spin

Dear Censorial Overseers

The deletion of the comment quoted below in this notification is perhaps the most odious of all those made under this article today, all done without any clearly discernible reason but with quite evident rhyme. The comment below asks you to show respect for these commentators who have suffered deletion of their genuine and reasonable comment by providing an open advice as to the basis of that consistent disbursement of negative action.

The unavoidable message from your early closure of comments, following directly upon the posting of the request for your reasoned advice, is that you do not have respect for your reader and commenters. It also clearly demonstrates your publication’s covert imposition of a controlled narrative rather than being the relatively free arena for informed adult conversation that your promotion pretends you to be.

As I’ve already made mention of, as the repetitive and unexplained evidence mounted, your pretence and hypocrisy as an intellectual forum is comical; sadly, bleakly, disturbingly so, but comical nonetheless.

With some good fortune the cumulative load of Covid19 distress will be the death of your horridly sneaky and cynical enterprise. Hopefully, well-meaning staff will then find some useful jobs in which to sustain themselves within a wider community in need of real re-construction that is free of the property development, migration agency and associated Empire roles that your sponsors pursue ahead of real education, with the active assistance of this mouthpiece.

Kindest regards

Greg Wood

On 14 Apr 2020, at 4:51 pm, The Conversation wrote:

The Conversation
Academic rigour, journalistic flair

Hello G⁠r⁠e⁠g,

Your comment on ‘Why is it so hard to stop COVID-19 misinformation spreading on social media?’ has been removed.

There are several reasons why this may have occurred:

Your comment may have breached our community standards. For example it may have been a personal attack, or you might not have used your real name.
Your comment may have been entirely blameless but part of a thread that was removed because another comment had to be removed.
It might have been removed for another editorial reason, for example to avoid repetition or keep the conversation on topic.
For practical reasons we reserve the right to remove any comment and all decisions must be final, but please don’t take it personally.

If you’re playing by the rules it’s unlikely to happen again, so feel free to continue to post new comments and engage in polite and respectful discussion.

For your reference, the removed comment was:

Moderators have removed an entirely rational and reasonable comment by Duncan Mouat. The pattern of deletions is now profuse and appears to be quite consistent in its objection and purpose. Given the repetition and evidently convergent aim of these deletions, can the moderators please provide a clear statement regarding the exact standard(s) these posts are deemed to have offended.

I propose that due respect for your readers and contributors requires nothing less. We should not be left guessing what the editors’ position is on these matters wherein no insult or off-topic commentary has occurred.

Please understand that these deletions resonate especially loudly within a discussion that essentially reflects upon intent censorship.

For more information you can read our standards.

Kind regards,

The Conversation

ABC 7.30 Report last night aired part one of its three-part population special, which included me as the economist. While I will reserve judgement until the final two-parts have been aired, my initial gut reaction is disappointment. The main problem I see with it so far is the ABC has inferred that a population of more than 40-million mid-century is inevitable rather than a direct policy choice. Nowhere did The ABC clearly show how the federal government massively increased Australia’s immigration intake from the early-2000

By Leith van Onselen

ABC 7.30 Report last night aired part one of its three-part population special, which included me as the economist.

While I will reserve judgement until the final two-parts have been aired, my initial gut reaction is disappointing.

The main problem I see with it so far is the ABC has inferred that a population of more than 40-million mid-century is inevitable rather than a direct policy choice.

Nowhere did The ABC clearly show how the federal government massively increased Australia’s immigration intake from the early-2000s:

Nor how immigration is the defacto driver of Australia’s population increase – both directly as migrants step off the plane, as well as indirectly when they have children (then counted as ‘natural increase’). This was made explicit by the Productivity Commission’s 2016 Migrant Intake Australia report, which showed that Australia’s population would barely increase without immigration:

While the segment at least didn’t include spruiker ‘demographers’ like Liz Allen or Peter McDonald, it instead replaced them with another cookie-cutter demographer from ANU. One wonders why Bob Birrell wasn’t contacted, who has been a strong critique of Australia’s ‘Big Australia’ Program:

Finally, the spokesperson for Infrastructure Australia (IA) claimed that “population growth is an opportunity” – conveniently ignoring that IA has issued several recent stark warnings about infrastructure failing to keep pace with population growth, as well as ignoring IA’s own recent projections showing that living standards in both Sydney and Melbourne will be crushed as their populations surge to 7.4 million and 7.3 million by 2046:

Again, while I will reserve judgement until the final two parts are aired, I am not hopeful that The ABC will analyse this issue correctly and actually inform debate.

[email protected]

It seems that tax cuts are all the rage with the PM praising Trumps bold initiatives and vowing to push through similar (but smaller) cuts in Australia. Bill Shorten, while not opposed to this form of pea & thimble trick has tentatively suggested that the the government ought to say how these cuts could be funded. Well the answer is all there in the history books. Ronald Regan while not the first to use tax cuts was however the one who tried to justify it by claiming the cuts would so boost the economy that tax revenues would increase even more than the loss incurred by the cuts. It became know as trickle down economics which then morphed into voodoo economics when it was found that the national debt had doubled. To his credit John Howard learnt two things from this débâcle - tax cuts win votes and any problems created will be inflicted on the next government.

So he went in boots and all with a wide range of tax cuts to get maximum voter appeal. He introducing the over-60 superannuation tax holiday and other super concessions, family payments to middle-income households, age-based tax concessions, lots of income-tax breaks for middle to higher-income households and introduced the capital-gains-tax concession; bolstered the first-home buyers' grant; and boosted immigration, particularly skilled immigration which not only reduced the need (and cost) for local training but put pressure on housing demand. In education, he dramatically increased federal funding to private schools, and cut funding to public schools with the result that the number of public schools has actually decreased (58 in 10 years) despite a rapid rise in the number of students.

Supporters of this policy argue that Howard left the nation with a sizeable government surplus which is not quite correct, the actual surplus amounted to only 7.3% of GDP , about half of that held by Chile , a tenth of that in Finland and a twentieth of that of Norway This was a dismal performance considering Howard had the benefit of the minerals boom which boosted government revenue by $334b over the years 2004 to 2007. There was also the sale of assets like airports the National Rail Corp, Dasfleet, Telstra, the remaining share of the Comm. bank and many other valuable enterprises which yielded another $72b. In a somewhat bizarre move they also flogged off nearly all the nations gold reserves, 167 tonnes of it, for $306 per ounce just before the gold price more than tripled. Despite their mantra for lower taxes the Howard government introduced the GST which reduced the burden of providing federal funding for the states by $44.38b in 2007/8 .

Unfortunately the tax cuts made plus those promised by Howard at the 2007 election were matched by Rudd and will be extremely difficult to reverse by any future government which will have to find alternative revenue sources or make even more spending cuts. Malcolm Turnbull intends to put the medicare levy up from 2 to 2.5% , has cut 15,000 public service jobs since 2013, slashed university and even medical and scientific research funding with 700 full time jobs lost in this sector. He has now announced that he intends to cut the corporate tax from 30 to 25%, a move that will cost $65.4b over 10 years. Unlike the Howard years Turnbull is introducing these cuts at a time when the government has a budget deficit of $33.2b and is doing so without explaining how they will be funded. But like any politician he put a positive spin by saying the tax cut was a way of “putting more money into people’s pockets” and the Government’s priority was to “lower middle income tax rates”. He then added that there was “no doubt” taxes in Australia were high, an assertion contradicted by the Organisation for Economic Research and Development (OECD) which put Australia near the bottom at 28th out of 35 nations.

Putting money in peoples pockets does sound attractive and its possible that some corporations would use the tax cut to increase shareholder dividends. But what happens then? If the lucky shareholder decides to buy some new gadget on line the net result is a higher import bill. Alternatively if the corporation decides to spend the tax windfall on increasing their productivity with new equipment the import bill goes up and employees risk becoming made redundant by the new technology. Not exactly a win-win situation.

How did stealing from the public to enrich the private sector become a norm in Australia and why do some religions give it moral credence? This is a reminder of the existence of an important, publicly available article about the rise of right-wing so-called 'think tanks' in Australia since the mid 1970s and their recent tendency to combine forces with the religious right. Here, from another source and angle, are arguments that reinforce candobetter's message about the problems Australia has with the growth lobby and its merchants.

Manufacturing right-wing consent

An article by Marcus Smith and Peter Marden (2008): "Conservative Think Tanks and Public Politics," Australian journal of Political Science, 43:4, 699-717 describes how so-called 'think tanks' rose with the funding of private industry players who found in them a way to influence public perception to confuse business and commercial interest as "synonymous with public values". A hallmark of the language used for this was the notion of 'commonsense'. The authors identify a 'fact/value dichotomy' to push a 'logic of economic growth'.

They don't give this example but, "Jobs are more important than trees," immediately came to my mind as a slogan mindlessly repeated at election times.

The authors identify a 'pivotal shift' around 1980 when Sir Robert Crichton-Brown[1] led a political campaign to make business more pro-active in policy making processes and public debate, apparently with the aim of bolstering a privileged minority. Significantly preceding this campaign were visits to Australia in 1975 and 1976 of ultra-economic rationalists, Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek. (See more about Friedman and the Chicago School in Naomi Klein's once in a century book, Shock Doctrine.) The result has been,

"a mutually supportive network of market fundamentalists and vested interests that is committed to undermining any opposition."

Mass media the corporate messenger

Smith and Marden write:

"Our concern derives more from the discursive force of think-tank commentary received and appropriated as 'expert opinion' by a media too lazy to apply rigorous critical analysis and a public interested but unable to access alternative views."

The success of the right-wing movement in influencing the media and politics is the result of

"unrivalled access to financial, intellectual and political resources; the availability of technologies that make wholesale manipulation of public opinion possible and which are used with almost negligible transparency or accountability; and, effectively, the anonymity of many participants mean this activity not only has the capacity to undermine any notion of a democratic politics, but is, in fact, the very intention."

The paper gives the example of the IPA's 'great Australian Dream project' as one where an alliance of interests was formed and operated in public debate in the Australian political context to popularise the notion that housing unaffordability was almost solely the result of irrational planning regulations stopping the release of land. The authors chronicle how Federal Treasurer Costello in August 2006 introduced into Parliament The Tragedy of Planning: Losing the great Australian Dream", a report about housing affordability, compiled by the IPA's Alan Moran, without anyone being made aware that the project was chaired by Bob Day, a former Housing Industry of Australia (HIA) president. They describe how these ideas were taken up and promoted far and wide in the mainstream press and by the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL), whom Day had addressed. They also note links to a web site in the USA called Demographia, which is run by Wendell Cox, who also has links to the IPA.

Smith and Marden criticise the rationale of unfair planning regulations preventing release of land because they feel that the issue of interest rates should have been included as the 'overwhelming reason' why young Australian families were finding it increasingly difficult to afford a home." They add,

"There is not enough space here to analyse in detail the position of the IPA with regard to the housing issue; however, what is clearly evident in the language used is the unwavering faith in free market values coupled with an appeal to conservative family values, all the while serving vested interests in the housing construction industry, which has supported the efforts of the IPA. ...focusing simply on planning regulations as the sole cause of the increase in house prices and the obvious solution being to 'remove the burden of red tape'. The argument is designed to conceal more than reveal, relying on jingoistic labels, such as the 'Banana Brigade' (build-absolutely-nothing-anywhere-near-anything) and the 'Consolidati' (urban-consolidation-culturists), which serve all too conveniently as scapegoats who are accused of protecting property investments at the expense of young families seeking a first home. The reality is that the issues surrounding the built environment are far more complex, with powerful vested political and economic interests seeking to control the debate."

