more children, and the population will increase. If they think the population is large enough, and we don't need growth, they'll have fewer children and the population will stabilise or even reduce. Below replacement birth rates in the Western world are an indication that the people have voted with their ova and sperm, and don't perceive the need for a 'populate or perish' mindset. [This idea of below replacement is abused a lot by our masters. I suggest removing the 'The' which makes it sound like a widely established phenomenon, and just having 'Below replacement' which doesn't suggest such statistical dominance.]

So what should be the role of the state?

So where does the state fit in? It is the role of political and economic leaders not to force a population outcome that they desire or which suits their own objectives, but adapt that that chosen by the people. The low birthrate is only an issue because our political and economic ruling class cannot handle or adapt to this new reality. We have growth forced upon us because the dominant political class refuses to adapt, refuses to implement new solutions, refuses to reform and instead asks us to adapt and even to destroy ourselves, for their own security and posterity. In short, if a stable or falling population is a problem for the political and economic ruling class, then it is the ruling class which is deficient, which has the problem, not the people.

Immigration rate should be in line with birth rate

Immigration therefore has to fit in with this. As population policy is largely implemented through the immigration floodgates, and immigration is used to override the peoples' wishes, immigration policy therefore has to be synchronised with birthrate. Therefore, a sensible immigration policy would be in-line with the birthrate, and not seek to counteract it. Ideally, it the net population intake through immigration would be a function of the total birthrate. If the birthrate rises, then the immigration rate increases and conversely, if the birthrate lowers, then the immigration rate lowers. Immigration could be set at a fixed percentage of total births, where it represents at most, a small percentage. In Australia at the moment, immigration account for more than half of all additions, which is way to high. A better figure would be about 10%, allowing some people to enter Australia if they need to, but not being significant enough to override Australias chosen birthrate.

For those concerned about future population growth, such a stance should be acceptable, because birthrates being just below replacement in Australia (1.93 births per woman as of July 2016),[1] this should act as a limiting factor for future growth. Further measures can be taken to lower the birthrate by removing government incentives.

For Australia's pattern up to 2013 http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/Previousproducts/3301.0Main%20Features42013?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=3301.0&issue=2013&num=&view=

People often ask me why I campaign on population and the reason that I give is that it is an issue that is often overlooked by the environment movement and by the wider world at large. I feel that by ignoring this topic, so much of the other great work done by environmentalists and campaigners is in danger of being severely compromised. Rapid population growth is a worldwide issue and it is also an issue here in Australia. One reason for this is because Australia has one of the highest migration rates in the ‘developed’ world. Due to the way our infrastructure is distributed this is a major reason why an average of 1760 people are added to the population of Melbourne every week and 1600 are added to Sydney. (More by Mark Allen at http://candobetter.net/taxonomy/term/7484)

As a town planner I cannot ignore the impact that this growth is having in terms of how we can create long-term sustainable communities. This is why I run workshops on suburban sprawl and inappropriate high density and the impact that it has on our changing climate.

With my work I am asked a lot of questions, many on a reoccurring basis, so I thought that I would give my best shot at providing written responses to a number of written questions and comments that I have received over the past twelve months.

Where better to start than the issue of reducing population growth and xenophobia?

Population is not the right factor to focus on. It's a slippery slope to xenophobia and not directly linked to sustainability. It is also very dubious on ethical grounds, no real policy levers, and divisive all around. My suggestion would be to focus on sustainability if that's your objective.

I do understand why people are put off by the topic of population because there are so many people who have hijacked the issue with xenophobic intentions. This is all the more reason why we should embrace the topic with a critical, thinking mindset so that those with narrow minded views can be quickly called out. It is reasoned and rational discussion that will prevent a descent into xenophobia, not ignoring the topic and leaving it in the hands of those who feed off irrational soundbites.

In the meantime, if we continue to ignore the issue here in Australia, we will have to accept that suburban sprawl and unsustainable rates of high density development will continue until the current system breaks. By then we will have greatly reduced our ability to adapt to a low carbon society and we will be left with an environmental and social legacy that may take generations to reverse.

Eventually migrants will want to stop coming here due to the increased commutes and expense as well as services becoming increasingly inaccessible. This is already starting to happen (see The root of Sydney and Melbourne’s housing crisis: we’re building the wrong thing – Bob Birrell The Conversation).

If we wait until migrants stop wanting to come, we will make it so much harder for those migrants who need to come. In short we have to get our planning back into the hands of people who want to build communities.

Population growth has not been sustainable since the Howard era when it was massively increased to increase GDP with deliberately little fanfare. This kind of growth fuels the worst types of development; the type that forces generations of people to live lesser lives, all to justify short term profits. We need to shift our population policy away from growth for the sake of growth model towards one that does what is the most sustainable and the most equitable from a global perspective.

