Greg Barber

This article commentates the parliamentary 'debate' on 14 August 2012 on this bill, including how these politicians avoid confronting the driver of overpopulation. We also cite speakers on the associated ills: "[T]he government is setting us up for privatisation of the permit system. That is the holy grail. [...]What we have here in Victoria is the product of a mad scientist experiment, turning a simple matter — something that is simple in cities around the world, planning and building codes — into a privatised, almost anything goes objective-based system that is fundamentally broken. We think this approach is fundamentally wrong. There is a simple and easy process for the minister to achieve the same objective within the existing provisions of the Planning and Environment Act 1987." (Greg Barber, Greens)

Ed. All emphases, headings, and links are by candobetter.net editors. Source of quotations is at the end of the article.

Introduction

At the end of this article there is advice on how to tackle this problem. Scroll down for an overview, via headings, of what the MPs, Greg Barber, Mr Tee, and Mathew Guy had to say in Parliament.

The article starts with Greg Barber's speech because it sums up the problems with the bill, although Barber actually spoke after Mr Guy (Minister for Planning) and Mr Brian Tee, ALP State shadow minister for Planning and Sustainable Growth, which you can read at the end of Mr Barber's words.

Although Mr Barber's speech cuts through the detail, and although he talks about the Greens policies for planning, no more than Mr Tee or Mr Guy, does he address the cause of the proposed legislation which threatens to further erode Victorians' rights and turn our city and suburbs into an expensive concrete hell. The cause is the continued inviting of too many immigrants, at the behest of the growth lobby. In fact, Mr Barber attacked Kelvin Thomson not so long ago for trying to represent Australians on this issue that dwarfs all others. (See, "Are the Greens a real alternative?") As long as Mr Barber, Mr Tee and Mr Guy say nothing about the government's open invitation and offers to sponsor immigrants to Victoria on their "Live in Victoria" site, they cannot pretend that they are not aiding and abetting the death of democracy in Victoria, for all their fine words.

Barber: Elected councillors will lose their powers; Residents lose local representation

Mr BARBER (Greens)(Northern Metropolitan) on the Planning and Environment Amendment (VicSmart Planning Assessment) Bill 2012.

"It is clear that as we have gone from a Labor government to a Liberal government things have gone from bad to worse. When you look at the way planning currently works here in Victoria you can see that much of Mr Tee’s argument was hollow.

Of course we are seeking many outcomes from the planning system, and it seems that this bill will not provide them. In a simplified format this bill is attempting to set up a different track along which planning permits will be considered and decided upon. This new track will be that council officers will receive a planning permit application and, without necessarily the need for advertising or considering objections, go ahead and approve the application. Council officers will not be doing that under delegation from councillors; they will be doing it under a direct delegation from the council’s CEO, so a new system of deciding planning permit applications is being set up under this act.

That is pretty much all this bill does. It certainly does not tell us which type of applications and of which nature will be put into this stream. The minister has put the cart before the horse in introducing this bill to the Parliament. No-one has any idea, and there is certainly nothing in the legislation, that tells us what sorts of applications would be put into this stream. That is what allows Mr Tee to paint various scary scenarios.

The government says, "Trust us on the details" but how can we?

We would simply have to take it on trust from the government, because that issue will be determined later through the planning scheme, which of course the minister controls without reference to Parliament.

A fact sheet was produced by the minister, which says that ‘straightforward’ applications would be dealt with in this way.

The VicSmart — A Simpler Planning Permit Process fact sheet[Download here as pdf or here as word doc] is on the Department of Planning and Community Development website and states:

VicSmart will apply to straightforward, low impact applications. These applications will be clearly set out in planning schemes so applicants and the community know in advance how these applications will be handled. The types of minor permit applications being considered for VicSmart make up approximately 10 per cent of all permit applications.

We are then given a list of possible VicSmart applications, which includes: realigning a common boundary between two lots; subdividing existing buildings to create separate titles; building or extending a fence within 3 metres of a street; constructing a service station on land in an industrial zone; carrying out development and heritage overlay which is already exempt from public notice and review; managing vegetation in urban areas; building in the land subject to inundation overlay or special building overly; altering road access where the road is or will be in a road zone category 1; and erecting small advertising signs more than 30 metres from land in a residential zone where the sign is not lit, electronic or animated.

It makes you wonder: if it is really down to those simple issues, why has the government not approached this in a different way and established the same process through other mechanisms?

We know that the previous Labor government was constantly removing the requirements for permits and was constantly in the process removing residents’ rights to object.