Since they wrote this article, of course, there has been an absolute avalanche of special favours from government to the property development and growth lobby.

Candobetter.net would say that the overwhelming reason for high housing prices is that population growth causes an inflationary demand. High interest rates are just the icing on the cake for profiteers who hold Australians to ransome. Neither Smith and Marden nor the IPA seem to consider impacts on the natural environment or population policy. Andrew Norton's "Lone Classical Liberal" blog has some correspondence from a different angle, attacking Smith and Marden for getting the Australian dream wrong, claiming that Australians love failing to see that people "prefer, according to surveys, detached houses to flats." Other correspondence on the same blog also attacks universities for producing low quality arguments.

Perhaps because of its age, this excellent paper lacks a quantity of concrete examples of profiteering through the manufacture of consent, when examples in real life seem to abound. If we at candobetter.net did not have many pages of such examples, including links to The Growth lobby and its Absence we might find the story of this paper hard to believe. Instead, we find it corroborative and suppose that the reason the authors don't give many examples, but maintain their argument in the general and philosophical relates to the date of the research, prior to its publication, in 2008. At that time the scam of population growth was barely mentioned publicly. Nonetheless the article fills in some blanks. It is very well written, effective and provides fascinating documentation of associations between groups of people via their shared values and ideas.

Of loafs and fishes

The authors point at the link between religion and the growth lobby in the Alan Moran/Bob Day Australian Dream example. They then discuss the rise of the religious right in the United States and recently in Australia, finding a synergy between the religious right and the political right.

The adoption of 'Prayer Breakfasts' by Australian politicians from both major parties is one example of the surreptitious inclusion of religious sentiment into mainstream politics. ... The evidence of a transference to Australia of politico-religious values that are commonly associated with the political landscape of the USA is a major influence informing the emerging neoconservatism."

I was also bothered by the sudden introduction of Prayer Breakfasts as well as, earlier, the rise of pronatalism influenced by Christian groups, cropping up like the undead DLP, for instance with Kim Beasley, like father like son. (See "Pronatalist policies in Australia 1945-2000.") For this reason it has been a relief to have a childless unmarried atheist for Prime Minister, (Julia Gillard), even if experience tells me that branding can be deceptive, but then I tell myself that she must have something real going for her because the mainstream press hate her so.

So, what's the deal with religion and fascism?

"In attacking the notion of the state as benevolent, much of the critique recasts the state as an intrusive secular institution interfering in the relationship between the individual and God. A restoration of Christian ethics that are framed in natural law enshrined in Holy Scripture, shifts the emphasis of the state from provider to disciplinarian; the enforcer of the authority of the word of God and protector of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Within this framework, market fundamentalists and neoconservatives have identified a common interest that has enabled the formation of alliances between powerful corporate interests and right-wing conservatives and fostered a far more cohesive and influential political network."

NOTES

Sir Robert Crichton-Brown is a patron of Sydney University's Medical School Foundation, who give his biography thus:

Sir Robert Crichton-Brown KCMG CBE TD

Sir Robert joined the Lumley Group in 1938 in London. After war time service in Iceland, France, India and Burma from 1939 to 1945, he rejoined the Group, holding positions in Sydney from 1947 as Director, Managing Director and Chairman; remaining as a Director until 2003. He was Chairman of Rothmans of Pall Mall (Aust) Limited from 1981 to 1985 and Executive Chairman Rothmans International from 1985 to 1988. He also held positions as Director and Chairman of a range of commercial companies including the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney. Sir Robert was President of the Institute of Directors of Australia from 1967 to 1980, Honorary Federal Treasurer of the Liberal Party of Australia from 1973 to 1985, a Director of Royal Prince Alfred Hospital from 1970 to 1984. He worked with a number of community organisations including the Salvation Army, the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme, the National Scout Association and the Girl Guides Association of Australia. Sir Robert was a member of Australia’s winning Admiral’s Cup Team in the UK (Balandra) in 1967 and in 1970 winner of the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race (Pacha).

Sir Robert Crichton-Brown is an Honorary Governor and a Founding Member of the Medical Foundation. He held positions as Honorary Treasurer, and President from 1962 to 1987. Sir Robert was appointed an Honorary Fellow of the University of Sydney in 1987 and is an Honorary Life Governor of the Australian Postgraduate Federation in Medicine.

During the high immigration Howard era- the fuss about the boats was a smokescreen for the fact that we were getting a lot of extra government induced totally legal non- refugee immigration which was putting pressure on absolutely everything- environment, roads, housing etc. . Howard was a high population PM whist pretending to be jealously protecting Australia’s borders. This hypocrisy and the same game still goes on with Julia Gillard although without “children overboard”.

In their second series of Go back to where you came from SBS Television convey the message that a large section of Australian society are really worried about asylum seekers, notably 'boat people' flooding Australia. It seems that those same Australians do not have a clue as to the real flood, which consists of hundreds of thousands of economic migrants and their families. It appears (from what Mr Reith said on Insight on Friday 31 August 2012) that governments believe that Australians are pacified simply by the being told by governments that immigrants are 'legal' and that the immigration stream is properly managed.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Truth about immigration in Australia

During the high immigration Howard era, the fuss about the boats was a smokescreen for the fact that we were getting a lot of extra government induced totally legal non-refugee immigration which was putting pressure on absolutely everything: environment, roads, housing etc. . Howard was a high population PM whist pretending to be jealously protecting Australia’s borders. This hypocrisy and the same game still goes on with Julia Gillard although without “children overboard”.

Asylum Seekers - Onshore or Offshore Processing; that is the question

The asylum seekers have the right to seek asylum. They are not “illegals” as Tony Abbott calls them. Whether their claims should be processed on or offshore is the main question. The numbers of people who arrive by boat are very low compared with the numbers of people who come in as immigrants under our skilled migrations scheme. The numbers the government plan to admit as permanent entries in the non-refugee "planned" migration stream this coming year is 190,000 up from 185,000 in the year 2011-12.

Think of all the additional houses, roads, cars, schools, teachers, doctors, hospitals needed for this extra population!

Australia brings in about 14,000 people under its humanitarian program and any successful applicants amongst the boat arrivals are included in this quota. I think the government has just recently increased this to 20,000.

Numbers in Australia

The ultimate carrying capacity for Australia is, I believe (from my reading of books and Internet) quite low. The Aborigines numbered less than one million when Europeans arrived. Australia now carries more than 20 times that number of people largely because fossil fuels enable our very infertile and intermittently watered soils to produce far more than they would without this assistance.

Australia is already overpopulated: immigration is now costing more than money

Australia is already overpopulated. This is clear from all the environmental indicators. See for instance, the 2008 State of the Environment Report for Victoria. All indicators are declining because of population pressures. These include waterways coastal areas, biodiversity...

Australia really needs to stabilise its population as soon as possible and then allow it to reduce. With no immigration at all Australia’s population would increase by about 150,000 p.a. for the next few decades due to the number of women of childbearing age in our population. Until there are fewer women in their child bearing years, as the population ages, without high immigration, the growth rate would remain around half what it is now, which would still be quite high.

See the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures for 2011 at http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/mf/3101.0/

In other words- I do not get too worried about asylum seekers as a component of Australia's population growth when governments are significantly undermining our lives, our future and unraveling our environment through huge numbers of invited and economic immigrants, whether asylum seekers come or not.

I find it strange and somewhat alarming that apparently so many viewers of SBS do not have a clue about the problem of the growing numbers in the planned immigration stream. Why didn't SBS even mention this in their four nights of program on the subject of fear of asylum seeker floods?

Back in 2002 the Australian Government owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) surprisingly placed itself in the forefront of efforts to steamroll the public into acceptance of the Howard Government's plans to privatise Telstra.

In 2012, 10 years later, the same ABC Radio National Breakfast Show, but with a different presenter, is again at the forefront of another propaganda drive to impose yet more privatisation against the will of the overwhelming majority of Australians.

This article also marks James Sinnamon's relaunching of public asset defending website, "Citizensagainstsellingtelstra.net"

Recent history of major privatisation politics in Australia

Dick Estens was conducting the Regional Telecommunications Review and the vast majority of public submissions were opposed to privatisation when ABC Radio National's Breakfast Show presenter, Vivian Schenker, pronounced that the debate about privatisation was over. Schenker told audiences that it was no longer about if and when Telstra would be fully privatised, but rather how the proceeds coming from the sale would be spent.

In fact, public opposition to the sale was so overwhelming that it took three more years of manoeuvring, deceit and subterfuge on the part of the Howard Government and its corporate media and ABC propagandists to get the legislation to privatise Telstra passed by both houses of Parliament in 2005. Even then it was only possible because Liberal/National Party representatives such as Senator Barnaby Joyce broke election promises to vote against privatisation.

2012: ABC continues new wave of undemocratic privatisation spin

On 4 July, almost 10 years after Vivian Schenker pronounced the debate about Telstra privatisation 'over', The Radio National Breakfast Show placed itself at the forefront of a new propaganda push to gain public acceptance of a new wave of privatisation, this time of shipping ports still in public hands. The report commenced with the following hysterical pronouncement by reporter Will Ockendon:

"The first quarter of this year saw the biggest retreat in spending on non-mining and resource related infrastructure since early 2006. Roads, rail and other core transport works are just not being built to keep up with demand - that's the finding of a new market indicator created by Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, which represents private and public sector interest groups. And even when new infrastructure is authorised, it is sometimes incompatible with existing infrastructure."

Tunnels

Then Tony Eastley, who, in 2012, is filling Vivian Schenker's shoes as Breakfast Show presenter chimed in:

"If you're stuck in traffic this morning, you can only hope that transport planners are doing the best job possible.

When the New South Wales Coalition won government its biggest promise was to build vital rail links to Sydney's booming north-western suburbs.

The tunnels are yet to be built but the state's Labor opposition says the specifications sent out for tender are too small to fit Sydney's old carriages and may limit what style of trains can be bought in the future."

In the ensuing discussion, the various 'experts' agreed with each other that it logically followed that the only possible way to solve the crisis in transport infrastructure was to sell off yet more publicly-owned assets, this time shipping ports to raise the necessary funds. Of course, no one who represented Australians opposed to privatisation was given the chance to put his/her point of view.

Please support my efforts to defend public assets

I have therefore begun to raise the profile of this matter by republishing "Citizensagainstsellingtelstra.net" and starting up a new campaign to defend public assets against privatisation. For some two years I have been unable to carry this campaign forward due to my necessary participation in major rehabilitation after a severe head injury which left me comatose for nearly two months and from which I am only just beginning to recover some ability to participate in political activities. I ask for your support.

Victorian Planning Minister Matthew Guy is setting up a website http://www.planmelbourne.vic.gov.au asking for residents' feedback on the sort of Melbourne we want in the future. These kinds of websites, however, make it hard to say what you really think. It is probably better to send the Minister a submission re Plan Melbourne saying what you really think, in your own words, rather than responding to the website questionnaire. Email it to Matthew.Guy[AT]parliament.vic.gov.au . As a guide, we suggest that any plan must first have a policy to limit the population growth. To ignore this issue and try to plan for greater growth, would be self defeating.

Alert from BRAG

The Department of Planning has been working on a new metropolitan planning strategy and regional growth. A press release today from the Minister of Planning says, “We need to build on the best of past planning strategies and bring fresh thinking to our consideration of projected growth and change and how we address the challenges in front of us”.

But Brag's Vice President, Mary Drost, has responded saying,

“Population has grown too fast and infrastructure hasn’t been able to keep up.”

She is quite right. Melbourne is the fastest growing city in Australia, we grew by about 605,000 from 2001 to 2010 compared with only 450,000 in Sydney and that trend continues. And we are under pressure with overcrowded transport, gridlock on our freeways, overloaded sewerage and drainage, water shortages, power blackouts, problems with schools, hospitals etc.

