Penny Wong

I posted the following letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong and the Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus at around 11:00am on Thursday 7 April during a protest for Julian Assange outside the electoral office of Mark Dreyfus in the Melbourne suburb of Mordialloc. I had hoped to hand a copy of this letter to Mark Dreyfus in person or, at least, to a member of his staff, but his office was unattended. For security reasons, as explained to me by a member of the Federal Police, there was no slot through which I could put the letter, so I had to send the letter through the mail. I expect that my letter would have been received in Mark Dreyfus' office the next day and that my letters to Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong will arrive at Parliament House on Tuesday 11 April following the Easter long Weekend. I have also e-mailed this letter, with the subject Please act humanely now to end the illegal imprisonment of Julian Assange, and sent CC copies to members of the Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Support Group.

One of the many, many signs that Australia is nothing more than a US military and intelligence asset is the way its government has consistently refused to intervene to protect Australian citizen Julian Assange from political persecution at the hands of the US empire.

Phillip Adams wrote on May 27, 2022 —  "Mr Albanese is also a signatory to the Bring Julian Assange Home Campaign petition." (ABC 27-5-2022)

Without obtaining the prior mandate of the electorate, successive Australian governments have been seeking to establish a water-market in this country. For as long as the people of Australia are required to “buy-back” the nation’s water, especially during times of crisis, they will have no water security. Bidding-wars, as currently being waged by Senators Wong and Joyce, are now an unattractive and dangerous feature of Australian water policy: profits arising will be privatised but the impacts will be borne by the Australian public. The electorate of this country must be given the opportunity to indicate whether it wishes its water to be privatised and exposed to global speculation - or protected for future generations of Australians.

Water policy options say “buy, buy” to Australia’s water security

The much-vaunted water policy announcements from the major parties over recent days should be treated with great scepticism, according to a statement released today by national public water-rights and environmental advocacy group, Fair Water Use (Australia):

“Without obtaining the prior mandate of the electorate, successive Australian governments have been seeking to establish a water-market in this country.

As an inevitable consequence, private corporations are wielding ever-increasing control over Australia’s water future. This has led directly to the current chaos in water management and has serious long-term implications for all Australians and the environmental health of this country.

Privatisation hurting the Murray-Darling

Privatisation is severely compromising attempts to resolve the plight of the Murray-Darling. In a privatised setting, once sustainable diversion limits are set, subsequent to the eventual adoption of the Basin Plan, further remedial action will largely be limited to the purchase of water from the private sector; water that was at no time sold by the nation.

Bidding-wars, as currently being waged by Senators Wong and Joyce, are now an unattractive and dangerous feature of Australian water policy: profits arising will be privatised but the impacts will be borne by the Australian public.

For as long as the people of Australia are required to “buy-back” the nation’s water, especially during times of crisis, they will have no water security.

Australia has been identified as one of the parts of the world most threatened by severe water shortage.

The CMO of Summit Global Management, a large, US based, water investment company recently stated, “There are few areas where we can execute our strategy - but Australia is one of them."

Other countries abandoning water privatisation

Widespread problems overseas have resulted in a growing number of countries turning their backs on water privatisation.

However, in Australia, opportunistic administrations from both sides of the political spectrum continue to encourage consideration of the nation’s water as a tradeable commodity, rather than an essential public asset.

This unsanctioned process must be halted and reversed if governments are to ensure responsible management of our struggling water resources, including the Murray-Darling river system, for the benefit of all Australians, now and into the future.

Get water away from the corporates

Fair Water Use believes that Australian water must be removed from the portfolios of corporate investors, who seek to control the availability and price of this vital natural resource, and returned to public hands. Resolution would entail fair reparation of those impacted by this process, not “buy-back”.

The electorate of this country must be given the opportunity to indicate whether it wishes its water to be privatised and exposed to global speculation - or protected for future generations of Australians.

Source: FairWaterUse, 13th August 2010

By Albert Bartlett

Let me thank Bill Ryerson of the Population Media Center for circulating a set of several reports telling of the concern that a growing number of thoughtful people in Australia are having about Australia’s continuing explosive population growth and dwindling water and other natural resources.

In the first report, Penny Wong was listed as the Climate Change Minister in the government of Kevin Rudd. An interviewer asked the Minister, “Australia’s population is projected to increase by 65%... by 2050. During the same period, the government is committed to cutting our carbon emissions by 60%. Aren’t these goals or facts mutually exclusive?”

Minister Wong responded emphatically “…Absolutely not.”

Minister Wong’s response notes that “Whereas the last few hundred years …growth in our carbon pollution has essentially tracked our population and economic growth…The key issue here is breaking that link, not trying to reduce population.”

Let’s look at some numbers.