It did so many times through the planning scheme, and if this minister found himself thwarted through legislation, he could certainly go ahead and, at the stroke of a pen, make many of these applications, through changes to the planning scheme, no longer subject to advertising and review.

It is not like that is a new idea.

In fact for the 11 years of the Labor government we had a capital city zone right here in the central part of the city of Melbourne.

Harks back to the Windsor Hotel and other ALP planning nightmares

There were many large applications, including the one involving Windsor Hotel, affecting thousands of residents. Every one of those applications — which were not for pergolas and fences; in fact one of them was for a massive development of a heritage-listed hotel, being the Windsor — was, and I will quote from the capital city zone planning scheme: … exempt from the notice requirements of section 52(1)(a), (b) and (d), the decision requirements of section 64(1), (2) and (3) and the review rights of section 82(1) of the act. That is a common enough provision in a range of zones and overlays and other schedules, but in relation to the capital city zone, if Mr Tee now really is as upset as he pretends to be about this removal of residents’ rights, why is it that over 11 years Labor never restored residents’ rights in the capital city zone? And why is it — and this is not a rhetorical question; I really want to know the answer — that only the Greens have committed to doing so? Why is it that during the entire process of the by-election for the Assembly seat of Melbourne, when we invited the Labor Party to endorse our policy, to give back rights to notice and appeal —

Victorians need rights in planning decisions; says Greens offered these at Melbourne By-Election

[...] But I would just say to opposition members that if you are not going to oppose Ted Baillieu’s policies and you have not got any policies of your own, could you at least endorse mine? And could you endorse here today, while we are on the subject of residents and neighbours — let us call them — having rights under planning decisions and in the capital city zone restoring to the 6500 voters who live in the CBD and in that zone the rights that you say this bill is taking away, which you say is a terrible thing, and you may be right.

Melbourne By-Election: ALP failed to put forward good planning alternatives

[...] But on the really big stuff Labor did not restore when it had the chance residents’ rights, and for that matter the rights of other types of neighbours in the city. Again, coming back to the Melbourne by-election, we invited Labor to endorse its policy, in fact the commitment the Labor Party made, to give live music venues some say over encroaching residential development. That is the so-called — and I am sure Mr O’Brien is going to get very excited about this — agent of change principle. The Labor Party committed to doing it but did not do it, and even during the Melbourne by-election where this was an important issue — we all remember seeing tens of thousands of people walking up Bourke Street in defence of live music — Labor declined the opportunity to endorse our commitment to what had been previously been its promise. That is a strange way to go about running an election.

Skyscrapers could go up next door to houses?

[...]the context is that you could be in the capital city zone and you could wake up one morning and find that you no longer have natural light because a 22-storey building has gone up next to you and you do not have — —

This is about Privatising the Permit System

[...]You never saw the yellow notice because you did not have a right to object — much less have your objection considered or have the opportunity to appeal a decision — so I think it is analogous, but members of the coalition government cannot see the contradiction. There is one more thing that is wrong with this bill, and that is that in setting up this second track the government is setting us up for privatisation of the permit system. That is the holy grail. Make no mistake: the reason this bill is here is because the development industry wants it to be here. They had been campaigning for it for as long as I have been involved in planning — 10 years, since I first became a councillor. This is the thing they have always asked for. Today we are arguing the merits of it, but they had been campaigning for it for 10 years to get to this point and now they have got it.

The Privatising of Planning Permits

What it ultimately allows for is the privatisation of planning permits in the same way that building permits, which used to be issued by councils and were sometimes even considered by councillors, were completely privatised.

Once you have taken this threshold step, which is that it is no longer a matter of the democratically elected local government of your area having control of the planning permit system because what councillors might say about it is now irrelevant and it is simply a statutory process being implemented by council officers under the head of power attached to the CEO, who got that from the act, not from a delegation of councillors, then what difference does it make?

Harks back to Mr Kennett's rule

Why not, as Mr Kennett did, send that whole process out to a competitive process and private assessors, because if these codes are as tight as Mr Guy seems to want us to believe they will be, they simply become mechanistic exercises in comparing an application to a code. Why not privatise them out? But that in itself is a contradiction, because as I said there are still two parallel tracks. Some small permit applications go through the traditional council permit, and some new types will go through the code assessment permit. It does not necessarily relate to the complexity or the codification — the codifiability, if you like — of these applications, because that is simply a matter of writing the rules.