The current planning strategy is to retrofit development into existing areas using existing capacity in schools, hospitals roads, rail,
trams etc. but any capacity is now well and truly filled. For instance our trains and trams are already seriously overcrowded.

BRAG's view is that any proposed development should identify local infrastructure capacities, show the effect of the project and how the developer will tackle the problems that will arise. If the developer does not come up with a satisfactory solution then the application should automatically fail. It should not fall back on Councils or the residents to rectify such problems.

Outer suburban developers have long been required to fund local infrastructure requirements. Why not in the inner suburbs?

BRAG contends that a bigger Melbourne is not a better Melbourne. We are trying to cope with densification in inner Melbourne as well as the urban sprawl and neither option is the answer. The Federal budget is unlikely to provide finance for the necessary infrastructure upgrades. Of course we have the elephant in the room – massive population growth, which both federal and state governments ignore.

So what is the answer?

We are constantly told that we need to go up to cope with population growth . Commentators like Bernard Salt from KPMG and the
Committee for Melbourne believe Melbourne needs New York style development and have promoted “Manhattanising” Melbourne,
which appeals to the development and construction industry but would be a disaster for residents.

Boroondara is a great place to live and, as a consequence, is under pressure from the developers because it offers them the best
economic returns. Our Council is doing its best to manage the tensions between accommodating growth and offering housing diversity while maintaining liveability. However the pressure from developers will continually increase making council’s task ever more difficult.

More and more residents from all over Boroondara are asking BRAG for help in combating opportunistic development in their area.
Under the previous state government there was a real decline in local democracy and local say in planning issues which accompany urban consolidation. When we object, we are branded NIMBY’s But its OK to say “not in my backyard”. We do have rights concerning the neighbourhood we live in despite what the growth lobby says.

Now we have an opportunity to exercise those rights. Planning Minister Guy has announced he is setting up a website http://www.planmelbourne.vic.gov.au which offers residents the opportunity to have input to the sort of Melbourne we want in the future.

We urge you to carefully consider the issues then go on to the website and tell the government what you think. Encourage your neighbours to do the same. If we don’t then the government will think we don’t care.

However, be careful about following the lead set by the questions. Like many such government surveys, they seem to be set up to gain predetermined answers.

BRAG believes it is better to send the Minister a submission re Plan Melbourne in your own words that say what you really think. Email it to Matthew.Guy[AT]parliament.vic.gov.au

As a guide, we suggest that any plan must first have a policy to limit the population growth. To ignore this issue and try to plan for
greater growth, would be self defeating but you make up your own mind and tell the government accordingly.

Jack Roach
BRAG(Boroondara Residents Action Group)

The producers of Q and A have their favourites when it comes to “thinktanks”, with the free marketeering IPA topping the list with 4 different panellists and 11 appearances in total (not including appearances by former staff members). Meanwhile, prominent progressive think tank The Australia Institute has never featured on Q&A, despite TAI’s current head Dr Richard Denniss debating Lord Christopher Monckton about climate change at the National Press Club last year and its former head being prominent author and intellectual Professor Clive Hamilton.`````

The national broadcaster promotes the show as being “adventures in democracy”, but according to a new study by Independent Australia, if ABC’s popular Q&A programme set electoral boundaries, it would produce a worse gerrymander than Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s Queensland.

The study, which details every guest on the current affairs panel show hosted by Tony Jones Q&A since its inception in 2008, shows an overwhelming preponderance of guests from Sydney and a very low proportion from Western Australia, Queensland and regional centres.

Figure 1:

In addition to being focussed on NSW, where Q&A is usually produced, the study shows that the programme uses an extremely narrow range of talent. For instance, out of the 680 panellists appearing since the show began, only 345 different individuals have appeared — an average of almost two shows per guest. This average is bumped up because some guests have been on the program up to 13 times, including tonight’s guest Tanya Plibersek, despite only being a junior minister until December 2011. (Another guest appearing tonight, Malcolm Turnbull, will be making his twelfth appearance on the show. Note Figure 2.)

Figure 2:

Independent Australia found that many prominent Australians, including Don Henry from the Australian Conservation Foundation and former Nobel Peace Prize nominee Dr Helen Caldicott, have never been asked to appear on Q&A.

“I’ve never been asked and would like to be,” Dr Caldicott told Independent Australia in an exclusive interview. “I find it somewhat stimulating, but a limited range of topics is discussed.”

The research shows that the show is relatively even-handed in presenting voices from the two major parties, but seldom includes panellists representing minor parties.
It appears that the producers have their favourites when it comes to “thinktanks”, with the free marketeering IPA topping the list with 4 different panellists and 11 appearances in total (not including appearances by former staff members). Meanwhile, prominent progressive think tank The Australia Institute has never featured on Q&A, despite TAI’s current head Dr Richard Denniss debating Lord Christopher Monckton about climate change at the National Press Club last year and its former head being prominent author and intellectual Professor Clive Hamilton.

“As the director of Australia’s largest progressive think tank I am sure the producers of Q&A will have me on one day,” said Dr Denniss in a statement provided to Independent Australia.

“Given the Institute’s research into the impact of the mining boom, climate change, tax reform, superannuation and the role of government in the 21st century, it’s hard to imagine they don’t think we’d have something to say about the big issues.”

The author of the study, Independent Australia managing director David Donovan, says the ABC is letting down the public by its narrow focus and may be in breach of its own Charter and Code of Practice.

“The ABC, by focussing on the same few people, mainly from the two major parties, is not presenting a full range of views,” said Mr Donovan.

“And by focusing on such a narrow range of people and views in such a popular and important current affairs show, Q&A is in danger of breaching its own code of ethics and charter,” he said.

“The ABC Code of Practice says it has a duty to provide balance, impartiality and a diversity of views, however based on the responses I have received from Q&A producers – which will be included in the final report – they appear to be more concerned about providing entertainment.”

“They seem to see Q&A as a sort of modern Australian Punch and Judy show.”

“Of course, entertainment is one of the objectives specified in the ABC Charter, but it is mentioned in that document after the aims of providing a sense of national identity and informing.”

“Also mentioned in that Charter is the need to reflect the cultural diversity of the Australian community, which appears doubtful in this program from its focus on voices from Sydney and Adelaide at the expense of voices from WA, Queensland and regional centres.”

“Far from being an exercise in democracy, Q&A more like an autocracy that bestows patronage upon its favourites.”

The research and report is due to be published on the Independent Australia website later today.

COMMENT: David Donovan, [email protected], 0403 237 880

Independent Australia
'The journal of democracy and independent thought'
MEDIA RELEASE
12 March, 2012

The shocking death this past summer of Canada's newly-elected Leader of the Official Opposition, Jack Layton, forced me to put the following article on hold. Mr. Layton's sincerity, persistence and bouyant optimism in the face of encroaching cancer was inspirational even to his political enemies. Nothing could attest more to his universal appeal than the fact that a state funeral was held in his honour. Nevertheless, respect for the man should not mean that criticism of his policy direction should be suspended or that his ideology---the ideology of his party----should enjoy indefinite immunity from critical examination.

Growth is OK if its "benefits" are shared

For those who do not follow Canadian politics, the New Democratic Party is now Her Majesty's Official Opposition, thanks to its stunning success in the recently held federal election. On the weekend beginning June 17, 2011, the triumphant party held a national convention in Vancouver, and party leader Jack Layton once again attempted to present the NDP as a clear alternative to the reigning Conservative government led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The main order of business, it seemed, was semantics.

Mr. Layton assured party members that the proposal to rid the preamble to the party constitution of the word "socialist" reflected the intention to merely modernize the language of the party---- not revise its values. The NDP would still be the party that would restructure Canadian society in a fundamentally different way. But what way would be fundamentally different? Consider this prominent portion of Layton's speech (emphasis mine):

"You are the reason that New Democrats are Canada's Official Opposition – fighting for the values we cherish.....Canadians elected the NDP to be the Official Opposition, but also to propose ideas, not just to oppose the government.It's up to all of us in this room to live up that responsibility – to provide Canadians with a positive alternative and to build a strong and united country. To grow our economy, create new jobs, and always put the needs of everyday families first." http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/06/17/pol-ndp-friday.html

This stated party objective was something that Layton has repeated on numerous occasions, including his victory speech on election night when he vowed that "We must focus on economic growth and environmental sustainability". Some three years ago—in a speech given on May 22, 2008 to “The Shepherds of Good Hope”, Layton had declared that the problem with growth was that its benefits were not fairly and equitably shared. “Today we are seeing a very disturbing trend in Canada: the growing gap between the rich and everyone else. More wealth (sic) is being generated than ever before—but that does not mean that everyone is better off. In fact, the opposite is true. The reason is pretty clear---the benefits of economic growth (sic) are not being shared equally among all Canadians.”

Doublespeak is a long-standing NDP tradition

It is a theme that provincial NDP leaders have emphasized as well. Then BC NDP leader Carole James told delegates at the party convention in Penticton in November of 2009 that we needed to "grow the revenues" to support the social services that the party hoped to extend and maintain for the benefit of the province. The current leader, Adrian Dix, remarked during his bid for the leadership that the NDP were better economic managers than the incumbent Liberal government because the growth rate was higher during its decade of office than was the case under the last ten years of Liberal rule. Former Saskatchewan NDP Premier Lorne Calvert had peddled the same line, arguing that growth was needed to grow the tax base and that the party's mission was to ensure that all citizens benefited from the process. Of course, all of this economic growth could exist side by side with "strong environmental protection", a contention made less credible by his government’s record. After seeing his province’s Green House Gas (GHG) emissions by 60% since 1990, Calvert still had the cheek in 2006 to promise his audience that “while continuing to grow the Saskatchewan economy, we will stabilize the absolute level of GHG emissions by 2010.” The Manitoba NDP, for its part, once declared on its website that "We want Manitoba to be a place that promotes sustainable growth and a place that recognizes our lakes, rivers, and forests as our greatest assets." Great assets to be preserved---or developed? Since then, they used the 2010 throne speech to brag about the province’s “unparalleled growth”. http://todaysndp.ca/search/node/sustainable%20growth For New Democrats, as for other parties, growth is the measure of success.

Ironically, following Layton's speech, a TV interviewer spoke to the party's environment critic, MP Fin Donnelly of New Westminster. He spoke of his determination to stop oil tanker traffic down a sensitive part of the BC coast, but when asked about the contradiction being opposition to the tar sands development and the party's commitment to protect the jobs of "working families", he admitted that the issue was difficult and then launched off into an explanation of how it was important to develop a "sustainable" energy policy. Too bad Doris Day is not still alive to sing the NDP's theme song. "Growth and the environment, growth and the environment, go together like a horse and carriage---- you can't have one, you can't have one, no you can't have one without the other."

Deceit by semantics

No doubt further research would yield a hundred other examples of this kind of double-talk. Initially it was my belief that it reflected a sinister attempt at manipulation and obfuscation, but then it struck me: Canada's social democrats have swallowed their own greenwash. They have no idea that they their statements are oxymoronic. The NDP has indeed, as Jack Layton said, "modernized" its language. It is the language of confusion and deceit. The language of people who are, in the most profound sense, ecologically illiterate. People who believe that we can put one over on Mother Nature simply by changing our language. Not comfortable with "economic growth"? Fine, then we will call it "sustainable" growth. Don't like that? OK, then we have sustainable "development" waiting on the bench ready to jump over the boards and join the play at any time. As Garrett Hardin said, in “sustainable development” growth-mongers have won a moratorium from the painful process of thinking.

