self-government

This talk covers the environment, human population, and the State- with reference to ethical considerations. The world’s population needs to be allowed to decline and then stabilise at lower and safer levels as soon as possible to minimise human suffering. People need to have enough self-governing power to be able to veto the engineering of population numbers upwards by governments and big business. Compromising the environment for economic and population growth erodes human rights and then the humane treatment of other creatures becomes even less likely thus increasing total suffering. [Article adapted from a speech by Jill Quirk of Sustainable Population Australia, Victorian and Tasmanian Branch to the Victorian Humanists, on 25 April, 2014.]

Definitions:
Environment: The place and the medium in which we and our fellow creatures live. It covers the land surface and underneath the earth, the sea, rivers and lakes and the Earth’s atmosphere. One can think of all life, including humans as being an intrinsic part of the environment.

Human population: Homo Sapiens – (a type of ape) their numbers, locally and globally and their movement from one place to another.

The State: All citizens of a place identifying as a unit/country. It is an abstract concept. Note that The State is not the government and governments act within the State.

Ethics

Ethics, is a branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending and recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct, often addressing disputes ofmoral diversity.[…]Philosophical ethics investigates what is the best way for humans to live, and what kinds of actions are right or wrong in particular circumstances. (Wikipedia)

So ethics is to do with acting in right and wrong ways – which is usually a decision to be made with respect to others, how we treat them and how we affect them. I will say that at the its most minimal it is about not doing harm or causing suffering and at its most elevated, it is about doing good for others and improving a situation for them or righting a wrong if it is within our powers.

Environmental ethics

Environmental ethics is the part of environmental philosophy which considers extending the traditional boundaries of ethics from solely including humans to including the non-human world. (Wikipedia )

Background

The rock called Earth spinning on its axis and travelling on its orbit around a star we call The Sun is all we have and know as a place to live and survive in. (despite recent discovery of the Earth-like planet 500 light years away) Earth’s environment, the crust and atmosphere as well as the life thereon is deteriorating on every measure one can think of e.g. (globally) - forest cover, climate change, water quality, desertification, biodiversity loss, extinctions and contamination from nuclear oil spills.

The island continent of Australia suffers many of these problems and more e.g. salinity of soils, deteriorating coastal areas, damage to coral reefs and world record biodiversity loss. Humans are causing all of this destruction either directly or indirectly, inadvertently or deliberately.

This may seem a series of very extreme assertions but unfortunately, I doubt that they can be shown to be wrong.

Population

Human numbers have increased dramatically over the last 300 years from 1 billion to over 7 billion and continue to increase.

This growth in numbers took off in Britain after the beginning of the Industrial revolution when industrialisation fuelled by the use of coal meant that farm work now done largely by machines displaced peasants from the land to live in the cities and work in factories. This movement of people began the urbanisation process we see continuing in many other countries today. It is a process where people who previously lived amongst other people they knew in a familiar landscape and married not too far from where they were born, found themselves without their familiar references. This sparked off a population explosion. After all in a crowded city of strangers there are no holds barred on permitted marriage opportunities. This is a vastly simplified sketch of the situation- you can read more in Demography, Territory and law by Sheila Newman

The people of many lands far distant from Britain suffered terribly from invasion as a result of this. The furthest habitable continent, a largely arid and infertile place now called Australia was at this time, home to up to 3 million people (The Australian Aborigines) and had been for between 40-60 thousand years. (Estimations of how many Aborigines lived in Australia prior to European occupation vary between 300,000, through 1.3m to 3m. The largest estimate is by Jim Poulter. See "The smallpox holocaust that swept Aboriginal Australia - Red hot echidna spikes are burning me"

From all accounts the Australian Aborigines had been living in fairly constant numbers in a logical distribution, according the fertility and rainfall patterns since they established themselves on this continent. These patterns were much as the distribution of the human population today but in far fewer numbers. It was not a nation as we know them today but a series of different nations within the continent.

Thus as there was a population explosion in Britain, in Australia, life went on as usual…….Until the unwitting inhabitants sorely and most unfairly felt the consequences.

The Britain and Australia comparison is a stark example of how human populations grow at different rates at different times and in different places on Earth.

The world’s population now grows at about 80 million per year but the growth is not evenly distributed.

Globally Australia’s growth is higher than just over half the nations of the world. It has the highest population growth in the developed world, hovering around 1.8% p.a., doubling each 39 years (according to ABS statistics). Compare this with France at around 0.4-0.5% p.a. (doubling in 140 years).[1]

Government influence over population growth within a state.

Government policies can radically affect a nation’s population trajectory.
These largely come down to

1. The presence or absence of “Pro- natalist” policies-eg.rewards for having babies and
2. High or low immigration policies.

Australia’s rapid population growth is very much influenced by government policies, especially immigration. 60% of Australia’s population growth is from this source. John Howard as Prime Minster greatly increased immigration levels and this was continued by PMs Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, and Tony Abbott.

Note low immigration under Gough Whitlam

Population engineering propaganda

Peter Costello, Federal Treasurer

Past treasurer of Australia, Peter Costello, in 2004 urged young families to have “one child for Mum, one for Dad and one for the country”. At this time as it is now, Australia’s population was growing at well over 100,000 p.a. (now about 150,000) from “natural increase” alone births over deaths) quite apart from immigration. But Peter Costello pretended that only immigration was keeping Australia growing!

Costello wrote in a Foreword to The Australia Day supplement for the Sydney Morning Herald, 2006, that  "Our national fertility rate (1.75 babies a couple) is less than the replacement level. Only immigration is making our country grow." 
In fact, Australia grew by 237,100 people at a rate of 1.2%. Natural increase contributed 127,000 and NOM 110,101. Thus natural increase contributed 53.6%.  [And now it is only 40%)
Steve Bracks, Victorian Premier

Around the same time, Victorian premier Steve Bracks, on ABC radio announced that Victoria had more deaths than births. Anyone can make a mistake but to deliberately say such a thing when the complete opposite was true needed a retraction. I wrote to the premier giving him the true recent figures for Victoria (62,000 births and 33, 200 deaths = 28,800 net increase) but I never received a reply. I sent a copy to the then state opposition leader, Robert Doyle who replied, acknowledging that I was correct and that his opposite number was wrong. I am sure it gave him pleasure to write this!

Peter Costello anyway wanted even more births than the Australia wide huge surplus (births over deaths) that we already had and the Baby Bonus was born. [2]

In Australia after the introduction of the Baby Bonus the number of births went from 254,246 in 2004 to 265,949 in 2006. Up by 11,703. That is not to say that the baby bonus was 100% responsible for this increase as other factors could have influenced it. E.g. Virginia Abernethy’s “fertility opportunity theory” says that people will have the number of children they anticipate that they can raise and thus their fertility will be influenced by their future expectations. This can mean economic news, the expectation of an inheritance, anticipated education expenses, even expressed willingness on the part of grandparents to mind children in working hours.

But the intention of the Peter Costello’s “Baby Bonus” was to increase the country’s human fertility. This is government engineering of the fertility rate.

Australia’s population has gone from 19.2 million in 2000 to nearly 23.5 million now in 2014 and is now the highest growth rate in the OECD, a similar rate to many 'third world' countries.

