development

"No apology"!

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

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

But Mr Rudd should apologise !

Rudd is socially-engineering Australia's population growth

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

Optimism without foundation may doom Australians

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

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

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

He makes no apology.

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

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

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

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

How will our cities cope?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Henry then spoke of the kangaroo industry:

Commercial slaughter of 49.9 million kangaroos

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

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

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

On p.18 Ken Henry remarks:

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

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

Population Ageing overshadowed by Overpopulation

In his conclusion Henry remarks:

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

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

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

More extracts and editorial comment:

"Population Ageing"

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

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

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

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

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

Population Aging causing positive GDP

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

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

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

[Chart 2: Participation rate]

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

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

Overpopulation a much bigger worry than Ageing population

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be wary but keep looking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...

Introduction:

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

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

The grounds of our submission are as follows:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is a Sustainable Population for Victoria?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Destruction of the Environment and Green Wedges:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Ed.) McPhail Report – State of the Environment

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

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

The report continues:

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

Urban Growth Areas in Fire Prone Areas:

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

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

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

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

Cost to Victorians:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Accommodation of Population within Existing Urban Growth Boundaries:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Submission details

This submission was addressed to:

Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc.

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

on 19 October 2009
by

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

[email protected]

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

Dear 7.30 Report,

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

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

No statistically significant link

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

No Conservation Position

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

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

You have brought shame on the ABC.

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

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

"Australia's population steeply rising"

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

Shambolic treament of crucial topic

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where was Kelvin Thomson?

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

Whatever journalism

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

Whatever!

Phone in PM Rudd on Jon Faine - Immigration question

On the Jon Faine program, Radio ABC, Melbourne, 3 September, 2009, people were invited to phone in with questions. A caller, Ron from Box Hill, asked Rudd to house the homeless and balance the budget, not to waste money on the new broadband network, and to “immediately stop immigration”. (Perhaps the caller was responding to the grueling exposure of homelessness in Australia on the Four Corners program, "Heartbreak Hotel") where many forum participants linked homelessness to the greed of developers for immigrants.

Faine ran through the caller's points one by one to prompt Rudd's answers.

Faine: “Stop immigration?”
Rudd: “You know something, I thought we had a bit of a bipartisan consensus on this going back to let me say World War II that this country, a nation of immigrants, will continue to be a nation of immigrants into the future”.

Media manages damage control and sells nuclear at same time

I have noticed a flood of this kind of talk since Kelvin Thomson 'came out' scientifically criticising continuous population growth and I assume that it is the way the media intend to deal with immigration on behalf of the government and vice versa.

A Bernard Salt article in the Australian,"Where to put the extra millions at the end of the 21st century?" (September 10, 2009) comes out with some incredible assumptions/dictates:

Bernard Salt says:

"And that's the issue. Australia will be an immigrant nation for our lifetime and for the lifetime of our grandchildren."

"But what of the next stage of urban growth beyond five million to six then seven million? Melbourne and Sydney jointly contain 14 million residents of Australia's 35 million.Does this mean Sydney and Melbourne will account for 24 million if Australia reaches 62 million then? Is this possible? "

"There is the very real prospect that urban planners will have to manage the development of three Australian mega-regions (Sydney, Melbourne, southeast Queensland) each rising to between five and seven million by century's end."

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

And, of course, all this tyrannically planned, assumed and imposed growth, is a means to an end: it justifies a nuclear economy. Never mind that we will not be able to afford one and the problems of uranium supply are huge and the success of thorium and breeder reactors cannot be guaranteed; the growth lobby, notably the developers and the mines will make money out of our destitution as long as they can talk Australian governments into underwriting the technology and the infrastructure for the big cities they plan around nuclear reactors.[4]

I wonder now how all those in the Australian Conservation Foundation who pitilessly militated against any effective expression of disapproval at high immigration feel now to realise that, if Penny Wong pretends to 'de-link' population growth from carbon emissions, everyone else is busy coupling high immigration to nuclear power.

Freddy the blind environmentalist could see this coming.

Ziggy Switkowski [1] and Bernard Salt [2] are making clear noises about nuclear; the "Climate Institute" (a P.R. blog) and Frank Lowey's Institute of International Affairs will find excuses for it [3] and Penny Wong's 'de-linking' will probably be predicated on it.

AATSI and the Scanlon Report" have done the blueprint for the 'way forward'. Salt's comments, seemingly tongue in cheek, echo similar statements made without humour in the Scanlon Report.

Special enforcement squads - Ha ha

Salt flags housing behemoth populations with growth economies in continuous sprawls all over our most fertile coasts and hinterlands, suggesting that our major cities will not be able to contain such human explosions.

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

There you have our predicament in a nutshell. We kid ourselves if we think that, in the eyes of Obama, Rudd, et al, Australia is any different from Chile or Argentina. (See Shock Doctrine articles.)

Press serves up Rudd with G20 and plenty of whipped cream

Page 2-3 of the Financial Review, 26-27 September, mercilessly flatters the bumbling Rudd, as though he were a two year old promoted from a high chair: "Australia has won a seat at the table of what will become the world's new peak economic decision-making body in the biggest shift in global financial architectures since the end of World War II." See also the Perspective insert, pp. 19-21 in the same Fin Review.

To me that's an indication that none of our policy will be made at home or democratically; we are simply to be further co-opted as a corporate colony.

If it all goes smoothly for those who, with the help of the media, have captured the helm of this country.

NOTES

[1]Ziggy Switkowski, once head of Telstra, now Chairman of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, is again promoting nuclear at public expense in "This debate could really go nuclear", 'Perspective', Financial Review, 26-27 September 2009, pp. 25-27

[2] "Demographer", Bernard Salt has been marketing population growth and housing developments for many years now, as a partner with the international accounting firm, KPMG, and you would think that he would have warned us of the consequences before they might lend themselves to the hyperbole of 'inevitable' if he were truly concerned about public welfare or democracy.

KPMG, which Steve Bracks (ex-Premier of Victoria) went to work for in Timor, has been linked to pernicious international interference in Iraq along with a number of other big corporations:

"Michael Fleisher, the founder of the Chicago School based Shock Doctrine, [said in 2003 of Iraq that] ‘protected businesses never, never become competitive’. “He appeared to be impervious to the irony that Halliburton, Bechtel, Parsons, KPMG, RTI, Blackwater and all the other US corporations that were in Iraq to take advantage of the reconstruction were part of a vast protectionist racket whereby the US government had created their markets with war, barred their competitors from even entering the race, then paid them to do the work, while guaranteeing them a profit to boot – all at taxpayer expense." Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine p.355.

[3] Lowy is a developer who has used the issue of climate change to launch certain opinions on many different political and development issues. As an Australian developer, not surprisingly, he wants to see our population keep on growing. The argument that we will need nuclear power to support such growth then comes naturally. See, for instance, http://www.lowyinstitute.org/Publication.asp?pid=786 and do a search for 'nuclear' on the Lowy site.

[4] For political and economic costings see the analysis of nuclear power requirements and capacities in "France and Australia after oil" in Sheila Newman (Ed.)The Final Energy Crisis, 2nd Edition, Pluto Press, UK, 2008

State-sponsored human population growth is doing more harm to Australian wildlife and the environment than the dreaded cane toad!

(Illustration:Canetoad Anna B by Sheila N)

Anna Bligh's policies are turning the human population in Queensland into the equivalent of canetoads. Native habitat is being sacrificed to continuous development and humans are overwhelming indigenous species, just like the imported canetoad. We have far less excuse though, since we are able to control our population and we are supposed to be living in a democracy - not a developer-led dictatorship.

Canetoads

Cane toads, which produce large numbers of offspring, are colonising northern Australia at an increasingly rapid pace. Cane Toads are likely to colonise almost every habitat type before eventually moving further south.

In Australia it is officially recognised that the cane toad is a pest and an invasive species in many regions where it has been introduced. A particular concern is that its toxic skin kills many animals—native predators and otherwise—when ingested. The kinds of native animals that are most likely to be affected by toads are predators, like quolls (marsupial carnivores), large snakes, and goannas.

Humans just as out of control as toads, but with less excuse

Our iconic koalas, however, are under threat from a runaway human invasion! In fact, all native species have been impacted by the growth of human populations, and as koalas are competing with the same locations, they are losing out badly. This is not properly acknowledged officially; human development impact is being dealt with piecemeal, project by project, without reference to the total impact of total human development in the total koala habitat. This is either incompetent planning or a depraved policy to wipe out koalas by simply erasing their habitat in a patchwork approach.

(photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Southeast Queensland typically supports the highest densities of Koalas in the State, but rapid human population growth there is accompanied by loss of native vegetation and koala numbers are plummeting towards zero! A conservative estimate indicates a further loss of 23-25,000 ha of native vegetation, much of it koala habitat, in the next 20 years as human population burgeons. An upper estimate is 30-35,000 ha loss of native vegetation, further accelerating the decline of koala and other wildlife populations. Long before that, the koalas will all be gone!

The bulk of remaining koala habitat is legally unprotected

An estimated 80% of koala habitat has probably been destroyed since European settlement. Most of the habitat that is left is private land – almost none of it protected in law.

Extreme drought, ferocious bushfires and urban development could make koalas , extinct within seven years environmentalists are warning.

Erna Walraven, senior curator at Taronga Zoo, sees the koala as a flagship species , with the health of their populations serving as an indicator of the wider health of the wildlife of the bush, including bandicoots and wallabies.

Stress causes illness in koalas. Stress is another word for hardship. Stress is caused by loss of habitat and subsequent overcrowding. The majority of koalas in Queensland are believed to be infected with Koala retrovirus (or KoRV). This retrovirus can cause suppression of the immune system in koalas, leukaemia and lymphoma

The Queensland Government has announced it would protect 5.6 hectares of state-owned koala habitat at Alexandra Hills

Govt land handover for koalas a "shocking joke"

(Photo source: http://www.epa.qld.gov.au/about_the_epa/public_reporting/epa_bulletin/issue_48_june_2009/index.html)

State Climate Change Minister Kate Jones said the land, located on Windemere Road and of high commercial value, would be handed over to Redland City Council.

Honorable as this handover is considering the land’s commercial value, it is a drop in the ocean. The solution needs a more holistic approach. In fact there should be no more development in the vulnerable area at all.

We should be looking, not at what Minister Jones is 'sparing' but at what she is allowing to be taken and destroyed.

Koalas like to move about, and being surrounded by roads and developments, saving 5.6ha of key habitat will have little effect ultimately on saving the species.

The small Koala populations that remain cut off in fragmented areas of bushland are at great risk of localised extinction because a single fire may wipe out an entire habitat. Bushfires are extremely common in the summer months. Below habitat threshold points, a rapid decline in koala occupancy is likely. Fences, roads and cleared land can all create barriers to koala movement. These factors alter population dynamics, impede gene flow, and limit the ability for populations to recover from insult and depletion.

Without interlinking and continuous wildlife corridors and crossings, habitats remain fragmented.

According to Australian Koala Foundation chief executive officer Deborah Tabart, 25,000 koalas have died from dog attacks, cars and disease in the last 10 years in South East Queensland and that's because leaders have failed to plan effectively which land should be developed.

South East Queensland’s excessive population growth is no doubt stimulating economic growth - albeit debt-funded. Our leaders worship growth, but they fail to appreciate that koalas and other animals have indigenous rights and that to treat them in this way is depraved. Unless there is a stop to developments and housing and cap on human population numbers, the Bligh government’s greed will destroy Queensland’s natural wealth, including its biodiversity, and create a crowded, sterile and cruel wasteland!

Is Premier Anna Bligh happy to create, manipulate and profit from a human population explosion at the expense of wildlife habitat and to willingly make human invasions a greater threat to Queensland than those of the unwitting cane toad?

Any introduced species, with unchecked population growth, can become a “pest” species! The Economy should not over-ride our moral and ethical duty to protect the species that have a rightful existence in their land and whose survival dignifies our own.

#WhatYouCanDo" id="WhatYouCanDo">What you can do

Contact Premier Anna Bligh and let her know how you object to her Government making the plight of our endangered koala worse. Please send us any copies of correspondence to or from the Premier.

Her contact details are:

South Brisbane Electoral Office

E-mail: South.Brisbane[AT]parliament.qld.gov.au

Phone : (07) 3255 3615
Fax : (07) 3255 3627

Suite 1/90 Vulture Street
West End 4101 Qld

PO Box 5822
West End Qld 4101

Ministerial Office

E-mail : premier[AT]ministerial.qld.gov.au

Phone : (07) 3224 4500
Fax : (07) 3221 3631

Level 15 Executive Building
100 George Street
Brisbane Qld 4000

PO Box 15185
City East QLD 4002

Observations on how we are being backed into a corner

The propaganda against the 1/4 acre block started a few decades ago. - appearing as opinion pieces in newpapers. I believe this propaganda was aimed at very ordinary people in or suburbs with traditional blocks. It was to prepare them to relinquish their lifestyle and for their children not to expect it in the normal course of events. I don't think it was aimed at rich people as they are different - a special case. The very rich can actually do the opposite to "urban consolidation." The rich can buy the next door property in Toorak, bulldoze the house and annexe the land for their own pleasure in the form of a tennis court or swimming pool.

The propaganda seems to have been on behalf of those who wanted to effect radical change in values and rights for the sake of population growth, which for various reasons they derived benefit from - usually financial.

Why this is important

The 1/4 acre block affords some local self sufficiency to the ordinary person. 50 years ago it was quite common for people to keep chickens in the suburbs- some still do but I don't think it's as usual. There is probably an economic reason for this . Vegetable gardens were common then and they may be trying to make a return now.

Recently in Sydney I visited a cousin who has built her eco friendly dream home in the suburb of Ryde. The garden was for low rainfall, the house worked on passive temperature control and in the corner of this living arrangement was a chicken house with inhabitants. Area of block- 1/4 acre approx.

As oil depletion continues I believe self sufficiency will become more important. The more land per family we lose the less self sufficient we can be.

How dare we be talked into denying children the rights that we grew up with?

I believe the people of Melbourne are losing their land by stealth and propaganda. I also wonder how people can, on the one hand, be talked into having more children, and, on the other hand, talked into letting go of those children's rights.

In 2007 I made a submission to the Melbourne 2030 review. I made some of the points below. (Now Melbourne 2030 is out of date, of course. They are trying to bring in something even worse. )

Urban temperatures rising, trees and water disappearing

Urban temperatures are higher than those in the country, and made worse by air conditioners. I worry about the reduced ability of land to absorb water with increased concrete bitumen, housing and impermeable surfaces in general. I can see this affecting the water table and possibly having ramifications with regard to street trees and other trees and vegetation on public land. We should be preserving trees to keep the city cool and moist instead of infilling and concreting everything.

I would have thought with all the apartments and townhouses shooting up in the bastardized process known as suburban infill, that we would want to keep backyards full of trees etc. Never mind that I'll never own a $1.8M 3BR house in Hawthorn East, I'm just glad someone owns it so that there aren't twenty people in 6 townhouses there instead.

So God bless those rich people in their big houses!! (Unless of course they are developers and politicians telling the rest of us to go and live in high-rise infills.)