The truth is, the NDP wouldn't know what "sustainability" was if it leaped up and bit them on the ass. The "alternative" vision which they represent is the vision of the 1960s, when conventional wisdom had it that "the environment" was a luxury, an externality that would be nice to have as soon as we could "afford" it. Only by growing the economy, and becoming "prosperous", can we afford to "clean up" the environment. "Hey honey, look. I know you would like us to buy new furniture and paint the house, but we have to finish the addition first, and pay down the mortgage." This line follows the same kind of logic that would argue that only by fostering a strong tobacco industry can we gain the revenues necessary to build cancer clinics.

Equity isn't the main issue

Look Jack, whether you call yourself a socialist or a social democrat is of no relevance. If you say that you want to make things ‘fair and equitable’, we’ll take your word for it. The issue, however, is not how we can grow the pie and divide it equitably, but that the pie is shrinking while you’re inviting more diners to the table. At least the father of Canadian socialism, J. S. Woodsworth, understood that you need to turn the immigration tap off when the economy is in a tailspin. Adding more consumers to the stew will not grow the supply of cheap non-renewable resources. And as Dr. Peter Victor of the University of York observed, growth is not particularly effective at eliminating poverty, creating full employment, or safe-guarding the environment either. Since 1976, as both the GDP and the greenhouse gas emissions have gone up consistently, levels of unemployment and poverty have bounced around.
Here is a news flash for socialists--- Oops, I mean "social democrats" (by all means let’s be modern): The economy is a fully owned subsidiary of the environment. No environment, no economy. (Eg., no cod, no Newfoundland cod fish industry). At what point in history will that truism sink in? We don't expect Conservatives to get it. After all, they are Conservatives. They are in love with capitalism, and debt-capitalism and growth work hand in hand. But the NDP is the “Opposition”, and don't we elect opposition parties for a reason? Aren't they supposed to offer an another option? A genuine choice?

Continuing growth is not possible---get it?"

For some, continuing economic growth may seem necessary, even desirable---if you don't care about undercutting our life-support system. But what New Democrats don't understand is that even if continued economic growth is necessary and desirable, it is not possible. Our industrial economy depends on the unsustainable use of finite non-renewable natural resources, which by definition, cannot be used indefinitely. That is why they are called "non-renewable". "Renewable" energy cannot be scaled up to anywhere near our requirements. To believe otherwise is to reveal a kind of mystical thinking which is informed by a blend of shallow research, wilful ignorance and false hope. A dozen credible sources could be cited but a local one will do. Just read what Canada's foremost energy expert, David Hughes, has said. His motto? "Beware of scale".http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2009.06-energy-an-inconvenient-talk//?ref=2009.07-environment-an-inconvenient-talk&page=
There are lots of alternatives on the drawing board, but they won't take us where we need to go. Not even close. And even if energy needs could be met, no replacements could be found for all of the 69 metals and minerals that analyst Chris Clugston identified as critical to the operation of an industrial system and which have already ‘peaked’. Metals and minerals which, like oil, will always remain in the ground but which at some point soon, will not be able to be affordably extracted. In other words, at some point, there will be a net energy loss in procuring them. http://www.wakeupamerika.com/papers-and-essays.html

We are entering an age of what Clugston calls "continually less and less". Our industrial economy will keep shrinking. Economic "stimulation" will only feed the demand for increasingly scarce and expensive natural resource inputs whose rising, prohibitive cost will eventually choke the economy. In other words, these "job-creating" efforts will only accelerate our remorseless drive to the cliff. Them's the facts, m'am. And what is First Officer Jack Layton's advice to Captain Edward John Smith (aka Harper) on the HMCS Ecological Titanic? "Full steam ahead sir. We can go faster if the ordinary working people in Third Class are given a fair share of the perks on board this great vessel. And by the way sir, we need to pick up more passengers---at least 340,000 immigrants a year---to keep this ship ‘vibrant’ and growing.”

It is astonishing that even an articulate man with a PhD who claims to represent a brand new change of direction for the country is evidently unaware of our extreme predicament. Don't politicians spend any time reading and thinking outside the CBC Matrix? Or are they content to believe their own bullshit? Apparently.

The NDP is NOT an "alternative"

New Democrats are not an "alternative". They are what Jan Lundberg described as "Team-B"---a “group of cheerleaders for a different shade of growth mongering. In this camp are some politicians and organizations that many progressive people would prefer to love unconditionally. After all, fundamental change, however overdue, is nice to put off or to pretend that it might be smooth....Accommodating more people as part of population growth or immigration solves nothing, but fattens the wallets of the growth industries responsible for urban sprawl and increased consumer spending.” http://www.culturechange.org/cms/content/view/197/65
It seems that everyone has heard about petro-collapse except the politicians and the media. No one can talk about the impending collapse and the reckoning except, as Lundberg puts it, “on fringe websites or in our living rooms. Or at the bar. Or in the woods. In the streets.” Certainly not, however, in Canada’s House of Commons or on the CBC. And obviously not in the NDP caucus.

Put on a happy face. Think positive. Wishful thinking and wilful ignorance will banish those recession blues forever. The New Jerusalem that Tommy Douglas spoke of awaits you. We can have our cake and develop too. It must be true---I heard on the CBC.

Tim Murray
June 19, 2011

October 31st, 2011, was a "teachable" moment, one of those moments that come so infrequently that they must therefore be seized and exploited to the fullest extent to increase public awareness. That was the day that, according to demographers, we reached an awful milestone, the day that our species became 7 billion in number. If you expected David Suzuki to use that event to highlight the problem of overpopulation, your expectations would have been cruelly dashed. Dr. Suzuki instead chose to spout the Monbiot line. Overpopulation is not the problem, you see. Its overconsumption by you know who.

Suzuki Repeats The Monbiot line

This article is for Suzuki-cultists who have been trying to tell me that finally The Great Man "gets it", that underneath it all, he really does understand that overpopulation is a key driver of our predicament. Wrong. He is a unreconstructed Monbiotist pure and simple. October 31, 2011 was arguably the most significant day in human history, the day we reached the 7 billion population mark. That was the day for Dr. Suzuki to step up to the plate and talk about overpopulation. Instead, he chose to repeat the tired old party line of soft green environmentalism and Hartmanite feminism. Next time greens want us to join their parade on climate change, keep that in mind. http://www.straight.com/article-519421/vancouver/david-suzuki-overconsumption-not-overpopulation-biggest-problem

Try this experiment. Phone his foundation and ask why they don't devote space to population issues. The answer I got was "We don't have the resources to deal with it." The David Suzuki Foundation is purported to have a $7 million annual budget. One would think that they could find a few bucks to bang the population drum, but then again, that would scare away a good part of their donor base, a base that includes the Royal Bank of Canada, Encana natural gas, and American corporations with commercial motives to shut down their Canadian competition.

As Steve Kurtz, a long-time population activist in Ottawa----now a resident of the United States---remarked: "He suckered me when I read some interviews or articles during the past year. But I won't be fooled again." Suzuki is good at customizing his interviews according to what he thinks that particular audience wants to hear. If an Australian audience wants to hear that Australia is overpopulated, he will tell them so---as he has. But we will not get on the CBC and tell Canadians that Canada is overpopulated, as he has done in more cloistered quarters or while overseas. Yet his fawning fan club in CBC-land lauds him as a man of integrity and courage, and the Great Canadian Myth persists, a myth swallowed whole by adoring fans in Australia, America and across the world.

Don' t Choose Fake Environmentalists For Heroes

Suzuki and the environmentalists are a waste of time. For them, the "P" in IPAT is a sop thrown out to appease our sensibilities, an inconsequential nuisance that they have to deal with but wished they didn't. Window-dressing. If you need to worship a Canadian environmental hero, try world-acclaimed wildlife artist Robert Bateman or Captain Paul Watson. Both of these men are aware of the 'raging monster' of human overpopulation and not afraid to say that it is running amok right here in Canada. To my knowledge, they are the only Canadian celebrities on the landscape who deserve to be called 'environmentalists'. As the term is presently used, an environmentalist is someone who attempts to manage the environment to accommodate relentless population growth, while a Malthusian would attempt to reverse population growth to accommodate the environment. Environmentalists---so-called---are essentially "growth-managers", not growth-stoppers.

By the way, if you want to understand the impact of overpopulation on biodiversity, take a look at Dave Foreman's latest book, "Man Swarm". This is what people like Suzuki, Monbiot and McKibben need to talk about----especially on days that have great demographic significance.

Measuring The Suzuki Legacy

If you want a measure of the Suzuki legacy, try to understand what impact he has had in shaping the mind-set of environmentally conscious people in his own community (mine). The Sierra Club here is a dominant force in this area, and conducts lectures and film nights through-out the year to "raise" our consciousness. They have a monopoly on the environmental conversation, and David Suzuki is a central figure in their pantheon. On one cold day in December of 2009, a cluster of local Sierra Club members stood in the parking lot of the village shopping centre with placards demanding meaningful action at the Copenhagen meeting on climate change. Their signs carried phrases like "Stop at 350" and "Stop Global Warming". Good on them to give up a weekend afternoon to make a statement about our environmental crisis. But on October 31st of this year, they were nowhere to be seen.

Instead, I met one of them in a local store dressed in a costume. When I asked her why she was dressed that way, I got the answer I expected, "It's a very important day, it's Halloween!" I replied that it was indeed, a very important day---- but not for that reason. She reacted with bewilderment. "Why?". I then began to tell her that it was the day that demographers estimated that we passed the 7 billionth mark, that our population number was now seven times what it was in 1800, that it had increased 250% in my lifetime, and that there are now more children born in one day that there are primates in the world. She cut me off to object that we need more children, and that if we lived more simply, there was more than enough to go around. "We need to grow our own food and get off the grid". In other words, hers was the programmed response that one gets from almost anyone now in her subculture. It is the typical catechism one hears from environmentally-conscious under-30s. Overpopulation? Maybe, but if we "empower women", dump capitalism, live like Ghandi, and share the wealth, overpopulation will take care of itself. Besides, birth rates are falling, aren't they?

Thanks For Nothing

So thank you Suzuki. Thank you Sierra Club. Thanks for nothing. Thanks for two decades of aggressive misinformation. Thanks for being the Pied Pipers who led an entire generation astray. Thanks for being Missing-in-Action on October 31st and blowing another "teachable moment". You are worse than useless, you are dangerous. Corporations have the environmental movement they paid for. One that manages dissent rather than directs it toward crucial targets. One that, to use Thoreau's words, "hacks at the branches of evil rather than striking at its roots."

Tim Murray
November 5, 2011

Sierra Club motto: "Let's cut our per-capita consumption in half so we can allow the population to double."

George Monbiot is at it again.

See It’s the Rich Wot Gets the Pleasure of 27 Oct 2011.

George Monbiot is at it again.

http://www.monbiot.com/2011/10/27/its-the-rich-wot-gets-the-pleasure/
Why does he and his ilk insist on asserting the primacy of consumption over population growth as the most critical factor toward aggregate resource liquidation and associated global catastrophes such as climate change?

BOTH conditions are the problem!!
Each one factors upon the other to deliver increasing resource depletion and system entropy.
Why waste time and public attention span arguing a false dichotomy?

That said, it is high material consumption standards that are, ostensibly, the central pursuit of our current capitalist value system. It lies at the very heart of the dominant economic growth fetish, which has a core metabolic need for all participants to consume, and to compete to consume, ever greater streams of 'stuff'. Why else would 'consumer confidence' be such a prominent indicator of economic health?