This number of humans and their activities are damaging Australia’s fragile environment.

What are the ethical considerations?

All of us in this room would probably consider ourselves good, well-intentioned, ethical people. We would not harm anyone we know and we would want the best for all of them. Do we extend our comforting, helpful, improving and not- harming attitude and behaviour only towards one species, our own or do we extend it to our fellow creatures? And should our efforts at not harming but doing our best for the well-being of others be only for those living now or also for coming generations who have no say in decisions made now which affect them?

How do we act, then with respect to ourselves, other people including future generations, other creatures, our environment and our population numbers within the State?

How big is our sphere of influence?

In discussing this we, as individuals need to look at our own sphere of influence. How big is it, really?

At a Nation State level, our sphere of influence is as big as governments and ruling elites within the State will allow and on our level of resources. Most of us can take care of our immediate family but going further than this, to extended family and /or friends requires greater resources. Taking care of the immediate environment where you live and protecting it for your own descendants can be very problematic requiring organisation of other locals and an effective democratic process of self- government. Often people fail to save for future generations the piece of nature that they have enjoyed because of failings in any of these areas.

Individuals can spend much of their time and energy trying to save natural areas or an example of Heritage which they value –e.g. Jill Redwood of EEG, the forests of East Gippsland, Julianne Bell, Royal Park, Jenny Warfe, Port Phillip Bay from channel deepening, Gloria O’Connor in Pakenham area saving public assets on public land for the community Sheila Newman and James Sinnamon telling the stories of many of these through an alternative medium candobetter.net. MP Kelvin Thomson devotes enormous energy to saving Victoria’s environment, Ian Bird as a guardian of Carlton heritage etc. Many of these people’s crusades have continued for decades in the face of many discouraging failures.

As David Suzuki said “In the environmental movement, every time you lose a battle it's for good, but our victories always seem to be temporary and we keep fighting them over and over again.”

Effects of lost environmental battles, population growth and development.

There have in fact been plenty of defeats and they are permanent. Just locally, most planning cases at VCAT are lost by the objectors, Lake Pedder in Tasmania was flooded, for hydro-electricity (although the Gordon River area was saved), Port Phillip Bay channel deepening involving massive blasting at the Heads proceeded and it does not stop there. Next it will be the sensitive area of Hastings. Pre- settlement woodland at the Westerfield property was annihilated for the Peninsular Link freeway after sustained and strong community objection. Bastion Point boat ramp at Mallacoota, strongly opposed involving removal of 3,500 cubic meters of rocky reef is going ahead.

The original environments can never be restored.

In Australia, it seems that the citizens’ sphere of influence is small.

The loss of natural areas results in biodiversity loss and suffering of other creatures. When a forest is felled, the inhabitants do not survive. They die painful deaths from, poisoning, starvation, being run over or cut up by machinery. The probable scrapping of the Forests Peace Deal in Tasmania will, undoubtedly increase this destruction and suffering on an island that is world heritage famous for its forests.

The benefits of logging for the bulk of Australians are very dubious but those opposed to logging were, it seems only able to get a temporary stay of execution for many of the forests in Tasmania.

None of us would be pleased to know that on every parameter, Victoria’s environment is in decline because of human population pressures but most of us have no say in the level of population growth.

The Commissioner’s forward to the first Victorian State of the Environment report, 2008 says

“Victoria is the most developed state in Australia and its natural environment has been heavily modified from the time of European settlement. This State of the Environment report reflects the simple fact that most areas of the state are highly stressed. Most natural vegetation, waterways, wetlands, coasts and rivers are reported in a parlous condition.”
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/environment-call-to-improve-states-health-20131128-2ye5t.html

Other quotes within the report are :

“Population growth, settlement and consumption patterns and climate change are the key drivers of environmental degradation in Victoria”

“Victoria’s population growth, increasing affluence and the expansion of our cities and towns have contributed unsustainable levels of resource consumption and waste production.”

“Energy generation and consumption is the single largest component of Victoria’s ecological footprint.”

“Consumption drives the modification of our waterways and is an environmental pressure in itself “

The 2013 State of the Environment (SOE) Report reveals that the state of threatened species, energy use and waste generation have all got worse. There is no change in the state of marine and coastal ecosystems or of freshwater aquatic systems. The 2008 report should have put governments on an emergency footing but the environment seems to have low priority otherwise we might have done better.

Population pressures of course continue to increase.

Rapid population growth in Victoria has also led to rising demand for land and thus, relative land scarcity and fast increasing land prices. This in itself brings human hardship with mortgage and rent stress, homelessness and narrowed profit margins for local business.

Other creatures suffer even more from human population growth.

Farm animals

Pressure on land has meant farming has become increasingly intensive with, for example laying hens living their whole lives in small cages, never being able to extend their wings or put their feet on the ground. To put it simply, their lives are hell.

Pigs spend significant portions of their lives in confined spaces, sows giving birth and then feeding their young through metal grates. Pigs in agriculture used to, in the past have some sort of normal life before being slaughtered for our consumption.

Native wild life

The other iconic animal to suffer immensely through human population growth is the graceful kangaroo. Presenter Ali Moore blithely said on ABC radio recently, in defence of their being shot that we could not compare this issue with that of whaling (the topic under discussion) as “we have so many of them.” (kangaroos)

We think there are “so many” because they get in the way of our own activities and population growth. There is actually a dearth of accurate information on kangaroo numbers. Kangaroos occupy land which humans would like to see empty. Around Canberra land is required to be empty to make way for housing, roads and airports for more human population growth because this is a way for the state to get more stamp duty and for property developers and financiers to get more action.

The Federal Minister for the Environment has refused to help the survival of the Southern Brown bandicoot in Victoria on the basis that he is the local member for Flinders where wildlife corridors, previously guaranteed will be annihilated for housing for ever increasing population.

This seems to say that he cannot be objective about his own patch and is to me a case where objectivity or disinterest is not required at all.

The outlook is bleak for our native animals with increasing habitat loss let alone deliberate shooting.
Governments could act to right these wrongs but too frequently, they do not.

Why are these ethical issues?

1.The way we treat our farm animals causes life long suffering. Pressure on land from a rising human population is not an excuse for the terrible treatment of these animals but for commercial interest, people will often do what they can get away with according to the law. If land for these enterprises were in abundance and therefore cheap, laws could more easily be changed and in any case, even the most insensitive famer would not have the need to economise by reducing standards to rock bottom.

2. For our native wild life, losing habitat and being shot or poisoned are both painful and then fatal to the animal. Remaining animals after “culling” i.e. incomplete extermination suffer disorganisation and fragmented families. Young kangaroos are left to die, sexual maturity is then reached too early when older animals are shot and as social animals, kangaroos have no-one to help and teach them to raise their young ref. (Faces in the mob)
3. Animals that die out from habitat loss become very difficult or almost impossible to preserve as a species or to re-introduce to another location if there is one.