This means using some of the money that would otherwise be spent in trying to reduce the massive infrastructure debt that accompanies rapid population growth to help other countries stabilise their population in a non-coercive way. This money could also be channelled into partnering with them to create permaculture based communities as a way of adapting to and helping to combat climate change.

Secondly, by slowing population growth we can better utilise land that would otherwise be developed to house a rapidly growing population to sequester carbon through regenerative farming practices.

Thirdly, most of our population growth is directed towards the fringes of our cities or in ribbon developments along the coast. As well as being some of our greatest areas of biodiversity, these areas are also have some of our most fertile soils. Therefore slowing population growth in Australia may help us to increase global food security or at the very least reduce our reliance upon importing food from areas of the world who will likely have food security issues of their own.

Lastly, slowing our current rate of population growth will allow us to engage in the slower more considered method of planning that is required to create resilient and meaningful communities that will benefit everyone including incoming refugees and other migrants.

High immigration to Australia doesn't add to net world population so it seems right that Australia should take some of the load.

When you consider that the population of the world is increasing by 80 million a year, the effectiveness of Australia in helping to more evenly distribute global population growth is negligible and it does nothing to stabilise the rate of growth in those regions that are struggling to adapt. It is a reactive approach rather than a proactive one. The fact that Australia’s population centres are situated in some of the most ecologically rich and fertile areas of the continent coupled with the fact that we have a planning system that puts profit before resilience, means that this is having a massive environmental and social impact.

Most of us agree that we need to be reducing our emissions rapidly. Therefore the last thing we need to be doing is compromising our capacity to reduce our food miles by pouring huge amounts of carbon intensive concrete over our inner suburbs and urban fringes. It makes much more sense to reallocate the money that would otherwise be required for all the additional infrastructure into helping people in their own countries adapt to the climate crisis and importantly to partner with them to reduce that crisis. Otherwise we only help a small number of people at a massive environmental and long-term social cost.

We want to be in the best position to provide sustainable resilient communities for those people who cannot stay in their own country for one reason or another. Otherwise incoming refugees will be blown like feathers in the wind into the social isolation of an ever increasing suburban sprawl.

Why not just change the planning system?

We need to work hard to change the planning system and work towards reducing GDP driven population growth. If we do one without the other we will fail because deliberate high population growth is the driver of fast paced suburban sprawl style development as well as prefab concrete apartment developments that are quick to build and quick to age. It is a never ending vicious circle. I saw this with my own eyes when I worked as a planner. Sustainable planning takes time as it is about regenerating wasteland, increasing medium density in the post-war middle suburbs and building new village communities complete with recreation, services and capacity for permaculture. This requires a slower rate of population growth for a slower more considered rate of development.

You seem to be advocating for more development in the middle suburbs. This is where much of our food security could lie and we could end up losing this if we are not careful.

Many of the houses in the middle suburbs are being demolished because they do not meet the perceived needs of 21st century living. Also, because most of them lack heritage appeal, very few people feel the inclination to retrofit them. The middle suburbs (unlike the outer suburbs) are much more connected to public transport and much of the housing stock is within walking distance of public open space. Many of these houses have large backyards. Some of these are well utilised while many are not. So the question is, should we see this 'outdated stock' as an opportunity to encourage increasing the density of these areas (as much of it is likely to be demolished over time) in order to reduce the pressure on the urban fringe? Or should we instead regard these backyards as an underutilised resource which will become all the more relevant as we move towards a low carbon, steady state economy?

Could it be that the larger backyards of the middle suburbs will one day provide the food security that other medium density settlements cannot provide? If so, how much of a willingness is there for the occupants of these areas to become urban farmers? In reality most people see their garden as something that simply needs mowing but resilience is all about the ability of communities to adapt to new social and economic circumstances. In which case those backyards could be seen with a new perspective. I really don't have any firm answers. I believe that we can potentially increase housing diversity in the middle suburbs without threatening their potential as permaculture communities but I know that with the current planning system in place, this will not happen. In reality it will be ad-hoc and many good gardens will be lost and much more besides. Increasing housing diversity in the middle suburbs does make a lot of sense but the potential of these areas to grow food and contribute to local self sustaining economies could be critical in the future. We need to tread very carefully (for more on this issue check out the co-founder of Permaculture, David Holmgren's youtube videos and forthcoming book on retrofitting the suburbs)

Are you not just some privileged white guy trying to protect his way of life?

Anyone who thinks that we should be protecting our way of life is in for a rude awakening sooner rather than later as we are currently living well beyond the planet's capacity to absorb our lifestyle. The only thing that we should be trying to protect is our potential to create sustainable resilient communities that are adaptable to energy descent and that can absorb population growth sustainably. The demographic of the inner suburbs of Melbourne has changed a lot in the past few decades as more and more Greek and Italian migrants are displaced by a white middle class demographic. The irony is that it is this very same demographic that is rejecting a suburban model of living that originated and is still championed by white culture. This will continue under the current paradigm as multicultural areas such as Footscray and Richmond become increasingly gentrified through modern apartment living, all of course under the greenwash banner of urban consolidation*. This forces more communities to be dispersed into the social isolation of the urban fringe. We need to prevent the further gentrification of our existing suburbs while ensuring that new communities are built around a village model, as this is the most socially, ecologically and economically sustainable method of creating communities.