Population growth is merely a lazy way to bid up national or corporate GDP numbers in lieu of the productivity gains that the 'experts' incessantly tout as being the ideal means for economic growth. However population expansion does also serve to bid up the value of resource assets owned by the obscenely wealthy, so perhaps it does provide for an implicit core function within capitalist economy.

In the third world population growth is largely a collateral damage aggregated from the cultural and landscape destructions borne of colonial resource plunder. However globalisation has very successfully harnessed those who are too poor to be effective consumers into a yoke of corporate slave labor. Consequently unemployed westerners can at least afford shoes, shirts and gadgets, even if they are the discards of others who are easily able to buy too much at cheap-as-chips 'discount' prices.

Given this centrality of consumption to the modern economic equation, and the relative periphery of population growth, what is George's plan for reform?

It had better be a damn good one. Consumption levels are now, more than ever before, THE dominant socio-economic value. Radically decreasing them will require absolute system revolution, or a complete systemic collapse. Either way larger population only adds to the difficulties and risks involved within the transition. Without this revolution, incremental consumption will be ongoing and population growth will magnify its impacts upon both the planet and the poor.

Furthermore, excessive population growth also confuses and complexifies systems of communication and delivery, both local and global. The poor are clearly the biggest losers from such systemic 'entropy'.

So then, all things considered, why trivialise or malign concern about population levels?

Monbiot's view on Nuclear power reeks similarly of evidence that he is, in fact, a closet growthist. At complete odds with his stated views against 'over-consumption' he fails to observe that aggregate energy consumption is way, way too great. He implicitly accepts current and growing energy demand levels as a foundation of the problem at hand, factors this with climate change as the greatest concern facing humanity, and arrives at nuclear power generation as the solution.

The contradiction this poses with his 'over-consumption' fetish is astonishing. However the most salient flaw in his thinking is his complete oversight of high energy consumption as a core problem, no matter what the generation method. The most critical fact is that we move around too much, we build too much, we dig up too much stuff, we eat too much and we breed too much. All because we derive access to and consume too much energy. (It is vital to note that we do not 'generate' energy. We extract it from materials and systems occurring naturally around us, all of which have critical extraction limits. There is also always a loss between what we extract from system flows or sinks, thus depleting them by that amount, and what we can actually convert to our use from that extracted amount. These losses also create impacts, such as waste heat and frequency pollution. Our economic system externalises both the depletion and the conversion losses.)

The cold reality of advanced depletion across multiple vital resource values dictates that it's time to simply stop being so utterly and intractably frantic in our lives and in our expectations. It's time to learn how to just sit around a lot more; to think, talk and have simple fun; to spend our precious, finite time upon unhurried days with people and pastimes we genuinely like, rather than purchasing facile amusement and ego adornment with money that we mostly don't have. This shortfall obliges our permanent commitment to a mostly un-fulfilling, grinding work schedule to which our tenure is increasingly uncertain and destructively competitive. Such an uneasy commitment, welded to us by debt, debases our life to being a cellular input to the weight and power of the global industrial behemoth. We become one small cell in a burgeoning consumer battery. And then, like George, we have to conjure or adopt myths that can enable some belief in our personal metaphysical health. Admittedly George has carved a relatively well-configured position within the battery complex.

The commercial cost of genuine basic needs poses a significant problem to most of us when considering this necessary slowdown, most particularly the cost of amenable housing. Both the affordability and the amenity of housing are directly and seriously diminished by rapid population growth. Amenity includes access to land, private or common, on which to grow food bearing gardens. Thus population growth increases our need to work even harder to maintain our own basic standards, even when we renounce mainstream consumer behaviors. Thanks George. Appreciate your help and concern with this problem. Not!

This condition of bondage to growth might be something that the Occupy movements could very usefully focus upon.

The way The Australian writes him up, Tim Flannery, who once wrote so articulately in defense of our land and its ecology and our place in it, now seems reduced to a quasi-apologist for extreme mining technologies. The Australian writes in such an unbalanced way. See also "Fracking Democracy..."

"Tim Flannery backs coal-seam gas and mining industry" by Amos Aikman, The Australian, October 25, 2011

Unbalanced perspective

The article reads as if Tim Flannery, (famously author of The Future Eaters), alarmed at the roughshod being run over Australian farmers' rights and the environment, is trying to get higher standards in the mining industry.

He is reported to have said that, "similar arguments applied to mining generally, and called on government and industry to do more to regulate and rein in poor performers."

The Australian cites him as saying that mining is utterly necessary for modern life.
It fails to balance its argument by giving the case for allowing population to downsize and relocalise and for people to be more self-sufficient in a slower economy to allow the planet time to heal. No attention is given to how we all work harder for less and how many of us don't see the point in producing all this short-lived 'stuff' that finishes up in land-fills. Yet it is only in order to continue producing all this stuff that extreme technologies like gas-fracking can be artificially politically justified. In the end the only reason to go on producing more and more stuff is to keep a few undeserving greedy people at the top in the positions to which they have become accustomed.

Completely different perspective operates outside our system, but we don't know of it

Here is the comment I sent to the Australian regarding their article:

"France recently passed a law in parliament to make fracking illegal. The law rescinds rights previously granted and put any schale-mining for gas on hold pending new and safer technologies. Source: JT, Edition du Mercredi 13 Avril 2011, http://jt.france2.fr/20h/ Since then a further report was released and covered on the news for France 2, Monday 3 October 2011, which said that the French Government remained unconvinced by the latest techniques proposed by fracking concerns. All permits have been cancelled. High on the list of reasons against fracking in France was the risk of contamination of water supply and its impact on agriculture and human health.

This parliamentary decision is yet more evidence for those aware of different legal systems, that the Napoleonic system in France and Europe is far more democratic - in protecting peoples' rights and communal (and national) assets and vital resources - than the anglophone systems in their various forms in Britain and her current and ex-colonies."

Let's see if they publish that.

Murdochian only spoken here

Generally, it seems that, if you want to have your opinion published in the mainstream press you may only express it in so far as it fits their paradigm. So Tim Flannery, who once wrote so articulately in defense of our land and its ecology and our place in it, now appears to be reduced to being portrayed as a quasi-apologist for extreme mining technologies. It is hard to believe that he is really behind gas-fracking. One gets the impression that he is now interfacing, on behalf of numerous committees, with a monolithic industrial mining front that speaks uniquely in Murdochian.

It is as if our press and government have rendered us incapable of imagining any other way. France's parliamentary decision to ban gas-fracking is yet more evidence that the Napoleonic system in France and Europe is far more democratic - in protecting peoples' rights and communal (and national) assets and vital resources - than the anglophone systems in their various forms in Britain and her current and ex-colonies.

Australia's mass media and government keep her citizens in the dark and feed them B.S.

Australia's lack of information and news from Western Continental Europe keeps us in the dark about other ways other possibilities, and notably enduring forms of democracy that retain local powers. We only get an Anglophone perspective on matters of importance. America, Canada, Australia are among the least democratic countries in the world, with vast and growing differences between the haves and the have-nots, in legal systems which cannibalise and destroy their own community, citizens and resources. The reason that these countries are not yet obviously reduced to the poverty of Haiti is that their citizens started out with more resources per capita. As commonwealth is transferred more and more into private hands in those systems, people who have to date been able to survive, will not survive. The growing numbers of homeless and hopelessly endebted are indicators of the social unsustainability of the current economic and legal systems in Australia, America and Canada. In France and the rest of Europe, it is virtually impossible for citizens to be left without shelter unless they voluntarily opt out - as some homeless do - albeit with every attempt made to shelter them each winter.

That this same system was able to appraise and legislate against a threat to its peoples' way of life in response to their protests is an indication that their system is more democratic and more flexible than ours.

Your ABC will be giving yet more air-space to commercial growth lobbyists who will be spruiking at the Wheeler Center tonight. Publicity for the event actually claims that high density living is "great for the environment." In fact, the Australian Conservation Foundation's Consumption Atlas shows that greenhouse gas emissions of those living in high-density areas are greater than for those living in low-density areas. An analysis of the data shows that the average carbon dioxide equivalent emission of the high-density core areas of Australian cities is 27.9 tons per person whereas that for the low-density outer areas is 17.5 tons per person. (Free Event TONIGHT 12 OCT 2011.)

Wheeler Center - another festival for malignant Growth to be amplified by Your ABC.
The Wheeler Center will be hosting a predictable event called, "Seven Billion, it's getting crowded in here," on Wednesday 12th 6.15pm at 176 Little Lonsdale Street, near Russell St.

Money talks over democracy

Publicity for the event kicks off with a completely erroneous statement that "High density living is great for the environment."
We can expect that ignorant assertion to dictate the level of discussion. The advocates of growth seem willing to say anything and repeat it ad nauseum in the appearance of justifying their totalitarian push for developers to maximise their financial returns. Sadly, Your ABC seems happy to promote the malignant growth virus.

"High density living is great for the environment, right? But what does it do to our heads and hearts? The Australian psyche was moulded by the myth of the ‘wide brown land’, so what might life packed like sardines look and feel like? With the world’s seven billionth person is about to be born, can we learn from the Asian megacity experience? And will we still be sharing a cup of sugar with our neighbours? As the population debate gets mental, we’re going in search of the soul in urban sprawl. Hosted by Natasha Mitchell and featuring Kim Dovey, Helen Killmier, Bernard Salt and Sein-Way Tan. Presented in partnership with ABC Radio National."[More about the speakers in note [1]

What does the 'environment' mean to the person who wrote that ridiculous statement? Obviously not fans of biodiversity. Do they actually like landscapes destroyed by coal mining, gas fracking and sand-mining?

But there is a mountain of evidence to show that, not only is high density living unpleasant and reduces options for self-sufficiency, it uses much more energy than ordinary low density blocks:

"On the Green advocacy website Planetizen.com there is an interesting new piece entitled "Resisting Dickensian Gloom." This article cites several new Australian studies that refute the whole notion that we can build our way out of Global Warming. Australia, which bought into the high density dream early on and now has vast swaths of the stuff, apparently now has cause for a little bit of buyer's remorse. Here is a part of what this article has to say:

Greenhouse gas emissions: Advocates of high-density policies (often termed "Smart Growth" but also under other descriptions and euphemisms such as "urban consolidation," "compact development," "growth management," and "urban renewal") maintain these policies save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

A comprehensive study of per capita emissions in Australia based on household consumption of all products and services appears in the Australian Conservation Foundation's Consumption Atlas. Unexpectedly, this analysis shows that greenhouse gas emissions of those living in high-density areas are greater than for those living in low-density areas. An analysis of the data shows that the average carbon dioxide equivalent emission of the high-density core areas of Australian cities is 27.9 tons per person whereas that for the low-density outer areas is 17.5 tons per person. As mentioned in the Demographia Survey introduction, food and goods purchase account for most of the emissions and this amounts to more for wealthier inner-city dwellers.

Surprisingly, transport emissions amount to very little (only 10.5%), household electricity and heating fuel being about twice as much at 20.0%. It should also be noted that the emissions from household dwelling construction and renovations at 11.8% are greater than emissions for transport. It is clear that transport, so heavily emphasized by Smart Growth advocates, is responsible for only a small fraction of household emissions.

The article goes on to cite a few more studies, all of which come to the conclusion that packing people into urban core development might not be as "green" a thing as advocates such as noted ecologist Arnold Schwarzenegger have claimed. Which means that low density communities such as Sierra Madre might very well be the greenest possible solution after all. And that Sacramento, along with SCAG and 40% of our current City Council here (they're the ones that talk a lot), should really go find some other way to save the world.