Other than the charismatic recognisable faces or feathers of animals such as the Tasmanian Devil and birds such as the Orange Bellied Parrot, biodiversity such as trees, grasses, small bushes , flowers, and micro – organisms, small insects etc. are lost when land is taken over for human activities, particularly with invasive all- consuming constructions such as a roads, dams, housing and shopping centres. When compounded, these losses seriously impact on human welfare too both in a psychological /spiritual sense as well as a utilitarian one. (Bats have an important role in forest regeneration and pollination insectivorous micro bats who keep insect populations, especially mosquitos down.)

4.The loss of species affects future human generations who will never see them and will be deprived of benefits without having a say. Humans living right now are being denied access to and experience of nature. Experience of nature is everyone’s right and our collective responsibility to preserve.

We need access to nature in its entirety, not just to an approximation and simplified version of its former richness. omit?

How are we to act?

No sane, sensitive person would want to leave a poorer environment for their descendants than that which they inherited and have enjoyed, surely? They would not knowingly and purposely put their own descendants in peril because of a ruined environment ….would they?

Most of us are not actually or actively doing this. Neither are we irresponsibly having large families, despite “Baby Bonuses”. Most of us are not actively doing anything towards increasing Australia’s population at a 3rd world rate.

BUT most of us are not doing anything to stop it, either.

Records of Australia soon after European settlement

The Aborigines lived on this continent for aeons before European invasion, changing it possibly quite dramatically but not ruining it. They were probably the cause of the “mega fauna” going extinct (as it seems humans were responsible for similar in Europe with the sabre toothed tiger and the woolly mammoth for example) However, the continent was in pretty good shape when Europeans arrived.

The first -hand descriptions of the lush landscape and wild life in what is now Melbourne are compelling.

Contemporary Australia

We have to admit that by comparison, the area is now a desert and what little is left of nature is on borrowed time because of population growth. Melbourne could be a city of 20 million people and growing by the end of this century if current growth rates continue.

Australia now has a very high rate of population growth, 40% from natural increase and 60% from net immigration. Only a small percentage of immigrants are in the humanitarian intake.

Much of Australia is dry and infertile and cannot be compared with Europe in terms of human carrying capacity as many like to do. Population pressures as well as very intrusive activities such as mining and logging are damaging our environment. Recent high rates if continued would see Australia’s population at over 46 million by the middle of the century.

Why are we either not trying or being singularly unsuccessful in protecting our environment for future generations? Few would argue that this is not an imperative, not just to give future generations pleasure and allow them their birthright but with environmental uncertainties and looming resource scarcities especially oil to actually allow them to survive? Most of us are fairly well- meaning responsible, ethical individuals. So, why is our environment collapsing around us and why are we facing increasing and eventually uncontrollable overpopulation?

I would suggest that it is because we either don’t know how things work or we don’t know how to overcome forces that act against our interests.

What makes it difficult for us to act?

We can observe changes in our immediate environment and in places we visit repeatedly over time but other than our direct experience, we need information.

Insufficient and misleading/partial information

Newspapers, TV, radio on the whole do not give a rounded picture of many issues. This becomes apparent when you have particular specialised knowledge of something and then you read about it in the newspaper and see that the picture given is often unrealistic. Why wasn’t the State of the Environment Report 2008 trumpeted in headlines? I bet most people in this room have not heard of it. The 2013 one showed the overall picture has not improved and in fact is mostly deteriorating. Despite the concern a few decades ago as to what we would do with all the increased leisure we would have with advances in technology, most of us suffer from a lack of time, to seek accurate pertinent facts about issues which affect us or a lack of curiosity and a general inclination to trust mainstream info. Australian Murdoch and Fairfax Mass media have vested interests in population growth, most of which we cannot ascertain. However their investment in property development, finance and sales is obvious. These media corporations own Australia's major property marketing sites: Domaine.com.au and Realestate.com.au .

Subtle censorship

For reasons we all would recognise, it has been very hard to talk about population growth even amongst our friends for fear of sounding politically incorrect. This ridiculous situation has been engineered by the media with vested interests over years and is now virtually unassailable. It is puerile and has silenced us in talking about now and our future. By that I mean the future of everyone permanently living in Australia today.

We have also been censored by the much publicised and unhappy asylum seeker issue. Unfortunate people seeking shelter have been cynically used by governments, starting with John Howard. It was obvious to members of SPA that the asylum seekers arriving in small numbers were being used cruelly as scapegoats and a distraction from simultaneous very high planned economic immigration. John Howard made it official in an interview on ABC RN with Fran Kelly in January this year on the subject of asylum seekers arriving by boat from Indonesia.

He said:

“The more people think our borders are being controlled, the more supportive they are, in the long term of high levels of immigration. Australia needs a high level of immigration. I’m a high immigration man. I practiced that in government, and one of the ways that you maintain public support for that is to communicate to the Australian people a capacity to control our borders and to decide who and what people and when come to this country.”

This tactic, aided and abetted by the mainstream media has given Australians the impression that asylum seekers /refugees = the totality of immigration to Australia and that because many are uninvited they will be treated harshly. In fact refugees/asylum seekers = about 6% of total immigration intake.- The Gillard government increased the refugee quota from 13,750 p.a. to 20,000 p.a Tony Abbott said he would reduce this back to 13,750.

It is no coincidence that the asylum seeker streams are from the countries with whom we are or have been at war: Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, The refugee issue is muddied by both misleading information and censorship which stifle discussion on Australia’s population size. This issue, amongst fair minded people has become self-censoring on population. Some see the government treatment of asylum seekers as conveyed through the media as unacceptable. Others see asylum seekers as a threat are often unaware of the relatively small numbers in the context of a very large, planned economic immigration program and they applaud a tough stance.

Whichever way one is affected by this, one needs to have an idea of numbers to evaluate the situation and to discuss the issue of population in a rational way. It is easier in nearly all circumstances to let the topic drop even though continued high population growth (hardly any from refugee numbers) is damaging.

The issue of the treatment and processing of asylum seekers, their being admitted to Australia and the quotas for refugees is an ethical issue with respect to these people in the context of the number of refugees worldwide and the available places of asylum.

The size of planned economic immigration intakes - is an ethical issue with respect to the incumbent residents of the destination country, their welfare, and the welfare of future generations. This needs to be considered in the context of the sustainable carrying capacity. Consider also that each additional person in Australia requires $200,000 to $300,000 of infrastructure and services. This must be in place before arrival if we are not to be always in arrears and have people suffer.

Planned economic immigration is to provide business with plenty of labour, property investors with high demand, or business with capital, and universities with fee paying students. As well as New Zealanders who can come or go at will account for most of Australia’s migrant intake and about 60% of the country’s population growth.
(RE NZ- much less often do Australians take advantage of the “Trans-Tasman Arrangement”) (NZ has a significant through-put from elsewhere who then come to OZ.)

It is hard to for us organise.

There are many environmental groups valiantly beavering away all through Victoria trying to save parks , forests , creeks, Green Wedges etc. but all efforts are ultimately doomed if Melbourne is to proceed to being a megalopolis of 20 million and rising by the end of the century , which it will be if present growth rates continue. On the whole, these environmental groups are silenced on the issue of population because it is politically incorrect and because the information is confusing .When it comes to the crunch, saying the “right thing” is more important to many than saying what is true which is that if human population growth continues, all our environmental battles will be lost. Larger environmental organisations such as the ACF and Environment Victoria are also silenced on the issue, presumably because of the need to secure funding from pro big Australia governments and business sponsors
These are the reasons it is hard to act but what happens if we do act? Who is driving population growth? Who is driving Australia to a future of environmental destruction and who would we be up against if we could organise ourselves to speak up?