*Urban consolidation (the act of increasing densities within the existing built form as a means of reducing urban sprawl) does not have to be greenwash if:

a) It is not perpetual and ongoing. In other words if the high density is not being constructed to house the endlessly growing population that is needed in order to prop up an over inflated housing market.
b)If a substantial proportion is affordable and within financial reach of those people who would otherwise live on the urban fringe where land is cheaper.
c) A substantial proportion of the units are large enough to be viable for families. This includes being within close proximity to services that are within walking distance, including childcare (most inner suburb areas currently have waiting lists of over a year for childcare services).
d)The apartments are resilient and will last for generations.This includes high quality finishes that will not require constant maintenance and trips to landfill.
e)Apartment developments are incorporated into the fabric of existing neighbourhoods in a way that they do not become the dominant built form and that that their presence is subtle and not detrimental to the overall streetscape. Maintaining the village like feel of our suburbs, including the green spaces within them is essential for long term social and environmental resilience.

Much of the urban consolidation currently taking place in Melbourne fails on all of these points and as result does nothing to reduce urban sprawl whist also compromising much of the existing urban landscape.

You support the Greens policy of increasing our refugee intake but in the future there could be many more refugees as climate change worsens. Where do you draw the line?

Assuming that we do not end up becoming refugees ourselves due to climate change (especially as most Australian cities lie on the coast while the interior is becoming increasingly dry) we could theoretically house an increased number of refugees without increasing sprawl or over developing our existing neighbourhoods. We won't have the economic or environmental justification to build many new towns so the focus will be on retrofitting what we already have and part of this would be retrofitting existing housing stock. In Maroondah alone, at the time of writing there are 3000 empty homes. These are artificial “housing shortages” created by speculators and developers to inflate the value of their investments. Therefore we can provide asylum for people without compromising the ability of our cities to adapt to a low carbon world but of course we have to change the paradigm.

Preserving our capacity to provide food close to and within our cities will however be critical. This is why we need to be focussed on retrofitting what we already have as opposed to creating new development on our precious soils.

New research shows that Melbourne's "food-bowl" supplies 41 per cent of all fresh fruit and vegetables to the city but that is set to plummet to just 18 per cent by 2050 thanks to urban sprawl. It is a similar situation in Sydney.

A major component of reducing our environmental footprint lies in sustainable town planning and that just cannot happen at the current rate of population growth because it is quicker and cheaper to build new estates on the fringe or the unsustainable prefab concrete apartment blocks that we are increasingly seeing in the existing suburbs.

Surely population growth is good because it stimulates change and innovation?

There are some areas of Melbourne that in combination with sound planning and urban design principles could be enriched by a modest increase in population. This however is an issue of poorly distributed growth as opposed to it being an issue of there not being enough growth. Many areas within the wider Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane conurbations are growing much too fast while there are some areas that could benefit from the modest amount of growth that is needed to generate commercial activity (helping to decentralise jobs) while making public transport more economically viable. Therefore we need a slower rate of growth coupled with an improvement on the way that growth is distributed.

We have an ageing population so we must increase our population to compensate.

The drain that older people have on services is over emphasised. Many older people contribute to society well past retirement and if we need to create more jobs to support them, then no problem. It might mean fewer jobs running and maintaining poker machines, a few less real estate agents perhaps, a few less loggers and a few less property developers. And how would we pay for it? The last time I looked there was 452 billion dollars from big corporations and millionaires in Australia that are not being taxed (source: Getup). It is also worth considering that:

1)The average age of a person migrating to Australia is 30. That means they are 30 years older than a newborn baby, which has the affect that in 30 years time the ageing population problem will be even worse than it is now.

2)It is worker-to-dependency ratio that matters, not youth-to-elderly. Australia's un/underemployment is probably over three million people.

3)Demographer Dr Jane O'Sullivan has estimated that it may be costing thirty times more in growing our population to offset ageing than our ageing population is costing.

Migration policy is not the only way of achieving a sustainable population.

Very true. For the answer to this question I will quote Michael Bayliss who is the president of the Victorian/Tasmanian branch of Sustainable Population Australia.

“I envision a future where families with no children are respected as being the societal norm just as much as families with children, and where adoption is seen as a viable and accessible alternative to couples of all sexual and gender identities. The key as always, is through education, empowerment, and allowing people to make their own choices. High schools for example should educate young people into the pros and cons of having children, and with due consideration given to the environmental impacts of having children. I do not advocate fiscal policies that reward large family size, instead this money should be spent on children’s services, such as schools and medical subsidies.”

