Once again members of the Victorian and Tasmanian Branch of Sustainable Population Australia braved the usual dreadful hot conditions at the Sustainable Living Festival in Melbourne, which has just come to an end.
Candobetter supports SPA's message and admires SPA Victoria. We salute them for their almost single handed contribution to opening debate in Victoria on population numbers.
Jill Quirk, the President of the Victorian Branch, has shown great skill in bringing together various conservation and environment organisations, as well as planning activists, together on the issue of population growth.
It is hard to imagine that only a few years ago most environmental and planning activists actually could not see the connection. Although they could see the connection between development and loss of ammenity, democracy and natural environment, they still believed the government's dishonest pretention that population growth in Victoria was falling. They did not understand what was pushing overdevelopment and they often did not realise that their local problems were repeated not just in other suburbs, but in other states, all across Australia.
Despite some attempts to silence debate from bullies who claim affiliation with Right to Life, the Socialist Alliance and the (non-incorporated) Refugee Action Alliance and seem to work to the advantage of developers and government, it has become possible to educate more people on what is actually happening, as our government tries to engineer our population and deprive communities of natural ammenity and citizens of reasonable rights to enjoy their property.
It is through the experience of trying to stop forced population engineering for commercial purposes that only bring benefits to a very narrow minority that more and more people are realising that effective democracy in Australia is an illusion. We may be able to talk, but we have little or no means to organise and act.
Add comment