None of us who do not benefit financially from population growth want Australia’s environment to be further destroyed. We are all sane ethical people who want to leave future generations with a place to live which has some resemblance to the place we inherited and one which can sustain them. Most of us would want our unique Australia fauna and flora to be part of the future environment. Since that is NOT the direction we are going in, we have to conclude that these things are either not important to or are not understood by those who have more say in our lives and future than we do. I say this because we can be fairly sure that most Australians are not happy about Australia heading down a path towards “Big Australia” (Betts and Birrel survey 2008, Galaxy Poll 2010, ANU 2010 ) yet that is where we are going!

Some people have more say than the rest of us. Why would they do this? Why would they want this? Do they not care ? Who are they? How do they get their wants translated into government programs and policy?

Why?

The reason you get an unpopular outcome in a supposedly democratic country is because the outcome carries focused financial benefits for a few who can recognise and organise to maintain and increase their benefits in a situation where the costs of this unpopular outcome are diffuse and their origin is not easily recognised.[3] Groups that are organised with a pro-growth agenda are Housing Industry of Australia, banks, Property Council of Australia, APOP, Committee for Melbourne etc.

What about the ethical considerations of population growth and environment in other countries and their governments?

As I said earlier, the Earth’s environment is deteriorating All problems can be traced back to the activities of HS (Homo Sapeins) . The more people there are the greater the demands from the environment. We, in Australia seem to have no ability to stabilise our population and are told by government and media that it is good to grow.

China

The government of China has been aware for decades that the rate of population growth in that country was too high and they introduced a “one child policy”. This seems draconian to us but it has saved them about 300,000,000 in population to date. Note that China’s population was relatively small until the 16 century and colonisation. This century, Chairman Mao decided to grow the population, believing that big populations lead to big productive economies. Very soon China’s population growth was out of control creating a social environment tolerant of draconian population control methods.

Australian business leaders have the same concept that big= rich and this belief will lead to China’s problem.

India

India has never had a "one child policy" and its population has ballooned, however the government must now be aware of the need for family planning as there evidence of it playing a role in helping people with this. India too had a sustainable population until colonisation.

HJS Maine was a contemporary expert in comparative law who made some big theoretical advances on how the replacement of property inheritance by the commodification of property underlay the creation of private property. He thought this was a great idea and he was the major responsible for the codification of Indian law under British colonialism, making India's property laws more capitalistic, like those in Britain[4]

Western Continental Europe

Populations in Western European countries grow slowly or are stable and on course to decline to stable pre- industrial era proportions . Contrastingly, populations of Britain, US and Canada grow fast (but not as fast as that of Australia).

Although the world’s population continues to grow, the actual rate of growth is slowing but because of the huge global population, each new billion people are added at very short intervals – under 15 years. Compare this with the first billion at 1804 and the second billion in 1927, 123 years later The fact that population growth is slowing means that the maximum is in sight. (Unless Australia, USA and Canada allow their populations to blow out of control) How this growth will end is a matter of conjecture depending on available food, possibly the effects of climate change or some other disaster like a breakdown in “the web of life”.

Global human population growth has been a disaster for other life forms and the environment in general. It has in many countries also been a disaster for humanity. Most of the population growth has occurred since 1700 accelerating through the 20th century. If we go back before 1800 when the world reached its first billion people, Africa was not overpopulated and poor. It had bountiful energy -intensive biota (e.g. large carnivores e.g. lions, cheeetahs and leopards as well as large herbovires such as giraffes, zebra, rhinoceros , elephants ) in a fully functioning ecology. It cannot have been overpopulated in today’s terms since the whole global population was “only” 1 billion. Africa is now a continent of over 1 billion. From estimates it seems it was about 1/10 the current population in 1800. Europe back in 1800 was home to about 203,000,000 people and lots of large animals such as bears and wolves and is now well over 700,000,000 but destined to slowly decline. Europe is not trying to grow its population.

I will assume that I have convinced you that the prospect of the human population reaching a maximum and then either stabilising or declining is a good thing. The lowest maximum at the earliest date would also be the best thing for the environment, for people and for other species. This may seem an overwhelming issue over which we have no control. The strange thing is that people did once have control of their populations.

This is clear and obvious from the global population numbers through time that countries now overpopulated have become so fairly recently. How populations were able to control numbers locally is the subject of a book: S.M. Newman, Demography, Territory and Law: The Rules of Animal and Human Populations, Countershock Press, 2014.

Without going into the detail that it would entail as to how this worked, let's accept that most small communities in most countries have been disrupted especially in the last few centuries and mechanisms that worked for aeons have been corrupted.

Sustainable Population Australia has for the last few years been actively involved in a campaign to put the global population issue on agenda of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change- (Note that 2 of the authors of the latest report have said that population growth and economic growth or development drive GGEs.) SPA’s is an ambitious and expensive enterprise which most of us cannot even contemplate, it seems that the best thing that the rest of us mortals can do is to come to grips intellectually with what has happened to bring us to the terrifying place we are now.

Age of extinctions

I say it is terrifying because we are in a great age of extinctions, with Australia leading the charge. Climate change seems to be a reality and a very dramatic one with unpredictable and far reaching consequences World hunger has not improved and the task of increasing food production for an even greater world population is, to say the least, extremely challenging and will no doubt mean further environmental degradation as crops and raising of animals for meat means land must be taken over for these purposes.

Oil

Finally, the liquid that fuelled the last few decades of world population growth, oil, is a finite resource and we’ve burnt a hell of a lot of it. The easy- to- obtain oil is dwindling; otherwise oil exploration companies would not be resorting to sources deep in sea beds or requiring elaborate practices to extract (shale oil) nor overriding property rights and democracy to extract coal gas.

When more energy is required to extract the substance than the amount of energy extracted it will be the end. I don’t know when that will be but it must be on the horizon. When this happens, it is not just a matter of us all converting to battery powered cars, it affects world food production. Since 2008 there have been riots over the cost of cooking fuel in poor countries where cars are hardly an issue.

It is said that “modern agriculture is the process of turning oil into food”.

Some also say on the subject of oil depletion that

“The stone age didn’t end because they ran out of stones.”

This quip is to point out the ingenuity and inventiveness of the humans. But we cannot afford the luxury of such complacency. The situation is now perilous for millions if not billions of people if not enough food is produced. Already about one billion people are either hungry or under nourished.

Mass commercial agriculture also overturns local people’s capacity to provide food for themselves, by taking over land and patenting species of grain and other foods.

The world’s population needs to be allowed to decline and then stabilise at lower and safer levels as soon as possible to minimise human suffering. People need to have enough self-governing power to be able to veto the engineering of population numbers upwards by governments and big business. Compromising the environment for economic and population growth erodes human rights and then the humane treatment of other creatures becomes even less likely thus increasing total suffering.

