democracy

Good news! WTO negotiations may collapse as nations push for self-sufficiency.

In a syndicated piece in The Australian Financial Review, “CAP on trade fuels food fears", London-based writer, Geoff Kitney, expresses British horror at the prospect of France leading the EU and European agriculture from July 1 this year. I guess he thinks that the national syndicators of mad cow disease could do a much better job.

He describes the French as “seizing on the global scare about dwindling food supplies” to call on the EU to use its ‘common agricultural policy’ (CAP) to motivate European farmers to raise production and make Europe self-sufficient in food.

I don’t know about you, but ‘global scare’ strikes me as a bit of a frivolous way to describe widespread starvation and food riots, whilst ensuring national self-sufficiency sounds to me like the right way to go.

Kitney sounds as if the prospect of declining oil reserves hasn't sunk in, or perhaps he just doesn’t understand the oil-food connection.

According to Kitney, naughty Germany has backed up the French position, saying food supplies are key, even if that means higher prices. And, not content to ensure adequate food supplies:

“Germany went further, suggesting that as food supplies became more scarce, it was important that the EU demanded higher environmental and health standards from countries such as India, china and the US if they wanted to sell in the European market.”

Shock! Horror! That could mean an end to cheap imports, mobile capital and slave labour. How will the rich survive if they can’t exploit poor and dirty conditions off-shore? How will they get to own all the seeds in the world if the EU rejects GM and the patenting of genes? Heavens, the next thing they will be banning child labour – and then the birth rate will fall in the third world. What’s an economic rationalist to do if nations begin thinking rationally for their citizens?

“Little wonder”, [writes Kitney], “that there is such a sense of urgency to get an agreement now before the rising tide of protectionist fear overwhelms the WTO negotiations.”

He goes on to say that the WTO cannot just at the moment “boost food production and lower food prices” but describes how it will be working on stopping all this democratic nonsense about self-sufficiency.

Whilst the [unfortunately well-fed] WTO negotiators will be “working overtime at its headquarters on the foreshores of Lake Geneva” the UN Human Rights Council will be holding a special session just down the road to look at the global food crisis “from a human rights perspective.”

What a novel approach!

Kitney relates that Olivier De schutter, the new UN rapporteur on the 'right to food' has expressed concern that protectionism in the 'rich' countries is making the products of the poor countries uncompetitive.

Unfortunately, it seems that the UN never really looks at the hard problem of land-stealing in the third world, which has meant that perfectly viable economies became basket cases in the 19th C and, just as they were getting some control over the situation, the economic hit-men of globalism went in under the shock-doctrine and turned them into slave-dictatorships, coordinating the international privatisation of public land and utilities and rewriting constitutions. (See Review of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine)

We certainly cannot trust the WTO to look after democracy and the environment. The UN, whilst made up of many excellent local and regional organisations, seems to act on a global level as a monolith dancing to the tune of the WTO, the World Bank, and the USA. Whilst national systems may not be perfect, they are a step towards relocalisation. In an oil poor world we need to get control back over our immediate surroundings and governments.

What organisation has only 24 members of which the first ten comprise the current Prime Minister and nine past and present Australian Prime Ministers or Prime Ministerial contenders? And why would they be so dedicated to an organisation with a focus so antithetical to democracy and Australians? Read on.
See also: "Nuclear power, totalitarian spin and overpopulation in Australia", "Bernard Salt on the Population 'debate'> and "Ziggy Switkowski, Population Numbers and Nuclear in the Australian" and "Normalising endless immigration and coupling it to nuclear power in Oz"

The document below probably furnished the blueprint for the Australian government to plan to transform Australian society in a manner which will displace and disenfranchise the bulk of its current population.

The Scanlon Report 30/50 - The Technological Implications of an Australian Population of 30 million by 2050

Note - this link no longer functions - see "Notes" [1]

Here is a new link: https://www.atse.org.au/Documents/reports/30-50-technological-implications-australia-population-2050-report.pdf. (Date last visited was 8 June 2018).

In the 150 pages the word 'democracy' is not mentioned once, although every aspect of Australians' lives and governance is dealt with here.

This is a 'peak oil' document, but it advocates a route whereby any choice Australians might have of reorganizing, locally, to adapt to declining availability of cheap energy, is being abrogated by the Scanlon Foundation’s grand plan to increase Australia’s immigration intake by 1.5% per annum to achieve a population of 30 million by 2050.

Australian politicians have apparently accepted the Scanlon prescription for continued economic growth through social and infrastructure engineering, and social indoctrination at the expense of democracy.

Immigration to increase by 1.5% of total population per year

To cater for our 'aging population' and 'economic growth', with immigration to increase by 1.5% of population every year, based on a recipe worked out by ANU demography, with demographer Peter McDonald, we are to have imposed upon us an unwanted and unsought massive population increase to accompany, service and pay for massive engineering works. Disappointingly, but not surprisingly, the report is the result of a study carried out by The Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering with money from the Scanlon Foundation. The Scanlon Foundation was, until 2001, the Brencorp Foundation, and the child of Peter Scanlon, of IXL and Patrick/Corrigan fame, currently marketing credit cards to Asia.

The Australian Multicultural Foundation and the Institute for Global Movements

In 2006, the Scanlon Foundation recently made “one of the biggest private sector donations for social sciences” to the Monash University Institute for Global Movements and the Australian Multicultural Foundation,[1] in the words of Professor Nieuwenhuysen (formerly Director of the Bureau of Immigration Research), now director of the Australian Multicultural Foundation and of the Institute for Global Movements.

The study in question seems to have been a project investigating ways to get Australians to accept a massive immigration program, draconian changes to their way of life, and loss of the natural amenities and space they grew up with, in the context of huge engineering works and infrastructure expansion proposed by the abovementioned Scanlon Report. Nieuwenhuysen commented in 2006, when the Monash University study began, that "The results of these studies are destined to generate much interest from government, academia and the wider community, both in Australia and internationally."