We should be codifying more requirements of the planning scheme

The minister has the cart before the horse, and he has also taken a contradictory approach. We should absolutely be codifying more and more requirements of the planning scheme. It should be simple to know whether a particular type of development is possible or not. That would be good for developers and good for neighbours. What we have here in Victoria is the product of a mad scientist experiment, turning a simple matter — something that is simple in cities around the world, planning and building codes — into a privatised, almost anything goes objective-based system that is fundamentally broken. Labor kept it for 11½ years, barely tinkering with it, and now it makes lots of noises about the minister taking it the next step.

This Fundamentally wrong approach is also unnecessary

We think this approach is fundamentally wrong. There is a simple and easy process for the minister to achieve the same objective within the existing provisions of the Planning and Environment Act 1987."

Mr Guy argues for his party's new bill that Greens and ALP say is so awful

Mr Barber said quite a lot (which Candobetter.net editors have cut out) about the hypocrisy of the Labor opposition on planning, but Mr Guy also did, and extracts from his speech now follow.

Mr Guy protects the Growth Lobby by avoiding the population elephant in the room

Hon. M. J. GUY (Minister for Planning

"[...] What is worse? Is it the deprivation of home ownership or the expansion of an urban growth boundary? In my mind the deprivation of home ownership is far and away a prospect that is far worse and something that governments need to put their minds to addressing. In Melbourne our population is still growing very strongly and has been through the last few years to the extent where that growth of nearly 70 000 people per year is having huge impacts upon affordability, particularly when coupled with the previous Labor government’s land release policies. It is having massive impacts on affordability for people trying to get into the first home owner market."

CANDOBETTER Here Mr Guy is claiming that the objective of the new rules would be to help people buy affordable homes. He does not say that much of Victoria's real-estate and development goes to overseas buyers (who also easily obtain tax-payer-funded first home buyer subsidies) and that all this goes to raising the cost of home ownership as well as artificially keeping demand for houses up.

Note that no-one in parliament even touches on this!

Mr Guy continues by attacking the opposition. Of course the opposition has given him an enormous amount of ammunition, but this doesn't help Victorians:

MR GUY:

"[...] in 2010 the previous government expanded Melbourne’s urban growth boundary by 43 000 hectares, an area one-third of the size of Adelaide. No-one in the now Labor opposition, the then Labor government, opposed that 43 000-hectare expansion.

[...] It is absolutely, utterly unequivocal that if Labor had been re-elected in 2010, it would have pursued a strategy around logical inclusions. There was not a word of opposition from people on that committee such as Mr Tee, the now opposition planning spokesperson, who has been in hibernation for three months. The only written comments on the record that I have found from the Labor opposition in relation to logical inclusions — and this is not an unrelated issue — are from Labor’s deputy leader, James Merlino, the member for Monbulk in the Assembly, who has written to me. This correspondence is on the record and has been for some time. In this correspondence Mr Merlino sought a logical inclusion for the Waverley Golf Club [...]

In opposition Labor has no idea whether it supports the growth boundary expansion or opposes it. Labor’s shadow planning minister is out there opposing this policy, talking about the death of green wedges and his opposition to a policy that he supported just two years ago, yet Labor’s current deputy leader has written to me — and his correspondence is on the record — advocating on behalf of a golf club to get land included in the urban growth boundary as part of a logical inclusion[...]

Gutless parliamentarians under Brumby Government

[...] Those people who just two years ago did not have the guts to cross the floor and oppose their Premier, John Brumby, will now get up in this chamber and declare their opposition to outer urban growth when they expanded the outer urban growth area by 43 000 hectares. Let their hypocrisy be lost on no-one, because believe me it is not lost on the mainstream media or the population in those areas."

CANDOBETTER: It should not be forgotten that the Liberals, when in opposition, were just as gutless as the Labor parliamentarians about standing up to the developer dictatorship that Premier Brumby seemed to head up in Parliament. No-one stood up for Victorians then and it looks like no-one is standing up for us now.

MR TEE (ALP Shadow Minister for Planning and for "Sustainable Growth" [!])

Mr TEE (Eastern Metropolitan) — "I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Planning and Environment Amendment (VicSmart Planning Assessment) Bill
2012.

This legislation is frightening and is causing a great deal of concern in the Victorian community.

It provides a permit application, or a golden ticket, the holder of which can effectively bypass some of the most important planning provisions in the Victorian planning system.

If you hold a golden ticket and fall within the so-called VicSmart process, you do not have to talk to your neighbours or consult with the community to get your development up. You do not have to worry about the views of the local council or take into account, or indeed even notify, those who would be adversely affected by your application.