This is an ethical issue.

NOTES

[1]The nation with the highest growth in the world is Qatar at 4.93% p.a. Lower growth countries are Denmark 0.24, Greece, 0.06, Italy, 0.38 and then some countries are not growing at all but their populations are falling- Russia -0.01, Japan -0.08, Cuba – 0.12 and Cook Islands -3.14. http://www.photius.com/rankings/population/population_growth_rate_2013_0.html
These figures are a bit rough as this site underestimates Australia’s growth rate, but the order of is most likely to be indicative.

[2]http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/BudgetReview201314/BabyBonus

[3] See, Newman, S.M., The Growth Lobby in Australia and its Absence in France, Research thesis in Environmental Sociology, 2002, Swinburne University.
[4] Newman, S.M., Demography, Territory, Law: Land Tenure and the Origins of Capitalism in Britain, Candobetter.net, forthcoming publication 2014, (Advance copy) p.112.

The problem is that once you entrust growth of the population and future direction to powerful individuals, whether in the government or in business, the ordinary people lose their right and ability to secure their own future. Having a system whereby a nation is subject to arbitrary population policy is a crime against that nation of people. Period. Policy which may influence birth rates through incentives or disincentives is different, as population in those cases is still determined by people’s individual reproductive choices. The future of a population of people is no longer in the hands of the people who share its future, but in those who may only see the people as a resource, or worse still, only see the state as a resource and people as merely human assets. People then become interchangeable and replaceable. A subtle, but very significant shift happens here. The identity of the people, the nation itself, the nation of people no longer exists in a political sense. The country has changed from being a tool of a people to organise themselves and to serve them, to a resource controlled by a few, whose make up is arbitrary and can be changed at will. All that matters now is numbers, and some will argue the population should be higher, others lower, but this is now all done from the perspective of the needs of the economy and the needs of the system. The people essentially hand themselves over and are now owned by state and government interests. Whether the state is a democracy or not, whether it has been popularly voted it or not doesn't matter. No individual should have the right to decide the fate of a people.

This has been happening for some time in the West and is so obvious, that no one sees it any more. But if, for example, you took control of Nepal and convinced them to have a population policy, and that the primary political endeavour would be to expand "Nepal" economically and structurally, then you would have essentially changed the nation to one which exists for its own sake because it is a nation of people, to one which is working for defined objectives (Growth, etc.). The people are now a means to an ends, rather than the ends in themselves. Now having established that, you can implement any legal population policy you like, even if it is one which results in rapid growth and in the original population becoming a minority or even being assimilated into the population you constructed and defined. You have also severely undermined the moral authority of the people to oppose you. You can even go further, and accuse those who object of undermining the country’s future.

This is an act of hostility against the nation, but by getting people to accept the premise that "Nepal" can and should be run as an enterprise, rather than be acknowledged as a nation of people, they've tacitly accepted this fate. If my goal was to engineer, modify the nation, or even completely change it demographically, I have targeted them, their way of life and identity for destruction. If one’s vision of 'progress' however involves destruction, destruction of suburbs, of parks, of heritage buildings and open spaces which people enjoy, why wouldn't it extend to include people? But there is a significant difference. One can own a building, and while it is a shame to allow people to destroy a building of beauty for gaudy apartment blocks, their ownership fits in with our morality.

But can one own a people? Does someone have the same right to engineer or change a population) the way they do their possessions? I argue they do not, and that being democratically elected does not grant one that right. Elected or not, no one has a right to decide for a people what their future is. Countries don't create nations. Nations of people create countries. Therefore the government which runs a country has no right to engineer a nation. Whether it is the Japanese nation, German or Kenyan, their respective government cannot assume the right to change the make up of the nations they are responsible for. The people of those nations must therefore call their governments out when they assume powers that aren't theirs.

We, however, are discouraged from looking at the issue in this manner. "Practicality" we are told, must trump all. But does economic benefit, growth or the housing industry justify this? Is it acceptable to reshape humanity, or sections of it for these purposes, or allow this to happen because of your policy?

We can see a more recent, clear example here.

This conference believes that the destiny of the natives of Aboriginal origin, but not of the full blood, lies in their ultimate absorption by the people of the Commonwealth and it therefore recommends that all efforts be directed to that end. Nobody who knows about these groups could deny that their members are socially and culturally deprived. We must improve their lot so that they can take their place economically and socially in the general community. Once this is done, the breakup of such groups will be rapid. [1] [2]

This was viewed by some as genocide, but not through killing or displacement, but by engineering the population. This was a deliberate attempt, but what if it was just promoted as an ideal? What if the government gave incentives for people to move to make this happen? What if the government marginalised Aboriginals who objected as being backward and intolerant of change? Are there any circumstances by which this goal could be achieved, and this be considered acceptable? I would argue not, and most people would likely agree.

We must be aware of the potential problems that can occur through poor 'population policy'. We should analyse it not just on economic and practical terms, but make those who promote policy accountable for the cultural and national impact that such policies have. If those policies pose threats to an identifiable group of people, then we must hold people who propose such policies morally accountable. This seems odd, as in the West we have been conditioned not to view ourselves this way. Populations always change over time, naturally, this is to be expected. But there is a smooth continuum from natural change, to forced change, from the migrations of people westwards into Europe prior to the establishment of civilisation, to forced assimilation to “breed out the black”. Between these two, there is a vast grey area, an area where it easy to move from acceptable to unacceptable. Where change can turn from natural to forced. Where demographic change can turn from natural evolution to forced engineering, as is happening in the West.

The idea of 'population policy', the tool that governments use to move masses of people can easily swing us from acceptable to unacceptable. It is this we must be wary of, and be willing to call our elected leaders out on.

NOTES

[1] http://www.stolengenerations.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=140&Itemid=109

[2] http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/resources/pdfs/52.pdf

Nelson Mandela is dead and, despite his immense charisma, intellect, capability and courage, Africa remains poor, divided, overpopulated and spectacularly unhealthy. In her monumental book, The Shock Doctrine, Penguin, 2007, Naomi Klein told how economists got control of the details of the revolution during handover negotiations, blinded revolutionaries with their sophistry, and tied it up in red tape. They actually returned the management of the central bank to its apartheid boss. This article is an excerpt from pp200-204 of the chapter in The Shock Doctrine entitled, 'Democracy born in chains.' The greatest loss to the African Revolution was that by the time Mandela rose to power, his government no longer had the right to redistribute land - which is the essence of revolutionary government.

"[...] the de Klerk government had a twofold strategy. First, drawing on the ascendant Washington consensus that there was now only one way to run an economy, it portrayed key sectors of economic decision making - such as trade policy and the central bank - as 'technical' or 'administrative.' Then it used a wide range of new policy tools - international trade agreements, innovations in constitutional law and structural adjustment programs - to hand control of those power centers to supposedly impartial experts, economists and officials from the IMF, the World Bank, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the National Party - anyone except the liberation fighters from the ANC. It was a strategy of balkanization, not of the country's geography (as de Klerk had originally attempted) but of its economy.