Membership list of this exclusive club

Indeed, if you look at the 24 person strong membership list of the Australian Multicultural Foundation, you might consider this a foregone conclusion. Here are the first 10 members:

The Hon Kevin Rudd MP (Prime Minister of Australia), Mr John Howard, The Hon Mr Simon Crean MP, The Hon. Mr Alexander Downer MP, Mr Robert Hawke AC, Dr J. R. Hewson, Mr Paul Keating, Mr Mark Latham, Mr Kim Beazley, andMr Andrew Peacock AC.

This must be the most exclusive club in Australia. I cannot help but wonder, what's in it for the members? Maybe this is how you get a crack at being the titular head of the country, by selling out your constituents to big business.

At any rate, any illusion some naive people may have been clinging to, that the Australia 2020 conference really meant to consult with Australians, rather than get them to do the bidding of engineers and industries which benefit from rapid population growth, should now be dispelled, along with the illusion that we are still living in some kind of democracy, or that the future is safe in the hands of our politicians.

[1] "Monash University > News and Events > Monash Memo
$600K for study on social cohesion

22 February 2006

The Monash Institute for the Study of Global Movements has received $600,000 from the Scanlon Research Foundation to study social cohesion in Australian and international societies.

The research program for the Social Cohesion Project will be undertaken in partnership with the Australian Multicultural Foundation.

The grant will fund major interrelated studies on social cohesion: analysing and measuring the components of social cohesion; how to constructively attain social cohesion in Australia; and a study on minorities in Australian and international society.

The research will be led by academics from Monash's Faculty of Arts, including School of Political and Social Inquiry senior lecturers Dr Nick Economou and Dr David Wright-Neville, lecturer in sociology Dr Michael Ure, and Professor Andrew Markus, Director of the Jewish Civilisation department within the School of Historical Studies.

The research will be undertaken in cooperation with scholars at Chatham House in London, the Australian National University and Macquarie University.

The institute's Director, Professor John Nieuwenhuysen, is managing the project in association with Multicultural Foundation Director Mr Hass Dellal.

"This is one of the biggest private sector donations for social sciences," Professor Nieuwenhuysen said. "The Scanlon Foundation is genuinely interested in research and public policy issues and is greatly impressed by the calibre of research staff at Monash.

"The Social Cohesion Project is of central importance to the future of Australia and the international community and is a significant event for the institute.

"The results of these studies are destined to generate much interest from government, academia and the wider community, both in Australia and internationally."

The findings from each study will be presented at the 12th International Metropolis Conference to be held in Melbourne in October 2007. The conference, to be co-hosted by Monash, is the world's largest annual conference on international migration and settlement issues. It is the first time it will be held outside North America and Europe.

The Scanlon (formerly Brencorp) Foundation was established by the Brencorp Group in Victoria in 2001. The foundation's current focus is population and cultural diversity in Australia."

NOTES

(Added to article on 2 April 2010.)

[1] The URL for "The technological implications of Australia at 30 million in 2030" was a href="http://www.atse.org.au/index.php?sectionid=128 but the file is no longer listed there. I have copied and pasted the Address by Peter Scanlon below, to document the launching of the document. This address is quite interesting because it gives us an economic belief context and even admiringly cites a chapter written by Harvard economist, Benjamin M. Friedman, written with the notorious Milton Friedman: Benjamin M. Friedman, Milton Friedman, A. W. Clausen, "Postwar Changes in the American Financial Markets," in Martin Feldstein, ed., The American Economy in Transition," University of Chicago Press, 1980.

If anyone wants an electronic copy of the 2007 ATTSE Report itself, "The technological implications of Australia at 30 million in 2030," contact me through candobetter.org and I will send one to you.

"ADDRESS BY

FOUNDATION CHAIRMAN, PETER SCANLON

TO ATSE REPORT LAUNCH

18th April 07

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Ladies and Gentlemen:

The Honourable Robert Smith MLC, President of the Legislative Assembly.

The Honorable Jenny Lindell MP. Speaker of the Legislative Assembly and Parliamentarians;

Mr. Peter Laver, Vice president of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering

Mr. Vaughan Beck
Distinguished guests.

The Scanlon Foundation is committed to the belief that Australia needs to continue to grow and that this growth will require a substantial and increasing role for migration. As a consequence we see social cohesion as critical to both migration and Australia’s growth.

In that context and separately from the study by ATSE The Scanlon Foundation’s Social Cohesion Research Program incorporates six (6) individual projects, managed by the Monash Institute for the Study of Global Movements and the Australian Multicultural Foundation.

One of these projects is the innovative benchmark survey throughout Australia measuring the current status of social cohesion in Australia. This survey has been commissioned and field interviews will commence in May. We anticipate results in July ready for analysis and preparation for release at Metropolis 2007.

However, the study released today by ATSE, and although very much part of our program, has different origins. In the early days of our work on social cohesion it was clear to us that there are a number of people in Australia across a broad spectrum who queried the underlying principal of growth because they worried whether the country was able to accommodate more people. In essence they asked “can we have a population of 30 million people by the year 2050 without creating substantial infrastructure and environmental issues”.
It was to deal with this perception, this question that led the Foundation to commission this study. That is why it is specific both as to numbers and Australia. That is why we went to ATSE as the independent expert with its 750 eminent Fellows.

Clearly the study says we can accommodate 30 million people by 2050. However it does say there are issues and that these are legitimate issues that need to be discussed and dealt with. ATSE concludes in fact they need to be dealt with irrespective to 30/50.

However I ask that as you reflect on this study that you do not do so in isolation. There is a flip side to the debate. That is the consequences of Growth. Too often growth is mistakenly seen to be only about material outcomes.

In his book “The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth” Benjamin Friedman demonstrates why the elements, held out by the Enlightenment thinkers so central to Western philosophy, of openness, opportunity, tolerance, economic and social mobility, fairness and democracy are all enhanced by growth.