Even if I have hardly any garden at all, I want to protect other people's gardens. They are part of the environment and even if the garden is not mine- I benefit if I walk past or live near it. I breathe the oxygen that its greenery exudes. I am cooled by the transpiration of the leaves. Even if I live in a one bedroom apartment in the same street, I am better off if this house and garden remain than if this house in turn is bulldozed for another block of apartments. I can see what the obvious counter argument is to this - homelessness - but that problem is circular; the root cause of homelessness is rapid population growth.

Urban wildlife is yet another issue - one I feel so deeply about that I can hardly even write of it. Gardens provide some habitat for native animals, birds reptiles, and insects. The more the city is consolidated, the more predictable every space within it becomes and there will be little room for any species other than humans, dogs and cats. And, even then, the dogs must be on leads and the cats must be kept indoors. It would make more sense if we made friends with the neighbourhood possums, but the government has designated them as pests.

If we continue with population growth at 2% per annum- we stand to lose the few advantages we still have very quickly. If we have a population growth rate of 1% per annum we will still lose it but at half the speed.

I do not think that Australian politicians have a moral or any other right to do this to us.

Editor: This is a comment about the Planning Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 2) Second reading Debate resumed from 15 September on a motion of Mr BATCHELOR (Minister for Community Development) made in the Assembly of the Victorian Parliament on 16 September and recorded in Hansard. [1] This Labor Government initiated bill is a source of enormous consternation for Victorians not completely roped in by the corporate media. The concerns are on democratic, planning and environment grounds. It was read for the second time and, after a very close call, its passing has again been delayed - this time until 13th October.

Moratorium on population increase 'totalitarian'?

Labor Government member, Ms Joanne Duncan, stated that she supported the Planning Legislation Amendment Bill (No.2)[DACs revisited] and the introduction of development assessment committees (DACs). She observed that people did not want to continue Melbourne’s sprawl, but conceded that "people generally do not like higher density housing." She then said that it was inconsistent to "have higher density housing and prevent urban sprawl," commenting, "We are either serious about increasing densities across metropolitan Melbourne or we continue urban sprawl." However she then made this bizarre statement: "Another option is to somehow put a moratorium on any population increase and have all manner of totalitarian measures to reach that end. All of those are completely unacceptable, so we will continue to have population growth."

What totalitarian measures?

What are the totalitarian measures that would be required to put a moratorium on any population increase?
The totalitarian measures are already present in the government purposefully ramping up immigration to create overpopulation and then trying to force through increasingly draconian legislation to facilitate this dictatorial regime. Democracy is decreasing with population increase, yet Ms Duncan pretends that to allow the population to grow or stabilise or shrink at its natural pace would somehow require totalitarianism.

What sophistry is this?

It makes the writer wonder just what the people advising the Labor government are saying to elected representatives to make them toe the line and endorse the real totalitarian measures in the government purposefully ramping up immigration to create overpopulation and then trying to force through increasingly draconian legislation to facilitate this dictatorial regime.

Anyway, here's the rest of the purportedly 'anti-totalitarian' Duncan's support a bill which was described elsewhere in this way:

List of terms used by Shadow Minister for Planning, Mr Guy, for the earlier but similar version of this bill [1]:
The terms were: ‘concerning’; ‘sneaky’; ‘pretty low’; that the bill showed ‘contempt’; ‘bizarre’; ‘bureaucratic’; ‘misleading’; ‘half-hearted’; ‘half-baked’; that it would ‘do nothing for industry’; that it would ‘gut’ community input; ‘shameless’; and ‘deceptive’. He concluded by saying the bill would ‘undermine the fundamental basic principles’ of planning.

Ms DUNCAN (Macedon) — Despite the opposition of the previous speaker to this bill, I would support many of the issues and points that he raised in his contribution. But I rise in support of the Planning Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 2).

I have sat in this chamber and listened to a number of different members go through their positions on this bill, and I am again puzzled by the position of the opposition. We are hearing from most of the speakers that they will not be opposing the bill but basically they do not support it.

We have heard a range of criticisms of the bill, which does make you scratch your head and wonder: if that is their view, if they believe that this is such poor planning or poor legislation, why would they not just not oppose it but actually reject the bill? If they were true to themselves and that was what they truly believed and if this whole dispute resolution process were not just a relevance deprivation exercise on behalf of the opposition, they would oppose the bill. There is no way members opposite could support the bill with clear consciences having said some of the things that have been said in opposition to it.

One of the good things that has come out of the debate is that the member for Shepparton declared — and it might have been mentioned by the member for Box Hill but I missed that — that if ever again the opposition is in government, it will be repealing parts of this legislation so that, as I understand it, councils will be allowed to either opt in or opt out of being part of this partnership process between state government and local government. I will be bold enough to make a prediction and to suggest that some years down the track — hopefully many years down the track — if the opposition is back in government, when it makes this offer to local governments most local governments will choose to stay in the system. It was highlighted by the previous speaker that planning is incredibly difficult:
for as many people support a proposition there will be that many who oppose it with sound arguments for and sound arguments against, and it is always a balancing act.

One of the main reasons I think this is good legislation is that previously either local governments were making decisions or there were call-ins by the planning minister. One of the reasons the opposition may oppose this bill is, quite frankly, why would opposition members see the need for it? Under their government it was either a decision by local government or they made that decision by the planning minister calling in huge numbers of proposals. Under the previous government we saw how many times the planning minister unilaterally, without any explanation, without any guidelines about why or why not, would call-in a proposal and would make that decision unilaterally.

From memory, none of these call-ins were actually in support of local residents. My memory — and I stand to be corrected — is that his call-ins supported the proponent, the developer, in almost all of these cases.

Do not ever be misled by what the opposition would suggest, that it is there to support the underdog and this is big developers just trampling over the individual rights of residents. One has only to look at the track record to appreciate that that is absolute rhetoric and hypocrisy in its highest form.

We also heard the member for Box Hill talk about the threat that hangs over us if we do not support the bill — the unchecked and repeated call-ins that he said may result if this bill is not passed. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! It really is hypocrisy in its most extreme form for any member of the Liberal opposition to suggest that this government is doing anything like unchecked and repeated call-ins. I think he must have been talking about the planning minister under the Kennett government.

It seemed to me he also questioned the fact that there are still appeals to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. He was saying that if the government was hoping this was going to speed up planning, then the fact that there are appeals to VCAT means that will not occur. That suggests to me that he thinks you either do it unilaterally, which we saw members opposite do they were in government, or you remove all those third-party appeal rights.

I can understand why the Liberal Party is confused. In listening to the contributions of members of the Liberal Party to the debate I can understand why the Liberal members would be confused, because while they say they support the bill, it is inconsistent with everything they have previously said and everything they did when they were in office. It is the case again that either they are very confused or, as I said before, they never let the facts stand in the way of a good piece of opposition rhetoric.

I support this bill. I support the introduction of development assessment committees (DACs). It is a good balance between the decision making of local councils, which will understand their local communities and have an appreciation of those local issues, and state representatives, who have an eye to a broader need for the potential of this sort of development. We know we do not want to continue Melbourne’s sprawl. We know we need to have higher density in housing and in all manner of developments. As much as people and the opposition will say, ‘Where has 2030 gone?’ and all of these things, the reality is that people generally do not like higher density housing. You cannot have higher density housing and prevent urban sprawl; the two are inconsistent. We are either serious about increasing densities across metropolitan Melbourne or we continue urban sprawl. Another option is to somehow put a moratorium on any population increase and have all manner of totalitarian measures to reach that end. All of those are completely unacceptable, so we will continue to have population growth.

These sorts of decisions must be made in a balanced way, where you are trying to bring together a partnership between two planning authorities — one with an eye to the local issues and one with a broader eye to the statewide issues and statewide development pressures — and I believe the DACs will achieve that result and we will get balanced and good planning outcomes as a result.

I commend the bill to the house. It is a further development of planning laws in this state that are designed to provide balance as well as the kinds of infrastructure, planning and development we need to ensure that Melbourne does not continue its sprawl.

[1] Listed by Mr Brooks in the debate recorded in Hansard, 16 September, 2009 (Assembly)

Mark O'Connor on Barry Maley in 'Population Fallacies'

Barry Maley, in "Birth Rate Bubble" on ABC radio's Unleashed wrote, "Any nation needs to have a birth rate of not less than 2.1 children per woman to maintain its population. The second Intergenerational Report in 2007 observed that five people of working age were supporting every person 65 or older, but by 2047 there would be only 2.4 workers per aged person."

"A nice example of the 'Replacement Rate Fallacy'," quipped Mark O'Connor, author of Overloading Australia, [1] and a number of snapshot demographic analyses known as 'fallacies' prior to that. Here is what he has to say about claims by other pro-natalists that Australians' reproductive rate is running down:

The Replacement Rate Fallacy[2]

The late pro-natalist B.A. Santamaria once informed his readers in The Australian that for Australia’s population not to fall rapidly the average woman must have 2 surviving children. Such views are quite common, and often lead to a false belief that population is either falling or about to fall. Thus in July 2008, when the Pope visited Sydney for World youth Day (just after World Population Day), Australia’s Cardinal Pell told the media that Western nations faced a population crisis fuelled by ‘ruthless’ commercial forces, and that ‘No country in the Western world is producing enough children to keep the population stable.’

If Pell was thinking about his native Australia he was right?but not in the way he imagined. Australian women are having far too many babies to keep the population stable. In fact almost twice as many as necessary. Births in Australia (about half a million a year) are twice deaths (about a quarter of a million) and have been so for the past twenty years?even though Australian women have been averaging significantly less than two children each for at least that long.

Clearly there is something cock-eyed about this “replacement rate” argument. It involves a common, but elementary, error in demography. Can you spot it?

Can you spot the elementary error?

In fact to keep stable and just replace itself, a relatively young population like Australia’s would currently need something even lower than Western Europe’s rate of around 1.3 children per completed family. More like 0.93. And that’s without immigration!

(Barry Maley also writes: "One of the symptoms of this problem recently confronted Greg Combet, Minister for Defence Personnel and Science, when he drew attention to the demographic problem of a shrinking pool of young men available for recruitment to the defence forces." O'Connor puts this one in its place here but elsewhere as well.)

Misunderstandings like Pell’s often come from those who a decade earlier might have tried to argue that we need more people for defence, or for “respect” in the world. As those older props are discredited, more weight has fallen on the Replacement Rate Fallacy. Underlying all this is a natural bias of human beings towards pro-natalism.

The replacement rate was a useful, if theoretical, concept back when couples everywhere were having 4 and 5 children as a matter of course. Since couples often justified this by saying that the world must be populated, demographers would point out that all a couple need do to replace itself, was to have 2 children. More exactly, about 2.05 children, to allow for the odd child that dies before reaching reproductive age, and for the slight excess of male births. But basically, if women in their reproductive years average two surviving children, or one surviving daughter, a generation will simply replace itself, won’t it?

Humans are not fruitflies

Well, no! Humans are not fruitflies, where the generation of parents dies as their offspring are born. Children don’t replace parents, or even grandparents these days, but more often they replace great-grandparents. Hence if a generation of parents were to produce an equal-sized generation of children this would not mean the population had stabilized. In fact the population would not stabilize, at that rate, until the last generation to have more than 2.05 children had departed the scene. For instance, if India achieved so-called “replacement fertility” now, with all its couples in future averaging just 2.05 children, its population would still double, adding an extra 1 billion people!

Don't confuse the birth rate with the fertility rate!

Demographers need to clearly explain to journalists the difference between the Theoretical Long-Term Replacement Rate (TLTRR) and the Current Replacement Birth Rate (CRBR). The latter is the birth-rate that would currently (though not indefinitely) produce as many births as deaths. The only replacement rate that Australia could claim to be safely below is the Theoretical Long-Term Replacement Rate (TLTRR) of just over two children per completed family. But that is the replacement rate of an imaginary Australia, an already stabilized Australia, a society in which there would now be equal numbers in each generation.

By rights we should distinguish birthrate from fertility rate. The birthrate is the number of babies born per thousand people per year (and hence the replacement birthrate is that at which births per year would equal deaths); whereas ‘the fertility rate’ is the average number of children a woman will have in her lifetime ? which is the demographers’ justification for speaking of 2.05 children per woman as ‘replacement fertility’. If only non-demographers could be got to observe this distinction, Santamaria’s error could be succinctly described as confusing the birthrate with the fertility rate. Since fertility rates are always below 10, and birthrates may be nearer to 100, the two terms ought not to be confused! However one must despair of getting the media to distinguish between birthrate and fertility rate.

[1] Overloading Australia by Mark O'Connor and William Lines, Published by Envirobook Sydney, 2008. The second edition is coming out soon in 2009. (The authors in Chapter 14, "Pyramid-selling Australia" kindly note that much of that chapter is 'endebted to' Candobetter's Sheila Newman's 'ground-breaking' research. Thank you Mark and William!)

[2] Source: http://www.australianpoet.com/overloading.html#rrf

2 September, 2009

The announcement of a Federal Government review into immigration numbers has been cautiously welcomed by environment group, Sustainable Population Australia.

But the national president of SPA, Sandra Kanck, says, “SPA is very concerned that the government is responding to a short term business agenda rather than what will be best for the country in the long term.

“The skilled migration program now makes up 70% of Australia’s immigration, and this is way too high.

“If the government is serious about this review then it will need to look at a whole range of issues such as water and food supply for a growing population and the urban sprawl with all its social dislocation and crime.

“Population growth makes every environmental problem harder to solve” said Ms Kanck, “There is a very close correlation between population growth and growth in greenhouse gas emissions. And there is a very close correlation between climate change and damage to Australia’s food production.

“The Rudd Government must decide whether its priority lies with long-term protection of the Australian environment or with pandering to short-term and avaricious demands of a powerful business lobby.

“Contrary to popular claims, in industrialised countries like Australia, there is no statistically valid link between population growth and growth of per capita GDP. Population growth is of no benefit to the average Australian who suffers all the disadvantages. It only advantages the few and the political parties that receive substantial donations from these few.

“While Minister Evans has announced there is to be a review, it is unclear who is conducting it, what its terms of reference will be, and who will have input.

“If this review is to make any sense it should be conducted in a wider framework of a population policy that suits the driest inhabited continent. Without such a policy our immigration numbers are being established in a vacuum.

“SPA cautiously welcomes the review, but if it is just another dance to the tune played by the business lobby it will result only in further damage to our environment. Australia should be aiming to stabilise its population as quickly as possible.” said Ms Kanck.

This interesting letter about the experience of a citizen representing a group's appeal at VCAT vindicates the citizen, educates others about the VCAT attitude, and shows VCAT up.

Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc. (PPL VIC).

The Hon. Justice Kevin Bell
President
Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal
55 King Street
Melbourne 3000
13 August 2009
Your Honour

ADDENDUM TO SUBMISSION TO VCAT REVIEW

I refer to my letter of 15 May 2009, written on behalf of our organisation Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc., containing our submission to the review of VCAT. I am writing to you with an addendum about a number of urgent concerns about VCAT proceedings following a Practise Day Tribunal hearing on 13 March 2009.

See attached the VCAT Order (Reference P3692/2008) relating to the Practice Day hearing on 13 March 2009, the applicant being the Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc. and the Responsible Authority Port Phillip Council. We were represented by a barrister.