Best of all, if you have this golden ticket and you are part of the VicSmart system, the role of the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal has been effectively gutted. Holders of this golden ticket get a direct free ride to VCAT, but the role that VCAT plays in protecting everybody else — the local community, the local council — is completely neutered by this bill.

Not just pergolas: "literally no constraints"

The government ministers say, ‘This is all good and well; we’re just looking at pergolas.’ But we all know that this legislation is much broader in its scope; the sky is the limit. There are literally no constraints on the powers provided under this bill in terms of heights and setbacks. There are no constraints at all; it is open slather. It could be that the first you would know that a decision has been made under these provisions to put up a multistorey development is when you come home from work and find that your neighbour’s house has been bulldozed.

Mr Tee's "livability" euphemism for the overpopulation elephant in the room

[...] People have a right to expect their communities to be protected. We also know Melbourne’s livability is what attracts the best and the brightest from around the world to live here, invest here and make their contribution to our economy and to the ideas that generate the wealth in this century. This is not only an attack on our livability; it is an attack on our economic success.

[...] clause 3 provides that paragraphs (b) to (e) of section 60(1) of the Planning and Environment Act 1987 will no longer apply. Section 60(1)(b) provides that when deciding on an application the responsible authority must consider the objects of planning in Victoria.

[...]

What are those objects? The first is: … to provide for the fair, orderly, economic and sustainable use, and development of land. That objective will not apply to a permit considered under the VicSmart provisions."

CANDOBETTER: Note that the above clause about 'fair, orderly, economic and sustainable use, and development of land' was used and abused repeatedly by VCAT members as an excuse to ignore environmental and democratic concerns. The economic principles are, unfortunately, whatever the prevailing government decides to say they are when they get into government. As Greg Barber says earlier in this article, we do need more encoding. Leaving these matters up to VCAT members who tend to be growth-lobby reared is like leaving baby chickens to the care of foxes.

Ecological principles that the Bill abrogates

MR TEE [continues]:

"The next object is:

… to provide for the protection of natural and man-made resources and the maintenance of ecological processes and genetic diversity. That will no longer apply."

CANDOBETTER: The 'economic' principles always trumped this with the ALP which had a derelict performance on protection of our natural environment within the planning process. (See "How thick can a political skin get...")

Built, social and ammenity environment

MR TEE [continues]:

"The next object is: … to secure a pleasant, efficient and safe working, living and recreational environment for all Victorians and visitors to Victoria. It will no longer apply. The next object is: … to conserve and enhance those buildings, areas or other places which are of scientific, aesthetic, architectural or historical interest, or otherwise of special cultural value. That will no longer apply. The next object is: … to protect public utilities and other assets and enable the orderly provision and co-ordination of public utilities and other facilities for the benefit of the community. That is another object that will no longer apply. The next object is: … to balance the present and future interest of all Victorians. That again will be gone."

CANDOBETTER: With regard to the protection of public utilities it is hard to see how the corporatisation and privatisation of resources undertaken by the former Labor government in Victoria can be held up as an example here, however, in this good cop, bad cop routine, where Labor Governments do bad things and then Liberal Governments do worse things, we can probably expect, as Mr Tee intimates, even more open slather.

Community and service providers lose rights to consultation

MR TEE [continues]:

"[...] It gets worse. The bill provides that section 60(1)(c) of the Planning and Environment Act will no longer apply to the consideration of a permit application under the VicSmart process. That section requires the decision-maker to consider objections and other submissions which have been received. That effectively means that the views of the community — that is, anybody has expressed a view about a development — are to be disregarded. They do not matter.

Another provision that is discarded by this bill is section 60(1)(d), which provides that the responsible authority must consider the decision and comments of a referral authority. The bill provides that the views of the power companies, VicRoads, WorkSafe and the water authorities are to be discarded. Their views are not to be considered when a permit application under these provisions is being considered.

Section 60(1)(e) also will no longer apply. That means that the decision-maker will not consider the environmental impact of the application. That section requires a decision-maker to consider the: … significant effects which the use or development may have on the environment or which … the environment may have on the use or development. Again, that provision will be gone, so there will be no requirement to consider the impact of the application on the environment.

Another issue relates to the role of local councils. The bill provides a role of local councils — that is, the role of the CEO of the local council will be to tick and flick any permit applications that come through the VicSmart process. The bill provides no role for the elected councillors — that is, those who are elected to protect their community and to make sure that the development that is undertaken is consistent with the look, feel and character of their community. All of that is discarded by this bill."

CANDOBETTER:Don't however get your hopes up that Mr Tee is some kind of hero, standing up for us all against the population growth that drives all this disenfranchisement, this destruction of our property and legal rights. Mr Tee, unfortunately, continues to barrack for high immigration.