The average growth rate needed to increase Australia’s population 65% by the year 2050 is only 1.252 percent per year.

The average annual reduction of emissions needed to reduce emissions 60% by 2050 is 2.291 percent per year.

Add these two rates (1.252 + 2.291) and you find that to accommodate the projected population growth AND to reduce overall annual emissions by 60% would require an annual rate of decrease of per capita emissions of polluting greenhouse gases of 3.543 percent per year over the next forty years. The per capita annual emissions would have to be cut in half every 19.6 years!

What is the basis for Minister Wong’s belief that this enormous reduction can be achieved, year after year for 40 years? What progress toward this goal has Australia made during Ms. Wong’s leadership in her present position of Climate Change Minister?

Does Minister Wong really believe that this can be done? Or is she basing her policy recommendations on Walt Disney’s First Law:

“Wishing will make it so.”

Let’s look a little farther. The present rate of growth of Australia’s population is quoted as being 1.8 percent per year which is significantly higher than the 1.252 percent per year assumed above. If this current higher rate continues, Australia’s population will double by 2050 and would reach a density of one person per square meter over the whole continent in just over 700 years!

Surely the Minister will admit that population growth in Australia will stop itself through starvation, pollution, warfare and lack of resources long before the population density reaches one person per square meter.

The critical question for the Minister then is, “Should Australia encourage continued population growth or should the people of Australia act to stop the growth before Nature stops it?”

If the Minister feels that Australians should act to stop population growth before Nature stops the growth, then why not stop it now while there are still some resources and some open spaces?

It would be very helpful for the people of Australia if Climate Change Minister Wong would give these facts and options some serious consideration and then report the results of her considerations promptly to the people of Australia.

Albert A. Bartlett; Professor Emeritus of Physics
University of Colorado at Boulder, CO; 80309-0390
Phone, Department Office; (303) 492-6952
Home; 2935 19th Street, Boulder, CO; 80304-2719
Phone; (303) 443-0595; FAX; (303) 449-9440

Circulated by Bill Ryerson, President of the Population Media Center and Population Institute

One of the most important principles internationally when referring to greenhouse gas reduction schemes it that the polluter pays. This means that national targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions should be based on the historical contribution of each nation to global emissions.

A most important factor is the levels of emissions per capita. Australia has the highest greenhouse gas emissions per person at 26.7 tonnes per annum and this it twice the average level for all other industrialised countries and 25% higher that per person in the USA (21.2tonnes).

It is obvious that Australia's population growth policies have a enormous impact on our greenhouse gas emissions. Our immigration rate is the major contributing factor of our population growth and thus the biggest contributor to increasing our greenhouse gas emissions, and not "natural" growth. Immigrants coming here therefore adopt our consumption habits and lifestyles, thereby increasing their emissions, and our overall output.

If Australia decides to increase our population rapidly, to 50 million by 2060 or more, then energy-related emission would grow to around 600 parts per million CO2, or about double 1990 levels! (Population Policy and Environmental Degradation Sources and Trends in Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Clive Hamilton and Hal Turton, Monash University)

People are not pollution -- Why climate activists should not support limits on immigration.
People are not "pollution" and neither is CO2, but both can cause problems from excess quantities!
Recently, as concern about greenhouse gas emissions and global warming increasing, the anti-immigrant argument has taken on a new form. Now the argument is: immigrants should be kept out because our way of life is a threat to the world’s environment.

According to the article: To calculate “per capita emissions”, we simply divide a country’s total greenhouse gas emissions by its total population. This provides a useful baseline for comparing countries of different sizes – but it tells us nothing at all about the emissions that can actually be attributed to individuals. In fact, most emissions are caused by industrial and other processes over which individuals have no control. In Canada, for example, no change in the number of immigrants will have any effect on the oil extraction industry at the Alberta Tar Sands, described by George Monbiot as “the world’s biggest single industrial source of carbon emissions”.

Monbiot site on Canada

However, Australians have made effort to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, but unless our numbers are limited the gross output will continue to rise. Industry and technology cause anthropogenic emissions, and a higher population increase the demand for larger markets and increased production. More population naturally equates to a demand for more jobs, and thus more industries and more plundering of finite natural resources! Excessive exports are due to human greed and worship of growth.

The Government accepted the findings of Professor Garnaut that a fair and effective global agreement centred on stabilising long-term atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases was at or below 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent is in Australia’s national interests. However, the Australian National Greenhouse Accounts released in June 2009 showed emissions rose by an estimated 553 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, or 1.1 per cent, in 2008. According to Climate Group, (Jan 2008) compared with 2000 levels, emissions from energy-use were significantly higher across all states, collectively up 19 per cent.