A matter which perturbs us greatly is the failure of the Tribunal to comply with the Practice Note which sets out procedures for submitting evidence and submissions. Port Phillip Council failed to comply with the Practice Note as its legal representative produced additional documents at the hearing without having previously circulated them to us the requisite two days beforehand or at all. Apparently this is a routine occurrence at VCAT hearings and puts community groups at a significant disadvantage because they cannot afford the expense of an adjournment to consider fresh material. I have heard from a number of our member groups that this has happened to them. In our case the Port Phillip Council brought its request to strike out our case on 13 February 2009 yet came up with additional material five minutes before the hearing a month later on 13 March 2009. Hence Council’s legal representative had plenty of time to circulate additional documents.

I understand that there are many different jurisdictions (14 different lists?) and each has different procedures for “bringing applications”. There are different Practice Notes, different forms and requirements for the different jurisdictions. It appears that Tribunal members do not enforce them, as we found in our case.

The Tribunal member hearing our case justified allowing Port Phillip Council’s legal representatives to provide additional material five minutes before the hearing by saying:

“The applicant was aware of the statement of grounds being relied upon by the council prior to the hearing; they have not come as a surprise... In the present case, there was nothing in the council’s outline of submissions or the additional material that the applicant or I could not comprehend or respond to on the day”.

In fact, some of the material was new and there was no time to even read it closely. (See Paragraph 9, Page 2 of Order.)

The Chair further made the following comment:

“The applicant, Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc., through its spokespersons, Julianne Bell, appears regularly before VCAT and is familiar with Tribunal procedures, planning legislation and planning control. The applicant was represented by experienced legal counsel who himself presented detailed written submissions and was well able to request an additional opportunity to respond to anything at the practice day hearing if indeed he has been taken by surprise. He did not do so.”

(See Paragraph 10, Page 5 of Order.)

Not only was the statement about regular appearances before VCAT false, and not based on any evidence, it is apt to create great disincentive to community groups seeking to have a voice at VCAT hearings. The Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc. has not appeared regularly at VCAT, in fact we have had two cases only since our establishment in 2004 - the present one included. The other case was an application in July 2008 to obtain information under FOI from Port Phillip Council. (VCAT referred the case to the Ombudsman who was unable to extract information from the Council and the case lapsed.) The organisation does not know about planning legislation or Tribunal procedures as claimed by the Tribunal Chair and accordingly engaged lawyers to represent it. I have only had very limited further contact with VCAT in other matters and do not pretend to understand the procedural requirements.

The comments by the Tribunal carry the implied slur that Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc. has been vexatious, but of course there is no redress for a community group confronted by this kind of attack from a VCAT member.

Community groups come to VCAT in order to have a hearing according to law about issues of importance to the community. In many ways they ought to have more entitlement to a proper hearing than those who do so from motivations of profit. The refusal to hear a properly formulated proceeding, accompanied by this studied slight to the group bringing the claim, is typical of the type of alienation of the community by VCAT which has been so distressing for those involved in the process.

Yours sincerely

Julianne Bell
Secretary
Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc.
PO Box 197
Parkville 2052

Photograph of Edgar Creek Site 15 Edgars Creek Waterfall & Geological Structure in Coburg below a newly sited Kodak development. Source: Merri Creek Management Committee: http://www.mcmc.org.au/content/view/164/261/

Once again, Northern Suburbs Federal Labor MP, Kelvin Thomson, has come through to represent the public against the falsely positive coasian economics of Victoria's grubby and despotic government!

He has written to Victorian Environmental Assessment Council's inquiry into metropolitan Crown land asking for the land to be given to the Council gratis as long as it is kept as public parkland. Thomson's arguments impressively cogent, demonstrating far better grasp of biology than the average Melbourne parliamentarian, and serious students of climate change would benefit from reading them. Moreland Council has also asked for the land to be kept public and undeveloped.

Note that illustrations, most emphases, and some headings have been inserted by Candobetter. The original document is accessible to the public at http://www.kelvinthomson.com.au/public_documentsdocs/090219%20EdgarsCreekSubac.pdf

"The extent to which parklands, trees, shrubs and wall gardens can cool places has been
greatly underestimated. Estimates by the Co-operative Research Centre for Irrigation Futures are that they can lower temperatures by 2-8 degrees because increases in evapotranspiration reduce building energy use by 7-47%. Average electricity saving per tree due to lower air-conditioning use ranges from 70-90 kilowatt hours a year, with savings
greater at peak times reducing overall energy demand by 10%" (Fisher 2009).

Kelvin Thomson MP, Federal Member for Wills

Submission to the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council Metropolitan Melbourne Crown Land Inquiry
Edgars Creek Parkland; the lungs of the Coburg Community
February 2009

1. Overview

I make this submission to the Victorian Assessment Council, which is investigating the use of Crown owned land across 29 of Melbourne’s municipalities. I make this submission with regard to the Edgars and Merri Creek Parkland, located in my electorate of Wills in Coburg.

This land should be retained as public open space. It was originally acquired by VicRoads with the intention of running a freeway into the City along the Merri Creek. Fortunately the freeway reservation was deleted and it is now time to protect this fine open space forever.

The Victorian Government instructed the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council to investigate the use of Crown Land across 29 Melbourne Municipalities. This inquiry’s terms of reference include investigating the use of Crown owned land in Moreland. The areas to be investigated include parks- but not parks that are freehold land owned by councils- small
slivers of land, areas used for community purposes, VicTrack and VicRoads land set aside for future infrastructure or land owned by a public authority such as Melbourne Water (Fyffe 2009).

The purposes of the investigation are to:

(a) Systematically identify and assess the uses, resources, condition, values and management of Crown land, and public authority land in metropolitan Melbourne;
(b) assess values of Crown land, and public authority land for areas not committed to a specific use, and report on appropriate future uses relevant to Melbourne's liveability and natural values; and (c) report on the contribution of Crown land, and public authority land to Melbourne's liveability and opportunities for enhancement of this contribution.

The Victorian Environmental Assessment Council will prepare a discussion paper during 2009 and a final report by May 2010 (VEAC 2009).

A Victorian Parliamentary inquiry last year found that important open space and Crown Land- such as areas set aside for roads, rail lines and water authorities, is often sold off to developers for the highest price, with little consideration to the long term community and environmental ramifications (Fyffe 2009).

The sale of the Edgars Creek Parkland is being negotiated between a number of government agencies. VicRoads has had a number of meetings with Moreland Council’s CEO to explore options for the land that would be suitable for all parties. The role of the Government land monitor is to provide Government with an assurance of accountability and integrity in land transactions. State Government policy has been that surplus land is to be sold at market value as assessed by the Valuer-General Victoria. As the City of Moreland expressed interest in obtaining the land for a public purpose, the land was offered to Council on this basis (Madden 2008).

The Edgars Creek Parkland site is an extremely important piece of public parkland to the Coburg and surrounding communities. The parkland has been maintained free-of-charge by the Moreland City Council (2008:2), its predecessors and local voluntary community groups such as the Merri and Edgars Creek Parkland Group (2009) over the last 25 years.

The true value of this site cannot be placed in monetary terms. Its environmental, ecological and recreational importance to the community of Coburg far outweigh any short term profit the State Government may be able to derive from its sale.

My submission will outline the ecological, environmental and social reasons for securing the future of this site. I will also set out the pressures that the growing population is having on the local community in terms of public open space.

2. Executive Summary

VicRoads owned land in the vicinity of Edgars Creek should be retained as public open space.

This land was originally acquired by VicRoads with the intention of running a freeway into the city along the Merri Creek. Fortunately the freeway reservation which hung over this land was deleted. It is now time to move forward and protect this fine area of open space forever.

Increasing population is putting even greater pressure on our living space, and parks like this one are not simply important now; they are destined to become even more valuable in future.

Coburg needs all the open space it can get. It is largely built up and has been now for many years, and the new Pentridge Village and Kodak developments will add new pressures. This parkland is one of the largest areas of open space in Coburg, and should not be lost to housing or other developments.

The land readily links in with the existing open space and wildlife corridors along the Merri and Edgars Creeks. The State Government, Moreland Council and the local community have worked in partnership now for over 25 years in restoring the Merri and Edgars Creek Valleys and they are a major asset. Their value will be enhanced if the Vic Roads land is added in.

The Victorian Budget has been well managed and is in a state of healthy surplus.

The need
for real estate dollars from the sale of public land is much less than the need of the Coburg and Newlands community for room to live and breathe.

The land is the largest open space in Coburg and acts as lungs, pumping the oxygen throughout the veins of our community. On the basis that Moreland Council and the local community is willing to maintain the land as public open space, the land should be handed over to them by VicRoads.

3. History of the Edgars Creek Parkland

The Edgars Creek flows along a 17km course from its headwater in Wollert through the highly urbanised suburbs of Epping, Thomastown and Reservoir, finally joining the Merri Creek in Coburg in the electorate of Wills (FoEC 2009).

Edgars Creek, along with many of the water bodies of Melbourne's north, is of spiritual and cultural significance to the Wurundjeri People, its indigenous Aboriginal People. Several sites of cultural and spiritual significance to the people of the Wurundjeri-willam have been recorded along Edgars Creek. At the old Kodak plant site, and further north in Wollert &
Epping, numerous scatters from the making of stone axe and spear heads have been sighted (Freshwater 2006).

Some historians believe that the signing of the Batman Treaty may have taken place along Edgars Creek. Edgars Creek, like many other Melbourne creeks and rivers, provided a vital source of food and water to the local Aboriginal community. Family groups consisting of somewhere between ten and twenty or more people would make up a single clan, or tribe
(Freshwater 2006.

The Wurundjeri People had, and continues to have, an intimate physical and deeply spiritual connection to the land. There are many descendents of the original Wurundjeri People who still live in and around Melbourne (Freshwater 2006).

The Edgars Creek Parkland, located at the junction of the Merri Creek, is Coburg’s largest parkland and public open space, approximately 10ha in size (O’Connell 2008). Edgars Creek passes through the boundaries of the Cities of Whittlesea, Darebin and Moreland, through rural, industrial and residential areas. It is a seasonal creek, susceptible to drying out during
the hot seasons, particularly in its northern most regions, and is likewise prone to flooding (Freshwater 2006).

Though a considerable part of the creek is in an artificial state, through much of Epping to Reservoir, over half of the creek remains in a semi-natural state, particularly in its upper and lower sections. Further downstream Edgars Creek feeds the picturesque Leamington St Wetlands Reserve and Edwardes Lake Park in Reservoir, which is home to many bird
species (Freshwater 2006).

Edgars Creek departs the lake via a weir wall at the southwest end, continuing from Livingstone St through to the City of Moreland, where there are lovely walking areas on both escarpments (Freshwater 2006).

The reserve is a significant piece of parkland not just because of its size, but because of its ecological, environmental and social role in making the Coburg community a better community.

The Department of Sustainability and Environment 2006 Atlas of Victorian Wildlife records 48 fauna species within 1.5km of the Kodak Bridge over Edgars Creek. Approximately 280 trees already exist on the site, and included in the parkland are areas of remnant vegetation. The land has high intrinsic value due to its position at the meeting point of two linear open space and wildlife corridors (Merri & Edgars Creek Parkland Group 2009).

VicRoads acquired numerous parcels of land in the 1970s for the proposed F2 Freeway and associated East-West Links. The Edgars Creek Parkland was part of the planned route for a freeway along the Merri Creek Corridor into inner Melbourne. Following strong opposition from the local community, the proposal was abandoned (Moreland City Council 2008:2), and it is now time to protect this fine open space.

Following the freeway reservation being removed, VicRoads still owns the land. The original asking price by VicRoads was around $10 million, with developers having expressed interest. There have been ongoing discussions between VicRoads and Moreland City Council for the land to be gifted to Council on the proviso that it remain as public open space
(O’Connell 2008).

Moreland City Council (2008:2) and its predecessors have developed and maintained the land as public open space over the last thirty years at no charge to VicRoads. Thousands of trees have been planted, pathways constructed, weeds managed and fire risks reduced. A significant amount of time and money has been invested into the parkland by the local
community.

This inquiry provides the Victorian Government with the opportunity to write the final chapter in the history of the parkland through securing the Edgars Creek Parkland as public open space forever.

4. Moreland City Council and Community maintenance and protection of theParkland

A considerable effort has been made to restore indigenous vegetation within both the Darebin and Moreland boundaries by both councils in conjunction with the Merri Creek Management Committee and other local community groups (Freshwater 2006).

The public have paid many times over for this land in rates and voluntary labour

Moreland property owners have contributed millions of dollars to the Parks Charge which has been included on their water, sewerage and drainage bills since 1958. They receive no direct benefit as there are no Parks Victoria regional parks in Moreland (Moreland City Council 2008:3).

Over the last thirty years that Moreland City Council (2008:2) and its predecessors have maintained the land, thousands of voluntary hours have been invested by local residents at the park in undertaking tree planting, weeding and general maintenance activities. In 2007 alone, over 400 volunteer hours were dedicated to the creek restoration and
enhancement projects by the local community as part of the Friends of Edgars Creek Activities (Merri & Edgars Creek Parkland Group 2006:3).

The Friends of Merri Creek has been making a significant contribution to the local community through its environmental protection and enhancement projects for the last twenty years. It has accumulated 400 members, planted thousands of trees and has undertaken weeding, water quality monitoring, tours, information stalls and removing litter
from the Creek (Gencturk 2008).

The Edgars Creek Parkland should be gifted to Moreland Council in its entirety on the proviso that it is maintained as public open space in its entirety.

The sell off of certain sections or parcels would compromise the parkland’s ecological integrity (Craig 2009).

To keep this land in public ownership also represents a return for the Melbourne Water Parkland fee paid annually by local ratepayers.

To date precious little of the $3 million in funds collected each year by the State Government in the form of an annual Melbourne Water Parkland fee has been used for parkland maintenance in the City of Moreland (Merri & Edgars Creek Parkland Group 2009). All parkland maintenance has been undertaken by volunteers throughout the community and at the expense of ratepayers through Moreland City Council activities.

5. The Social, Recreational and Health benefits of the Parkland to the local Community

The Edgars Creek Parkland is used as public open space for a wide range of activities by residents of Coburg North and surrounding suburbs. The land is used by walkers, golfers, runners, Coburg Harriers Athletics Club and dog walkers. The parkland is a place for gathering and meeting and fosters social interaction and community connectedness (Merri
and Edgars Creek Parkland Group 2007).

Nearly one in three Australians, 29%, play sport or exercise twice a week or more. The most popular sport or physical recreation activities amongst Australians include walking (25%), aerobics (13%), swimming (9%) and cycling (6%) (ABS 2006).

Nearly half of the Australian population, some 10 million people, exercise or play sport at least once a month, with more than half (54%) reporting ‘health and fitness’ as their main reason for exercising. This was followed by enjoyment (22%), well-being (7%) and social or family reasons (7%) (ABS 2006).

Walking is the most commonly reported sport and physical recreation activity amongst Australians, with a participation rate of 25%. People aged 55-64 years reported the highest participation rates for walking (35%), followed by those aged 45-54 (31%) and those aged 65 years and over (29%) (ABS 2006:10).

Coburg and the area in the immediate vicinity of the Edgars Creek Parkland have a somewhat aged population compared with the rest of Moreland. Residents aged between 55-64 years make up 8.2% of the Moreland population and those of 65 and over make up 16.6% (ABS 2007).