The questions and answers written above form part of a booklet that is available in electronic format by emailing [email protected]. It is also available as a hard copy from the New International Bookshop in Carlton, Melbourne.
Feel free to contact me at that same email address with your feedback.

Mark Allen is an ex-town planner and environmental activist with a particular interest in population. He runs workshops on Population, Permaculture and Planning across Australia and runs a Facebook group of the same name.

“When discussing population, let your starting point be about finding the issues that you have in common. It could be about congestion, climate change, loss of heritage, the list goes on. It is not about us pushing our view of the world onto people. Instead it is about helping them to see population in a new light by showing how it connects to the issues that are important to them.” This article is based on Mark Allen's speech to the Victorian Branch of Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) Seminar: Attitudes and communication in population and the environment on 23 April 2016. Videos of the event will be available soon. Mark Allen started Population Permaculture and Planning. He has a background in town planning.

It is nice to be reminded about how well the past year has gone and what a great journey it has been and it wouldn't have happened without a lot of support. I would like to give special mention to Sheila Newman, Jill Quirk, the candobetter.net website and all the folk at the permaculture village at Confest (which is where I held my first workshop during Easter last year). I would also like to thank Michael Bayliss for his unwavering support.

Connecting with these people and others has been invaluable in terms of helping to build the Population Permaculture and Planning movement that began with that first workshop. One of the reasons why I have managed to engage with so many people since then is because I have tried to take a more collaborative approach with no fixed outcome and with no expectations other than a passion to make real change....so far it seems to be working and I will discuss more about that as we go on.

Working in collaboration with people can take you to places where you never expect to go and I mean this in a good way. It can be very constructive if you get it right. You can help to bring the best out in people and they can help to bring the best out in you but if you get it wrong it can have the opposite effect.

I have been involved in activism to a greater or lesser degree for quite a number of years and I have seen a lot of activists come and go along the way. Many have burnt out, many became disillusioned and overall, despite our best efforts and some great wins along the way, the trajectory in terms of making the world a more ecologically and socially sustainable place has generally been downwards......which is quite depressing.

Part of the reason for this is because people have a tendency to bring their agendas and egos into movements. After a while it becomes all about protecting identities and valuable energy that should have been used to create systemic change is wasted in internal fighting. I am sure that you can all relate to this to a greater or lesser degree. For example I have seen animosity between vegans and non-vegans in the animal welfare movement to the point where I sometimes wonder whether the animals would have been better off had we all just gone home and watched TV.

So over time I have learnt that creating real proper decent long-term change requires more than going out and fighting the good fight so to speak. There is also a need to create underlying whole-scale cultural change from within. A great philosopher once said that you cannot overcome an addiction with the same mindset that allowed that addiction to manifest in the first place.

If we want to lift ourselves out of the very real climate emergency that we are currently facing and achieve so much more, we have to change the record; we have to re-examine our approach so that we can achieve real progress with our activism as well as ensuring that what we achieve is effective and durable.

This was my intent when I started Population Permaculture and Planning or PPP as I shall refer to it from now on. For a start...... the fact that I was taking on the issue of population knowing very well how divisive and emotionally fraught this topic can be, I realised that I had to approach it in a way that could make it as accessible to as many people as possible.

I started PPP in part because I could no longer ignore the population issue, especially knowing the impact that it has in terms of how we plan our cities (or not plan as the case may be). I had entered into the town planning profession because I thought that was the best that I could do in terms of contributing towards making the world a better place. Basically I thought that I could change things from within.

Obviously I was a bit naïve but it was worth studying planning because while my education didn't turn out to be of much use to me in a professional context, it did teach me to think critically and to understand that many issues are often more complex than they first appear. Ignoring this complexity can lead us into all kinds of problems.

For example so many planners are caught up in the high density is the solution to suburban sprawl dichotomy that they ignore the fact that high density can actually help to increase sprawl by pricing people out of the inner suburbs. One distinguished professor in WA even went on to say that the answer to this problem is to lower the quality of high density development in order to make it more affordable to people on lower incomes. I think that if we lowered the standard anymore here in Melbourne many new developments would actually start to become uninhabitable but that’s another story........

So because my drive as a planner was to try and create sustainable communities, it became increasingly apparent that we cannot ignore the topic of population growth. With Melbourne increasing in size by more than a thousand people every week, it is becomes impossible to engage in the slower more considered planning that is needed to create long term viable neighbourhoods.

The vicious circle of planning for engineered population growth

It is a case of more hastily built prefab concrete apartments and continuous sprawl beyond the urban fringe. This rapid rate of population growth of course is used to justify this type of development and this type of development is in turn perpetuated by politically engineered population growth. It is a vicious circle spinning perpetually downwards as our potential to create socially and ecologically sustainable communities continues to decrease.