MR TEE [continues]:

"We also know Melbourne’s livability is what attracts the best and the brightest from around the world to live here, invest here and make their contribution to our economy and to the ideas that generate the wealth in this century. This is not only an attack on our livability; it is an attack on our economic success."

CANDOBETTER:That is how he deals with the problem that he and everyone else in the parliament surely knows is causing the breakdown of Victorians' laws and rights.

What you can do

There is no point in just writing a protest letter to your local member of Parliament, but there is one effective kind of letter or email you can write to them. It is this: Write an email or a letter and send an electronic copy to http://candobetter.net to publish as a comment under this article or on our miscellaneous page. The email or letter to parliament should ask your parliamentarian what he or she is doing to prevent the continuing overpopulation of this city and state. Ask them what they have done to stop the government's permanent invitation to more and more immigrants via Live in Victoria.com.au? Ask what they have said in Parliament when the government was making laws to remove our rights to object to more development on the grounds that they were providing more opportunities for the homeless or to help affordabililty by releasing more land. Quote this article or provide the URL.

We will publish their answers and we will also record where they did not answer.
Send this article to people who may also want to stand up to this sham.

Representing Victorians on this issue better than we have been represented by the above debate is what you should be demanding of your politicians.

NOTES

Source:
PLANNING: SCHEME AMENDMENTS, Hansard, COUNCIL PROOF Tuesday, 14 August 2012

The following article takes the Victorian Greens severely to task . We at candobetter.org are very willing to publish a reply from the Greens explaining their failure to move a motion to replace or to vote against VC71.

Labor and Green MPs' condemned on VC 71

This week Protectors of Public Land Victoria and Planning Backlash both condemned Labor and Green members of Parliament for failing to act to remove the infamous Clause 16 of Planning Amendment VC 71.

VC71 clause 16 was to be challenged by the Liberals on 6 October. Greens were approached to support it and many people expected that support to be automatic. The Greens had voted against clause 16 in an earlier form[1] and it had now reappeared without significant changes. Many conservationists and planning activists throughout Melbourne have seen in the Greens some hope of an alternative to population growth and development uber al. They were aghast to realise that the Greens had finished up supporting the Brumby Government's ecologically unsustainable population growth and this crowning horror of Justin Madden's bad development laws.

But there were signs of this earlier. See "Are the Greens a real alternative?".

Mary Drost, of Planning Backlash, wrote that she was "devastated" to have to tell people that, when the partial debate took place on Wednesday night (the 6th):

Greg Barber, Planning Spokesperson for the Greens, talked so long that the time was up and there was no time for a vote, due to Standing Orders of Parliament. Reading his words in Hansard I am still not sure what he was saying. Some are calling it a "Filibuster" (to avoid a vote being taken). Hence it means that VC71 clause 16 was not challenged and remains in force."

"Even worse," Mary continued,

"On Thursday (the 7th) there was a motion that the Upper House return to Parliament next week to vote on deleting the clause from VC71 motion. The Greens voted with Labor against returning to Parliament, saving the Greens the decision whether to vote for deleting Clause 16 of VC71 and upsetting Labor or voting against the motion and upsetting the community. Well we are upset, we feel badly let down. We condemn those members of Parliament - Labor and Green – for allowing Clause 16 of VC71 to remain in force.

So VC71 stays in and is already being used in VCAT to help developers. It is pie in the sky for Greg Barber to say in his lengthy speech that it can still be got rid of in the new parliament.

Of Clause 16, Julianne Bell, of Protectors of Public Land wrote,

"PPL VIC has long campaigned against such high rise urban development along transport routes and also against the extension of the urban growth boundary. The community has not been consulted over VC 71 but it has been imposed on Melburnians by the Brumby Government despite the extraordinary community opposition demonstrated through Melbourne, including several rallies at Parliament. This plan to line public transport routes with multi storey apartments to accommodate the anticipated increase of one and a half million population had its genesis in the blueprint "Transforming Australian Cities" commissioned by the City of Melbourne and the State Government in May 2009. (This plan was said to have been derived from a South American architect who sought to house former shanty town dwellers in high rise/multi storey apartment units along bus routes.)

