ABS statistics 2009

Some highlights (or lowlights) from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data. (All passages are quotes from the ABS website). The only thing good is that there is now more public discussion - despite the government and mainstream press wanting to suppress anything except the propaganda that growth is good. The incoming diaspora is not some irresistable force of nature; it has been coordinated by Federal and State Government policy in cahoots with the commercial growth lobby.


http://www.census.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/[email protected]/DetailsPage/3101.0Jun%202009?OpenDocument

Natural Increase to net immigration rate:

For 2008-09 natural increase was 157,000, and net overseas migration 283,300. No matter how you measure it, net migration has never been so high. (p. 10 has the overview of the main data.)

Natural increase for the 12 months ended 30 June 2009 was 157,800 persons, an increase of 8.4% (or 12,200 persons) on the natural increase for the year ended 30 June 2008 (145,600 persons).

Births

The preliminary estimate for births during the year ended 30 June 2009 (300,900) was 4.6% higher than the figure for the year ended 30 June 2008 (287,700).

The total fertility rate (TFR) for the year ended 30 June 2009 was 1.978 babies per woman.

For the 12 months ended 30 June 2009, Australia's population growth rate (2.1%) was almost double that of the world (1.1%).

After a recent increase in growth, Australia is now growing at a faster rate than many countries including the Philippines (2.0%), Papua New Guinea (1.7%), Malaysia (1.6%), India and Hong Kong (both 1.4%), Indonesia (1.2%), Viet Nam and Sweden (both 1.1%), United States of America (1.0%), Canada (0.9%), China (0.6%), France (0.5%), the United Kingdom (0.3%) and Republic of Korea (0.2%). The populations of Greece, Italy and New Zealand all failed to register a
significant growth rate (both 0.0%). Further, Japan experienced a decrease in its population (-0.2%). One country that experienced faster growth than Australia was Singapore (2.2%).

Impact

Australians are losing control over access to housing, resources and ammenities, with incoming immigrant stream often much wealthier than the average Australian. There is something very wrong with a political system that allows this to happen, indeed encourages it.

In my view our non-representative 'representative' government comes from our land-use planning system, which favorises aggregation of private land, which means that private individuals and corporations can acquire more power than governments. Our governments, at Federal and State level, are hard to distinguish from private enterprise, with the ALP having massive property and financial investments, and, in government, running government owned investment and property development companies - with private intermediaries like Advance and other lobby groups, Progressive Business organisation and Labor Holdings and Labor Resources. Sources: http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2008/s2152596.htm, http://www.theage.com.au/national/labor-mates-linked-to-lucrative-winning-tenders-20090808-edlz.html, http://www.theage.com.au/national/in-the-murky-world-of-lobbying-mateship-is-king-20090808-edm6.html, etc.

What you can do

Be aware of what is happening, and try to educate other people.

Tell people overseas - notably in Britain, the source of many immigrants - that the government and private immigration agents are misrepresenting Australia as a big empty country.

Say that we are 75% rangelands (grasslands) and desert. The interior is flat and salty, with few permanent water-sources. Our rivers are slow-flowing and lose much of their water to evaporation. Our soils are thin and infertile - because the land has been worn down by erosion, without recent input from glaciers (as in Europe), river deltas (as in India) or volcanoes (as in Indonesia), which contribute to fertile soils.

Most people live on the South Eastern and the South Western coast. There is only one well-watered populous settled interior area, around the Murray Darling Basin, which is our major river system. Unfortunately this area is on the brink of ecological collapse. That means that we may lose our capacity to feed our own population in the manner to which it has become accustomed.

The only reason we appear rich is that we have shared a relatively small GDP among a relatively sparse population, like Argentina - which increased its population and lost that advantage. In fact, Australia is roughly comparable to Central and South American countries with low density indigenous populations and aggressive agricultural and mining colonisation.

Australia's GDP relied on the agricultural rape of the soil, which is ongoing, and on serendipitous gold-rushes and other mineral booms and speculation on real-estate. It now relies increasingly on selling off our assets, including finite supplies of minerals and hydrocarbons, along with flogging real-estate and the illusion of permanent jobs associated with ephemeral service industries.

There are severe water problems in most cities, massive public and private debts, housing shortages. Australians work extremely long hours, their industrial relations rights have virtually disappeared, the work-culture is cruel and competitive in the worst way, and obesity is rising.

Say emphatically that Australians were not consulted about this massive program of immigration. Say that we may appear like a democracy, but that we are being treated still like a colony, with cheap workers and an extractive economy. The suicide rate is up and so is obesity.

Neighbours is a developer's wet dream and more and more people live like Kath and Kim, like aging, half-educated children, herded into 'estates', reliant on cars, with shopping center, commercial parlor games and more debt their only desolate outlet.

This was never the Australian dream.

Skippy is being starved out and chased onto the road for new developments to accommodate off-shore purchasers.

Say that the government is working with big business to take over our agricultural land and making it almost impossible for people to supplement their incomes by growing their own food.

Say that our native animals are being hounded to extinction, losing their habitats to urban expansion, and our cities are being turned into inhospitable and unnatural glass and concrete human menageries.

Write for candobetter - in comments and articles - on your feelings about this, since we represent one of the few 'free presses' in Australia. Write for other good internet publications. Join and assist protests by groups like Planning Backlash, Protectors of Public Lands, and Sustainable Population Australia, Australian Wildlife Protection Council. Eschew professional 'conservation' organisations and councils that receive grants from government or from big business.

If you are a member of any political party, raise the issues at stake and encourage your membership to get behind Kelvin Thomson's point population reform plan. Point out that your leaders are not representing the electorate or the party membership and look around for new leaders. Form breakaway groups if you can.

Your party leaders will not thank you - yes, not even the Greens. Unfortunately, the 'authorities' are simply not to be trusted; they have parasited an undemocratic situation. You will encounter severe opposition from a self-important few. That is how things got this way; anyone who raised the issue of population stability or reduction would be attacked by stooges. But people will note your courage and gradually you will find support.

There is the beginnings of a ground-swell, however, and if you and I stand up to be counted, others will.

Every day the problem gets worse; everything we can do to reverse the process or slow it down, gains time for more action.

In solidarity.