Freidman explains that growth, rather than simply creating a higher standard of living, is the key to effecting political and social liberalization in the third world. He shows that even the wealthiest of nations puts its democratic values at risk when growth stops. Merely being wealthy is no protection against a turn toward rigidity and intolerance when a country’s citizens lose the sense that they are getting ahead.

Post war we had the growth of economic socialism which tried to deal with the imbalance of material well being by relying on redistribution rather than creation. It failed miserably.

Today, to me, in many ways there seems to be a populous move to a form of environmental socialism in that there is a concentration on regulating and redistributing what we have as was the case with economic socialism. It won’t be the answer. Separately from mans proven record of ingenuity and adaptation we need to get back to planning and doing. This will be the answer.

That we need to manage better is without doubt. The ATSE report is very clear about this. The short period of elected governments, our system of Federation together with upper and lower houses, the politicisation of the public service and so on has left us with ineffective long term planning. And this when there has never been a better time to set these priorities with our prosperity and surplus investment capital which is searching the world trying to find a home.

If Social Cohesion was not the Foundations main game I think we would have tackled this issue. Pressure and knowledge needs to be focused on our infrastructure and environmental planning. The current situation is a disgrace. We probably need for the want of a better title a Reserve Bank of Infrastructure.

However right now that’s not for us other than to support ATSE’s call for leadership and planning.

In conclusion the Foundation expresses it appreciation to ATSE. In particular my thanks to Vaughan Beck, Ian Duncan, Ian Rae and of course many talented authors and contributors to the 30/50 study.

We at the Foundation look forward to pursuing our ongoing work on social cohesion and positive migration strategies for the future prosperity of Australia.

Thank you"

"Who owns Port Phillip Bay?"

Martin Pakula (martin.pakula @ parliament vic gov au) is a lawyer and a member of the Victorian Parliament. He works for Roads and Ports Minister, Tim Pallas (tim.pallas @ parliament vic gov au). Tim Pallas has been the Victorian Minister for Roads and Ports since December 2006. These elected persons have responsibility for the Channel Deepening project and are theoretically answerable to the public.

On Friday, 18 April, 2008, in the Australian Newspaper, journalist Rick Wallace, reported comments Mr Pakula had made to Parliament about the dredging of Port Phillip Bay, which seemed to show that Mr Pakula has a poor understanding of the ideals and responsibility of democracy - at least in this instance.

"The views of absolutely minor participants have been portrayed and elevated, so long as they oppose the project,"' Mr Pakula is reported by Wallace to have said.

Apparently Mr Pakula gave as an example of what had irritated him, an Age story which described the mother of a person in a level-crossing accident as having inaccurately accused the Victorian State Government of spending $1 billion on channel dredging, when the government claims to be supplementing the port users’ costs by ‘only’ $150 million. The road-crossing victim’s mother had reportedly gone on to compare the port expenditure with $32 million spent on railway crossings.

I would like to know why Mr Paluka would view such a citizen as a ‘minor participant’, especially when, to my knowledge, her views are typical of those of many Victorian citizens, indeed, of citizens all around the country. It also seems inappropriate to me that the Victorian Government should spend ANY money propping up this project of which I heartily disapprove myself for environmental and democratic reasons. The democratic reasons are that the Bay is ours; it is our precious natural asset. It does not belong to a few men who will be in parliament for a few years before they join other mortals as pieces of dust, to modify in a manner which could destroy it forever. And it seems entirely appropriate to me that the mother in question complained about Roads and Ports spending any money at all on a widely despised engineering project, when apparently she perceived a failure to adequately maintain safety on Victoria’s level crossings, which Mr Pakula also has responsibility for.

Mr Pakula had previously described the Age’s reporting of Channel Deepening matters as a campaign of “unrelenting negative headlines and stories”.

Journalist Wallace recorded that The Age and its Chief Editor, Andrew Jaspan, had received “complaints from the Premier, corporate chiefs and top bureaucrats, including Prime Minister and Cabinet chief Terry Moran…about the paper's stance on the project.”

Wallace also referred to “unrest among reporters” in this matter.

I usually can the Fairfax press and all the other mainstream media. I would be amazed if the Age or the Australian or the Courier Mail, or any other property dot com associated media were to give sustained fair and democratic coverage of any matter which would encourage population growth and property speculation. The owners and directors of The Age would presumably be in favour of the Channel Deepening project simply because it is a tool of a corporate body that embraces population growth and widget multiplication. That the Channel Deepening project is being pushed through by government in a manner that is antithetical to democracy would presumably not trouble mass media moguls.

I have, however, not been following Channel Deepening comment in the mainstream press - the Age or elsewhere. For all I know, there may be some reason that The Age is actually against what seems to strike many as the raping of Port Phillip Bay for alleged profit. Or maybe the journalists at The Age are so alarmed by the dredging themselves that they are insisting on persistently reporting the widespread opposition to it.

What I can say with some confidence is that the message that Murdoch media journalist, Rick Wallace, carries from the Victorian Parliament, would scare Age journalists. It would scare any journalist. It scares me. It would scare Age journalists because it could be used as a lever by The Age Editors or The Age directors, to pressurize Age journalists to lay off reporting the deep and important public dismay at the dredging of Port Phillip Bay. I can see that it must be very hard to be a professional mainstream media journalist who is really concerned with representing public opinion, rather than marketing corporate projects to change laws and landscapes for corporate profit. I can also say that I think this message should scare other Australians, particularly those in Victoria.

Why should we all be scared? We should be scared because our representatives in Government who are responsible for the imposition of Channel Deepening are either unaware of the extent to which the public is dismayed by the high-handed and grossly disrespectful manner in which their Bay is being treated by those elected to care for it, or they do not care. Or it may be that Paluka et al are true believers in economic growthism and simply believe that the dredge-dissenting public lacks faith and must be led into the heaven of endless growth by its high priest parliamentarians. Or it may be that they are experiencing irresistable pressure from financial and other interests in the Port of Melbourne dredging project.