The Greenhouse Indicator Annual Report, released by the Climate Group, measures emissions created by electricity and petrol use across the eastern states. The report shows overall emissions were 5.3 million tonnes lower in 2009 than in the previous year. The base line should be 2000 (Copenhagen) or 1990 levels (Kyoto) , not 2008! So we are reducing our increase?

Australia has declared it will not go beyond a 5 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 without guaranteed action by major emitters including the US, China and India. Little hope anyway of going beyond 5 %! By 2020 the Federal Government wants to cut emissions by 5 to 25 per cent. At our present rate of population growth, our numbers are likely to be well over 25 million by then!

THE United States (Jan 29th) officially stated a goal to cut carbon emissions by 17 per cent by 2020 off 2005 levels, in a submission to the United Nations as part of last month's Copenhagen meeting.

Our 5% is looking a little short now that the US have challenged it!
Kevin Rudd's drive for a "big Australia" and his efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emission are totally at odds, and are completely contradictory and hypocritical to addressing climate change, what he previously called the "greatest moral challenge of our time"!

I understand that Australia, if it keeps to its present course, is projected to grow its population by some 14 million people, or 65%, in just 25 years. Climate Change Minister Penny Wong of the growthist Labor administration of Kevin Rudd, was asked this question on September 21/09:

Interviewer:
"Minister, Australia's population is projected to increase by 65% to the level of 30m people by 2050. During that same period, the government is committed to cutting our carbon emissions by 60%. Aren't those goals or those facts mutually exclusive? How are we going to massively cut carbon as our population continues to massively grow?"

Penny Wong:
"Well, absolutely not, because the key issue with reducing emissions is that we have to de-link our levels of carbon pollution from economic growth and population growth. We have to ... Whereas the last few hundred years emissions growth - that is, growth in our carbon pollution - has essentially tracked our population and economic growth, we have to break that link and that the whole world has to break that link and so does Australia. So the key issue here is breaking that link, not, not trying to reduce population." Source: http://candobetter.org/node/1563

Letter to the Minister:

Penny, I have a weight problem. My doctor tells me that if I persist in eating a litre of ice-cream every day, I will increase my weight by 65% in just 25 months. But since it is chocolate ice-cream, I feel it is racist to pin the blame for my growing girth on it. I also feel that it is possible to “de-couple” my weight gain from my caloric intake.

In fact, while I now wolf down 4,000 calories a day, I believe that I should look forward to doubling that intake by 2035. I need a caloric stimulus package that will kick-start my body and brain from its current slow-down. I can compensate for any negative consequences by metabolizing the ice cream more efficiently. I call it “smart gluttony”, and already the environmental movement is wanting to adopt the phrase as a slogan for their “green living” tips.

If I buy green-coloured ice cream, lime-flavoured, it would be a symbolic statement of my fresh approach to a sustainable future for my body. As we know, cosmetic labeling in and of itself usually suffices for a substantive policy shift.

Ms. Wong, I must congratulate you for your faith in human ingenuity. Julian Simon was right. Malthusians chronically underestimate our intelligence. With enough brainpower, we can have our cake (or ice cream) and eat it too. Ice cream that doesn’t consist of calories. Growth that doesn’t result in carbon emissions. The Peter Pan School of Greenwash. Make a wish that growth will have no ecological cost, and that wish will make it true. Pure magic. Hey, I have seen that trick played in Canada too. We signed on to the Kyoto accords in 1990 with the promise that we would reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 6% by 2012 but by 2006 we were 22% beyond our emissions level in 1990. Of course, that had nothing to do with the fact that immigrant-driven growth has increased our population level by 22% (27.7 to 33.7 million today). Like the environmental establishment, we simply ‘de-coupled’ our imagination from reality. Population growth, where? Who cares? Perhaps we could become a race of 15 billion “breatharians” who simply subsist on air in a world where thirst is decoupled from water use and hunger is decoupled from food use. As our population grows, so grows the pool of our ideas. The sky is the limit!

Oh to be young again. Hopeful, credulous and cornucopian.

Tim Murray

Australian series

Andrew Robb, Federal Opposition member for Goldstein is the latest amongst a series of Australian politicians to announce a battle with mental depression.

I understand this illness is more prevalent in Australian politicians than in those of other countries.

I have had some thoughts about the reasons for this.

Are Australian politicians simply more inclined to come out public with the diagnosis or is depression among politicians actually more widespread in this country than in others?

A theory to explain

I can understand why the job might cause this state of mind in an intelligent and well meaning politician. Politicians must have to constantly make compromises and vote for decisions that they know are not in the best interests of their constituents, but instead in the interests of powerful lobby groups.

Eventfully they must have to delude themselves that they are doing the right thing.

Climate change policy as a cause of mental stress in politicians

Greenhouse gas and climate change policies are areas of particular parliamentary stress and Andrew Robb has been involved heavily in this area for the opposition.