Hopefully one that might actually work.
Posted on the Sierra Madre Tattler at http://sierramadretattler.blogspot.com/2010/02/high-density-development-actually.html

[1] The speakers:
Kim Dovey - Kim Dovey is an Australian architectural critic and Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of Melbourne, Australia, teaching urban design theory. Dovey, K (2005) Fluid City: Transforming Melbourne's Urban Waterfront, London: Routledge

Helen Killmier - Helen is a community psychologist. Her areas of responsibility include disability services, community aged care, recreation, respite, partnership development, community capacity building, social policy and strategic planning. Prior to this position Helen spent 12 years in Local Government in management positions working directly with communities. Her research interests are in sense of community, the built environment, place attachment, community development, community governance, health and community wellbeing.

Bernard Salt

Sein-Way Tan - serves on the Advisory Board of Global Urban Development, Climate Prosperity Alliance and Data Cities. Sein-way’s consultancy is advising the Chinese government on its sustainable cities policy, and the UN Habitat’s World Urban Campaign. His research focuses on rapid global urbanisation and is conducted in collaboration with more than 400 global leaders in politics, business and environment.

Participants were shocked recently to hear Ms Prue Digby, Deputy Secretary, Planning and Local Government, Department of Planning and Community Development include in her paper on "housing a growing population" a section on "eliminating the NIMBY culture" at the Informa Australia "Population Australia - 2050 Summit." Article by Julianne Bell.

By Julianne Bell
On Monday and Tuesday 26 and 27 September 2011 I I - representing Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc., I attended the second annual Conference organised by Informa Australia Pty Ltd entitled, “Population Australia - 2050 Summit”. This was a national conference and included public servants from Government (State, Federal and Local); eminent academics; and representatives of the business world and the housing industry plus a smattering of representatives of community groups. (Several of us were able to attend only because a benefactor provided us with the admission tickets or Conference fees.)

Ms Prue Digby, Deputy Secretary, Planning and Local Government, Department of Planning and Community Development included in her paper on "housing a growing population" a section on "eliminating the NIMBY culture". Participants were shocked as we considered that this was confrontational and indicated a contemptuous view of the community by a member of a Government Department. We were additionally shocked when she presented a solution stating that 30% of future population growth could be accommodated in "infill" housing in established suburbs. (Dr Bob Birrell of Monash University labels this "opportunistic infill" by developers.)

I - Julianne Bell - asked a question at the end of Ms Digby’s speech as follows: “Your Minister. Matthew Guy, advised us after the election that future density of development would be directed to the inner city, for example in developments such as E-Gate and Fisherman’s Bend and not in the suburbs. Yet after the election we are seeing high rise or high density (housing) proposals in Bayside, Banyule and Boroondara City Councils. Can you clarify what are your policy directions (concerning infill housing)?

Ms Digby refused to answer the question and said “You had better ask him yourself” and with that she left the podium. Unfortunately, we cannot give you a tape of her statement as Ms Digby insisted that Informa and Sustainable Population Australia Inc., who chaired Day One of the Conference, delete their recordings.

Mark O'Connor (Professional Poet and Author of "Overloading Australia") spoke at the Conference on "Environmental and social implications of a 'Big Australia' . He commented to me on Prue Digby's statement about "infill" in suburbs. He said: " Densification cheats residents out of quality of life" and that "it indicates the constant decline of our living standards".

We are seeking clarification from the Minister for Planning about increased density in established suburbs using infill and on promoting high rise along transports routes (tram, bus and rail) and around stations as this is contrary to his stated policies after the election. The questions are topical ones in Banyule, Boroondara and Bayside to name a few suburbs.

Julianne Bell Secretary Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc.

Take a look at the One Child Policy nonsense at the Australian Democracy Museum site! Today Candobetter.net received a communication from the Australian Museum of Democracy. At first we thought that a bunch of Australian revolutionaries with a sense of humour had contacted us and we immediately went to their website, as they advised us to, to comment. We were disappointed to realize that this is just another face of Australian government propaganda and the Growth Lobby is well-ensconced. The website belongs to the Australian Museum of Democracy, which is owned and financed by taxpayers, but controlled by the government. So, what do you find when you go and make that visit to the website to “have your say” about democracy as encouraged? Update 5 Aug 2011: My comment now published on democracy site.

Today Candobetter.net received a communication from the Australian Museum of Democracy. At first we thought that a bunch of Australian revolutionaries with a sense of humour had contacted us and we immediately went to their website, as they advised us to, to comment.

We were disappointed to realize that this is just another face of Australian government propaganda. The website belongs to the Australian Museum of Democracy, which is owned and financed by taxpayers, but controlled by the government.

So, what do you find when you go and make that visit to the website to “have your say” about democracy as encouraged?

Well, firstly, you find that the site promotes Australian democracy as a given. Secondly, if you try to post, you will discover that democratic speech is moderated at the Museum of Democracy. Thirdly, it purports to educate us about the value of this so-called democracy by evoking four different indicators of what it calls undemocratic governments. The indicators are: Curfews, Prevention of Public Assembly, One Child Policies, and National Identity Cards. Australians are supposed to congratulate themselves that the government apparently doesn't impose these policies. Hmm, and we also don't have public floggings and women are allowed to go to school, so everything in the garden of democracy in Oz is lovely - not!

Enough with the spin, already.

1. Curfews.

Okaaay, so we are still allowed to stay up late and catch scarily neglected public transport home (if there is any).

2. One Child Policies.

We don’t have such policies, yet. But we are working on it with our big population policy. We are currently free to have lots of children, but who has the time or money when we are all working to pay huge rents and mortgages as the cost of living skyrockets due to that big population policy we all hate that’s supposed to make us all rich.

3. Prevention of public assembly.

Then again, there is no civil right to public assembly. If someone threatens you with violence for holding a meeting, they have to actually hurt you before the police will step in. It is actually illegal to hold a democratic protest in many places in Australia because public space has become privately owned. Joe Toscano tries to educate people about this scandalous abrogation of democracy again and again. Check out his podcasts on 3CR. And, if you want to meet in city square or one of those big malls that have replaced normal town centers and streets, you need permission, and you will have to say who will take responsibility for the gathering.

4. National Identity cards

Yes, well, all you have to do is go to the bank and your movements are electronically traceable. You don’t even have the choice of receiving your wages in cash these days. You HAVE TO have an electronic footprint. This isn’t freedom. (The popularization of mobile phones and the lack of public phones is another traceable consumer-trap, not to mention facebook, which more and more people are conditioned to bare their soles on – but you are not forced to engage with these.)

Australia's poor record on Human Rights and even worse on Civil Rights (Democracy)

Australia recently held, with much fanfare, a “National Human Rights Consultation,” overseen by a Catholic priest with a strong commitment to communitarianism, questionably famous for his involvement in Aboriginal communities, and with little interest in civil rights. The outcome consisted of, to paraphrase the Attorney General, “reaffirming a commitment to our human rights obligations; the importance of human rights education; enhancing our domestic and international engagement on human rights issues; improving human rights protections, including through greater parliamentary scrutiny [by Murdoch-controlled parliament, sure]; and achieving greater respectfor human rights principles within the community.

The Attorney General went on to say, apparently without any conscious irony, that “A legislative charter of rights was not included in the Framework as “the Government believes that the enhancement of human rights should be done in a way that, as far as possible, unites rather than divides our community.” !

My submission to the Democracy Museum awaiting moderation - now published

Under “One Child Policies,” in response to “Population control is not an issue in Australia and no attempts are made by government to limit births—in fact they are encouraged!”at 13.55 today, August 3, 2011, I placed the following comment. At 21.09 the same day it was still “awaiting moderation.” On 5 August I saw that it was published. Nonetheless, moderation is a fraught concept on a democracy blog and there should be some explanation at the democracy page, for instance, that they will publish anything except stuff that breaks the laws, including material that is critical of laws.

I wrote,

Thank you for your democracy initiative. I edit an Australian website for reform in democracy, environment, population, land use planning and energy policy. It is at http://candobetter.net
Your claim that “Population control is not an issue in Australia…” is false. It is a major failure of democracy in Australia that the government, at state and federal levels, is artificially stimulating population growth upwards by forcing high levels of immigration on Australians against the small amounts of protest our defective ‘democratic’ system affords and polls which show over 70% of people are against this. It is clear that the major movers of this undemocratic population control policy are corporate members of the Growth Lobby, who have financial interests in growth (notably in property development and allied industries) and that they find support from the corporate and public media, the ALP and the Liberal Party. I wrote my research thesis in environment and population sociology on this and it has been strikingly predictive. You may find it at The Growth Lobby in Australia and its Absence in France. There are many women fighting Australia’s growthist policies. You might like to promote some of my articles about Australian activists against growth and its impacts, particularly this one about how women lead democratic actions in Victoria, Australia against an undemocratic parliament: “Anti-Growth Lobby: Women in politics: why don’t more participate – or do they? (Melbourne, Australia)” At http://candobetter.net we have a whole page assigned to democracy: http://candobetter.net/taxonomy/term/13.

There are also many other policies in Australia – and laws – which are in place – such as the laws on terrorism – which are dangerous to freedom.

The official democracy blurb

Here is what is being sent round by the Museum of Australian Democracy:

“Have your say day August 10th 2011

“A recent survey conducted by the Museum of Australian Democracy shows that two thirds of Australians say they don’t understand the relevance of democracy to their everyday lives, even though we live with it everyday – from our own personal values, to the way we interact with our family and our local community, down to the choices we are free to make.

These are freedoms enjoyed by citizens of a democracy.

That’s why on Wednesday August 10 the Museum of Australian Democracy is holding a “Have Your Say Day”.

On “Have Your Say Day” we want to encourage all Australians to speak out and be a part of democracy.

How can you participate in “Have Your Say Day”

We want you to share with our nation, what you love about the freedom of our country and importantly, discuss an issue you feel passionate about.

Below are 10 steps on how you can get involved in “Have Your Say Day”:

1. Contribute to the “Have Your Say Day” dialogue by visiting www.ourfreedom.com.au
2. Join a group with a cause
3. Tweet about it using #moadhaveyoursayday to join the conversation
4. Find out who your Member of Parliament is at the Australian Electoral Commission website: http://www.aec.gov.au
5. Go to your favourite newspaper’s website and make a comment about a news story, or write a letter to the Editor
6. Start a blog of your own or participate in a blog or forum online
7. Call a talkback radio station and voice your opinion
8. Discuss democracy or some of the issues in today’s news with your family and friends – what are their thoughts and opinions?
9 Post a note in your Facebook status or create your own Facebook poll
10. Post a video to YouTube and tag it “Have Your Say Day” and encourage your friends to do the same.

You can also take a visit to your state’s parliament, or come and visit the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House in Canberra – www.moadoph.gov.au

For more information on “Have Your Say Day” – visit www.ourfreedom.com.au

Try it.

For their media contacts the Democracy Museum of Australia lists a commercial company, Fenton Communications, which is a slick ‘cause’ marketer to and for the mainstream.

The Museum of Democracy, in its Annual Report for 2009-2010, included among their “Key performance indicators” to “Increase awareness of the new role of OPH as a museum exploring the past, present and future of Australian democracy” and to “Be acknowledged as a pre-eminent and innovative cultural institution” and to “Extend OPH’s profile and partnerships with other institutions, academics and cultural innovators.”

So, Australians, let this Museum know you are out there and that you expect more, much more of an institution purporting to represent your voices.

NOTES

For the record, when I first published this article, I was very critical of the moderation and failure to promptly publish my comment about the one child policy. I feared that it would not be published, however it now has been, so I do eat my words and pay my respects to the democracy blog, even though I still regard the examples it gives as indicative of growth-lobby bias. At least I was able to criticise this.