In fact, I do not know what motivates Mr Pallas, Mr Paluka, Mr Brumby, or what motivated Mr Bracks, Mr Thwaites, and Mr Kennett, to inflict raw capitalism, metal tooth and iron claw, on Victoria and its inhabitants. All I know is that, from the professional divers of Port Phillip Bay to the millions of other Australians who love it, from Catani Gardens’ possums, to Mornington Peninsula’s and Somerton's Kangaroos, from Malvern East’s proudly gentrified wooden houses, to Frankston’s sprawling backyards, and from the dead gardens of Bendigo and Ballarat and similar country towns targeted by the New Army of developers and water barons, to the farmers round Culgoa who formed PipeRight Incorporated to stop the government giving their water to big business in the riverina, people and other animals are hurting badly. Ruled over by a mad government, we are in despair.

We need proper representation from our government and journalists need absolute freedom to report. Time to turn off the Corporate Machine. Time to stop Mr Brumby's New Army of developers. Time to slow the monster down, Mr Brumby, Mr Paluka, Mr Pallas. Time to listen, not dictate.

There was a fascinating pay-off in James Sinnamon's predictably unsuccessful bid for Lord Mayor in the recent Brisbane elections. In his "Courier Mail provides 'boring', yet unbalanced, coverage of Brisbane City Council elections"₁ (March 17-20, 2008) correspondence between Sinnamon and Emma Chalmers, the Courier Mail journalist responsible for much of that paper's election coverage, provides a valuable sociological tool for what it reveals about the media and politics.

Teachers, students, and citizens, take note.

Mr Sinnamon's dialogue demonstrates that the Courier Mail does not treat all candidates in an election equally.

In their defense that newspaper might say that equity and fairness are up to the formal process of the election and that newspapers just publish the news.

But some might say that it is the mainstream press that determines the outcome of elections, or at least, who is really in the running, which is not the same thing as who is actually running.

On page 11 of the Courier Mail of election day Saturday 15 March, journalist Emma Chalmers asked: "Have these been the most boring Council elections?"

In response, James Sinnamon points out that Ms Chalmer's coverage of the elections made them boring. He later says that he realizes he cannot hold Ms Chalmers responsible for everything that is wrong in the Brisbane Courier Mail's coverage of Brisbane council policy and practice, but, as he adds, he can only address these problems by asking the journalist questions, taking her work at face value.

Indeed, how responsible is Ms Chalmers for the quality of political analysis in her articles? In an Anglophone world of internationally syndicated political blanding, Emma Chalmer's writing is entirely appropriate. There is a theory (which seems self-evident) that media owners choose media editors and those editors choose the journalists in a self-perpetuating cycle of intellectual and political supineness₂.

If crucial elections are reported in an incredibly boring way, Mr Public will hold them in contempt, and protests about democracy and the information distribution monopolies will remain minimal.

Can others recognize these trends? For so many Australians, compared to television and sports, electoral participation remains a chore of mysteriously over-rated importance because, due to the destructive skill of mainstream media, this supremely interesting area which would normally eclipse Neighbours, since it is about real neighbours, comes across as if it does not concern anyone but a few blandly suited men, who have inexplicably risen to the top of the pile. In the case of the Brisbane Mayoral Elections, only two men in suits were given more than token importance. One looked as if he strayed out of a men's clothing ad, and the other, in shirt-sleeves, a salesman ready for the Saturday morning customers. Apart from these minor differences in style, there was little to tell them apart.

Yes, it was not the election which was boring; it was the exceedingly limited but repetitive coverage.

For this election contained a really new, important 'angle,' indicative of a fundamental desire for political and economic change. And that was that FOUR candidates, not just James Sinnamon, declared that they had policies against population growth.

Of course these candidates for a major policy change ran right up against the big vested interests in a business-as-usual outcome for the Brisbane Council election. Those vested interests are the property development industry and its upstream and downstream dependents, which include the Courier Mail. Many are grouped under the umbrella of The Australian Property Council. Such industries have chosen to structure themselves around continuously increasing population growth, without which most would not survive.

To this end they naturally prefer mayors and councilors who will not seriously challenge their objectives. "Can Do" Newman has been giving them what they want and telling Brisbanites that this is what Brisbane needs, for years now, in what the Property council of Australia describes as the "Council's high quality working relationship with the State Government" and "the cooperative relationship between the State Government and Liberal Lord Mayor Campbell Newman."₃

The other candidate taken seriously by the press, Mr Greg Rowell, a retired professional cricketer, and the ALP counterpart to Campbell Newman, has been employed by the Property Council of Australia as a 'senior policy advisor' since 2005, working "extensively with the State Government and Brisbane City Council." ₄

The Property Council sent questionnaires to all the candidates, promising a later press release. The questionnaires were, not surprisingly, looking for supporters of more and more development, with fewer restrictions and fewer costs to developers.

Four candidates openly stated they opposed the unfettered development resulting from the turbo-charged population growth which blights Brisbane and costs ordinary people money, time and comfort, ruining amenity and the natural environment, raising the cost of housing, water and land.

Four candidates lined up to represent the side that opposes growth.

Yet Newman and Rowell were promoted as the only show in town through mainstream media's extremely boring treatment of this potentially riveting, not to say crucial, election.

Ms Chalmer's view of the Brisbane elections gives almost no coverage to anyone other than what she calls, the 'major contenders'. She writes, "we have an obligation to adequately scrutinise the promises being made by the major parties and major contenders." But not the major issues, apparently.

Democracy in Paris and in Brisbane: two different systems

Brisbane can't hold a candle to the recent mayoral elections in Paris. There the press treated respectfully a 27 year veteran street mendicant in the swish suburb of St Germain des près (6th arrondissment), and he actually retained 3.7% of the votes.

That is, at 577 out of 15,000, slightly fewer than James Sinnamon, who, with almost no publicity, achieved less than one per cent of the Brisbane vote.