The North Coburg area has 9% of the population aged between 55-64 years old and 19.1% aged over 65 (ABS 2007A).

Walking is the most popular exercising activity undertaken by seniors across Australia. It is therefore important that seniors have adequate access to suitable parkland and walkways to continue undertaking this activity.

According to the ABS (2006:7) there were over 1.0 million (6%) people aged 15 years and over who had been cycling between 2005-06, with more than twice as many males reporting to have cycled than females.

There were 875,500 or 6% of Australians aged 15 years and over who participated in golf between 2005-06, with Victoria recording the highest number of participants along with New South Wales (236,900 and 277,000 respectively) (ABS 2006:7-8).

Running, which is another popular activity undertaken through the Edgars Creek Parkland, has a high volume of participation according to the ABS (2006:8). There were an estimated 681,300 Australians who participated in running between 2005-06, with Victoria recording the second highest participation rate (171,000).

The Edgars Creek Parkland has been enabling local residents to undertake physical and recreational activities for many years now. Its sale for commercial, residential or other development would deal the Coburg community a severe blow in its aspiration to stay fit and healthy.

Providing local communities with the resources and parkland to take part in physical activity has become ever more important, especially with the ever increasing frequency of media reports and concern that Australia is in the midst of an ‘obesity epidemic’ (Biggs 2006), with child obesity in Australia being at an all time high (Houghton 2007).

Statistics show strong and consistent increases in the rates of combined overweight and obese children over the past 20 years, such that these now affect one in every four school children. Obesity affects 6%-8% of Australian schoolchildren. This equates to 260,000 school aged children. This figure has increased by 1.8% in the last five years, which is an additional 65,000 children (Gill & Baur et al 2008).

Childhood and adolescent obesity is associated with a wide range of immediate health concerns, as well as increasing the risk of disease in adulthood. Some weight-related health problems are also found in overweight children (Gill & Baur et al 2008).

If healthy dietary and physical activity environments and behavioural patterns can be established for young children it may help prevent the onset of overweight or obesity in adolescence and adulthood (Victorian Government 2006A). The State Government should be working to reduce obesity rates amongst the community, particularly young people, through the provision of adequate open space and recreational sporting infrastructure.

Keeping the Edgars Creek Parkland as public parkland will ensure the Coburg community has the space to live and breathe so they can continue undertaking popular recreational activities such as walking and cycling.

6. Edgars Creek Parkland; ‘The lungs of the Coburg Community’

The Edgars Creek Parkland is a significant piece of parkland not just because of its size, but because of its ecological and environmental role in making the Coburg community a healthier and environmentally friendly community. The parkland acts as the lungs of the Coburg community, allowing residents to live and breathe; providing essential open space with a variety of flora and fauna in our otherwise urbanised and developed area.

The Department of Sustainability and Environment 2006 Atlas of Victorian Wildlife records 48 fauna species within 1.5km of the Kodak Bridge over Edgar’s Creek. Approximately 280 trees already exist on the site and included in the parkland are areas of remnant vegetation.

The land has high intrinsic value due to its position at the meeting point of two linear open space and wildlife corridors (Merri & Edgars Creek Parkland Group 2009).

I regard climate change as the issue of our time, the issue which will define our success or otherwise as policymakers.

Each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet (Obama 2009).

The phrase ‘think global, act local’ has never been timelier. Removing the parkland would certainly add greenhouse gases in the Coburg community (Parliamentary Library 2009:4).

We can help play our part in the broader solution of reducing carbon emissions by retaining the Edgars Creek Parkland.

Governments are overlooking what city trees and parklands can do to reduce water use and fight climate change. For some years Australia has experienced a staggering growth in the installation of air-conditioners, with sales surging by around 10% each year, and some houses having more than one (Fisher 2009).

These air-conditioning units are ravenous electricity users, imposing heavy demands on peak-load generating capacity, especially older less efficient models. The more airconditioners to fight the climbing temperatures, the more black balloons and carbon emissions, the more the planet heats up. Adding to their workload is the explosion in hard surfaces, patios, pebble gardens, car parks, walls, roads and buildings that retain heat, causing an urban heat island effect (Fisher 2009).

The extent to which parklands, trees, shrubs and wall gardens can cool places has been greatly underestimated. Estimates by the Co-operative Research Centre for Irrigation Futures are that they can lower temperatures by 2-8 degrees because increases in evapotranspiration reduce building energy use by 7-47%. Average electricity saving per tree due to lower air-conditioning use ranges from 70-90 kilowatt hours a year, with savings greater at peak times reducing overall energy demand by 10% (Fisher 2009).

Melbourne has a rich assortment of trees, shrubs and grassed areas, a resource known as the urban forest (Fisher 2009), with the Edgars Creek Parkland being a prime example.

A study of two forested urban parklands in Chicago found total carbon stocks of 230-260 tC ha-1 and annual carbon uptake of 3-5 tC ha-1yr-1 (Jo & McPherson 1995:109-133). They found that 80-90% of the carbon was stored in the soils. In contrast, a study of green space in three Korean cities found storage ranging from 26 to 60 tC ha-1 and annual carbon uptake of 1.6 to 3.9 tC ha-1 yr-1 (Jo 2002: 115-126). The continuing carbon sequestration by the parklands offset carbon emissions of the cities by 0.5-2.2%. Another US study found that urban forests across the country store an average of 25tC ha-1, or about half the storage density in natural forests (Nowak & Crane 2002:381-389/ Nowak 1993: 207-217).

Vegetation represents a carbon store. All plants perform photosynthesis in the presence of light. This process absorbs carbon dioxide gas from the air. When plant material decomposes or is eaten or cleared, the carbon is converted back to CO2 and returns to the atmosphere (Parliamentary Library 2009:2).

The Edgars Creek Parkland’s role in storing carbon should be valued. If part or all of the land is sold and developed, it would result in carbon which it has captured over the last thirty or so years being re-released back into the atmosphere.

A further factor that I urge this inquiry to consider is that the land is vital in maintaining a green buffer between the Newlands Industrial Precinct and surrounding residential areas. This buffer mitigates emissions and manages noise pollution and other impacts emitting from the around the clock industrial operations (Merri and Edgars Creek Parkland Group 2007).
It should also be noted that the Edgars Creek Parkland is subject to inundation. This status is unlikely to change as the frequency of flash floods, related to global warming, increases (Hodge 2008).

7. Demographic and population demand for open space

Increasing population is putting even greater pressure on our living space. Parks like this one are not simply important now; they are destined to become even more valuable in future.

Victoria’s population is forecast to increase from the current 4.8 million to over 6.2 million by 2031 (Victorian Government 2006:11). As of June 30th 2006, Melbourne’s population was 3,744,982 people, and has been growing at an annual average rate of 1.5% annually for the last five years. Over the previous five years there were no local government areas in
Melbourne that declined in population. Moreland has grown by 0.9% (Victorian Government 2007).

Between 2001 and 2006 the population of Moreland grew by just over 5000, from 130,531 in 2001 (ABS 2001A) to 135,764 in 2006 (ABS 2007). This growth is placing extra pressure on local services, schools and infrastructure, including open spaces. This pressure is forecast to grow particulary in the North Coburg area where the Pentridge and Kodak residential
developments will result in a major influx of new residents.

There are long term requirements for open space in the area resulting from high to medium residential developments in the Pentridge Village and Kodak sites. [Ed. See photo at top of article.] The City of Moreland already has one of the lowest percentages of open space allocations in metropolitan Melbourne. Retention of this land as public open space is fully supported by Melbourne 2030 Policy 5.6; to ensure long term protection of public open space (Merri & Edgars Creek Parkland Group 2009).

The Melbourne 2030 plan supports the position of the Merri and Edgars Creek Parkland Group, who are in favour of retaining the parkland as public open space. The recent Audit Expert Group Report on Melbourne 2030 notes that the provision of neighbouring amenities, including parks, open space, facilities and services, is an essential component of maintaining
neighbourhood liveability. Further it recommends improving open space provision and services in line with population increases (Hodge 2008).

The Audit Expert Group on Melbourne 2030 also notes the reduction of tree canopy and loss of open space are two of the most easily felt and resented potential outcomes of urban consolidation.

The allocation of surplus government land for open space is an area that should be taken into consideration (Hodge 2008).

We get told that population growth is inevitable and that it is desirable. Population growth has traditionally come at the expense of open space. Future public policy must take into consideration the threat which population growth poses to our existing public open spaces. Managing population growth so that it does not threaten the liveability of our city ought to be
a priority of this State Government and Governments to come.

The Edgars Creek parkland must be protected not just for ours but for future generations. Its value cannot be placed in monetary terms. Its ecological, environmental and social value far outweigh any short term profits the State Government may be able to derive from its sale.

8. Recommendations

Recommendation 1: VicRoads owned land in the vicinity of Edgars Creek should be retained as public open space.

Recommendation 2: VicRoads should hand over the land to Moreland City Council free-of charge on the proviso that it will be maintained as public open space.

9. References

- Australian Bureau of Statistics (2007) 2006 Census QuickStats: Moreland (LGA). Released 25/10/07 [Online] www.abs.gov.au [Accessed 13/02/2009]
- Australian Bureau of Statistics (2007A) 2006 Census Quick Stats: Coburg North (State Suburb). Released 25/10/07 [Online] www.abs.gov.au [Accessed 13/02/2009]
- Australian Bureau of Statistics (2006) 4177.0 Participation in Sport and Physical Recreation Australia 2005-06 [Online] http://abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/[email protected]/ProductsbyCatalogue/9FD67668EE42A738
CA2568A9001393AC?OpenDocument [Accessed 12/02/2009]
- Australian Bureau of Statistics (2001) 2001 Census Quickstats: Coburg North (State Suburb). Released 9/03/06 [Online] www.abs.gov.au [Accessed 13/02/2009]
- Australian Bureau of Statistics (2001A) 2001 Census Quickstats: Moreland (LGA) . [Online] www.abs.gov.au [Accessed 13/02/2009]
- Biggs, M. (2006) Overweight and obesity in Australia E-brief. Published by the Parliamentary Library [Online] http://www.aph.gov.au/library/intguide/SP/obesity.htm [Accessed 12/02/2009]
- Craig, S. (2009) ‘Save the site bid’. Article published in the Moreland Leader Newspaper on 12/01/2009.
- Fisher, P., Dr. (2009) ‘It’s time literally to go green’. Article published in The Age on the 23/01/2009 [Online] http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/its-time-literally-to-gogreen-20090122-7nv5.html [Accessed 23/01/2009]
- Friends of Edgars Creek (2009) Melbourne’s Freshwater Systems Community Natural History [Online] http://www.freshwater.net.au/community/foec.htm [Accessed 3/02/2009]
- Freshwater.Net.Au (2006) Melbourne’s Fresh Water Systems; Edgars Creek [Online] http://www.freshwater.net.au/nature/about_edgars_creek.htm [Accessed 11/02/09]
- Fyfe, M. (2009) ‘Review, and you, to bring order to open-space race’. Published in
The Sunday Age 4/1/09, Page 7.
- Gill, P., T., & Baur, A., L., et al (2008) Childhood obesity in Australia remains a
widespread health concern that warrants population-wide prevention programs.
Published on the Medical Journal of Australia [Online]
http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/190_03_020209/gil10817_fm.html [Accessed
12/02/2009]

Melbourne City heritage under threat by undemocratic, unwanted, and destructive development

This article is a response to concerns raised by the Victorian National Trust, and using their material, so you can rely on the statements and cite them. At the base of the article and some specimen letters, there are addresses to write to or email.

Melbourne is under attack

IN MELBOURNE a very large number of heritage buildings are being demolished or overwhelmed by new development. This new development will deprive Melbourne of much that is unique to its character. Too much has already been lost in recent years.

The 1894 Eastern Arcade on Bourke Street and the rear facades of both Myer Bourke Street and David Jones have already been lost. Now a permit has been granted to demolish a collection of three interwar buildings behind Scots church, including Victoria’s oldest multi storey carpark, built in 1938.

Towers already approved break the height limit in the central city, and will be overly dominant, and may provide precedent for further breaches. St Paul’s Cathedral may soon be dominated by an 88m glass office tower in Flinders Lane that is more than twice the recommended height limit of 40m. Scots Church may soon be dominated by a 51m high office tower where the height limit is 30m.

Heritage buildings should be preserved where at all possible, and re-used instead of demolished for the sake of simple commercial gain.

Heritage buildings and precincts should not be completely overwhelmed by large new towers directly behind or over them.

Height limits should be respected, because they are intended to maintain a ‘pedestrian scaled’ street level environment, the proper context for heritage buildings.

It is alarming that so many of these big projects have been permitted by the Sate Government through a planning process that does not include an ability to make submissions or lodge appeals.

The Melbourne City Council has shown little interest in preserving existing heritage listed buildings, let alone updating the listings, which have not changed since 1984.

There is plenty of room for new development outside the central shopping area and Collins Street. The city fringe area such as La Trobe Street and beyond, King Street and beyond, and of course the Docklands and Southbank provide plenty of scope for new innovative developments without threatening unique heritage precincts.

The protection of areas by heritage and height controls, such as the central retail area, the Bourke Street hill and Chinatown, has preserved the small scale buildings of earlier eras, the laneways that serve them and the buildings hidden there. These controls are responsible for the development Melbourne’s vibrant laneway culture and apartment conversions of old buildings.

Re: Demolition of Lonsdale House, Lonsdale Street

• Lonsdale House is a good example of Art deco architecture in the city, and is ‘protected’ by a Heritage Overlay and should not be demolished. It is an integral part of the heritage streetscape of Lonsdale Street.

• The justifications used are not convincing. The need to widen the laneway for trucks sounds like a convenience rather than a necessity. Furthermore such a wide truck accessway will create a barrier and a danger for pedestrians.

• That it should be replaced with an entry for a large shopping centre and an electronic billboard clearly shows that generic ‘development’ has been given a higher priority than our unique city heritage.

• It will provide a diagonal entry to a shopping centre that will contain over 100 shops over three levels, and will have multiple entry points from Myer and Melbourne central. To allow this small corner piece as well the demolition of all but the facades of the Myer building shows that the demolition of Lonsdale House is simply a bonus profit for developers who knew full well that it was heritage listed.

• The development will destroy one of the now characteristic laneways of Melbourne, and specifically the St Jerome’s bar, home of the laneway festival. There will be no room for unusual or fringe activities that so animate Melbourne in the new shopping centre. Such unique spaces and activities are in danger of being destroyed by their popularity.

Letter specific to the Windsor

This letter should be addressed to Heritage Victoria

Email : [email protected]

Copies to the Minister and the Trust

Executive Director
Heritage Victoria
Department of Planning and Community Development
Level 4, 55 Collins St, Melbourne, VIC 3000.
PO Box 2392,
Melbourne, VIC 3001.

Dear Executive Director,

RE: Windsor Hotel redevelopment

• The Windsor certainly needs some ‘refreshing’ but the scale of the development threatens to overwhelm what would be left of the original building.

• The architecture of the new parts is certainly innovative, but is this sufficient justification for its scale and impact on the Windsor and the Bourke Hill heritage precinct ?

• The owners bought the business and the building knowing full well it was on the Heritage Register, and had a height limit of 23m, as does much of the surrounding area.

• The 1961 corner building has little heritage value, but the new corner building is a floor higher, dominating the original building more than the existing.