What makes this fact all the more poignant is that there is an urgent need to rapidly reduce our carbon emissions and it is imperative that this starts with town planning. If we get this wrong everything is so much harder, no amount of divestment from fossil fuels will be of help if we continue to build on our food bowls and green spaces and increasingly have to rely upon sourcing our food from further and further away... and that is just the start.

Creating resilient communities is about being flexible and adaptable to changes in society that we cannot even perceive at this point in time and we are living in extremely uncertain times.

It may just be that we will come to value the larger middle suburbs that are currently targeted for subdivision and that we will look towards retrofitting them as permaculture communities. There is good soil out there that has been lovingly enriched over the decades by generations of Greek and Italian migrants and we have the infrastructure already in place to produce a good proportion of our fresh fruit and vegetables from this under-tapped resource. The cofounder of Permaculture, David Holmgren, has a new book coming out later this year that is about all of that....... but I am digressing.

So I came to realise the important interconnection of permaculture and town planning and population in terms of creating long term viable sustainable communities and that by discussing the three in context I could make the issue of population so much more approachable to so many more people.

This inspired me to start running workshops and by doing so I began to draw people in who otherwise may not have been interested in discussing population as a subject in its own right. Importantly this had to be a collaborative effort. When we engage with people about population or indeed any other subject for that matter we must try to connect with their world view, to see it from the prism of their perspective and use that as a starting point.

I always begin by brainstorming ideas with the participants at the beginning of each workshop and that way they are better able to feel as though they are part of the creative process and to share some of the ownership of the outcome. It is not a case of me lecturing to people how they should view a particular topic. Instead it is a step by step process and this always leads to an understanding that our current rate of population growth is something that has to be questioned. I am not saying that everyone comes out of the workshop agreeing that there is an urgent need to reduce population growth but almost all come out knowing that population is an important consideration and that it is ok to discuss it, especially when looking at its importance in a wider context. This means that the next time they hear the population issue brought up in discussion, they will be more open minded.

This is why I believe it is important that we help people to think about population without challenging their values or their political identity. Some people come into a workshop believing in the principle of open borders for example and they come out continuing to believe in that principle. However they also come out agreeing that in the mean time we need to slow our rate of non-refugee migration so that the communities we do create are socially and environmentally viable over the longer term.

They no longer see population as a fixed black and white issue, that it is in fact fluid depending upon the circumstances. A belief in the free movement of people is strong among many young people on the left and if we want to connect with them we must acknowledge these ideals and by doing so they will more likely acknowledge that there are many steps that need to be undertaken before that kind of thinking can be put into practice.

There may come a day when the world is so balanced politically, socially and environmentally that we could have open borders across the world without it leading to sudden influxes of population from one country to another. It doesn't look very feasible at the moment but who is to say that we shouldn't work towards that ideal. It is an ideal that I would like to work towards no matter how out of reach it may feel. We don't have to smash people's dreams in order to persuade them to consider reversing a migration policy that was put in place by John Howard in order to boost gross domestic product.

We need to slow the rate of population growth as it is right now and, for want of a better word, start an intelligent and ongoing national conversation about the rate in which our population should grow (or shrink) and how we should plan for that to happen. Right now that is all we need to be trying to achieve. As population activists, we ourselves need to acknowledge that we all have differing values and that we should be comfortable with the fact that we do not all need to share the same values in order to bring about change.

The important aim of the workshops that I hold is that they do not run to a particular agenda other than to help people connect to the three issues of population, permaculture and planning. This attitude I think needs to form a wider approach in terms of how we work with other activists, that we work towards finding those areas where we can connect and that in turn allows us to feel comfortable with different values and perspectives.

We need to see our work as being part of an ongoing conversation that will always be greater than the sum of one person's perspective. That way we don't get bogged down in internal politics and because our agenda is fluid, our values do not become threatened. In turn, by taking this approach we can have a profound influence on the people with whom we interact. They pick up on this sentiment and they themselves become more open-minded and become more open to challenging assumptions as well as seeing things from other perspectives.

We need to work together to find areas where we can connect rather than focussing on the games of ego that occur through issues that divide us. That is what got us into this mess. We need a different kind of thinking to let us get out of the mess and to stay out of it.

So when discussing population, let your starting point be about finding the issues that you have in common. It could be about congestion, climate change, loss of heritage, the list goes on. It is not about us pushing our view of the world onto people. Instead it is about helping them to see population in a new light by showing how it connects to the issues that are important to them.

This is the kind of thinking we need in order to create a truly sustainable and resilient world. We need to think outside the matrix and to help others do the same.

The globally unique and lovable Carnaby's Cockatoo exists only in the South West of WA. They are a totem for Noongar people and a part of our shared cultural and natural heritage. But the cockatoos are endangered and we are at risk of losing them forever.