The big difference for these two unknowns was in the attitude of the press and the public towards democracy and values over social and strategic position.

French mainstream media has nothing like the connections to property and population growthism that afflict Australia and other Anglophone countries. The French electoral system also permits many more parties and individuals to make a running.

This is perhaps not surprising in the country which symbolised a successful revolution by storming the Bastille in 1789, only one year after Australia became a penal colony for political prisoners of poverty. Child of the revolution, himself, politician and author Victor Hugo wrote Les Miserables, in which escaped convict, Jean Valjean, imprisoned for stealing bread, becomes Mayor by popular demand because he is so good and kind.

Here is how TFI, French television online, reported on the person and policies of Jean-Marc Restoux, street-dwelling candidate for the Parisien mayoral elections:

"Even if he doesn't have the political bearing, he has the rhetoric and the determination. His remarks are well thought out, his words are well-chosen, his ideas considered. [They quote him:] 'Today, in the 6th arrondissment, buildings are resold to luxury brand-names, rather than being made into public housing. There is nothing left here except luxury businesses'.(...). 'Exorbitant rents push old people out. We must, at all costs, maintain the local businesses, in the knowledge that wealth lies in their diversity', he exhorts, wishing 'to show another way to people' and to integrate into the social dialogue more people who, like himself, survive precariously . Among his ideas is one of encouraging people to mentor and assist people in difficulty. 'That those who are able to, assist the homeless by offering them a place to live with low rent and help with administrative tasks, providing a leg-up for them. It should not be forgotten that accidents in life can happen to everyone.' ₅(My translation)

James Sinnamon's program₆ was not dissimilar, but received no similar interest from the Australian media of course.

A different land-use planning and housing system

At least in Paris property speculation is severely hampered by speculation and inheritance taxes and the state has an obligation to see that everyone is housed. This year it became possible to sue a European state if you are homeless. Paris does not have the insane problem of out of control development and mass immigration from other states and the rest of the world, albeit it does have a problem with family reunion and a stock of 'clandestins' which ebbs and flows with the seasons. Not only are citizens owed shelter by the State but so are any legally present immigrant workers. Population-building for the simple purpose of enriching land-owners would cost too much to publicly funded programs for ordinary citizens to allow it to happen. Paris real-estate does have a problem of its capacity to attract the rich, chic business and the corporations, which have an upwards impact on rents. But France and Paris ceased to pull down buildings to intensify development when they abandoned their costly policy of population numbers-building in 1973. Since then the accent has been on restoration and structural insulation. In fact, over the period 1973-1975, due to the pull-back by the state from the policy of expansion and intensification of development, many developers and builders went broke. Those who survived adapted to a relatively steady-state situation. No major influence in France developed power through population building in the past 35 years.

Australian information production, treatment, and distribution

In Australia a few semi-dynastic media owners have obtained from successive leaders what amounts to a license to control the distribution of most of the information in the country and to decide what will be treated as important and what and who will be sidelined or ignored.

Our political, legal and business figures depend on those media-organs for almost all their profile and influence. By providing the powerful with a voice, the media derives more power through their authority. From this arises a situation where the public has been educated to take seriously only candidates who have press profile. To gain that profile, public figures (with the possible exception of notorious criminals) are generally notable for saying nothing which will make the media look upon them unfavourably. This seals the situation where the media confers authority upon certain ideas, individuals and industries, in a rim of brilliant limelight, whilst casting a shadow over most of the rest of the planet and its people, plants and animals.

This might not be so awful, were the media merely a dynastic system, ruled by variously colorful or petty kings. The problem is that the media is a monster network of corporations of which newspapers, television, radio and digital media are only the face and mouth. Behind this public façade are financial, land and commodity interests permeating every facet of human enterprise. Perhaps the most fundamental and far-reaching of these interests is the property development empire that the great bulk of Australian print media is intimately involved with.

Whilst many readers probably are aware that newspapers carry huge amounts of real-estate adds, and those readers may assume that those papers are therefore reliant on the patronage of property marketers, few realize that the situation goes much further even than this.

The fact is that Australian newspaper corporations now own and control the bulk of Australian property marketing on an international level. Our newspapers do not rely on getting advertisements; to a large degree they control the Australian portal to the entire world property market because they control the distribution and diffusion of information about this market and for several years they have been in the business of actually marketing the property market itself at local, national and global level.

This has been made possible on a level never previously conceived of due to the global Internet, through property dot coms like www.realestate.com.au and www.domaine.com.au, but also through very rapidly converging and mushrooming of industries and professions across government and private sector, so that we have, for instance, on the one hand, at the Federal level, the National Foreign Investment Review Board (NFIRB) positively facilitating foreign investment in local real estate and facilitating purchases by temporary immigrants for high turnover, and, on the local level, realtors touting local property internationally with the assistance of privatised migration agents and local solicitors, and at State level (where land use planning is controlled), organizations like the Property Council of Australia (APC), closely involved with determining government policy.

In a document called its "Report Card," summarising policy, the APC demonstrates nationally coordinated planning and international objectives, and massive reach for political power in every area of Australian politics. It is clear from this report that the APC believes it is responsible for major press articles and detailed government policies in areas of tax, planning, trade regulation, and international borders (to name just a few big areas). What is still not clear is whether there are any direct business links to media ownership or control. _7,8

With knowledge of the evolution of this system of corporatised government and media, one finds oneself wondering if the Australian Property Council (and its dependents, allies and similars) run Brisbane (among other states) and the Courier Mail helps them. Unless it is that the Courier Mail (News Ltd/Murdoch) runs Brisbane and the APC helps it. If this is the case, with the entire city and region given over to aggressive property development, one cannot help but wonder if any real government or citizens remain, or whether the whole Brisbane region (and indeed Australia) has simply been transformed de facto into privately owned, publicly managed real-estate, inhabited by renters and rate-payers with no more real say in government than feudal serfs.