• If the tower is allowed, it will provide a precedent for other tall buildings in the area, threatening the low intimate scale of the precinct and its laneways and small businesses.

• Is the demolition of the rear wing of the original 1888 building really necessary ?

• Surely there is a viable alternative future for the Windsor that did not include a tower with 200 new rooms, a swimming pool, gym and all the features you would expect for a modern hotel. As a boutique heritage hotel, such facilities would not be expected.

• The re-creation of the ground level arcade, a new suite incorporating the towers, and further restoration of the interior of the original building are welcome, but seem like small concessions for a building that is already largely restored.

Letter specific to 80 Collins Street

This letter should be addressed to the Minister for Planning, with copies to the City Of Melbourne and the Trust.

Email : [email protected]

The Hon Justin Madden
Minister for Planning
Level 17/8 Nicholson Street,
East Melbourne VIC 3002

Dear Mr Madden,

Re: Proposed 40 storey office tower, 80 Collins Street

• This giant tower will totally dominate the ‘Paris End’ of Collins Street, one of the most important precincts of Melbourne.

• A 40 storey tower built right up to the street line completely ignores planning rules and precedents for Collins Street that tall towers should be setback at least 10m from the street line.

• Placing the building on giant legs does not lessen its impact on the intimate scale of the small heritage buildings below; indeed they become insignificant footnotes at the bottom of a giant commercial development.

• Building right over the airspace of the Le Louvre shop would set a very bad precedent, threatening all small buildings in the city area with the same treatment.

• The tower is 30m wide and 40 storeys tall on the north side of the street; this will cast such a shadow over the street that dappled sunlight through the trees will become a distant memory.

• How is it possible that a development that so completely ignores the rules has been allowed to get to this stage ?

• Filling in the ‘gaps’ created in the early 1970s for Nauru House would be welcome if the new development complemented the heritage buildings on either side. Instead they are transparent glass boxes set right on the street front.

What you can do

The National Trust info[AT]nattrust.com.au suggests that people write to the Minister for Planning justin.madden[AT]parliament.vic.gov.au about this matter using these facts and cc the National Trust a copy. They have also sent out two specimen letters about specific projects in Melbourne, which I append below. Below these are more addresses.

Here is the Minister for Planning's street address:
The Hon Justin Madden
Minister for Planning
Level 17/8 Nicholson Street,
East Melbourne VIC 3002

Email : justin.madden[AT]parliament.vic.gov.au

And a copy to the National Trust please : info[AT]nattrust.com.au

Mail:
Conservation Division
National Trust of Australia (Victoria),
Tasma Terrace, 4 Parliament Place,
East Melbourne Vic 3002

And you might like to write to or copy to the Lord Mayor of the City of Melbourne :

The Right Hon the Lord Mayor Robert Doyle
City of Melbourne
PO Box 1603
Melbourne VIC 3001

Email :
[email protected]

Save your Parks from Sharks

What Ever Happened to Royal Park?

[1]

The Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc, of which the Royal Park Protection Group Inc. is a member, has lent us their logo for this newsletter.

Unfortunately we have failed to save Royal Park from “shark” attack. Over the short space of the past 13 years first the Kennett Government, then former Premier Bracks and his operative Bronwyn Pike MP, Member for Melbourne, plus compliant past and present Melbourne City Lord Mayors and Councillors, have presided over the progressive carve up, degradation, clear felling and concreting over of Royal Park, previously one of the glories of Marvellous Melbourne – set aside by our first visionary Governor, Charles La Trobe.

Park death by a thousand cuts

Construction of a multitude of developments include: concrete super-market style carparks round the Zoo for the Zoo, including the VCAT approved expansion at the north entrance; super tram stops; bike paths; a bus parking bay on Brens Drive for the Urban Camp; the State Netball and Hockey Centre plus carparks, ostensibly for the 2006 Commonwealth Games; and a mega, private real estate residential development “The Parkville Gardens” on the former Royal Park Psychiatric Hospital (RPPH) site, used for a few weeks for athletes’ accommodation for the 2006 Commonwealth Games. In addition, the Federation style Heritage listed buildings of the RPPH, restored at taxpayers’ expense and promised for community use, have been included in the Parkville Gardens, divided into units, handed over to the developer Australand and then sold for up to $800,000 a unit.

Hospital

Currently still under construction is the $1 billion plus new Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH), which has involved alienation of a huge section of south Royal Park to the west and north of the original hospital. Over 7 hectares, additional to the original 4.1 hectares hospital footprint, have been alienated for the “project construction site”, without guarantees that any land will be handed back to the park. In addition a 2,000 underground carpark for the expanded hospital is being built under the Park and, apparently, under a PPP deal a private hotel is to be built in the new hospital complex. The “Mercy Health” development, an aged care facility, is now being built on the former RPPH site. Although we believe that original contracts show approval for only a 100 aged care bed “social housing” facility, this aged care facility has 140 beds. Additionally a “Mercy Place” multi storey apartment complex is being built with 53 units for private sale, priced up to $600,000, and has use of a wing of the heritage buildings on the site. A “retail hub” is to be built for the flats and the aged care facility with consulting rooms. Also a Catholic chapel.

Freeway extension aborted

Thanks to the extended campaign last year up to December 2008 by RPPG with a coalition of community allies, extension of the Eastern Freeway - through under or over Royal Park, planned by Sir Rod Eddington as part of the $18 billion “East West Link” will now not proceed. It has been quietly deleted from the Victorian Transport Plan.

Ex Liberal leader, Lord Mayor Robert Doyle, cuts funding and protection of parks

Of grave concern is the fact that, as the present Council under Lord Mayor Robert Doyle has downgraded the care and protection of city parks and cut funding to the community, Royal Park will accordingly suffer. (See over.)

“This is my Land, this is your Land, this is our Land, this is not Australand’s” Banner at protest over loss of RPPH site.

Breach of Royal Park Master Plan by City of Melbourne

Breach of Royal Park Master Plan by City of Melbourne: As members may recall Lord Mayor John So sacked the Director and Deputy Director of Parks and Gardens plus a number of staff to save funds. In March this year Council terminated the Royal Park Master Plan Implementation Advisory Committee (RPMIAC) on the grounds that the implementation of the Master Plan was complete. This is far from the truth.

In April we saw the extraordinary departure from the Royal Park Master Plan by staff. The hill top in West Parkville with views of the Macedon Ranges was, in the Master Plan, to be kept clear. RPPG heard that staff planned to plant 120 forest eucalypts – Red Ironbarks. This species is not indigenous to Royal Park, was not included for this location in the Master Plan and will obscure the magnificent views. It is entirely unsuitable for a picnic area as the trees are prone to “limb drop”. RPPG plus other community groups’ members appealed to Councillor Cathy Oke to request staff to put the planting on hold until future discussions could be held. Staff apparently ignored her instructions and went ahead the next day and planted 120 Red Ironbark Trees. In June RPPG made a submission to the “Eco-City Committee” on the agenda item on Master Plans and included our complaints but have had no response. Members formerly of RPMIAC supported by RPPG and the North and West Melbourne Association have put in a formal complaint to the City of Melbourne over this breach of the Master Plan.

Phoney Parks Advisory Committee

Establishment of a Phoney Parks Advisory Committee: RPPG understood from Cr Cathy Oke from the May Council Committee meetings that Council was to establish a Parks Advisory Committee. By the June meeting it had morphed into a “Community Engagement Committee” It was then further altered when the CEO Cathy Alexander spoke to explain that it really was a committee to help set up consultations in the community. The Lord Mayor also had a go at explaining. So there is now no central Parks Advisory Committee as promised when the individual parks committees including Royal Park were terminated.

State Netball and Hockey Centre’s Obtrusive Hockey Lights

State Netball and Hockey Centre’s Obtrusive Hockey Lights: RPPG has a representative on the SNHC Advisory Committee. At the beginning of May installation of new lights was discussed and RPPG presented the Executive Summary of Dr Barry Clark’s latest research paper on the health risks associated with exposure to powerful light at night which includes increased risk of breast and prostate cancers. (As 2/3 of the Zoo is flooded with light when the hockey lights are on then the animals’ health is also at risk.) The State Sports Centres Trust is to be advised. This is serious because it puts the SSCT on notice of risk to health of users and staff of the Centre.

Volunteers not supported where it counts

Issue of Certificates of Appreciation to Royal Park Protection Group Inc. Volunteers: Representatives of RPPG – Rod Quantock and Julianne Bell - were invited to an afternoon tea on 11 June 2009 hosted by Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner, Federal Member for Melbourne “to acknowledge the important role that volunteers from the Royal Park Protection Group make in strengthening the well being of our local community.” Moreover we were presented with “Certificates of Appreciation” for “our outstanding contribution to the community.” Compare the scant recognition to community groups ever been given by the City of Melbourne!

Sewer Mining to supply parks and gardens with water

Report of the Parliamentary Environment and Natural Resources Committee Inquiry into Melbourne’s Future Water Supply: The report was released in June 2009. It contains a section of RPPG Convenor Julianne Bell’s submission to the Committee on 2 February 2009 on Sewer Mining (Page 204) which would be a means of supplying the City of Melbourne with recycled water for all its parks and gardens. (The Committee’s recommendation is to pursue sewer mining projects.)

RPPG Next Meeting:
Time: 11:30 am
Date: Saturday 1 August 2009
Venue: Walmsley House Royal Park corner of Gatehouse Street and Royal Parade Parkville.
Transport: Park in Gatehouse Street; tram up Elizabeth Street to Royal Parade. Get off at Gatehouse Street. Train to Flinders Street then tram as above.

Unreasonable rules for grant submissions

Rejection of RPPG’s Application for a 2010 Community Grant: As RPPG Committee members were ill and away overseas RPPG submitted our application by email. This was not accepted as only postal applications were specified. It is extraordinary as many organisations including the State Government accept online submissions and by email. It appears to us an excuse to cut back on grants.

This notice was printed with the support of the City of Melbourne through the 2009 Community Grants Program.

[1] This article comes from The Royal Park Protection Group Inc., News Bulletin – July 2009

Planning Minister, Mr Madden, ALP.

Justin Madden needs to answer questions

Shadow Minister for Planning Matthew Guy has issued a press release declaring that he will today ask the Parliament’s all-powerful Finance and Public Administration Committee to call the Planning Minister, Mr Madden, and the Growth Areas Authority (GAA) to appear before it to urgently explain the proposed Growth Areas Infrastructure Contribution (GAIC) that will have damaging effects on Victorian families."

Matthew Guy says he will ask why taxes not imposed on developers rather than land-owners.

In the press release it says that the Committee has the power to subpoena any Upper House minister or government agency, and that Mr Guy has said the Minister and the GAA should provide full and frank evidence explaining why this tax is being aimed at landholders on the outskirts of Melbourne, and not at those who sought to develop the land.

“The Minister’s public comments to date have been woefully inadequate and have left residents, councils and industry in the dark about this new tax,” committee member Mr Guy said today.

“The only way to make the Minister and the Growth Areas Authority answer in full is to haul them before this Committee and to seek answers under oath,” Mr Guy said.

After eight months, the GAIC is supposedly still in the drafting phase, yet Labor has announced several ‘amendments’ to the tax despite refusing to release any details beyond a handful of information sheets.

“Labor’s failure to keep Victorians informed about this new growth areas tax is atrocious,” Mr Guy said.

“This tax will reap more than $2 billion for the government from residents and the construction industry, yet the government still refuses to tell us the details.

“The GAIC proposal is destroying people’s lives and is creating huge uncertainty in the community.

“The only way to end the uncertainty is to have the Minister and the GAA answer questions in a full public hearing of the Finance and Public Administration Committee, and it must be done as soon as possible.”

To observers it looks like the Victorian government, beleagered by financial problems and massive unpopularity due to its undemocratic, unfair and socially and ecologically harmful land-use planning policies, may be in its last throes and thus susceptible to restraint. But bogeymen often come back just when you least expect it, so let's not hold our breath.

Candobetter Ed. We just hope that Mr Guy and the Liberal Party will join in spirit Federal ALP Member, Mr Thompson, in roundly condemning the growthist population policy which has led to these tragic circumstances and menaces all of Victoria's remaining wildlife habitat in the Green Wedges as well as agricultural land there. It would be very disappointing, to say the least, if the Liberal Party were merely to broker some other carve-up of Melbourne's lungs and wildlife corridors, to keep the ravenous and unsustainable growth lobby supplied.

David Davis MP will introduce his resolution for the Outer Suburban/Interface Services and Development Committee of Parliament to hold an enquiry into the Extension of the Urban Growth Boundary at 10:30 am on Wednesday 29 July 2009 in the Upper House. Concerned citizens are urged to attend parliament to watch as our representatives argue the toss of our remaining quality of life and environment in Melbourne. A link is also provided to listen on-line. See also: Other relevant articles about the Urban Growth Boundaries assault

David Davis MP will introduce his resolution for the Outer Suburban/Interface Services and Development Committee of Parliament to hold an enquiry into the Extension of the Urban Growth Boundary at 10:30 am on Wednesday 29 July 2009 in the Upper House.

It will be under General Business. It is suggested that if people would like to attend then perhaps come half an hour earlier to allow time for security clearance. Ask to go to the Upper House public gallery.

(No banners or shouting at ALP members in Parliament!)

For those at home look up on www.parliament.vic.gov.au and click on Live Audio Broadcast sign on the home page. You can listen to a direct broadcast. The picture of the member of Parliament speaking comes on the screen.

Below is cut and pasted an extract from Hansard with David Davis' resolution, which is the neatly presented bit at the top. What follows are remarks which may be of some interest. (Note that the links do not work.)

The State Government's plan to extend the Urban Growth Boundary, which heralds amongst other things, the destruction of Green Wedges and imposition of a grossly unfair vendor land tax, will have disastrous consequences for Victoria, if it gets through.

(Photo by Sheila)

This article is a reflection on the nature and efficacy of wildlife research in Australia.

I raise 3 issues:

Can research benefit wildlife? Can research contribute to its survival? Can research engender respect for the intrinsic value of wildlife?

The Nature and efficacy of wildlife reseach in Australia

I’ve asked these questions because, despite over 200 years research into every aspect of the lives of our native animals, the many thousands of papers produced and the many millions of dollars spent, fauna populations continue to decline, the number of endangered and extinct species continues to rise and the attitude of the general public towards indigenous animals slides further into the abyss.

The current state of wildlife is desperate. It’s obvious that Australia is waging a war on wildlife. It’s a dirty war. It’s fueled by research and it will ultimately result in the destruction of all native animals.

You would think that our native fauna would be a precious and vital element of our country’s identity and that these animals would be nurtured and protected, not only for their value to the tourism industry or their role in the maintenance of biodiversity and the fragile ecosystem but for their sheer beauty and the elegance of the way they strive to survive in this harsh and dangerous land.

Two prevailing views

Photo provided by Nikki Sutterby, Co-Ordinator, Australian Society for Kangaroos

Unfortunately this is not the case. Very broadly speaking there are two prevailing views of the environment in Australia and I believe that wildlife research reflects and perpetuates these opposing points of view.

The majority view is that humans always have priority, with the right to live wherever, take whatever and do whatever they want.

Depending on who you are, wildlife is a resource to be exploited, a pest to be exterminated, or a curiosity to be dissected. For hunters and hoons, wildlife is fun to kill and for environmentalists it is sustainable food.