Instead of helping the cockatoos to recover, the State Governments own analysis shows the Government's Green Growth Plan would further drastically reduce the population of these beautiful birds, intelligent, social and long-lived birds.. By locking in the clearing of thousands of hectares of bushland that the birds rely on, numbers of these already rare birds would be reduced by half and the long-term survival of the population would be placed in question.

While the State Government has hailed this Plan as a great environmental initiative, the grim reality is that it will result in the deaths of thousands of cockatoos through starvation as their vital food sources are bulldozed to make way for more unsustainable urban sprawl.

The public submission period for this plan is open now. Tell them to send it back to the drawing board.
See also an ABC report on the problems associated with this WA land-grab by a developer-government. "Carnaby's Black Cockatoos at risk if Perth-Peel land-use plan goes ahead, says leaked report." Note, however, that the ABC is part of this problem because it promotes the idea that mass immigration and population growth in Australia is inevitable.

Mention in your submision that we don't need the massive human population growth, or urban sprawl, and there's nothing "green" about it.
Please visit: https://ccwa.good.do/cockatoos/stopcockatoodisasterplan/"& and see candobetter.net's other pages on the Carnaby's cockatoo and previous efforts to save it in Perth - which these plans will wreck.

The Curse of the British invasion lives on?

"The Noongar people saw the arrival of Europeans as the returning of deceased people. As they approached from the west, they called the newcomers Djanga (or djanak), meaning "white spirits".^{#cite_note-5">[5]#cite_note-6">[6]} There were a number of reasons for this. Firstly their white complexion reminded the Noongar of corpses; their unclean odour of early 19th century Europeans was said to resemble the dead; the fact that the ships arrived from the west, the direction of Kuranup, the setting sun location of the soul in traditional beliefs;^{#cite_note-7">[7]} the fact that Europeans seemed to have no memory of kinship relations; and that Noongars who associated closely with Europeans were apt to die from European diseases over which Aboriginal people had little resistance, supported this claim."

And the devastation continues at an ever greater pace. We must stop this industrial savagery and civilise ourselves.

"God, Sydney’s just unmanageable now. The traffic is beyond control. The roads just can’t cope! I’m not against growth but there’s not enough room on our roads for all the traffic!”

The young woman was inviting her friend in Melbourne to visit her in Sydney.

“We have the same problems here." her friend replied. "The traffic is so terrible that if you head off to do something in a particular suburb, chances are you will have to change your plans due to traffic. You never know really where you are going to end up. One night recently I needed to cross to the other side of the city to meet friends for dinner and I had to just give up and go home. I didn’t even make it to the city, let alone out the other side. I was in gridlock. Of course, I’m not against growth either. How could one question it with all the benefits even though, I must admit, it’s hard to see what they are.”

"I do wonder myself," her friend from Sydney mused. "But they say we must have it." She continued: “They’re constructing a new major road in Sydney for the traffic overflow and people have had to sell their houses to the government and, you know, they don’t even get market prices for them! I’m not against growth but…"

"Yes, it’s the same here in Melbourne. Houses belonging to people who had lived in them for 60 years were acquired by the government to make way for a new tollway but then, with the change of government, it did not go ahead. It was too late for some people as they had moved on but many were very relieved to be able to stay. But then they will have to go through it all again with another change of government as the Libs are determined to build it. If or when it is built it will go right through Royal Park which will be a terrible pity, it will wreck it, actually."

" Oh that's terrible to put it through a park, although I'm not totally surprised."

"I don't live near Royal Park, but it is still upsetting. Nearer to home most of the houses in my area that come up for sale are bought by developers. Then they're demolished and replaced with high density living. We're even getting high rise towers. No wonder parking in the local shopping centre is almost impossible now! But that’s progress isn’t it? And neither of us is against growth.”

"No of course not!! But the same problem afflicts our suburb in Sydney. All the gardens near us have gone. We used to have lots of birds but we see very few now. I used to really enjoy hearing them in the morning. It’s sad but I guess we have to live without a few things we used to enjoy. Oh well, we can’t have things all our own way I suppose and you can't stand in the way of growth."

“I guess it’s all very well for us to say this but what about the kids? There are not enough schools in and around Melbourne and what about the poor train and tram commuters? The trains are terribly overcrowded, by about 50% over maximum capacity. It can’t be healthy to be crammed in like that.”

“Yes it’s the same in Sydney. It’s really not as nice a place to live in as it was when I arrived from London with my parents 12 years ago.”

“Well if it’s anything like Melbourne, it will have grown by about a million people since then. They have to be packed in somewhere!”

"I guess our family have been part of all this! Oh well, at least we subtracted a family of five from London but then London’s kept growing too! Where will it end? What will it be like in 50 years? “

"It’s too far ahead to think about really, but it’s happening so fast in Melbourne and we can see it happening. Maybe we don’t have to worry about 50 years from now but we sure as hell need to worry about five or ten years from now! Already it’s not as good as it was when I was a kid and it sounds as though it was much more free and easy when my parents were young and Melbourne was not so huge”

The two young women pause , deep in thought for a moment.