I should conclude by saying that I do not think this situation is hopeless. I do not for a minute believe that the property development lobby groups and the media are consciously homogeneously malevolent forces. What I do hope is that, by bringing the impact on government and the environment of their perseverative success to public notice, I will stimulate a conscientious response to solving this problem. It will take serious electoral coverage and voter involvement on the one hand, careful government and law-making, and serious cultivation of overlooked principles of ecological and democratic well-being by the property, finance and media industries. For the good of Australia and for the good of the world, the Australian property industry and its dependents, must turn off their overly successful money-making machine and start to plan for the winding down of business to one of consolidatory long-term infrastructure maintenance in a consolidated democracy. It is time to stop growing bigger and taller. It is time to grow up and become responsible and kind.

Sheila Newman

Footnotes

1. See candobetter.net/node/371

2. "The House of Representatives Select Committee on the Print Media report, News and Fair Facts The Australian Print Media Industry (March 1992) acknowledged the importance of editorial independence, but rejected calls for legislative requirements for mechanisms to support it." Kim Jackson, "Media Ownership Regulation in Australia," Analysis and Policy, Social Policy Group, Parliamentary Library, Australia, http://www.aph.gov.au/library/intguide/SP/media_regulations.htm

3. pcalive.netattention.com.au/act/page.asp?622=280779&E_Page=17720

4. www.qld.alp.org.au/01_cms/details.asp?ID=37 as retrieved on 16 Mar 2008 19:26:19 GMT.

5. See tf1.lci.fr/infos/elections-municipales/0,,3721508,00-clochard-qui-voulait-etre-maire-.html

6. See candobetter.wikispaces.com

7. In its report card, which summarises policy, demonstrating nationally coordinated planning and international objectives, and massive reach for political power in every area of Australian politics. It is clear from this report that the APC believes it is responsible for major press articles. What is still not clear is whether there are any direct business links to media ownership or control. www.propertyoz.com.au/PowerHouse2010/Congress2007_Reportcard.ppt

8. In its online policy publication, "Powerhouse 2010 advocacy priorities, 2006/2007", www.propertyoz.com.au/PowerHouse2010/Congress2007_Reportcard.ppt, APC National President informs members that "In our tenth year as the Property Council, your association's political influence continues to grow and pay dividends in advocacy wins. 2006/2007 sees a big focus on economic development, infrastructure, tax and cutting red tape." The claim is borne out in this remarkable document, which indicates that the APC takes responsibility for stimulating various state governments to engage in what the many environmental and democracy activists would call extreme levels of development, debt and population growth.

Here are some extracts:

"Governments will cut property taxes when presented with persuasive arguments for economic growth.

Over the past two years the Property Council negotiated close to $1.7 billion of property tax cuts with state Labor governments. The Property Council's goal is to increase the tax savings pyramid every year.

"Kick starting the growth debate

Ten years ago, urban strategies, economic development and infrastructure were off the agenda. Now they will dominate political debate for the next decade"

"Long term growth strategies

After months of lobbying, the Sydney metro strategy has been released incorporating three quarters of our recommendations, along with draft plans for other regions and key regional cities."

"Plan to Deliver Melbourne 2030

The Property Council stepped in to fill a policy vacuum in the Melbourne 2030 debate by releasing the discussion paper, Plan to Deliver Melbourne 2030. We are now in discussions to make these recommendations a reality."

"Melbourne 2030 demonstration projects"

Melbourne 2030 gained momentum after the Victorian Government agreed to Property Council calls for the development of demonstration projects, such as the Dandenong Transit City."

"Increase use of borrowing

The Victorian Government almost doubled borrowings to deliver much needed infrastructure. The Government's recognition of the benefits of sensible borrowings comes after years of campaigning from the Property Council."

"Land Tax thresholds increased

The Property Council has ensured that the State Government honour its commitment to increase land tax thresholds for individual land tax payers in line with rising unimproved values, saving private investors hundreds of thousands of dollars in land tax each year."

"Water reform

Representations, submissions and public comment by the Property Council have resulted in the State Government acknowledging the need to reduce the considerable water and sewerage infrastructure backlog and undertake structural reform of these council owned businesses."

I hate to resort to clichés, but this is a ‘must read’ book – the kind that only gets published once in a hundred years.

The theory Klein develops is that the main reason for the rise of democracy and social-welfare with its old age pensions, public hospitals, public housing, and universal education after the Great Depression of the 1930s was that the beneficiaries of the robber-baron culture which had dominated until then were aware that if people were kept sufficiently miserable, they would turn to communism and socialism.

Reading of the desecration and live dismemberment of Iraq and seeing the name KPMG, I could not help but think of how our recent Premier, Steven Bracks, who was so fond of public-private partnerships, and whose government gave away 20 ha of public land in Royal Park to private 52% owned Singapore developer, Australand. In a move which even the departing Queensland Premier criticised, Bracks recently began to work for KPMG Peat Marwick, which, incidentally, is involved in reconstruction efforts in East Timor.

Also published on Web Diary. See also: "Shock Doctrine's Shocking Short Shrift" of 8 Nov 07 by Carolyn Baker.

A review of Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine ( Penguin Australia, 2007)
By Sheila Newman. Also published on Web Diary. (2233 words)

Klein is a Canadian political scientist. She put this book together over a four year period, employing different teams of researchers for each chapter. The documentation is awesomely solid, making her assertions difficult to tear down, and thus supporting a theory which would otherwise seem almost fantastic, were it not also supported by more and more freestanding works.

The theory Klein develops is that the main reason for the rise of democracy and social-welfare with its old age pensions, public hospitals, public housing, and universal education after the Great Depression of the 1930s was that the beneficiaries of the robber-baron culture which had dominated until then were aware that if people were kept sufficiently miserable, they would turn to communism and socialism.