These beliefs are perpetrated by bureaucratic, short sighted, exploitative institutions and individuals who are always looking to maximize revenue, trade and profit. The research of selected experts is used to justify lethal management decisions and to excuse horrific cruelty to animals often by incompetent contract killers.

Taxes pay for this

Members of the CSIRO, National Parks, State and Federal Government agencies, councils, universities and agricultural colleges make up this group. Their work is often supported by the RSPCA and always paid for by the tax payer.

At the laboratory level these institutions also appear to be conspiring to eradicate wildlife by any means. They contract and conduct research into all means of destroying wildlife and habitat - poisons, fencing, traps, snares, starvation and introduced predators just to name a few. This research not only uses native animals in lab and field experiments but has contributed to the suffering and death of millions of native animals in the wild, as has the wide variety of cruel and often lethal tracking devices that have been developed and applied by these institutions for their dubious data collections.

Just last week it was revealed that in NSW, native stripe-faced dunnarts, a species classified as vulnerable, died in an experiment to see how their immune function would be affected by pesticides.

Research favourable to animal welfare

West Aust Black Cockatoos in rehab. Photo from Black Cockatoo Conservation Team

While it is true that there is research favourable to animals; research that proves for instance that kangaroos do not threaten the wheat and wool industries and that they are beneficial to the maintenance of natural vegetation, ethics committees and government departments usually choose to ignore these findings in favour of a quick result and often to cover–up incompetence in other areas of environmental protection or worse, to hide plans for building development.

Wildlife is not and has never been a priority in Australia. Based on the research and recommendations of certain experts, state governments and councils continue to sanction the slaughter of populations of flying foxes, koalas, possums, wallabies and kangaroos. Non-violent solutions, long-term planning and pro-active methods are rejected as thousands of ‘inconvenient’ animals die in holocaust-style mass-murder.

But then, when a species comes to the edge of extinction or contracts a mysterious disease, suddenly there appears to be great concern, with heaps of money flying around, lots of experiments in labs and zoos and plenty of carefully manipulated media attention, often to avert a situation which, with attention to research that had warned of environmental threats, could have been avoided.

Views of the Environment

The minority view of the environment is held by a group of Australians who believe that humans must co-exist with the natural environment for our mutual benefit. People with this view are compassionate, moral people, some of whom rescue and care for injured and dying animals, some carry out vital research of their own. They endure threats and scorn but mainly their work is ignored.

This minority group is long-sighted, non-violent, inclusive and creative. These people always look for the third alternative, they promote moral decision-making based on the interests of all players and they offer solutions that are not based on vested interest.

For example;
Last year when the Department of Defense decided to massacre hundreds of kangaroos trapped at the Belconnen Army Base, no amount of non-lethal, alternative solutions offered by researchers from this minority group could persuade the government to show an atom of compassion for these gentle family-oriented animals - and the world saw the most horrendous, unforgettable slaughter. When populations of animals are trapped in areas without corridors, when there is no proactive planning and when ‘management’ is code for ‘killing’, it’s so easy to justify their elimination.

In SA the kangaroo industry killing quotas are reviewed every 3 years after aerial and ground surveys. Although this is euphemistically called research for sustainable management, kangaroos are not benefitting from this. On top of the commercial kill, they also continue to perish as farmers take more land every year and kill more kangaroos. Independent research shows that genetic diversity is diminishing as a direct result of this slaughter but while the government profits from this industry, this issue will not be addressed.

On a smaller scale, there are the activities of the SA Museum, a centre for biodiversity research in that state. Researchers map declines and extinctions. They claim to contribute to the informed management of wildlife. This is defined as the way to provide for human needs without destroying other species. They are keen to point out that no unnecessary pain or suffering occurs in their research procedures but earlier this year a report revealed that, among other deficiencies in research methodologies, trapped tortoises had drowned during a data collection procedure. The solution to this ‘mistake’ was to invent a snorkel device to stop tortoises drowning.

These are just a few of the myriad ways that research harms wildlife in Australia.

Can research benefit wildlife?

Dr Maxine Piggott

Dr Maxine Piggott received the Voiceless Eureka prize last year for her development of non-invasive DNA analysis to research animal behaviour, genetic variation and population structure in Australian native fauna. Traditional methods of data collection involve trapping and handling animals to get blood and tissue samples. This can cause animals stress, injury or death and there is a risk of females abandoning their young in the process. Currently DNA analysis of hair and faeces samples is mainly used for conservation work and is particularly applicable to the study of rare and endangered species. It is an extremely important example of what research can achieve when animal welfare is made a priority.

Can research contribute to the survival of wildlife?

Recently Dr Mike Letnic, of the University of Sydney carried out observational research into the environmental role of the dingo. He has shown that as Australia's top predator, the dingo, plays an important role in maintaining the balance of nature and that reintroducing or maintaining existing dingo populations could reduce the predatory impacts of foxes on small and medium sized mammals, increasing biodiversity across over 2 million square kilometres of Australia..
Different regions separated by the dingo fence in farmlands of New South Wales and Victoria were compared. In regions where dingoes roamed free, there were far fewer kangaroos and red foxes and small native animals thrived. On the other hand, in lands protected from dingoes, researchers noticed far fewer native animals were present.
Dingoes suffer so much because of human pressure and ignorance – it’s amazing to find a researcher presenting in their favour, with data that hopefully cannot be ignored or distorted. And that’s what so great about this kind of research – it focuses on native animals in the context of their environment while highlighting the detrimental human impact of traditional attitudes and providing a non-lethal proposal that puts humans and wildlife on the same side. Is there a possibility that the Minister for the Environment will recognize the importance of this work and act on it before dingoes all disappear into history?

Can research engender respect for the intrinsic value of wildlife?

As you may well know, Northeast of Melbourne in the Whittlesea council, there is an area where a mob of kangaroos have become trapped on its home range by council –approved building developments. Residents are confronted daily by the sight of dead or dying kangaroos that have been hit by cars or mauled by dogs and local police have increasingly been called to euthanize injured kangaroos who have tried to escape to safety or better food availability.
The council and government have allowed development to enclose the kangaroos’ territory and are now just waiting for them all to die as this last tract of land left for the animals is going to be developed as a cinema.

Where is the research on which government based the decision to abandon these kangaroos? Where is the long-term environmental plan that showed respect and concern for the welfare of the original residents of this area? What message about the value of life and the wisdom of government is being conveyed to the local population?

Wildlife research becomes corrupt when it operates outside the ideals of preserving species and habitat; when it fails to protect individual animals and provide an environment where they prosper. Government used such research to justify the killing of the 7000 kangaroos slaughtered at Majura in the ACT over the last month.
Such actions contribute to the public perception of the disposability, even invisibility of wildlife and this manifests in the contempt consistently shown towards wildlife by sections of the public. But, appalling and shameful as any murder of wildlife is, I believe that the long-term consequence of this callous official attitude will be irreparable damage to the national psyche; the destruction of the natural spirit along with the extinction of all native animals.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

I don’t want to live in an Australia without native animals. It’s unbearable that they should continue to suffer because of pseudo-science and society’s addiction to economic growth. But there is great pro-wildlife research out there and many active people lobbying for change. We urgently need a coordinated national approach which makes wildlife protection and preservation a priority to all Australians. Meanwhile we can all get behind the campaign to boycott tourism to the ACT until they stop this obscene rampage against kangaroos.

Full text of this submission may be downloaded here in a pdf file 293.43kb.

Kelvin Thompson, ALP, Federal Member for Wills, (a House of Representatives seat.) Wills is located in the north-west of Melbourne, Victoria, comprising Coburg, Coburg North, Gowanbrae, Hadfield, Oak Park, Pascoe Vale, and Strathmore, extending as far north as Fawkner, Glenroy and the Western Ring Road and south to include most of Brunswick and Brunswick East and containing parts of the State electorates of Pascoe Vale, Brunswick, Broadmeadows, Thomastown and Essendon. At a local Government level it shares most of its borders with Moreland, but includes Strathmore from the municipality of Moonee Valley and the Essendon Airport.)

It is indeed cheering to hear a member of the Federal Government criticise the policies of the Growth Lobbyists in Australia. The speech quoted at length below was in Labor MP attacks Melbourne's expansion plan ( July 20 2009) misreported in the Age where it was conflated with statements from the Committee of Melbourne. This conflation misled me and others to believe that Kelvin Thompson was against expansion into the Green Wedges, but was calling for open slather along the main arteries of Melbourne. If you read his submission or the quotes below, you will see that he is actually stating that more population growth in Melbourne is environmentally and socially unsustainable. He is critical of arguments for expansion or infilling. He also exposes the related hypocrisy and nonsensicality of the Government's climate change policies in the light of continuous population growth. He even exposes the fact that the Victorian State Government advertises for high immigration, a fact that they constantly avoid making clear to the long-suffering public.

I have to say: Bravo Kelvin Thompson! You show leadership in a government apparently composed mostly of cowards and ignoramuses who take orders from big business against the interests of their electorates. The only thing you have left out is the role that the Federal Government plays in granting the states the numbers they so vociferously demand of it.

Headings are by the candobetter editor:

Kelvin writes:

"Our city is forecast to have 4 million people living in it by the end of this year, with annual population growth rates reaching 2% (Colebatch 2009). The outer fringe of Melbourne is currently taking 61% of our population growth (Buckley 2009). This is placing pressure on the existing Urban Growth Boundary.

Climate change is the biggest moral issue of our time

Climate change is the biggest moral issue of our time and addressing it must be at the forefront of our public policy planning. Compared to other major cities throughout the developed world, Melbourne has one of the highest rates of carbon emissions per capita. Our city’s cars, trucks, motorcycles and public transport services were recently recorded to generate 11 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, compared with just 8.5 million tonnes in London. This equates to 3.1 tonnes of carbon per person in Melbourne compared with 1.2 tonnes per person in Greater London. One of the key reasons for our significantly higher rate of emissions per person is because of Melbourne’s larger geographic area, which means journeys tend to be longer and heavily reliant on cars (Lucas & Millar 2008).

Twice the number of people in Melbourne will mean twice the amount of carbon emissions, congestion and pollution.

Existing Government policies are encouraging an expansion of up to 75,000 people a year. If we continue down this public policy path we will need to accommodate another 1 million people before 2025 (Buckley 2009). By 2036 Melbourne is predicted to have a further 1.8 million people, nearly twice the number forecast in Melbourne 2030 (Moncrief 2008). Twice the number of people in Melbourne will mean twice the amount of carbon emissions, congestion and pollution.

Submission to the Urban Growth Boundary Review

1. Executive Summary

Our city has reached the point where we need to change direction or risk our social and environmental future.

Melbourne is at a fork in the road. For a long time our city, its way of life and the opportunities it offers to all who come here has been the envy of cities around the world. To maintain this desirable situation we must act decisively to address the issues that threaten Melbourne with becoming another crowded, over populated, congested and polluted metropolis. Our city has reached the point where we need to change direction or risk our social and environmental future.

The Urban Growth Boundary Melbourne@ 5 million review provides the opportunity to investigate the issues currently facing our city and the options we still have to address them. This submission will identify the ecological issues associated with expanding the northern, western and southern Urban Growth Boundaries and discuss the long term consequences for Melbourne of the proposed expansion. I am making recommendations which will protect Melbourne’s social and economic
growth, local amenity, transport system and reduce our carbon footprint. I have put forward an alternative plan to that of an ever expanding urban fringe.

Melbourne is one of the world’s most liveable cities. This year it was ranked third out of 140 cities as being the most liveable city. Our lifestyle, employment opportunities, health system, education system, infrastructure and environment are all aspects of a community that is the envy of many around the world (The Age 2009).

Melbourne is now the fastest growing city in Australia, with thousands flocking to live here on a never before seen scale. Melbourne’s population is growing on a scale not seen in Australia before, swelling by almost 150,000 people in two years (Colebatch 2009). The 2001 Census recorded Melbourne’s population at 3.3 million people (ABS 2001). In 2006 our population reached 3.6 million (ABS 2006). It has continued to grow faster than that of any other city in the country.

Melbourne’s population grew by 74,713 in the year to last June and by 74, 791 during the previous year. Melbourne’s population is growing by more than 200 people a day, or almost 1500 per week. Melbourne’s population growth last year far outpaced all other major Australian cities. Sydney grew by 55,047 (1.35%), Brisbane by 43,404 (2.3%) and Perth by 43,381 (2.8%) (Colebatch 2009).

In response to revised population projections showing that Melbourne will reach five million people faster than anticipated, the Victorian Government announced its intention to review the Urban Growth Boundary in December 2008 (DoPCD 2009:i). The Urban Growth Boundary was introduced in 2002 as part of Melbourne 2030 (DoPCD 2009A). The boundary was expressly put in place to contain urban sprawl. It was expressly designed to prevent ongoing urban expansion into rural land surrounding metropolitan Melbourne and its fringe (DoSE 2005). It set out to place a clear limit to metropolitan Melbourne’s development. It sought to concentrate urban expansion into growth areas that are served by high capacity public transport (DoSE 2005A).

The most recent review of Melbourne @ 5 million forecasts an additional 600,000 new dwellings in Melbourne with 284,000 of these needing to be located in growth areas. Most of this future growth will be in the north and west of Melbourne (DoPCD 2009:i).

The State Government is investigating changes to the Urban Growth Boundary in response to updated population forecasts and revised longer term growth issues (DoPCD:6). Areas under consideration for urban expansion include 20,448
hectares in Melbourne’s west around Caroline Springs, Melton and Werribee; 25,385 hectares around Sunbury, Craigieburn and Donnybrook and 5560 hectares east of Cranbourne.

Under the plan Melbourne’s Urban Growth Boundary would be allowed to grow another 41,000 hectares to accommodate an extra 415,000 people. Development of these areas would lead to a loss of some of the most valuable grasslands on the city’s fringe (Dowling & Lahey 2009).

Around the urban fringe, we have a concentration of some of the most endangered ecosystems in Australia, including Western Basalt Plains Grassland and Grassy Woodland, and a diverse range of other vegetation types and threatened species (Environment Victoria 2009). It is vital we do everything we can to protect these ecologically sensitive and important areas from being overrun by high density development.

The Victorian Government is now seeking public feedback on the proposals regarding the proposed changes to the Urban Growth Boundary before a final decision is made (DoPCD 2009:3). In making a final decision, I encourage the Victorian Government to consider the issues of population, local amenity and liveability, climate change, economic growth and transport. I have put forward recommendations that are designed to tackle urban sprawl and that will continue to protect the
things that make Melbourne great.

Everything that makes our city the great place to live, work and raise a family, is potentially under threat if population growth and urban sprawl continue at the current rate.

Everything that makes our city the great place to live, work and raise a family, is potentially under threat if population growth and urban sprawl continue at the current rate. We must implement a strategy to control population growth, urban expansion and development. Our way of life, open spaces and infrastructure cannot be sacrificed on the altar of ever expanding population. We have a responsibility to secure our city’s future through thorough, thoughtful and detailed planning. This
planning should not include an expanding Melbourne waistline.

[...]

Encouraging urban sprawl and ever increasing high density developments will lead to a more
polluted, congested and unsustainable Melbourne. Bringing millions of people in to Melbourne will increase the stress on water supplies that are already strained, increase reliance on fossil fuels by communities that are on our urban fringe, and it will increase Melbourne’s carbon footprint when we must be reducing it.