This plan was successfully executed under the noses of ANC leaders, who were naturally preoccupied with winning the battle to control Parliament. In the process, the ANC failed to protect itself against a far more insidious strategy - in essence, an elaborate insurance plan against the economic clauses in the Freedom Charter every becoming law in South Africa. "The people shall govern!" would soon become a reality, but the sphere over which they would govern was shrinking fast.

While these tense negotiations between adversaries were unfolding, the ANC was also busily preparing within its own ranks for the day when it would take office. Teams of ANC economists and lawyers formed working groups charged with figuring out exactly how to turn the general promises of the Freedom Charter - for housing amenities and health care - into practical policies. The most ambitious of these plans was Make Democracy Work, an economic blueprint for South Africa's post apartheid future, written while the high-level negotiations were taking place. What the party loyalists didn't know at the time was that while they were hatching their ambitious plans, the negotiating team was accepting concessions at the bargaining table that would make their implementation a practical impossibility. "It was dead before it was even launched," the economist Vishnu Padayachee told me of Make Democracy Work. By the time the draft was complete, "there was a new ball game."

[...]

"We were caught completely off guard," recalled Padayachee, now in his early fifties. He had done his graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He knew that at the time, even among free-market economists in the U.S., central bank independence was considered a fringe idea, a pet policy of a handful of Chicago School ideologues who believed that central banks should be run as sovereign republics within states, out of reach of the meddling hands of elected lawmakers. For Padayachee and his colleagues, who strongly believed that monetary policy needed to serve the new government's 'big goals of growth, employment and redistribution,' the ANC's position was a no-brainer: "There was not going to be an independent central bank in South Africa."

Padayachee and a colleague stayed up all night writing a paper that gave the negotiating team the arguments it needed to resist this curveball from the national Party. If the central bank (in South Africa called the Reserve Bank) was run separately from the rest of the government, it could restrict the ANC's ability to keep the promises in the Freedom Charter. Besides, if the central bank was not accountable to the ANC government, to whom, exactly, would it be accountable? The IMF? The Johannesburg Stock Exchange? Obviously, the National Party was trying to find a backdoor way to hold on to power even after it lost the elections - a strategy that needed to be resisted at all costs. "They were locking in as much as possible," Padayachee recalled. "That was a clear part of the agenda."

Padayachee faxed the paper in the morning and didn't hear back for weeks. "Then, when we asked what happened, we were told, "Well, we gave that one up'." Not only would the central bank be run as an autonomous entity within the South African state, with its independence enshrined in the new constitution, but it would be headed by the same man who ran it under apartheid, Chris Stals. It wasn't just the central bank that the ANC had given up: in another major concession, Derek Keyes, the white finance minister under apartheid, would also remain in his post - much as the finance ministers and central bank heads from Argentina's dictatorship somehow managed to get their jobs back under democracy. The New York Times praised Keyes as "the country ranking apostle of low-spending business-friendly government."

Until that point, Padayachee said, "we were still buoyant, because, my God, this was a revolutionary struggle; at least there' be something to come out of it." When he learned that the central bank and the treasury would be run by their old apartheid bosses, it meant "everything would be lost in terms of economic transformation." When I asked him whether he thought the negotiators realised how much they had lost, after some hesitation, he replied, "Frankly, no." It was simple horse-trading: "In the negotiations, something had to be given, and our side gave those things - I’ll give you this, you give me that."

From Padayachee's point of view, none of this happened because of some grand betrayal on the part of ANC leaders but simply because they were out-maneuvered on a series of issues that seemed less than crucial at the time - but turned out to hold South Africa's lasting liberation in the balance.

What happened in those negotiations is that the ANC found itself caught in a new kind of web, one made of arcane rules and regulations, all designed to confine and constrain the power of elected leaders. As the web descended on the country, only a few people even noticed it was there, but when the new government came to power and tried to move freely, to give its voters the tangible benefits of liberation they expected and thought they had voted for, the strands of the web tightened and the administration discovered that its powers were tightly bound. Patrick Bond, who worked as an economic adviser in Mandela's office during the first years of ANC rule, recalls that the in-house quip was "Hey, we've got the state, where's the power?" As the new government attempted to make tangible the dreams of the Freedom Charter, it discovered that power was elsewhere.

Want to redistribute land? Impossible - at the last minute, the negotiators agreed to add a clause to the new constitution that protects all private property, making land reform virtually impossible. Want to create jobs for millions of unemployed workers? Can't - hundreds of factories were actually about to lose because the ANC had signed on to the GATT, the precursor to the World Trade Organisation, which made it illegal to subsidise the auto plants and textile factories. Want to get free AIDS drugs to the townships, where the disease is spreading with terrifying speed? That violates an intellectual property rights commitment under the WTO, which the ANC joined with no public debate as a continuation of the GATT. Need money to build more and larger houses for the poor and to bring free electricity to the townships? Sorry - the budget is being eaten up servicing the massive debt, passed on quietly by the apartheid government. Print more money? Tell that to the apartheid-era head of the central bank. Free water for all? Not likely. The World Bank, with its large in-country contingent of economists, researchers and trainers (a self-proclaimed "Knowledge Bank"), is making private-sector partnerships the service norm. Want to impose currency controls to guard against wild speculation? That would violate the $850 million IMF deal, signed, conveniently enough right before the elections. Raise the minimum wage to close the apartheid income gap? Nope. The IMF deal promises 'wage restraint.' And don't even think about ignoring these commitments - any change will be regarded as evidence of dangerous national untrustworthiness, a lack of commitment to 'reform' an absence of a 'rules-based system.' All of which will lead to currency crashes, aid cuts and capital flight. The bottom line was that South Africa was free but simultaneously captured; each one of these arcane acronyms represented a different thread in the web that pinned down the limbs of the new government.

A long time antiapartheid activist, Rassool Snyman, described the trap to me in stark terms. "They never freed us. They only took the chain from around our neck and put it on our ankles." Yasmin Sooka, a prominent South African human rights activist, told me that the transition 'was business saying, 'We'll keep everything and you [the ANC] will rule in name ... You can have political power, you can have the facade of governing, but the real governance will take place somewhere else. It was a process of infantilization that is common to so-called transitional countries - new governments are, in effect, given keys to the house but not the combination to the safe."

Click for French tv coverage

Airport closed by Islanders

In August this year (2009) Easter Islanders, who are mostly of Polynesian origin, 'closed' their island for 24 hours, blocking the one airport. Their purpose was to demand limits on immigration from Chili and on the length of time tourists might come and stay.

The were demonstrating because of the impact of tourism and population growth on the island. The French Press described it as a fear that their 'island paradise' might be lost, but we should remember that the Rapanuans, as the inhabitants of Easter Island probably prefer to be known, clawed back from the brink of extinction after overpopulation, nearly reduced their island to a desert in the 18th century, forcing some of their ancestors to survive by cannibalism. If this island has returned to paradise status, it has been dearly-won.

It is ironic that the island that the world knows as the most famous case of overpopulation should even have to ask for control over their population numbers, but inspiring that the Chilean government has recognised this right in a country not known for its attention to human rights.