But the robber-barons, land-sharks and bankers were only waiting for an opportunity to break down any political system which would stop them from having anything they wanted. Their method was tried and true: a religion embracing trickle-down economics, endless growth and total deregulation. I have wondered for some time how so many dim-witted, narrowly educated people going by the tag of ‘economist’ came to inhabit the corridors of power in our society. This has been somewhat explained to me by Klein, who identifies the genesis of a theoretical basis, defence and propaganda effort for corporatist free-market replacing real government. She places the rise of the shock doctrine of economic rationalism at Chicago University in the Chicago School of Economics, led by economist Milton Friedman, the author of Capitalism and Freedom.

She describes how this school set about training people in its atrocious doctrine all over the world. Its practitioners sought to break down all examples of egalitarian, community oriented democratic states, speciously linking ‘democracy’ to the imposition of ‘free-market’ economics.

Although Klein does not make this connection, their program began in 1973 which was the time of the first oil-shock. She describes a course of corporatised looting, torture, slavery and repression which begins with Pinochet’s rise in Chile, with Milton Friedman as his advisor, and passes through similar horrors in Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay, Poland, South Africa, Russia, and Irak. She finishes this incredible expose by describing the nauseating excesses of developers masquerading as foreign AID in Sri Lanka and Thailand after the tsunamis which so many Australians and others contributed their money to help.

Within 24 hours of the tsunami in Sri Lanka, where land had been 80% publicly owned, processes demanded by the World Bank, US AID, and the Asian Development Bank began to change the laws to transfer public land to private ownership, and to privatise public utilities and resources. Indeed those seem to be the signs that the shock doctrine is operating in a country – privatisation of public land, telephones, water, power and pharmaceutical distribution. Obviously I think that Australians should act quickly to familiarise themselves with Naomi Klein’s book and to begin to appreciate the danger to what remains of our democracy, public wealth and institutions. The possibility for land redistribution in South Africa by Mandela’s government had been similarly hamstrung.

Familiar bland illogical assertions come up along with the names of familiar corporations. Klein quotes (p. 355), “Michael Fleisher, the founder of the Chicago School based Shock Doctrine, saying in 2003 of Iraq that ‘protected businesses never, never become competitive’, and she comments: “he appeared to be impervious to the irony that Halliburton, Bechtel, Parsons, KPMG, RTI, Blackwater and all the other US corporations that were in Iraq to take advantage of the reconstruction were part of a vast protectionist racket whereby the US government had created their markets with war, barred their competitors from even entering the race, then paid them to do the work, while guaranteeing them a profit to boot – all at taxpayer expense. The Chicago School crusade, which emerged with the core purpose of dismantling the welfare statism of the New Deal, had finally reached its zenith in this corporate New Deal. It was a simpler, more stripped down form of privatisation – the transfer of bulky assets wasn’t even necessary: just straight-up corporate gorging on state coffers. No investment, no accountability, astronomical profits. The double standard was explosive, as was the systematic exclusion of Iraqis from the plan.”

Reading of the desecration and live dismemberment of Iraq and seeing the name KPMG, I could not help but think of how our recent Premier, Steven Bracks, who was so fond of public-private partnerships, and whose government gave away 20 ha of public land in Royal Park (Melbourne central) to private 52% owned Singapore developer, Australand. In a move which even the departing Queensland Premier criticised, Bracks recently began to work for KPMG Peat Marwick, which, incidentally, is involved in reconstruction efforts in East Timor.

Klein argues convincingly that the Chicago school acolytes have supported reigns of pure terror where peoples have, almost overnight, been reduced to poverty and starvation, with their states brought from sovereignty to economic indigence and crippling debt to the International Monetary Fund and other private agencies as they paid for ridiculously expensive, publicly resisted corporate projects and sold off state assets.

Klein tells how the IMF came about through an international agreement to prevent countries from falling into desperation and war by loaning them money to get through rough spots. It was modelled on the post WW2 Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan for Germany was particularly careful to preserve protection for Germany’s industry and workers. But Chicago-school economics came to rule the IMF, she says, and the book is about how this doctrine stripped its victims of democracy, labour protection and public assets, and, when war broke out or torture and imprisonment were rife, its practitioners turned a blind eye, instead celebrating the chaos as a clean slate for the birth of a rational economy.

The hypothesis is that democracy is destroyed by causing social shocks to countries and, in the ensuing panic and disorientation, the political system is dismantled and the economy pillaged through privatisation and government contracted debt. The International Monetary Fund is severely implicated in this as are a number of international corporations.

Examples of things which socially shock a country, most of which are dealt with by Klein using examples in many countries, are:
- The Breaking down of labour laws and trade regulations
- Mass immigration and the Contracting of business to foreign imported labour in preference to local labour
- Falling wages
- bank privatisation, deregulation of the economy
- Breaking down of the public service, public welfare
- Loss of public subsidy of therapeutic drugs
- Privatisation of public hospitals, schools…
- Privatisation of public technology, power and utilities – telephones, electricity, water and energy resources like oil and gas
- Unaffordable privatised housing and land development
- Land speculation leading to homelessness
- Unaffordable justice systems
- Privatisation of the military – use of mercenaries and contractors
- Torture, disappearance, and war
- Natural disasters

Signs of the dismantling of a political system and its reinvention as a corporatocracy include:
- education of young people, educators and politicians, in economic rationalist doctrines as the only true way
- growth economics
- the normalisation of theft of the public wealth through its transfer to the private sector
- loss of restrictions on investment by political regulators
- acceptance of ostentatious lifestyles in politicians and their public frequentation of corporate figures
- Phoney enquiries
- Commercial-in-confidence activities which make it impossible for the public to obtain information
- the privatisation of areas normally administered by government, for instance mercenaries for soldiers, corporations for military support and logistics like accommodation, clothing and food, immigration (immigration agents)
- The institutionalisation with public funded support for corporations. (The Victorian Government’s gift to Australand of public land and $80 m in exchange for what many would call very little, comes to my mind).

At the end of the book Naomi Klein tells us about countries which are fighting back against the robber-baron corporatisation of their governments, land, and industries. Examples are described in Latin America, Lebanon, Thailand, and many other places.