Regrettably the planning process in Melbourne is not being used to achieve environmental sustainability. Melbourne is generating more greenhouse emissions, using more water, losing open space and turning into a high rise steel and concrete jungle. Planners and policy makers talk the talk of protecting Melbourne’s environment, but their actions have the opposite effect. They behave as Gough Whitlam once described rowers facing in one direction but heading in the opposite one.

The promise of Green Wedges to give Melbourne lungs of open space in which to breathe has been broken

A fundamental component of planning for Melbourne’s growth during the 1970s was the concept of
urban growth corridors radiating outwards, separated by wedges of non-urban land (Friends of Merri Creek 2009:3). But the promise of Green Wedges to give Melbourne lungs of open space in which to breathe has been broken, and is proposed to be broken yet again. We need to retain Green Wedges as permanent wedges between growth corridors, not as potential urban land supply that is bulldozed as soon as there is a demand for it.

Original Source: http://www.climate4you.com/images/OperationBarbarossa1941.jpg

Submission by Jill Quirk, headlines and teaser by Admin, candobetter

Growth is discretionary but the Government doesn't want Victorians to realise this

We have just learned from a newly issued State Government report that building on the outer urban fringes -taking into consideration the infrastructure needs for making new suburbs from scratch- costs more than twice as much as building within established areas.

The hackneyed arguments about urban sprawl vs. urban densification are usually presented and reported as either forced choices or choices of the most suitable recipe of proportions of one or the other.

What is rarely questioned is the actual need to have the rate of population growth that forces these dilemmas on us.

The State Government and planning authorities as well as developers and all those who lobby for higher population growth must be well aware of the extent to which the level of population growth in Victoria is discretionary. These aforementioned must also be well aware that logically, growth at the present rate or indeed at any rate is not possible into the indefinite future.

http://www.liveinvictoria.com.au is a Government website to drive population growth upwards

Even without the State Government recklessly inviting people from overseas and interstate to join us in our water depleted state e.g. via the website http://www.liveinvictoria.vic.gov.au, Victoria would still experience population growth- but at a far more manageable level- roughly 30-40,000 per annum as opposed to the present nearer 100,000 p.a. increase . Eventually with a balanced level of incomings and outgoings and our natural birth and death rate , Victoria's population would level off in the next 40 odd years.

Victoria now in ecological overshoot

Victoria is now in ecological overshoot-as clearly demonstrated by the need to industrialise our water supply with a desalination plant and by the parlous state of our environment as described in the State of the Environment report 2008.

That is why we need to stabilise and then allow natural attrition

This is why Victoria, for a secure future needs to look towards stabilising its population in future decades. As long as our population increases, our environment will be in decline. The present scenario of high population growth guarantees a poorer existence for future citizens than that of present citizens just as the present residents are poorer than those of 40 years ago when the environment was in much better shape and we had adequate water supplies.

As Victoria is in overshoot in 2009, imagine what it will be like in 10 years with 1 million more people,many of them living on the Melbourne outer fringe in large poorly designed houses on small blocks of land with few transport options. 10 years from now, more of our agricultural land close to the city will be either built on or earmarked for development. At the same time we will be further down the one way road towards oil depletion which will adversley affect car travel economy, agricultural output and transport of goods.

In ten years people on the outer edges will be much closer to the edges of survival - food, water, petrol

The people of Melbourne especially those in the suburbs of the urban fringes will be much closer to the edges of survival. Their lives will be more difficult as they struggle to find economical transport and their opportunities for self sufficiency in a climate of rising food prices will be limited by lack of land and time.

These are all arguments against a mindset of continual population growth and expansion of our city which has so many unwanted consequences right now for the bulk the population.

Higher urban density not the answer; we are already going upwards and outwards

The alternative to extending the urban growth boundary given continued population growth is the densification of the established parts of the city which the State Government report says is the cheaper option for accommodating population growth. Unfortunately, at a massive 2% socially engineered p.a growth rate, we will get both more urban sprawl and urban densification . Urban densification has distinctly negative consequences for affected residents- overcrowding , uncertainty of what will be built next and where, loss of natural light in houses, loss of gardens and of open space and increased traffic. Eventually everyone will be adversely affected except those with enormous property buffers within the city i.e the very rich.

Apart from major conservation and wildlife considerations on which other organisations will be making separate submissions especially as extension of UGB affects the Green Wedges, the proposal to extend the UGB totally lacks vision and any will to make a different future in the interests of Victoria's citizens.

The Victorian Government should totally revise its modis operandi with regard to its own part in population growth in Victoria and work towards a sustainable future with first a future stable population and then inevitably a smaller one after mid century. This kind of foresight is needed if we are to have a future and not ecological collapse.

Jill Quirk

(Submission by Jill Quirk, on behalf of Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) Victorian Branch)
If you want to contact Jill, send her a message to [email protected]

***

See also on the financial cost alone:Jason Dowling and Clay Lucas, "Suburban sprawl costs billions more," The Age, July 17, 2009

"PLANS to build thousands of homes on Melbourne's fringes will cost Victorians around $40 billion more than if they were built in existing suburbs, a new State Government report shows.

In an embarrassment for the Government on the day that submissions close on its plans to further expand Melbourne's urban growth boundary, the report released on Wednesday shows the total cost of building homes in new outer suburbs is more than double that of building in existing areas.[...]"

Ed. But don't believe that writing to the Age will save you or even that the Age owners care - the Fairfax Press and the Murdoch Press would be backing this growth to the hilt, since they have corporate investments in property development and its marketing throughout the world, as indicated by, for instance, www.domain.com.au and www.realestate.com.au

Image from cover of Graeme Base, Uno's Garden, Viking, Penguin Australia, 2006

Re: Proposed Urban Growth Boundary changes.

There is a fantastic book by renowned author Graeme Base, that I often read to my children. It’s called ‘Uno’s Garden’. It’s about a guy named Uno, who arrives in the forest one beautiful day, where there are many fascinating and extraordinary animals there to greet him. And one entirely exceptional Snortlepig.

Uno loves the forest so much, he decides to live there. But, in time, a little village grows up around his house. Then a town, then a city….and soon Uno realises that the animals and plants have begun to disappear….
(sounding familiar?)

***

Graeme Base starts his book with this rhyme:

‘The animals go one by one
A hundred plants, then there were none
And all the while the buildings double…
This numbers game adds up to trouble’

So significant is this story, that it featured as the Myer Christmas windows in 2007. If you haven’t already read the book, I urge you to get a copy. It really is easy to read, and makes perfect sense.

On behalf of my children, I would like you to seriously consider the moral of this story when determining the UGB and population expansion.

Sharing our backyard on the periphery of the proposed new South East UGB, are EPBC listed, endangered Southern Brown Bandicoots. To my kids, these are like the ‘Snortlepig’ in the story. They think the Government must be careful to protect them as it’s important we have biodiversity. They really get that. What they don’t get, is that the Government is now planning to shift the boundary of the Urban Growth Corridor encroaching into Green Wedge land further threatening the SBB’s, to make way for more ‘concrete and McMansions’. They are worried that it will never end, and wonder where all the animals and farmers producing our food are going to go. They are worried that when they get ‘old’, their children and grandchildren will suffer for today’s government’s seeming lack of concern for the environment.

What should I tell them?

Submitted by: Catherine Manning [to the Growth Areas Authority]
Friday 17th July, 2009.

Photographs of Southern Brown Bandicoots in our backyard near Clyde.

The Emperor Julian codified the land-tenure laws which Napoleon later consolidated. The substitution of the Napoleonic code for the British inheritance system could help overpopulation and poverty.

July 11 was World Population Day, marking the day in 1987 when the world’s population passed five billion. This year’s theme in the UN is ‘Fight Poverty: Educate Girls.’

Here are some things that the UN does not talk about and which Bill Gates probably doesn't realise.

The third world countries that have natural increase problems began by their steady-state communities being disorganised through massive immigration - then called colonisation, now called industrialisation. The problems began with loss of land-tenure as entire peoples were disorganised and disoriented by having their traditional land removed from their control. Africa and India, for instance, had many stable populations for centuries, as testified by their high biodiversity and healthy natural systems at time of colonisation. The degradation of their natural systems has accompanied the destabilising of their human social organisation and overpopulation.

It was not until the 18th and 19th Century, with the imposition of the English political systems that these populations blew out. Polynesia, micronesia and Australia, colonised later, are succumbing later to the same failure of practical democracy.

The people of the original steady state societies lost their land to the colonisers and were encouraged to become wage-earners instead of self-sufficient. The new economy was initially agricultural and then manufacturing. Large landless families benefited both agriculturalists and manufacturers. Those without land were totally dependent on wages for their labour to survive and could not opt out of the labour market. Thus, people who for thousands of years had been self-sufficient and free, became servants.

Like the Americas and Canada, Australia is still being 'colonised'. The landless people who were forced to come here or who came voluntarily and displaced the aboriginal population are now losing their own access to land here, just like the Aboriginals. At the same time women here are being conned into having more children. It is becoming harder to get a decent education as well.

There is every reason to anticipate that this difficulty will increase.

The Importance of Child Labour Laws in preventing overpopulation:

Once the rot has set in, next thing to go are effective child labour laws. This is because if there is no ban enforced on children labouring, then large families are preferred to educated wives. Once children are a major source of income, mass-education withers away.

Child Labour Laws as a variable in fertility rates[i]

Here are some explanations for changes in human fertility since the beginning of agriculture.

In countries where effective labour laws prohibit the employment of children, those children become costly rather than income-beneficial.[ii] In those countries where working for wages is the main option for survival for many but where child labour is prohibited, then people who rely mainly or uniquely on wages will have fewer children.

Similarly, a woman who has education will be more valuable as an income-earner than as a child-producing wife in a society that prohibits child-labour. Where women earn less than men for doing the same job, in a society which needs skilled workers and prohibits child-labour, then this will be a disincentive for taking such women out of the workforce to have children. It will also be an obstacle to marriage because men's capacity to find work will be undermined by the cheaper but still skilled labour of women. In societies where monogamous marriage is the model for raising children, there are implications for marriage frequency. With children a high cost, only men with high incomes will be able to afford to take a wife out of the workforce to nurture children.

Inheritance Laws as a variable in average wealth differentials

In countries where men can own and inherit land, but women cannot, (England from the 12th century until the 1920s) then lack of land is an incentive for women to marry for material survival, but women who can own land and earn a salary may experience their ability to earn as a disincentive to marriage due to the status and power of running their own lives.

A disincentive also operates in countries where, in divorce, either partner may acquire rights to the assets that the other brought to the marriage.

Some countries have facilitated the ability of women to work, raise and educate children outside marriage -- e.g. France. To this should be added the fact that French women also benefit from equal inheritance rights to men.

Although French women only recently (in the 1970s) regained the right to manage their affairs, this right, coupled with the government's duty to house, educate and assure an income to its citizens, enhances women's security and independence.

France also, through its inheritance system, makes French women more likely to inherit wealth than British women and many British men, who had almost no land inheritance rights until primogeniture was revoked in 1926.[iii] Even though all children may now inherit in societies based on British law, because there is no legal requirement that they inherit, there is still a profound tendency to disinherit children in those societies, through second marriages or due to their being the product of casual union, or based on ideology or a whim. (I often think of how the very rich Australian, Reg Ansett, disinherited his son, Bob, apparently excusing the inexcusable with an ideology that everyone should make their own way in the world, failing to take into account that different generations have very different prospects according to resource depletion and other changes.)

The legally enforceable inheritance rights of any French child, legitimate, illegitimate, issue of first or subsequent marriages is almost certainly a major factor in the lesser disparities between rich and poor in France and those other countries in Europe which benefited from the Napoleonic Code (a Roman law based system). It is noteworthy that Pacific Islands which have inherited the French system do not have the same rates of overpopulation, homelessness and economic poverty as the ones that were colonised with the English system. (Neither do those in Japanese waters, with the exception of those which passed into US ownership after the Second World War. The Japanese inheritance system also preserves land in families.)

Unfortunately the French situation of equity will be affected by changes to the Napoleonic Code introduced by President Sarkozi in 2008. Now it becomes possible for a spouse to make a serious claim on part of a deceased's estate where that estate previously went entirely to blood relatives.

The recent ability of technological societies to prove paternity is a new factor that could be exploited to access additional income for children whose mothers might otherwise be their sole providers. This could act to increase the fertility rate, but men might become more careful about impregnating women under these new circumstances.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
[i] Excerpt from my book in progress below on this subject.
[ii] Doepke, M., Growth and Fertility in the Long Run, Mimeo, University of Chicago, 2000, available in reduced form in Doepke, M. "Accounting for Fertility Decline During the Transition to Growth", Journal of Economic Growth, 9(3), 347-383, September 2004. The speed of the fertility transition depends on policies that affect the opportunity cost of education, namely education subsidies and child-labor restrictions. Doepke considered the case of two countries that started to grow at roughly the same time, but which had experienced very different government policies: (South) Korea and Brazil. Korea had a strong public education system, and child-labor restrictions were strictly enforced, while Brazil had an ineffective public education system, with little systematic enforcement of child labour restrictions. Doepke found, as his model predicted, that the fertility decline associated with development proceeded much faster in Korea than in Brazil.

[iii] The rule of primogeniture in England was not changed until the Administration of Estates Act of 1926.

One of several speeches made at Melbourne 14 July 2009 rally against undemocratic rezoning of green wedges to benefit developers by making it possible to continue high immigration by providing housing at the expense of wildlife, open spaces and democracy.

The speaker is Michael Hocking of Taxed Out. The GAIC tax proposed is quite medieval, like a tax on peasants to benefit lords, which is how the feudal system worked. Where modern practice in the anglophone land-tenure systems is to tax developers the windfall they make on rezoned land, the GAIC tax would tax landowners if they sold land which had been rezoned against their wishes. The choice is a Hobson's one; if you stay you pay very high rates based on the theoretical value of resale. Hard to stay under the circumstances. A recipe for driving farmers and wildlife out and ushering suburbia in. A policy driven by the Growth Lobby.

Jan Heald and Maryland Wilson of the Australian Wildlife Protection Council

Rights of Wildlife

A lot of people at the July 14 demonstration against Madden's proposed land grab in the Green Wedges were there to campaign for the rights of wildlife. Among them were three members of the Australian Wildlife Protection Council (AWPC), President Maryland Wilson, Secretary Jan Heald, and winner of an AWPC award for outstanding service, Rod "Roos" Stoner.

"We appreciate this opportunity to be a VOICE for our native animals," said Maryland Wilson. "It is a privilege to be standing with Julianne Bell of Protectors of Public Lands, who speaks for all those affected by the Government's outrageous planning laws, which run roughshod over ecosystems and biodiversity."

She was, of course, referring to Planning Minister Madden's shocking proposed expansion of Melbourne's Urban Growth Boundary, involving rezoning up to 46,000 hectares for residential development, new roads and a freeway.

Addressing a large and angry crowd of people who had gathered to protest at the destruction of the wedges and draconian taxes on landholders, President Wilson expressed her sympathy for those who stood to suffer from the taxes, but she said, "Someone here also has to speak up for the kangaroos and other wildlife who cannot vote or speak up themselves. If these plans go ahead millions of living creatures will suffer and die, and our world will be poorer for their loss and we as human beings will be poorer for our loss of decency towards them."