According to the Blog for the Association of Adoptive Families of Children born in Chili, Rapanui Mayor, Luz Zasso Paoa, commented, "We depend for our heritage on sustainable development; we have to take care of resources such as water, energy and the managment of waste, reminding people that Rapanuians have been sounding this warning bell for ten years.

Illustration: Interactive Wikipedia map of Easter Island and its sights

Dangerously High European Immigration

The population has increased at a dangerously rapid pace, mainly due to the influx of people of European descent via the Chilean mainland. At the 2002 census there were 3,791 inhabitants, up from 1,936 inhabitants in 1982. By 2009 there were about 5000 inhabitants. Rapanui is 163.6 km2, with little fresh water.

The island is also losing its native Polynesian identity to European Chilean sea-changers. The native Polynesians (known as Rapanuians) have dwindled from around 70% in 1982, to 60% in the 2002 census. Chileans of European descent formed 39% of the population, with 1% Native American from mainland Chile.) (Source: Easter Island Article ID: 53418

Each year 50,000 tourists come to visit the beaches and volcanic landscapes which are world famous for their giant Moai statues of stone. Rapanui is 3,500km from the Chilean coast, once the most isolated island in the Pacific, and the last to be settled by Polynesians. Some theories have it that the islanders' ancestors chopped down the last trees in order to keep on making those statues. The statues stare out to sea like an island SETI program, as if signalling that the island was inhabited, hoping that this once most isolated island in the Pacific might to be found by other friendly Polynesians in the once endlessly large universe of the Pacific Ocean.

In fact the island was found by unfriendly Europeans and many of the islanders who had survived cannibalism and starvation, were taken away as slaves in the 18th century.

Today the stone statues are again attracting the wrong sort of crowd.

Easter Islanders get power to limit immigration to their island

In October this year, after public consultation, the people of Easter Island (Rapanui) approved a reform of the Chilean constitution which will give authorities on Easter Island more control over migration movements. This was an initiative of the Chilean Government, designed in response to Islander concerns about the impact on their ecosystem and culture of growth in tourism and immigration.

96% vote to restrict immigration and tourism

Some 1,300 - or more than 96% of voters welcomed the reform, according to Chilean media sources,

The Vice Minister of the Interior, Patricio Rosende, explained that the vote will "help to regulate the growth of the population of the island. It is a very fragile place which won't support an indeterminate number of permanent inhabitants."

In September the government had launched a system of immigration cards to control the reason, length of stay and place of stay for visitors, as a first step to control immigration traffic. The Supreme Court in early October had ruled that this idea was 'illegal and arbitrary in the name of freedome to come and go in the country.'

The vote in October would launch a process to revise the article in the Constitution which already recognises that Easter Island has a special status.

Source of above:"L'île de Pâques vote pour contrôler ses visiteurs," Agence France-Presse, Santiago, Publié le 27 octobre 2009 à 07h52 | Mis à jour le 27 octobre 2009 à 07h55 and France2 archived television video at http://info.francetelevisions.fr/video-info/index-fr.php?id-video=MAM_1500000000004645_200908181520_F2 Accessed on 27 December 2009. Easter Island Article ID: 53418

The Future Eating Syndrome

Nowhere is the ability of a system to limit growth more important than on isolated islands. The Pacific Islands were the last in the world to be severely disorganised by colonisation and the ideology of "Progress" so dear to the growth lobby. The destruction of their original societies was documented by many sources, including religious, commercial and anthropological. But the fact is, Easter Island's grisly history turns out to be the exception to the Pacific Islander rule - at least for those many island societies that survived well. Generally, Pacific Island societies have been the greatest survivors ever known, with some lasting more than 40,000 years. Even Hawaii had lasted for about 3000 years before the arrival of Europeans. Japan is another example of a Pacific island that succeeded for a very long time without overshooting its resources. No modern European society can claim anything like this success.

The Easter Island story is of the late colonisation by a single party of Polynesians of one of the most isolated islands in the Pacific.

It was so isolated that it is thought likely that no further traditional Polynesian colonisers ever arrived. Despite these inauspicious circumstances, this one party of Polynesians seeded a complex civilisation in 390 or 400AD which reached numbers between 7000 and 10,000, profiting from the abundant sea-life and productive vegetation. But the downfall of the Easter Islanders apparently lay in their very success, for they reputedly ate themselves out of house and home, finally dwindling to a handful of incestuous cannibals, surrounded by those mute giant statues which had been produced by their dead civilisation. By 1700 AD population had dropped from an estimated 10,000 to around one or two thousand. It is thought that no visitors landed until the first European voyagers in 1722 who described the straggling survivors of the former nation.

This form of death to a society by over consumption has been held up as the likely or even as the inescapable fate of modern man and consumer society by eco-gurus such as Jarad Diamond (Collapse) and Tim Flannery. Tim Flannery called it "Future Eating" in his famous 1994 book, The Future Eaters (Reed Books). In a series of international petroleum depletion discussion e-lists led initially by Jay Hansen of www.dieoff.org, Easter Island has been held up to illustrate the proposition that humans will always overshoot their environmental carrying capacity.

That people of 'progressive' cultures have so easily identified Pacific Island societies as hopelessly unsustainable lies in the severe dysfunction of most Pacific Islander cultures since the majority were exposed to 'Progress' through mostly British colonisation from the 1850s. The spectacular fate of the Easter Island, which was thought to have occurred before any colonisation, simply confirms in most "Progressive" peoples' minds that the poor Pacific islanders must always have existed in hopelessly dysfunctional societies, doomed to bloom and die like so many tropical blossoms, due to some innate lack of the progress gene.

But all Pacific islands did not end up like Easter Island. Most did not. So the whole proposition that Pacific Islanders are chronicly in need of direction from outsiders is flawed. And there must be an antidote to the Easter Island future-eating syndrome.

Australia is to be counted among the once-isolated islands of the Pacific and Australian Aborigines once used the same sustainable land-tenure and inheritance system as all other successful islanders. The Australian and New Guinean Lapita people were present in societies at least 40,000 years ago.

'Modern' Australia is a product of British colonial history and a victim of the British capitalist land-tenure and inheritance system. For all that it is bigger and more resourced than its smaller neighbours and for all that the white population far outnumbers the original black population, Australia is dogged by the same exploitation, overpopulation, and ruin as the other British-colonised islands. Because Australia is bigger than the other Pacific islands, its ruin is taking a little longer than some islands' and most of us cannot see that what is happening in our suburb is happening all over Australia's thin strip of fertile coast. Rest assured, however, that if we keep going as we are, we won't last nearly as long as Easter Island did before it crashed. And, what is happening to Australia is also happening to North America, Canada and Britain.

Wouldn't it be great if the people of Rapanui, having learned from the pain of being unfairly held up as an example to the world, were able to stop overpopulation destroying them a second time.

Let's wish them the best of luck and follow their example!