So, for the record: I had written:

"As I said,
Under “One Child Policies,” in response to “Population control is not an issue in Australia and no attempts are made by government to limit births—in fact they are encouraged!”at 13.55 today, August 3, 2011, I placed the following comment. At 21.09 the same day it was still “awaiting moderation.”

I wrote,

Thank you for your democracy initiative. I edit an Australian website for reform in democracy, environment, population, land use planning and energy policy. It is at http://candobetter.net
Your claim that “Population control is not an issue in Australia…” is false. It is a major failure of democracy in Australia that the government, at state and federal levels, is artificially stimulating population growth upwards by forcing high levels of immigration on Australians against the small amounts of protest our defective ‘democratic’ system affords and polls which show over 70% of people are against this. It is clear that the major movers of this undemocratic population control policy are corporate members of the Growth Lobby, who have financial interests in growth (notably in property development and allied industries) and that they find support from the corporate and public media, the ALP and the Liberal Party. I wrote my research thesis in environment and population sociology on this and it has been strikingly predictive. You may find it at The Growth Lobby in Australia and its Absence in France. There are many women fighting Australia’s growthist policies. You might like to promote some of my articles about Australian activists against growth and its impacts, particularly this one about how women lead democratic actions in Victoria, Australia against an undemocratic parliament: “Anti-Growth Lobby: Women in politics: why don’t more participate – or do they? (Melbourne, Australia)” At http://candobetter.net we have a whole page assigned to democracy: http://candobetter.net/taxonomy/term/13.

There are also many other policies in Australia – and laws – which are in place – such as the laws on terrorism – which are dangerous to freedom.

Oh, I get it, this is the museum of moderated democracy.

The Canadian federal election cries out for an alternative to BAU growthism. It cries out for a party which would present a coherent and distinctive alternative to the system of economic growth. Canadians need a place on the ballot where they can mark an "X" beside "no more growth". In fact they need an opportunity for vote for "de-growth". But the Green Party of Canada is not providing them with that opportunity or alternative. Instead, what they are providing is meaningless rhetoric and platitudes. Shall we lend credence to their approach by voting for them? Shall we allow them to say that they have our support for their direction? Shall we allow them to say, after receiving our vote, that they have a mandate to push for hyper immigration and a foreign aid policy that would continue to promote global overpopulation? I say no. I say that casting a vote can sometimes be worse than spoiling a ballot. There are many things one can do to promote change that voting in a sham election. Writing, petitioning, demonstrating and educating the grassroots come to mind.

The Canadian federal election is upon us and the Green Party claims to offer a "significantly different approach to governance" (see below). Really? Let's take a look:

1. "Growth is fine--as long as it doesn't foreclose future options". What kind of growth doesn't? What kind of growth does not involve the consumption of non-renewable resources? Growth in knowledge? Human brains need energy and sustenance. More humans need more resources, no matter what they do. Doesn't knowledge involve capital investments? Computers? Printers? Books? Classrooms? Laboratories? Lab equipment? Or is this knowledge to be imparted by ESP? Can we have science without technology? And if not, what technology does not require material inputs? Are MRI machines, electric cars and solar panels to be made out of thin air? How can the metals and minerals required for such technology be extracted without "plundering the earth”?

2. "We can have nutritious food forever---so long as we look after the soil" Food for how many people? 7 billion? Without fossil fuel inputs? If soil requires 15 years to regenerate naturally, then how many people could be fed? Do the math. 1/16 of 7 billion is what? Does the Green Party have a plan to shrink the human population down to fit that soil capacity? Do they have any plan that involves the "P" in the IPAT equation? Do they even know what the IPAT equation is?

3. "We could have a well fed, comfortably housed, well educated, healthy and employed population, without plundering the earth" Again, the Green don't tell us how many people could be "well fed, comfortably housed, well educated, healthy and employed" using the resources that are affordably accessible---and for how long.

4."Political parties of every stripe are mesmerized by the mantra to grow, grow, grow---every party, that is, except the Green Party". The Green Party does not believe in growth? Hmm. How would Canada NOT grow when it adds 350,000 people to its number each year? How does the Green Party intend to put an end to growth by advocating an immigration level 25% higher than it is now (285,000 per year)? How does it propose to end growth in a world that sees 80 million additional humans each year? Are they telling us that we can have population growth without economic growth? Will those extra people not demand resources? Where will the material to build "comfortable" houses for those extra people come from? Will no energy will be expended in providing it? Where will the resources for education and health care for those extra people come from? Will people in Greendom be disembodied spirits without a footprint?

What the Green Party offers is shallow trendy rhetoric without substance. Long on kumbaya and short on logic and math.

Some lament the federal court decision upholding the media's right to exclude them from the televised national debate. I would too---if indeed they really did offer "a significantly different approach to governance". But the truth is, the only thing truly "Green" about this party is its name.

Nonetheless, I am told that I have no other choice--as if voting for one faction in a one-party state is morally mandatory. Wrong. I can register my disgust with this sham democracy by returning my ballot unmarked to the electoral officer. And you can do the same. Imagine a million spoiled ballots. Now that would send them a message.

Tim Murray
April 5, 2011
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Green "Vision" message:
Greetings:

Once again Canada is looking for direction and once again Greens
across the country are trying to explain that there is a real and
important change in our circumstances that requires a significantly
different approach to governance. I've tried to capture the key point
here. Of note is that by referring to the underlying issue of having
reached a physical maturity as societies (ie. our activities fill our
planet), our message of change needn't be blocked due the spin that
has brought so many to deny issues like climate change.

If this is of any use, feel free to use it in whole or in part, as is,
or edited in any way that suits your purposes. No attribution
necessary.

Wishing you strength and inspiration for the weeks ahead.

Yours, Mike N.
(Mike Nickerson, http://www.SustainWellBeing.net)
================================

Our changing times require a new approach.

Change is essential, not because food and fuel prices are rising
faster than we can afford, tho for many this is true. We need the new
approach because our governments are dedicated to an economic model
that seeks to expand regardless of the impacts that expansion has on
our planet and on the other peoples with whom we share it.

Food, fuel, forests, fish, fresh water, soil fertility - even the
ability of the environment to absorb our waste - are all being
stretched. Yet, political parties of all stripes are mesmerized with
the outdated mantra to grow, grow and grow.

Every party, that is, except the Green Party.

The Green Party was founded because the others wouldn't take planetary
limits seriously. Growth is fine, as long as it doesn't foreclose
future options. We can grow nutritious food forever - if we look
after the soil. Shelters can be developed to capture sunshine and
cool themselves without requiring large amounts of energy. Education
and preventative health care are essentially boundless because they
are composed mostly of the unlimited resources: knowledge and good
will. All these steps will require that people work at them.

We could have a well fed, comfortably housed, well educate, healthy
and employed population, without plundering the Earth, if that was the
goal of our society. It is the goal of the Green Party and we are
inviting Canadians to take the step with us toward a sustainable future.

The human family has been expanding the volume of our activities for
thousands of years. Now that we are stretching the Earth's limits,
rather than expanding consumption and waste, it's time to adopt a
mature approach and to focus more on creating a sustainable future.

Join with us to build a future that our children can look forward to.

Neither The BC Liberals Nor the NDP Will Question The Population Growth Which Drives Energy Consumption

Dan Doyle, the Chair of BC Hydro, appeared on BC Global TV News on July 14, 2010 to say that the corporation must spend as much as $220 million this year importing power from the United States to meet the province’s energy needs---some 10%. The province in fact has had to import power for the last 9 years, at a cost of $25-30 million per year. But thanks to the Peace River drought and a drop in the water volumes in hydro-electric reservoirs, recently at 77% of normal inflows—the fourth worst in 50 years-- BC Hydro will have to spend eight times that amount on imported energy this year---much of it from “dirty” fossil fuel sources. NDP energy critic John Horgan warned of a coming rate shock of 29% to meet the extra costs, but BC Hydro is looking to gain permission to defer these costs to the future by tapping into a “rainy day fund” that would be replenished when the rain returns to ‘normal’ patterns. The concept that global warming might thwart that confident expectation apparently does not enter Mr. Doyle’s mind. In less than a year the deferral fund will be in the red by $730 million---enough that would require a 21% rate hike to liquidate.

What Mr. Doyle, Mr. Horgan and Liberal Premier Gordon Campbell have in common is their acceptance of population growth as a given. Campbell says that BC will grow by a million people in the next 20 years. Former NDP environment critic, Shane Simpson, once proclaimed in Campbell River to an NDP gathering in January of 2007 that he “will not tell people not to come to British Columbia.” And neither will he tell people not to come to Canada. According to the 2006 census, some 80% of new BC residents came from other countries, and that percentage grows by the year. BC in fact attracts more immigrants per capita than any other province. But neither will Mr. Simpson, nor Mr. Horgan or anyone else in the BC NDP caucus tell the federal NDP to not to lobby for higher immigration quotas. Like local and provincial politicians of all parties, they dodge immigration issues by hiding behind the skirt of provincial jurisdiction, arguing that they cannot do anything about incoming migration from any source. Yet they eagerly collude with their federal counterparts by offering support for their political campaigns as a quid pro quo for leveraging more federal dollars to cope with the demands that issue from hyper immigration. More money for ESL training, for infrastructure projects and a myriad of other expenditures.

Absurdly, Horgan joins the BC Hydro chorus and calls for more energy conservation. The answer, it seems, is to develop alternative energy sources and “conserve”. It is doubtful that the NDP, the Greens or the Campbell Liberals ever met a problem that could not be solved by decreasing per capita consumption and waste and increasing “efficiency”----the great elixir for all that ails us. Campbell’s “Clean Energy Act” even held out the promise of reducing ,through conservation, the forecasted growth of electricity demand in B.C. by 66% and a reduction of green house gas emissions by 33% in the next ten years ---all the while an average of 50,000 new residents are hopping on board the provincial energy train each year. Nevertheless, while conservation would slow the rate of increasing energy consumption by as much as two-thirds, it would not stop it. In fact, according to Campbell, provincial energy demands will grow by 20-40% by 2030. Fast or slow, growth is growth, and it is definitely not sustainable.

BC Hydro, of course, comes equipped with all the trendy buzzwords necessary to make this pitch palatable to any who might doubt its mission of having us believe that we can have our cake and eat it too. Everything will be “smart”, “green”, “sustainable” and “efficient” on the road to population overload. Move over, California! “The Power Smart Sustainable Communities Program” will help developers “green their projects by providing expertise, education, program support and financial incentives.” “District energy systems” will “provide a reduction in overall energy use and are able to utilize the most environmentally friendly available source of energy such as biomass, waste heat or geoexchange heat pumps.” Don’t worry about the fact that some 200,000 more housing units will have to be constructed to accommodate the half a million new energy consumers who will make B.C. their home in the coming decade. These housing units will all be “smart, green, sustainable and efficient.” In the virtual reality of the trendy green imagination, we can apparently decouple economic and population growth from all negative ecological impacts. We can conserve, reuse, recycle and retrofit growth of existence. As we grow our cities up and out and burst urban boundaries with more and more housing, we can install CFL lights, “energy star” appliances, induction stove cooking tops, solar panels, apply paint that protects air quality, and offer new types of roofing materials, insulation, carpets and pavement. All the things that will allow a theoretically infinite number of people to share this wonderful land. No doubt one can expect that soon thirst will be decoupled from water and ice cream consumption will be decoupled from weight gain.