“If things are not getting better in Melbourne and they certainly are not in Sydney, then something is wrong!"

Neither of us opposes growth but this actually seems to be the problem! What do you have when you don’t have growth? How does that work?"

(Both together) "Oh God! This is doing my head in!”

"Don’t worry about it now , let’s go and have a drink and start planning your trip to Sydney. Oh!! that’s where this whole discussion began wasn’t it?!”

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

Download the summary

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

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

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

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

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

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

SMH> Intergenerational report how labor was framed

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

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

Productivity

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

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

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

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

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

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

Population

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

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

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

McCrindle- population growth in the media

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

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

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

http://wombatawareness.com/2015/02/UPDATE 26-02-2015 - The millionaire bequest fell through! Brigitte and the wombats of South Australia are now facing a truly awful situation. She has set up a donation site in absolute desperation, no amount too small: https://www.chuffed.org/project/wombatssoontobehomeless and we hope our readers will spread this news. No-one else is helping the wombats in SA on a large scale and long term; wombats are starving, dying of mange and being killed by cars and farmers. As you know they are adorable and precious... and really worth saving. Thanks for any help.

The strange and unforgivable decline in wombat appreciation in the 20th century

The reputation of the wombat declined over the 20th century and is now at an unforgivable all time low. People may be interested to read "Rossetti's Wombat: A Pre-Raphaelite Obsession in Victorian England". This lecture by Harold White Fellow, Angus Trumble, at the National Library of Australia, Canberra, 16 April, 2003, gives a little-known history of wombat appreciation in Britain by 19th century poets, who called the wombat "the most beautiful creature of all". Here is a quote from a description written about 200 years ago, about a pet wombat which was taken to England (not that we approve the kidnapping of wombats to England):

"The wombat, burrowed in the ground whenever it had an opportunity, and covered itself in the earth with surprising quickness. It was quiet during the day, but constantly in motion in the night: was very sensible to cold; ate all kinds of vegetables; but was particularly fond of new hay, which it ate stalk by stalk, taking it into its mouth like a beaver, by small bits at a time. It was not wanting in intelligence, and appeared attached to those to whom it was accustomed, and who were kind to it. When it saw them, it would put up its forepaws on the knee, and when taken up would sleep in the lap. It allowed children to pull and carry it about, and when it bit them did not appear to do it in anger or with violence."

Whilst we do not approve of kidnapping wombats, we do approve the peaceful and positive interaction with them and wonder why it does not happen more frequently in Australia. Perhaps it is because we have been misled by our governments and education system to believe that they are unapproachable. Maybe this is another case for Gloria O'Possum to investigate.

Wombat Awareness Organisation Ltd., Research Conservation Education Rescue Unit

A hairy-nosed wombat community at Portee Station where this rare and persecuted animal is being rehabilitated and protected.

The site of the Wombat Awareness Organisation Ltd., Research Conservation Education Rescue Unit tells the rest of the 20th and 21st century story and that is where to go to purchase a little piece of outback Australia for the wonderful hairy-nosed wombat.
Here is a delightful film (link has been updated to new address)about this wombat refugee community in South Australia, run by Brigitte Stevens and her partner, Frank Mikela. It certainly bears out the earlier reputation of the wombat as a lovable and cuddly animal.

You may also sponsor a wombat, like this one, called, "Turty"

It is great to see a big effort being made to help wombats and the people who care for them with such dedication.

UPDATE September 21, 2010Millionaire bequest due in 12 months - but money urgently needed now

Brigitte Stevens still needs funding urgently, but urgently only for another 12 months or so, when the release of the first million dollar installment of an $8m bequest is scheduled to come through. Only recently has the news arrived that a US horse-racing millionaire has left to this organisation for wombats!

The millionaire's family has chosen to remain anonymous. According to Kim Wheatley, "US millionaire leaves estate to Wombat Awareness Organisation, the millionaire visited the organisation a couple of years ago to meet wild wombats.

He was shown the shameful conditions in which the South Australian government's laws and wildlife monitoring have reduced the wild population.

"I took him out into the wild population and showed him wombats with mange, wombats that were starving to death and wombats with burrows from motorbike tyres," she said.

Brigitte has another paid job just to pay the bills the organisation generates. According to Kim Wheatley's article, last year's vet fees amounted to $70,000. Now Brigitte hopes to buy two new properties and to run a 24 hour free veterinary advice clinic.

Ms Stevens - who works to help pay bills, including last year's $70,000 vet fees - wants to buy two properties in the Murraylands and run a 24-hour free vet advice phone clinic. But she is having trouble simply maintaining the Wombat Awareness Organisation at the minute, since the first installment of this bequest is still a long way off - around 12 months.

Please consider helping these kind and dedicated people to make it through to the time this windfall arrives.