JUST PUBLISHED UPDATE:

UPDATE DEC 2012: If you would like to know more, Sheila Newman has applied a completely new test of the collapse model of Easter Island, which will stun those who thought they knew all about it. Read about this in chapter four of Demography, Territory & Law: The Rules of Animal and Human Populations (see link). Forensic biologist, Hans Brunner writes of it: "This book takes us to a completely new paradigm in multiple species population science. It shows how little we understand, and how much we need to know, of the sexual reactions when closed colonies with an orderly reproduction system are destroyed, be it people or animals." Two chapters are on multi-species demography, the rest apply the theory to non-industrial societies, including Rapanui

Many ordinary people and committed activists are despairing of parliamentary democracy in its current form but say “What else can we do?” So many things just happen without us feeling that we have had any say at all or that our concerns have been completely ignored. Many of our friends are deeply disheartened. We say the community can no longer rely on our elected representatives to make objective and reasonable decisions on our behalf and we have to do something different. At the moment it is democracy in name only. We really have no control over our elected representatives from one election to the next, and we no longer have the time to be patient with them for 4 years at a time.

Here are our major points:

* It is clear that politely attending EES hearings, submitting thoughtful and well researched responses, running peaceful rallies, letter writing campaigns and using the law to try to protect the environment has become a useless exercise. Indeed it’s only function has perhaps become to furnishing government with its “community consultation” obligations. Blue Wedges for example has tried all of the above for the last 5 years, including collecting around 60,000 signatures on two petitions, 10,000 letters to MPs, and demonstrating to a Parliamentary Inquiry that a project has no economic credibility, but still the development juggernaut rolls on and over us. Government has managed to turn what appears to be detailed “community consultation” into a box ticking exercise. So, rather than continue to merely engage in government’s paradigm, we need to start the conversation about a different paradigm for decision making on important issues.

* Politicians have made themselves increasingly inaccessible and impervious to their constituents’ views – they are now mostly irrelevant to most of us most of the time. They are only responding to the growth lobby and a few other noisy, demanding, irrational but powerfully connected minority groups. Our current parliamentary system, where for the 4 years of their incumbency, and where a politician has no obligation whatsoever to vote according to how she/he campaigned and was elected, or how the majority of their constituents might subsequently ask them to vote is no longer serving a useful purpose for most of us.

* Old growth logging, the Tamar Valley pulp mill, the channel deepening issue, De-Sal, North-South pipeline, and of course Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) have all had well run campaigns aimed at engaging our local MPs and government to at least consider alternatives. The unpopular and unnecessary policies and projects just roll on.

* Most recently Planning Minister Madden has even ignored the recommendations of two EES Panel Inquiries, which recommended against the development of Bastion Point Mallacoota and the Crib Point bitumen plant. It’s obvious that parliamentary democracy and its underpinning administrative processes no longer serve us on so many social and environmental issues. As Cr. Rosemary West said at the Planning Backlash Rally on 10th June, “Were any of us asked whether we wanted 5 million people in Melbourne by 2030 (now 2020)?” We weren't asked, and in the case of population growth we weren't even really told what was going to happen.

* All levels of government in Australia have powers to initiate referenda on any issue. With the host of unrepresentative decisions being made by people elected by us perhaps it is time to look at alternative decision making processes.

* Unfortunately under existing arrangements, in Australia a referendum will only be held if a government or local council determines that a poll should be held on an issue. In Victoria we have provision for referendums but unfortunately the decisions are not binding on government.

* Referenda are already in use in a number of countries around the world, including Switzerland and many states in the USA, and Australia, where in recent times referendums have been conducted in Western Australia, Queensland and Victoria. Some countries have Citizen’s Initiated Referenda (eg. California USA) and some, like Australia only conduct a referendum if initiated by a council or government.

* The state-wide issue of whether to adopt daylight savings was recently decided via referendum in WA, as well a local issue in the City of Box Hill regarding liquor licenses. It would be relatively simple to organise voting on federal, state and local issues, as most people now either have Internet access via a home computer or mobile phone, or can access a computer via a public library. Electronic voting could be managed by voters using of a unique ID number such as tax file or Medicare numbers (no sillier than in the 21st Century still queueing up at the local school to have your name manually ticked off an electoral role).

* Referendums would need to be properly constituted, conducted by the VEC or the affected LGA. A properly constituted poll would be required to equally fund the for and against arguments, so that people could be properly informed, not marketed to. Candobetter Editor comment: Would this over-ride the mainstream press, which distorts every electoral issue by producing political options that it wants by restricting scope of argument? I suppose that what is being suggested here would at least help to combat commercial press propaganda.

* An electronic system could also present the ‘for and against’ argument equitably. It need not be compulsory to vote on every issue, but perhaps it could be organised so that a statistically significant sample is required to decide any outcome. I am sure that it is not beyond our capacity to devise a suitable system.

* Citizen’s Initiated Referenda is an ideal alternative to the present system and is currently operating in various democracies worldwide. (This is not the rather odd “People’s Mandate” idea promoted by some, which aims to collect signatures from over 50% of eligible persons to then invoke powers which have purportedly existed since Magna Carta. Blue Wedges sought legal opinion on the People’s Mandate and were advised, by the now President of the Court of Appeal that the People’s Mandate has no legal standing)

* CIR on the other hand is legally robust and already operating around the world. A CIR is determined to be conducted if 10% of eligible voters petition government to conduct a poll on a specific issue.

* CIR would have the benefit of providing direct democracy for all citizens and could eventually enable the abolition of state governments, which largely duplicate federal government bureaucracy and cost billions of dollars.

* New Zealand has CIR and has recently conducted two polls. One on the issue of whether parents should be allowed to use corporal punishment on their children and one on raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour. The result of the corporal punishment poll determined that parents should be allowed to smack their children, thus opposing the legislation that the government has just adopted, banning corporal punishment by parents. Unfortunately in NZ, CIR outcomes are not binding on government. To be effective of course CIR outcomes must be binding on government.

At the very least, perhaps our elected representatives should be required to conduct statistically robust polls in their electorate to guide their voting on issues currently before them in parliament. We understand Independent Victorian MP Craig Ingram did this on the recent abortion reform debate. His electorate overwhelmingly supported reform so that’s the way he voted. Other MPs of course proceeded with a “conscience” vote without any obligation whatsoever to consult or inform their electorate. As it stands, for most of the time that is precisely what most of them do – ignore almost everyone that voted for them!

The way things are at the moment, we will be fighting many unwanted policies and proposals in future and if nothing changes we will just keep on being ignored. From now on, when campaigning for the retention of something special, or against something dreadful, amongst all the points we make, why not take the opportunity to remind people that the conventional and proper methods for community input are being ignored by those “in control”, so we need to start thinking about a different way forward – otherwise it is a dead cert we will get what we DON”T want, the environment will be trashed, and those of us running the campaigns will get very depressed and worn out for no sum gain.

A component of all our current and future campaigns should be the message that “community consultation” is off the rails and heading for the cliff. We need somehow to take back control from those who purport to represent us, but are doing nothing of the sort. Otherwise we will just get steamrollered time and time again. We might not make a dent straight away, but sooner or later we just might if we keep giving it a go, and those who come after us will thank us!

We are still willing to believe that if given the facts, most people are capable of making a reasonable decision. If we think otherwise, and don’t trust our fellow citizens then we don’t believe in democracy either, and are just as bad as those we are currently criticising.

Written by Jenny and Len Warfe of the Blue Wedges organisation.