Chavez Venezuela:

(p.455) “In Venezuela Chavez has made the co-ops a top political priority, giving them first refusal on government contracts and offering them economic incentives to trade with one another. By 2006, there were roughly 100,000 co-operatives in the country, employing more than 700,000 workers. Many are pieces of state infrastructure – toll booths, highway maintenance, health clinics – handed over to the communities to run. It’s a reverse of the logic of government outsourcing – rather than auctioning off pieces of the state to large corporations and losing democratic control, the people who use the resources are given the power to manage them, creating, at least in theory, both jobs and more responsive public services. Chavez’s many critics have derided these initiatives as handouts and unfair subsidies, of course. Yet in an era when Halliburton treats the U.S. government as its personal ATM for six years, withdraws upward of $20 billion in Iraq contracts alone, refuses to hire local workers either on the Gulf coast or in Iraq, then expresses its gratitude to U.S. taxpayers by moving its corporate headquarters to Dubai (with all the attendant tax and legal benefits), Chavez’s direct subsidies to regular people look significantly less radical.”

Lebanon:

(p.459) “So when delegates from thirty wealthy nations got together in Paris in January 2007 to pledge $7.6 billion in reconstruction loans and grants, they naturally assumed that Lebanon’s government would accept whatever strings they attached to the aid. The conditions were the usual ones: phone and electricity privatizations, price increases on fuel, cuts to the public service and an increase to an already controversial tax on consumer purchases. Kamal Hamdan, a Lebanese economist, estimated that, as a result, ‘household bills [would] increase by 15 percent because of increased taxes and adjusted prices’ – a classic peace penalty. As for the reconstruction itself, the jobs would of course go to the giants of disaster capitalism, with no requirement to hire or subcontract locally - ” …

(p.460): “Many Lebanese citizens, however, were distinctly less cooperative. Despite the fact that a lot of their homes still lay in ruins, thousands participated in a general strike, organized by a coalition of unions and political parties, including the Islamist party, Hezbollah. The demonstrators insisted that if receiving reconstruction funds meant raising the cost of living for a war-ravaged people, it hardly deserved to be called aid. So while Siniora was reassuring donors in Paris, strikes and road blockades brought the country to a halt – the first national revolt specifically targeting post-war disaster capitalism. Demonstrators also staged a sit-in, which went on for two months, turning downtown Beirut into a cross between a tent city and a street carnival.” … “The biggest motivator driving many of those camped out in downtown isn’t Iran or Syria, or Sunni versus Shiite. It’s the economic inequality that has haunted Lebanese Shiites for decades. It’s a poor and working-class peoples’ revolt.”

Thailand:

(p. 402), “Some of the most direct clashes took place in Thailand, where, within 24 hours of the wave, developers sent in armed private security guards to fence in land they had been coveting for resorts. In some cases the guards wouldn’t even let survivors search their old properties for the bodies of their children. The Thailand Tsunami Survivors and Supporters group was hastily convened to deal with the land grabs.”…

(p. 463) “…villagers approached all government promises with intense scepticism and refused to wait patiently in camps for an official reconstruction plan. Instead, within weeks, hundreds of villagers engaged in what they called ‘land reinvasions’. They marched past the armed guards on the payroll of developers, tools in hand, and began marking off the sites where their old houses had been…” (p.464) A Thai NGO, commented that, ‘With the entire community camping out there, it became difficult for the authorities to chase them away, especially given the intense media attention being focused on tsunami rehabilitation.’”

[Should the homeless in Australia and those who stand to lose their overly expensive homes due to government facilitation of land-speculation consider such a move?]

New Orleans:

And, with the dispossession by corporations and public private partnerships in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (with which the book begins): (p.465) “In February 2007, groups of residents who had lived in the public housing projects that the Bush administration was planning to demolish began ‘reinvading’ their old homes and taking up residence. Volunteers helped clean out apartments and raised money to buy generators and solar panels.”

Klein concludes (p. 466), “The best way to recover from helplessness turns out to be helping – having the right to be part of a communal recovery.”… “These are movements that do not seek to start from scratch but rather from scrap, from the rubble that is all around. As the corporatist crusade continues its violent decline, turning up the shock dial to blast through the mounting resistance it encounters, these projects point a way forward between fundamentalisms. Radical only in their intense practicality, rooted in the communities where they live, these men and women see themselves as mere repair people , taking what’s there and fixing it, reinforcing it, making it better and more equal. Most of all, they are building in resilience – for when the next shock hits.”

I hate to resort to clichés, but this is a ‘must read’ book – the kind that only gets published once in a hundred years.

Also published on Web Diary. See also: "Shock Doctrine's Shocking Short Shrift" of 8 Nov 07 by Carolyn Baker.

Sustainable Population Australia South East Queensland Branch Media Release Monday, 25 June 2007

A recent publication of the Council of Mayors South East Queensland highlights that the mayors of SEQ are seeking help from developers to push the Local Growth Management Strategies (LGMS). These are legal planning documents that force each local government area in South East Queensland to accept unsustainable growth.

The COMmunique₁ 22 June 2007 states:

“The Council of Mayors (SEQ) will seek the support of the Property Council and Urban Development Institute of Australia to lobby the State Government for a communications campaign to promote key messages regarding the intent and purpose of local growth management strategies under the South East Queensland (SEQ) Regional Plan. Although acknowledging the issue, the State Government has yet to commit to a broad based and high profile campaign.”

“Local government mayors recognize they cannot sell unsustainable growth to their constituents, so they are seeking help from those who desire it most,” said Baltais.

“What is most appalling is that they want this unholy alliance to pressure the Queensland Government to spin a story for them,” said Baltais.

“We urge the Queensland Government to resist this pressure and engage the community in planning for its future with a total review of all targets in the SEQ Regional Plan in light of recent studies and current knowledge.”

Footnotes

1. See document at www.councilofmayorsseq.qld.gov.au/.../20070622_communique.pdf (43K)