Atkinson's opening speech to the motion 6 October 2010

Liberal, Bruce Atkinson, despite the party's formal opposition to Clause 16,
summed up his party's spineless endorsement of Labor's laws to mandate land-speculation and profit at the expense of democracy through high density development, in this piffling piece of hairsplitting:

Mr. Bruce Atkinson (Liberal) speaking to the motion in the Upper House on Wednesday last 6 October : "What concerns us about the government's approach in planning amendment VC 71 is not higher density development per se but the fact that this particular provision is indiscriminate. This provision would suggest that higher density development could run along every major railway, every major bus route, every major tramline throughout the metropolitan area and could quite conceivably involve development along these major transport corridors to a level of five, six, eight or nine storeys and for a significant depth, some 400 metres in, from those transport corridors - those bus routes, tramlines or train lines. That is a very significant change to the character of Melbourne and its suburbs."

(...)

"We are not opposed to some of the objectives the government had in arriving initially at its Melbourne 2030 policy — a policy that became discredited in the community and needed to be re-badged as Melbourne @ 5 Million. "

Victorian Greens Greg Barber's hollow words

What did Greg Barber talk about for so long that everyone else ran out of time?

Barber canned both Labor and Liberal for their failure to care for the environment or to provide better policies. All very well, but completely hollow words, for the Greens simply failed to supply an alternative to clause 16. And they all went right along and voted against any further review of Clause 16.

Read the full text at the end of this article, [2] but here is a stirring and clever excerpt which unfortunately led from nowhere to nowhere and round and round and round until all the allocated time was gone:

[Ed. Excerpt reparagraphed for clarity.]

"Ms Mikakos described this proposal by the government as policy neutral, which is a very post-modern Labor way of saying, ‘The document actually does nothing’ — and I
agree.

This document, which appears to update and make changes to the highest level decisions and aims of our planning scheme, does nothing.

We all know with the sorts of environmental, social and economic pressures on our city that doing nothing right now is not really an option. In a way, doing nothing is making a decision.

It allows the invisible hand of the market to have its way, and when you intervene it is usually at the ministerial level, site by site, favour by favour.

Let us have a look at this policy-neutral document in front of us.

If we take Ms Mikakos at her word, it is policy neutral in relation to the supply of urban land, but in fact having just voted on an expansion to the urban growth boundary (UGB), which the Greens opposed, this material anticipates the next extension of the urban growth boundary. It is policy neutral in the sense that we will continue to have the oxymoron known as a growth boundary, which really means sprawl-for-ever.

It is policy neutral in relation to planning for growth areas.

When we debated the UGB and the growth areas infrastructure charge the Greens knew the major issue then was the failure of planning for growth areas, not just in the sense of structure planning but in all the matters that go along with a livable community on a greenfield site.

It is policy neutral — that is to say it does nothing in relation to structure planning, a phrase that first popped up when Melbourne 2030 landed on our city like a group of lost aliens and said, ‘Take us to your leader’, or more importantly, ‘We are in charge now’.

Structure planning was meant to indicate that councils would take control of how development was to occur in activity centres. The amendment is policy neutral in relation to open space, which is to say that the government will continue to chip away at it where it is most needed, where it is already underprovided.

Nothing in this will protect open space, particularly when even what we think of as open space turns out not to be zoned for public purposes. Nothing in this suggests that land used as open space and essential to the community must have an appropriate zoning, let alone the kind of zoning that can just be wiped away in an instant at the stroke of a pen by the minister. That is exactly what happened in relation to the Abbotsford convent until we fought the government back.

The document is policy neutral in relation to activity centre hierarchy because we just do not have one. Sure, we have different forms of activity centres listed in a document, but it does not tell us what will then be the fate of each of those activity centres.

The amendment is policy neutral in relation to employment corridors.

When I asked the minister in hearings with the Growth Areas Authority what the idea of the employment corridors was he could not really explain it to me. Mr Guy is not here and I do not want to verbal him, but I had the same conversation with him. What does it mean?

It says: Develop the following employment corridors: Avalon Airport to Werribee, Melton, Melbourne Airport and Donnybrook (Hume-Mitchell). Who will work there and what will they do? Who said that that will be a great place for a set of industries?

Under this same section transport networks are being provided that will allow circumferential in addition to radial movements. That means that you can be a metalworker living in Werribee and working in Warrandyte and every day on the Western Ring Road you can pass another metalworker who does the opposite and you can wave to each other on the freeway.

The amendment is policy neutral in the sense that the government will just keep on building roads and people will just keep on driving on them. The government will not ask us about how we want the city to develop. We will just follow the cars that have an asphalt truck in front of them.

The document is reasonably policy neutral in relation to central Melbourne because there does not seem to be a vision for central Melbourne. Between the two census periods central Melbourne added 25 000 jobs. Some of the CADs (central activities districts) have only about 25 000 jobs each. If in one census period central Melbourne added the equivalent number of jobs of a CAD, why did that happen? Is that what was intended? What will the government do about it?