Stress of Carbon-reduction policy example

We might also look at the case of Penny Wong (who has not so far announced depression), which I would have thought carried some big stressors. She was interviewed at the beginning of this week by Fran Kelly for the ABC, who on 21 September 09, asked her how she could reconcile a rapidly growing Australian population with a target of a marked reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

Wong's answer to this question drew amazed gasps from the ecologically literate community. She said that targets could be achieved by de-linking the population numbers for the greenhouse gas emissions. Since she gave no further details to explain how such a thermodynamic breakthrough might be achieved for the first time in the history of the universe, one tends to assume that she is engaging in political wishful thinking.

Here is our transcript:

Interviewer:
"Minister, Australia's population is projected to increase by 65% to the level of 30m people by 2050. During that same period, the government is committed to cutting our carbon emissions by 60%. Aren't those goals or those facts mutually exclusive? How are we going to massively cut carbon as our population continues to massively grow?"

Penny Wong:
"Well, absolutely not, because the key issue with reducing emissions is that we have to de-link our levels of carbon pollution from economic growth and population growth. We have to ... Whereas the last few hundred years emissions growth - that is, growth in our carbon pollution - has essentially tracked our population and economic growth, we have to break that link and that the whole world has to break that link and so does Australia. So the key issue here is breaking that link, not, not trying to reduce population."

Perhaps, in fact, Penny Wong holds two conflicting pieces of knowledge in her head and copes with this by "de-linking" them. This is how the thinking might go:

"The population is growing dangerously fast and causing increasing greenhouse emissions.
We have to satisfy the public by promising to reduce greenhouse emissions.
We also want to avoid making the growth lobby angry by stopping ramping up population growth to unheard of heights.
This is impossible. I am going to go mad if I keep thinking this way. I can feel a depression coming on.
I know! I will de-link these two conflicting demands on my brain so that they will stop interfering with the logic of my policy statements and then we can all get some sleep."

Indeed, for an intelligent independent thinking person, this must cause some mental discomfort.

I really don't know if cognitive dissonance is the cause of the widespread depression in our politicians in recent years (Geoff Gallop, Jeff Kennett, John Brogden, Nick Sherry, Andrew Bartlett, Greg Wilton). Nor do I know why politicians overseas do not seem to be so prone to depression.

I do know however that most of them make me very depressed.

Maybe their $153.00 per week pay rise announced today will make them happier.

Although they will need to delink that from the mean earnings of the majority of the population or it will also cause cognitive dissonance with values of equity, equality, and a fair go.

Dear Minister Wong,

On 21 September 2009 you had the following exchange on the Breakfast Show on ABC Radio:

Interviewer:
"Minister, Australia's population is projected to increase by 65% to the level of 30m people by 2050. During that same period, the government is committed to cutting our carbon emissions by 60%. Aren't those goals or those facts mutually exclusive? How are we going to massively cut carbon as our population continues to massively grow?"

Penny Wong:
"Well, absolutely not, because the key issue with reducing emissions is that we have to de-link our levels of carbon pollution from economic growth and population growth. We have to ... Whereas the last few hundred years emissions growth - that is, growth in our carbon pollution - has essentially tracked our population and economic growth, we have to break that link and that the whole world has to break that link and so does Australia. So the key issue here is breaking that link, not, not trying to reduce population."

Please tell me exactly what theory and model you are relying on for this proposed delinking of energy from population numbers in a context of economic growth. Please tell me why you believe it is inconceivable to simply allow Australia's population to return to natural levels of growth rather than interfere to engineer growth ever-upwards.

I am aware of economic beliefs that energy calory decrease trends since the late 1970s meant that there had been a delinking of energy use from productivity. This, however, has been shown to be mistaken. What had changed was the choice of and quality of fuels used for different tasks. Overall fuel use (and concommitant carbon gas output) has continued to increase with economic growth.

If it had failed to do so then the laws of thermodynamics would have been repealed, and that is impossible.

Perhaps you are relying on centrifugal separation based nuclear power, which admittedly uses less electrical energy than the old gaseous diffusion type?

Nonetheless, surely you cannot be unaware that, to replace Australia's current electrical consumption would require at least one thousand MWe nuclear power plant for each million Australians, each supplying 25PJ, plus an average of 4.8 new nuclear plants per year to supply annual growth in consumption. And that is without replacing the energy that oil and gas depletion will leave unsupplied, and it is without catering to the total electrical output of electricity producers, much of which will never reach any purposeful productive activity.

I await your response with real anxiety. Please reply as soon as possible, citing your theory, data and sources.

Sincerely, Sheila Newman Population, Environment and Energy Sociologist Editor of The Final Energy Crisis, 2nd Edition, Pluto Press, UK, 2008