Victoria the leading state in environmental destruction

In an interview, President Wilson told me, "In 2006 the AWPC wrote to Madden, asking that any development should have an environmental impact statement (EIS) before proceeding. Not only has he ignored that reasonable and modest request, but he has proceeded to create policies which destroy native wildlife habitat at an alarming rate, so much so that Victoria is now the leading state in environmental destruction. The Victorian government and Mr Madden's planners run roughshod over wildlife habitat, seemingly without giving a thought to the ramifications of what it means in extinction of species."

When asked what she felt might still be done, President Wilson said, "Obviously Mr Madden is not going to listen to the pleas for help to preserve what wildlife remains. Therefore the only alternative is for a change of government."

She said that the situation is growing so serious for species, especially kangaroos, that she cannot keep up with the calls she receives for help and her volunteers are stretched to the limits on the frontiers of encroaching suburbia, dealing with a sort of 'animal apocalypse'.

Tragic and avoidable situation of the Somerton kangaroos near Thomastown

"For instance", she said, "Several years ago we made an award to one of our 'wildlife warriors' - Rod Stoner - for his incredible efforts to draw public attention to and get help for the plight of a small mob of kangaroos trapped by industrial, commercial and housing development in Somerton. The animals were literally being built around as they foraged for grass in fields that had been enclosed after they had entered it. Some died while trying to make it across the highway. A road was paved down the center of the area; rock crushers made noise and dust on one side; delivery trucks entered and left on another, bulldozers worked on another, and everywhere there was rubbish piled up and strewn around. The animals were being treated like so much rubbish themselves."

"A number of people from different organisations were so shocked that, there and then, we formed the Coalition for Wildlife Corridors. We have published surveys and drawn maps and studied the problem of Victorian wildlife in the particular and the general and we have, most importantly designed easy to follow plans for wildlife corridors in particular areas."

"Rod Stoner has been monitoring these poor kangaroos for several years now,and we have tried everything but stand on our head to gain effective action from VicRoads, DSE, and the Hume City Council. All have made reassuring noises when pressed, but no-one has taken any real responsibility. We who care so much see that those who have power in planning and development have no real concern for the suffering of other creatures and no real respect or understanding for the natural world. Because of this callousness and apathy, this poor little mob of kangaroo refugees will eventually die out. Our wildlife deserves ... So ... Much ... better, " she said, drawing the words out.

"On a bigger scale", she added, "It is obvious that a population explosion in Melbourne, with the accompanying demands for housing is responsible for the Somerton and other tragedies to date, but, with the latest figures showing that Melbourne is increasing by 2000 people a week, it will not be long before we see all our wildlife die out in Victoria, the most cleared state with the worst species extinction in Australia."

"If we cannot refrain from continuing this completely avoidable rate of population growth in addition to climate change and the reduction of indigenous habitat and wildlife access to water and food, our wildlife are doomed."

"Is this really what we want for Victoria?" she asked.

Australian Society of Kangaroos thanks the organisers of the rally

Nikki Sutterby, the Coordinator of the Australian Society for Kangaroos said she sent a big thank you to the people who organised the demonstrations and marched today to save our environment in Victoria, and its green wedges.

"As an organisation that is fighting for the rights of kangaroos, we are well aware of the suffering and displacement that occurs when natural areas are destroyed for development", she said.

"We are currently fighting to save a mob of kangaroos at Mill Park who are land locked by development, and another at Bendigo."

But that is only a teardrop in an ocean of infinite sadness ...

"These animals represent millions of animals that lose their homes every year to the expansion of human development and may we say that we are fully supportive of what you are doing to save our environment and increase the publics awareness regarding it."

Ms Sutterby regretted that she was unable to personally attend the protest, due to circumstances beyond her control, but she offered to give her organisation's ongoing support to the campaign.

Blurring of Government with Land Speculation Ominous for democracy in Australia

The opaque but omnipresent relationship of Australian state governments to developers and big business is a source of disquiet. A Bastille Day lunch between Victorian Planning Minister, Mr Madden, and big-business seemed especially Marie-Antoinette, as hundreds of angry farmers, other landholders, wildlife and other environment groups, demonstrated outside.

All were concerned about the bad laws and injustices that excessive population growth is driving in Victoria. Most are beginning to realise that it is because of the Government's excessively close relationship with the developer growth lobby that Victoria is suffering from water shortages, homelessness, increased violence and loss of democracy. A new tax the government wants, which would involve taxing landowners instead of developers for government-imposed changes to land-zoning could beggar thousands of people.

Jill Quirk, Victorian President of Sustainable Population Australia, said, “Planning Minister Madden's Bastille-day lunch with the ALP's developer-linked Progressive Business fund-raising arm is ironic.”

Yes, Jill. Bastille Day is the anniversary of the time in the French Revolution when the people demanded representation in return for their taxes from a worthless government that was selling off public land to the highest bidder in order to finance debt and printing worthless money.

Progressive Business Association: Official association for Big Business and the Labor Party

The Progressive Business organisation calls itself is ‘an associated entity of the Australian Labor Party [which] from time to time, donate funds to the Party’. It has two membership types : Corporate - $1,550 (incl. GST) and Business - $990 (incl. GST). Corporate members get 5 Tickets to the Breakfast Briefing Program and access to 5 Twilight Briefings for 5 company representatives; Business members get 3 Tickets to the Breakfast Briefing Program and access to 5 Twilight Briefings for 3 company representatives.

Most Victorians pay far more than this in taxes every year but the Minister for Planning doesn't listen to them.

The Victorian public get NOTHING but coercive population growth and development expansion. Research has shown that many of the government's sponsors and business associates reap far more in public contracts than they ever donate.

President Quirk commented that, "In a democracy, government policies should be conceived and drafted with the interests of ordinary citizens in mind. The push for more and more population growth causes friction, disruption and loss for those directly impacted and also to the citizens at large. Nature as a whole is being steam-rolled and many cannot sleep at night from rage and despair."

Rights of Landowners to be clarified

July 14th 2009

On July 9th at the Seymour Magistrate’s Court, the date of 27th August was set for a contest mention where charges of trespass against Sugarloaf Alliance employees will be refined.

These charges have been made by two Yea landowners, whose freehold properties have been affected by the construction of the North-South Pipeline. Their land was entered by pipeline employees, who fenced off a portion of their property, excluded the owners under threat of arrest and constructed a pipeline 1.75 metres in diameter, all against the wish of the landowner and prior to acquisition under the normal due process by way of the Land Acquisition and Compensation Act.

It is extremely important to all landowners, that the question of the right to enter private freehold land, for the purpose of major infrastructure construction, prior to due and proper acquisition(under the Land Acquisition and Compensation Act) is clearly and finally clarified.

Brumby government threatenes to recover legal costs

The Brumby Government should hang it’s head in shame when it threatens to recover legal costs over this issue. Any Government should uphold the rights of its citizens to the highest level, particularly the rights of freehold landowners.

One would think that the Government would also want this point of law decided, unless of course, Mr Brumby is worried that in his extreme haste to construct the N-S Pipeline, he has instructed employees to illegally enter freehold land.

Also : Contrary to recent Melbourne Water Media Releases, Plug the Pipe is not involved with any legal actions against Melbourne Water. All actions past and pending have involved private individuals. Melbourne Water has been mischievous in these media statements.

Jan Beer, Plug The Pipe Spokesperson, Yea Group
Mob: 0407 144 777

Fini Developer & City of Gosnells West Oz hard on near-extinct Black Cockatoos in Rehab

Glenn Dewhurst, of the Black Cockatoo Conservation Team in West Australia feels harassed and almost despairs in the face of complaints from a developer who lives next door to the 12 Acre Black Cockatoo Rehab facility in Martin, W.A., which Glenn has dedicated years of his life to constructing.

West Australian Black Cockatoos in Rehab enjoying nuts

The developer, David Fini, of David Fini Developments, has complained about noise from nesting birds, Glenn says. Glenn cannot understand why since, he says, only two birds have been born in the rehab facility. "They were accidents. It is not meant to be a breeding facility; it is for rehab. We free the birds when they are well, we don't breed them."

Mr Dewhurst says that Mr Fini has also complained about workers there picking native nuts to feed the birds.

Glenn says, "The collection of nuts is wide and varied, usually covering up to 100kms at a time. We never pick in the same spot and only 20% of any nuts. We have permits. Some weekends we have travelled over 350kms to get food for these birds. It is very important to have the native food and critical for their rehabilitation."

"Mr Fini has complained about the volunteers visiting the rehab centre, too", says Glenn Dewhurst, "Although there are only four volunteer workers at any one time."

In addition, Mr Fini has complained about the noise from the cockatoos that are being rehabilitated.

Glenn Dewhurst says that he does not believe that noise levels greater than those from wild birds in the area can be shown to be coming from the birds his team are rehabilitating.

He says that there are many more wild birds than the few black cockatoos in rehab.

More Noise from wild birds in Perth caused by birds displaced by developers

He explains that the numbers of wild birds moving in and out of the Perth area are constantly increasing because they are being displaced by developers like Mr Fini. "The wild birds don't have enough to eat and so more and more of them are trying to find food in the same place, wherever there are a few trees."

Despite Mr Dewhurst's impression that the Black Cockatoo Rehab Facility is being targeted unfairly, the Black Cockatoo Conservation Team find the local Council seems reluctant to stand up for the Cockatoos.

Council Inflexibility and unhelpfulness could kill these rare rescued birds

The Black Cockatoo Conservation Team say that they have asked the council and Mr Fini to allow them to adopt mitigation strategies which Mr Dewhurst believes have not even been stated in the report to council for the Tuesday meeting. "I have been told that the planner Andrew Bratley has only nominated 3 strategies and recommended that the strategies are refused."

"Ninety-five per cent of the birds will be moved to the other center, when it is ready. The other center is also in Martin and is called Kaarakin, and is located at 1.5km from the 'clone' facility which is the facility that is the source of Mr Fini's complaints."

"If the new facility isn’t ready these endangered cockatoos will be at critical risk. The Shire and the Developer seem to intend not to give the facility any time," says Glenn.

The Team are therefore desperately trying to move the cockatoos at the Martin facility to their other Kaarakin facility, which the Council made available to them some time ago for a pepper-corn rent. Ironically, however, the Council is inexplicably delaying a survey that is necessary before the cockatoos can be moved in.

Glenn writes, "We have fought hard to do what we do; I have personally given all my energy and strength to bring the plight of these birds to every Australian and beyond. I at times have put the birds before my beautiful family and they have been very patient with me, allowing me to follow my passion in saving these endangered birds.

In the five years of her life, my five-year-old has only been on two very short holidays down south. My three and one-year-old have only been on holiday once. Andrea and I spend every spare cent on these birds and she even agreed for us to cancel a holiday to visit her parents overseas, so that we could deal with issues relating to the endangered Black Cockatoos.

We now need your help to help us save the facility that has saved so many endangered Black Cockatoos, Please help any way you can."

These people may have some power to change this situation:

DEADLINE TUESDAY 14TH JULY -

Ian COWIE CEO City of Gosnells, icowie[AT]gosnells.wa.gov.au
Donna Faragher, Minister for the Environment Youth, Minister.Faragher[AT]dpc.wa.gov.au
Premier Colin BARNETT, wa-government[AT]dpc.wa.gov.au
Honourable Brendon GRYLLS MLA, Minister.Grylls[AT]dpc.wa.gov.au

So many contradictions in government behaviour

Glenn says the contradictions are a source of stress in themselves. He describes how, in April 2008, the City of Gosnells gave him a letter of support for the BCCT facility that they now want removed - at the request of the West Australian Department of Environment and Conservation. Only a few months ago, the same government's Minister for Environment had congratulated the BCCT on getting Land for Wildlife for these endangered cockatoos.

"We have all worked so hard for the sake of these special endangered Birds. We cannot lose this fight to the City of Gosnells and Mr Fini, as it is a fight for the survival of these birds. If we lose our 'clone' (secondary) facility then the City of Gosnells may be implicated for the demise of the endangered Black Cockatoo."

“Yes”, says Dewhurst, “The City of Gosnells has given us another facility on a pepper corn rental, for which we are thankful. We are not, however, allowed to build there unless we meet the normal conditions of building approvals. Although we should have no problem in meeting these, we are still awaiting the carrying out of the survey necessary before we can make our application.

"The City of Gosnells is responsible for the survey and for the delay. Because of these delays, we cannot even move the birds in the near future."

"We have also encountered personal hardship over this matter and have felt that we are being persecuted. For instance, Andrea and I believe that we have been subject to allegations of financial impropriety from a councilor at the City of Gosnells and from FINI Developments. To defend our good name we engaged an auditor at the cost $3.500, which we put on our personal credit cards. The complete audit showed no financial mismanagement. We are now in debt and it will take us about four months to pay this off. We estimate that the councilor in question has cost our organization $46,000 because of his allegations which have all been proven false.

Scale of the Conservation Facilities

This rescue attempt of an endangered species is no small affair. Glenn and his team are managing a wildlife rescue of international significance which has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars and many volunteer hours to run. The stakes are enormous for the birds, for their carers, for Australia and the world. At least two large facilities are required. Because of the amount of land and building involved simply to keep these birds, alive, safe and then to prepare them for release, closing down one facility before the other is opened would almost certainly have appalling consequences. Some of those consequences would be financial, of course, but the worst ones would be irreversible species decline, not to mention the extreme discouragement of the workers involved and the message this sends to children, Australians and the world. How sad if we were to lose these amazing, long-lived wise and funny creatures because a council had difficulty understanding the significance of the conservation program. This is not like a development that gets held up and costs some investors money; it is like destroying a part of Eden, never to recover.

Why the Black Cockatoos require two facilities

Mr Dewhurst says that the Black Cockatoo organisation requires 2 facilities in Perth (another is 450km away) for the following reasons:

• some of the injured and young birds require round the clock care. The Martin facilities can accommodate 24 hour volunteer care; and

• some of the research requires round the clock observation for the same reason. The Martin facility can accommodate this; and

• some of the birds housed at the Martin facilities are utilised for community educational purposes and are tame enough for people to interact with. These birds are also utilised by DEC for educational purposes. As these birds are valuable to the open market, for this reason they require secure facility; and

• having two facilities ensures protection from total disaster such as natural events like bushfires; and

• lastly, the Cohuna (Kaarakin) site requires major repairs. These are ongoing and have so far taken more than 7000 volunteer hours, which equates to a minimum of $200,000 in labour. The site is far from being the primary care facility. Currently it can only house around 30 birds.

Please consider emailing the following people who might help if they realise the significance of the problem

Ian COWIE CEO City of Gosnells, icowie[AT]gosnells.wa.gov.au
Donna Faragher, Minister for the Environment Youth, Minister.Faragher[AT]dpc.wa.gov.au
Premier Colin BARNETT, wa-government[AT]dpc.wa.gov.au
Honourable Brendon GRYLLS MLA, Minister.Grylls[AT]dpc.wa.gov.au

See also: http://blackcockatoorescue.com, Threatened West Aust Black Cockatoo gets help and Help save West Australian black cockatoo from extinction, phone Glen on 0417 988 872.