The network of dams built between 1960 and 1980 are aging assets that require massive maintenance inputs of over $10 billion in the next five years. In addition, the Site C dam project will possibly require $15 billion dollars, and promises to supply power to some 410,000 homes in the province---a gain that would be wiped out in twenty years by the province’s expected growth. The NDP argues that a Site C dam is unnecessary, just as it argued a half century ago that W.A.C. Bennett’s hydro megaprojects were unnecessary. They wince at the prospect of seeing 5,340 hectares of flooded land, and worry about its effect on agriculture and the environment---while remaining oblivious to the impact of immigrant-driven growth on those very same things. But rather than strike at the root of rising energy demands---the exponential growth in the number of consumers in British Columbia---they argue for all the boy scout measures that would reduce per capita consumption. One day they will learn that there are limits to conservation.

Tim Murray
July 15, 2010

Here is a quiz. What do the following blockbuster books have in common?

"The Trouble with Africa--why foreign aid isn't working" by Robert Calderisi
"The White Man's Burden---Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good" by William Easterly
"The Bottom Billion---Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It" by Paul Collier
"Dead Aid---Why Aid Is Not Working And How There Is A Better Way For Africa" by Dambisa Moyo

The answer can be found merely by looking at their respective indices. Only in Collier's book is the word "population" or "populations" mentioned, and then only four times. And more incredibly, Collier treats it only in a positive light, by stating that a larger population is one of those factors which is a precondition for a poor country effecting a "turnaround". Nowhere in any of these books does the word "overpopulation" appear. There you have it. To Garrett Hardin's sarcastic statement that no one ever died from overpopulation, one is tempted to add the corollary that no desperately poor and famished country ever needed birth control to climb out of its misery.

Calderisi offers "Ten Ways to Change Africa". Guess what? Family planning ain't one of them. Instead we have these remedies:
1. Introduce Mechanisms For Tracing and Recovering Public Mechanisms.
2. Require all heads of state, ministers and senior officials to open their bank accounts to public scrutiny.
3. Cut aid to individual countries in half.
4. Focus direct aid on four to five countries that are serious about reducing poverty.
5. Require all countries to hold internationally-supervised elections.
6. Promote other aspects of democracy, including a free press and an independent judiciary.
7. Supervise the running of Africa's schools and HIV/Aids Programs.
8. Establish citizen review groups to oversee government policy and aid agreements.
9. Put more emphasis on infrastructure and regional links.
10. Merge the World Bank, IMF and United Nations Development Programme.

All good suggestions worthy of consideration no doubt. But hasn't the thought that too many people chasing too few resources may have something to with war, famine, wildlife poaching, deforestation, soil exhaustion and erosion, disease, and a myriad of other ills that plague these failed African states---- even crossed his mind? Hello?

Then along comes William Easterly with his six suggestions for those who want to "aid the poor".
1. Have aid agents individually accountable for individual, feasible areas for action that help poor people lift themselves up.
2. Let those agents search for what works, based on past experience.
3. Experiment, based on results of the search.
4. Evaluate, based on feedback from the intended beneficiaries and scientific testing.
5. Reward success and penalize failure. Get more money to interventions that are working, and take money away from interventions that are not working. Each aid agent should explore and specialize further in the direction of what they prove good at doing.
6. Make sure incentives in (5) are strong enough to do more of what works, then repeat step (4). If action fails, make sure incentives in (5) are strong enough to send the agent back to step (1). If the agent keeps failing, get a new one.

Once again, some pragmatic, hard-boiled advice from someone frustrated at the fact the aid most often get to those who need it. But once again, nothing about addressing poverty by preventing births rather than simply trying to keep people alive. And Paul Collier has his solutions. He notes that "since around half of all civil wars are post-conflict relapses', a charter for post-conflict governance would be in order, as well as a charter for the wealth obtained from natural resource extraction, including a transparency initiative. And since the army "catches the scent" of large infows of aid money, external military guarantees against coups could not only reinforce incentives for good governance but also leverage effective scrutiny from an empowered citizenry. Collier is a not an unabashed free marketeer. He argues that the bottom billion cannot break into new export markets without temporary and strong protection against "the Asian giants". But he insists that for the majority of the developing world, capitalism is working, and that the goal should be to help the basket cases build market economies by attracting private investment. He argues that the left needs to learn to love growth, because while "growth is not a cure-all, lack of growth is a kill-all". Like other critics, he maintains that aid is spread too thin. The development problem is about the bottom billion who are stuck in poverty who are not here to be guinea-pigs for failed socialist experiments.

What is surreal about Collier's gospel of comparative advantage, developing export markets and growth promotion is his failure to acknowledge the impact of economic activity on biodiversity services and climate change. If economic growth is to be the goal of African reform, then aggressive "de-growth" in developed countries must be pursued as a global offset. If capitalism is working, it certainly isn't working for the environment, which after all is our life support system. Someone needs to remind these critics that human extinction is bad for the bottom line. Dambisa Moyo is also a growth booster and a champion of trade. Kicking the aid -dependency cycle is necessary for good governance, which for her, "trumps all". Corrupt and incompetent governments effectively raise the cost of doing business or investing. And despite donor conditionalities, aid is easily stolen or redirected. All sound points But add Moyo to the list of analysts for whom overpopulation is an utterly inconspicuous agent of scarcity.

In some ways the predicament of failing states mired in poverty can be likened to a cancer patient surrounded by a team of oncologists who inform him to rest, take vitamins and avoid sugar, but make no mention of his chain-smoking. Population myopia is a strange affliction. It is as if the growth virus is equipped with a cloaking device that makes it unseen by the timid and the politically correct. No wonder the media and state broadcasters in particular, are loath to confront it, and instead offer us mock debates between what in reality, are false polarities trapped in their own cycle of denial.

Tim Murray,
July 1, 2010

Growthist buzzwords that instantaneously evoke nausea and vomiting

When one is forced-fed an unrelenting diet of growthist, pro-immigration and pro-natalist propaganda, it is common to be afflicted by a medical condition known as G. I.G. (Growth-Induced Gastroenteritis). Similar in consequences to the ingestion of rat poison, it becomes medically necessary to induce immediate vomiting to expel the toxin before it becomes absorbed by your body and causes a brain seizure. It has been conventional to induce this expulsion by the oral administration of an emetic like syrup of ipecac, copper sulfate or, as in ancient times, by salt or mustard water. But recent experience suggests that certain growthist buzzwords can act more quickly and effectively without biochemical complications. These verbal emetics can be regarded as trigger words that induce instant nausea and expulsion of growthist propaganda that relieves pressure and provokes the release of endorphins into the bloodstream. For that reason the experience can prove dangerously euphoric and addictive, and many neo-Malthusians, particularly enlightened teens, have been known to adopt a bulimic lifestyle of deliberate exposure to the programming of state-broadcasting corporations like the CBC, the BBC and Australia’s ABC in order to feel good about themselves after each sado-masochistic viewing. Of particular attraction is the nightly newscast which inevitably quotes meaningless stock market indices that offer no facsimile to the real world. Some addicts organize their day around these reports and refer to the post-CBC purge as “ecstasy” and the coalition of law enforcers, health professionals and psychologists recruited to fight this phenomena have failed to stem the tide. They advise parents, spouses and loved ones to watch for dry heaves and simulated retching that these sustainability junkies often display involuntarily and habitually.

It has even been found that when a group of Malthusians watch a CBC program together, for example, once one Malthusian reacts to nauseating growthist cant, others reflexively react to his reaction. This response apparently evolved from primates who notice that when one of their party ingests harmful food and vomits, it proves advantageous for the others to follow suit. It is therefore recommended that Malthusians only subject themselves to the CBC in the company of like-minds.

What then are the trigger words that evoke nausea and vomiting? Words that once had a precise or legitimate meaning but were subsequently co-opted and rendered meaningless? This is a tentative list. Any of these verbal allergens could result in the gastric relief that victims require. You are welcome to supply worthy additions.

vibrant
sustainable
green
holistic
equitable
tolerant
embracing
life-enhancing
societal well-being
pro-active
paradigm shift
zero waste
stakeholder
accountability
dynamic
robust
sexy
iconic
diverse, diversity
enriched
inclusive
gender-neutral
bias-free
choice
multicultural
"smart" (smart growth, smart cars, etc.)
eco (eg. eco-friendly, eco-density ie. urban sardine cans coated in green paint)

To illustrate how these words can be employed to induce violent sickness, in my former community, growth brought more traffic congestion, pollution, bikers, drug-dealers, drug-addicts, criminals, transients and boom boxes. It therefore at once became both "vibrant" and "diverse". Self-serving development proposals with damaging impacts became instantly benign with the mere attachment of an adjective like "sustainable" or "green". An economy that is ripping up the landscape by deforestation, strip-mining and urban sprawl across arable land can be described as "dynamic" or "robust", but one which pauses to give the environment some desperately needed respite can be described as "stagnant". A car that was assembled in a "green" factory is designated as "smart", despite the mining, the smelting and the transportation involved in producing and delivering the final product to market, and despite the fact that this green factory was not constructed in virtual reality or with angel dust. Seen through the lens of this obfuscatory jargon, the world can be seen as a joyful and wondrous place. If you fail to see it as such, then you are "negative" or "misanthropic". Only by being "positive" can we meet the "challenges" ahead. Hand me your barf bag.

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end, we shall make thought-crime literally impossible because there will be no words in which to express it."
A character in Orwell's 1984

Tim Murray
February 5/2010

PRESS RELEASE
GREENWASH INC.

In the interest of societal well-being I feel it is our moral imperative to think outside the box, to pro-actively develop sustainable, life-enhancing, zero-waste policies that put environmental needs on a level playing field with economic considerations. To meet the challenges ahead we need to effect a seismic paradigm shift that will eventually result in a sea-change of public attitudes. A cultural regime change, if you like. Those who have issues with this agenda typically favour sexy solutions that don't impact the big picture. We can grow and prosper if we do it smart and share the benefits equitably and fairly . It won't be easy, but it is doable. As we say in America, we have a situation on our hands. We have lost our moral compass and our leaders are not held accountable. But to quote President Obama, who has achieved a somewhat iconic status of late, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. I think we can handle adversity if we pre-plan for it, and can embrace perspectives which are inclusive of the great diversity of stakeholders we have in our nation. If we remain focused on our objectives, and no one moves the goal posts, if we steadfastly reject negativity and adopt blue-skies thinking, we can make it happen. Reality is after all, ultimately what we perceive it to be. The glass is half full. If we work with each other instead of working against each other it will be a win-win situation for everybody. Tolerance must be our watchword. Do we have a consensus on that?

Tim Murray
Director of Communications
Greenwash Inc

We have taken the promo video put on You Tube by the rally organisers and turned it into a more realistic rendition of what the rally really means for the Tweed Valley.

The reworked video is on You Tube. The link is www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_O1ekQNX6I

Update: The video has been removed by YouTube because the organisers of the World Rally races have claimed that it breaches their copyright. If it does breach copyright, they, nevertheless, could hardly complain that the removed video provides a less accurate depiction of how the rally will turn out than their own. - JS, 23 Apr 09.

The quality of the video is not great but thank You Tube for that. We have a DVD version and an mp4 version that will be used at the Tweed Shire Council meeting today. I am still trying to get a better version onto You Tube.

What you can do:

1. Watch the video on You Tube, leave a comment and rate the video
2. Attend the Tweed Shire Council meetings held on 26th May and especially 16 June (when the rally DA should be considered).
2. When the DA is lodged (approx. end April) make sure you make an objection.
3. Attend the planned protest march which will be held either on 26th May and/or 16 June to coincide with the Council meeting.
4. Get involved in the protest through No Rally Group [Tel: 0438 357 452 or (Email) no.rally[AT]yahoo.com]. Next meeting is at Uki on Sat 2 May at 12noon.
5. Sign our petitions to Tweed Shire Council and NSW Legislature (available at Caldera Environment Centre).

See also: Raceway through the Rainforest. Paradise lost! of 19 Apr 09.