At 2pm at the Glebe Town Hall, listen to guest speakers Jack Mundey, Jill Green of STEP, Tony Recsei of Save Our Suburbs & William Bourke of the Sustainable Population Party. They will ask: What are the risks associated with adding another 3.5 million people to Sydney? Why are sprawl and high density presented as the only options? Are extreme levels of housing unaffordability placing an unfair burden on the City's young? What will be the impacts upon our surrounding native flora and fauna? ...

Come along and ask your own questions.

Event includes population speakers. "Australia should be one of the wealthiest nations on the planet, but driven by primal greed, the country is being bled dry by rampant out-of-control ‘corporatocracy’. The Australian version of ‘democracy’ requires public apathy … but is everyone really going to sit back whilst the socio-psychopathic global corporatists rip out the heart and destroy the soul of the nation?" (Forum spokesperson, Simone.) The "Freedom Summit" gives a forum for a range of speakers on the issue of "We all know something is wrong, but what is it?" The forum will be running in several cities in Australia, starting with Perth on the 1st November, followed up by events in Sydney (8/9 November) Melbourne (15/16 November) and then closing in Brisbane (22/23 November). "All proceeds from the Freedom Summits go towards supporting Free to Shine in their mission of equipping young Cambodian girls with education to prevent sex trafficking." (Source: http://101.0.76.10/~fsorg/philanthropy/

"The Full Circle Project includes a series of workshops, lectures and initiatives that can be impletmented locally in order to empower individual communities at a grassroots level and help provide a template that can then be expanded out to include all who come into contact with it. The intention is to introduce these templates into every country on this Earth that we are able to reach.

The Full Circle Project intends to focus on local cultures, art and traditions and seeks to present keynote speakers, workshops, reforestation programs and local agricultural co-opperatives with a view to reigning in the ship of state while informing our governments (public Trustees) of the new direction mankind now intends to take the world, while also offering them the opportunity to come with us under our own terms." (From 'The Full Circle project by Max Igan'

Is Apathy Killing You?

The big question is: ‘Are enough people ready to reach beyond their material attachments, to resist the subjugation and to participate in bringing about the changes we all know we need to see?’

If you answer yes to this question, then join us at Freedom Summits round 2. Keynote speaker and international activist Ian R Crane will present his no holds barred talk which will leave you shocked, disgruntled, inspired and motivated….all at once.

Freedom Summits were developed by a group of likeminded people dedicated to bringing together the most influential speakers on the topics that usually escape mainstream narrative. After a successful and life changing four state tour earlier this year, Freedom Summits are back by popular demand. Kicking off in Perth on the 1st November, followed up by events in Sydney (8/9 November) Melbourne (15/16 November) and then closing in Brisbane (22/23 November).

We are bringing you a diverse and exciting range of speakers and performers from here and abroad, including Ian R Crane, Samantha Bachman, Roman Spur and Paul Seils, along with a hand picked selection of some of the countries most informed and interesting speakers on sustainability and population, including Sheila Newman and Jill Quirk, in Melbourne, Chris Spike in Sydney, Peter Strachan in Perth, and Jane O'Sullivan in Brisbane. In a coup for Freedom Summits Round 2, internationally acclaimed comedian, Steven Hughes who will bring his own brand of social commentary to the Freedom Summits stage.

These summits are an investment in your future, you can’t afford not to come. The time is now to make changes to our own lives, to the planet we call home, and to connect with like minded people to build a sense of community. You will also receive accesible solution based information around writing off debts, minimizing tax i.e. n-g-o foundations, fine and infringement solutions, freedom.

So if you are looking for proactive solutions to bring around positive change in your world today….create links, build a sense of community, take self responsibility and empower yourself...Freedom Summits are for you.

http://www.freedomsummits.org
For further Information and speaker interviews contact : Simone – [email protected] / 0418 699 028

This article was posted to me by Geoff at Eco-Bushwalks Sydney - Ed

Infrastructure debt | "This year, the Australian population will grow by around 400,000 people. Since Sydney hosted the Olympics in 2000, Australia's population has grown by 22% from 19.3 million to 23.6 million. That is why Australia's roads, trains and hospitals are crowded. If the government wants to double Australia's population by 2060, it can either invest in the new infrastructure the country needs before the population arrives, or it can lower Australians' expectations about how much infrastructure we should expect.

It seems clear we are being warmed up for the latter. If Australians demand more infrastructure, Hockey tells us that the price of funding new roads and hospitals reduces spending on trains and nurses. This is not the logic of 1960's prime minister Robert Menzies, nor is it the logic of BHP. It is, however, the logic of a treasurer and a government that wants to use vague notions of "economic responsibility" to drive big reductions in the social safety net.

Should we continue Menzies' vision of 'nation building', or is our nation built?

If we continue building with rapid population growth, should we increase debt? Or is the cost of retro-fitting our current major cities with evermore complex infrastructure now becoming so expensive that we will never catch out tail?