Why did the government not buy enough trains to get those people to work?

If the government could not make provision for even those sorts of things, what chance does it have with other CADs in other locations across the landscape?

We absolutely know that the amendment is policy neutral in relation to green wedges because the government has done nothing for green wedges, to protect them and their values, since it has been in power. The green wedges have been there forever. As Mr Atkinson said, the city has always been there and the green wedges have always been there. The government has recognised them in policy occasionally. As with the CADs, the test is what the government did and what this document does to protect and enhance the values of the green wedges. The fact is that they are chipped away every year. "

Such reasonable observations. All talk apparently. The Greens offered up no new motion or recommendation. Perhaps they have some explanation - in which case, we want to hear it and publish it.

Three political parties or one big land-corporation?

All three parties seem to have become completely subservient to the developers and their agenda of growing Victoria (and Australia's) population just in order to promote inflation of their assets and demand for their products. There is much evidence to suggest that the ALP is no longer a real political party but more of a land-development corporation (see articles here), but the absolute lack of real opposition from Greens or Liberals to the way that the Labor government promotes its party's own financial agenda makes observers wonder what the pay-offs are.

The "Greens"

Most activists realise now that they cannot expect any kind of democratic reform from the Liberal or the Labor party. But many still had illusions about the Greens.

Maybe Victorians need to realise that branding - as in calling a party "Green" doesn't make it green. I mean, do you buy a dishwashing detergent just because it comes in a green bottle and calls itself 'environmental'? or do you look at the ingredients? Do you vote for a politician because they are a member of the "Greens" or do you look at the politician's record on ecological fundamentals - population, development and democracy?

Parties and politicians need to be judged by their actions and inactions. All the parties have politicians who are only ever seen or heard around election time, often in a photograph with the party leader, endorsing some motherhood cliche.

Others, more sophisticated, have developed a technique of trailing enticing isolated soundbites on issues of significance - population, development and democracy - but if you look more closely, you see that their parties have policies not unlike those of the State Labor government. For instance, check out the Greens' policies on Land-use planning. Not a word about avoiding population growth. Tim Murray's comments here about 'The Green Contradiction' are very apt, even though he is talking about Canadian Greens.

Truly, we are in dire need of new independent candidates. More activists should step forward and give it a go - outside the parties. Consider forming alliances of community independents.

Victorians urgently need someone else to vote for besides the Greens, Labor and the Liberals, or we are doomed. Let us hope for an outcome at the very least similar to the Federal election outcome, which gave the public for the first time in many decades, the possibility of real choice over policy directions.

Julianne Bell of Protectors of Public Lands writes:

"We consider that candidates standing in the forthcoming elections should be questioned on this issue and asked if they would consider acting to rescind Planning Amendment Clause 16, VC 71. We understand that the Liberal Party has recently advertised in a local paper that "a Coalition Government is committed to scrapping John Brumby's planning law changes." PPL VIC will circulate details of candidates election forums. Please send me details of any in your area for which you would like publicity."

REFERENCES

[1]
On Wednesday October 6th, the Coalition moved a motion to remove clause 16 from Amendment VC71 which Madden had signed 2 weeks earlier. This was a rewrite of the old clause 12 that had been sliced off VC67 earlier in the year, and resurrected in VC71 in the form of clause 16:

Link to the current clause 16 in VC71.

This will give developers an easy road to high density high rise development along tram train and bus routes and in and around all hundreds of Activity Centres. (see below quote from VC71 clause 16) This will allow indiscriminate development all over Melbourne. This will enable developers to win easily in VCAT, residents and councils would be rendered powerless in opposing high rise on transport routes and around Activity Centres, including even Neighbourhood Centres.

[2] Speech by Mr Barber

Hansard: Wednesday, 6 October 2010 COUNCIL PROOF 109 (pp.105-112 includes other speakers)

Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — It is amazing. It has taken four years and I never thought it would happen, but Ms Mikakos and I agree on something in relation to planning. Ms Mikakos described this proposal by the government as policy neutral, which is a very post-modern Labor way of saying, ‘The document actually does nothing’ — and I
agree. This document, which appears to update and make changes to the highest level decisions and aims of our planning scheme, does nothing. We all know with the sorts of environmental, social and economic pressures on our city that doing nothing right now is not really an option. In a way, doing nothing is making a decision. It allows the invisible hand of the market to have its way, and when you intervene it is usually at the
ministerial level, site by site, favour by favour. Let us have a look at this policy-neutral document in front of us. If we take Ms Mikakos at her word, it is policy neutral in relation to the supply of urban land, but in fact having just voted on an expansion to the urban growth boundary (UGB), which the Greens opposed, this material anticipates the next extension of the urban growth boundary. It is policy neutral in the sense that we will continue to have the oxymoron known as a growth boundary, which really means
sprawl-for-ever. It is policy neutral in relation to planning for growth areas. When we debated the UGB and the growth areas infrastructure charge the Greens knew the
major issue then was the failure of planning for growth areas, not just in the sense of structure planning but in all the matters that go along with a livable community on a greenfield site. It is policy neutral — that is to say it does nothing in relation to structure planning, a phrase that first popped up when Melbourne 2030 landed on our city like a group of lost aliens and said, ‘Take us to your leader’, or more importantly, ‘We are in charge now’. Structure planning was meant to indicate that councils would take control of how development was to occur in activity centres. The amendment is policy neutral in relation to open space, which is to say that the government will continue to chip away at it where it is most needed, where it is already underprovided. Nothing in this will protect open space, particularly when even what we think of as open space turns out not to be zoned for public purposes. Nothing in this suggests that land used as open space and essential to the community must have an appropriate zoning, let alone the kind of zoning that can just be wiped away in an instant at the stroke of a pen by the minister. That is exactly what happened in relation to the Abbotsford convent until we fought the government back. The document is policy neutral in relation to activity centre hierarchy because we just do not have one. Sure, we have different forms of activity centres listed in a document, but it does not tell us what will then be the fate of each of those activity centres. The amendment is policy neutral in relation to employment corridors. When I asked the minister in hearings with the Growth Areas Authority what the idea of the employment corridors was he could not really explain it to me. Mr Guy is not here and I do not want to verbal him, but I had the same conversation with him. What does it mean? It says: Develop the following employment corridors: Avalon Airport to Werribee, Melton, Melbourne Airport and Donnybrook (Hume-Mitchell). Who will work there and what will they do? Who said that that will be a great place for a set of industries? Under this same section transport networks are being provided that will allow circumferential in addition to radial movements. That means that you can be a metalworker living in Werribee and working in Warrandyte and every day on the Western Ring Road you can pass another metalworker who does the opposite and you can wave to each other on the freeway. The amendment is policy neutral in the sense that the government will just keep on building roads and people will just keep on driving on them. The government will not ask us about how we want the city to develop. We will just follow the cars that have an asphalt truck in front of them. The document is reasonably policy neutral in relation to central Melbourne because there does not seem to be a vision for central Melbourne. Between the two census periods central Melbourne added 25 000 jobs. Some of the CADs (central activities districts) have only about 25 000 jobs each. If in one census period central Melbourne added the equivalent number of jobs of a CAD, why did that happen? Is that what was intended? What will the government do about it? Why did the government not buy enough trains to get those people to work? If the government could not make provision for even those sorts of things, what chance does it have with other CADs in other locations across the landscape? We absolutely know that the amendment is policy neutral in relation to green wedges because the government has done nothing for green wedges, to protect them and their values, since it has been in power. The green wedges have been there forever. As Mr Atkinson said, the city has always been there and the green wedges have always been there. The government has recognised them in policy occasionally. As with the CADs, the test is what the government did and what this document does to protect and enhance the values of the green wedges. The fact is that they are chipped away every year. Land values, in farming, the landscape and biodiversity, are in decline in the green wedges. The document is certainly policy neutral in relation to wildfire. That in itself is a minor scandal given that members of this place have spent an awfully long time talking about wildfire and the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission and its recommendations. I go back to what the recommendations in relation to planning are so that we can remind ourselves that they are not being implemented, at least not through this exercise. The bushfires royal commission wanted a number of tasks done. In terms of actual strategic planning, these were the specific recommendations: The state amend the Victoria planning provisions relating to bushfire to ensure that the provisions give priority to the protection of human life, adopt a clear objective of substantially restricting development in the areas of highest bushfire risk — giving due consideration to biodiversity conservation — and provide clear guidance for decision-makers. The amendments should take account of the conclusions reached by the commission and do the following: outline the state’s objectives for managing bushfire risk through land use planning in an amended state planning policy for bushfire, as set out in clause 15.07 of the Victoria planning provisions — It is not there in this effort — allow municipal councils to include a minimum lot size for use of land for a dwelling, both with and without a permit, in a schedule to each of the rural living zone, green wedge zone, green wedge A zone, rural conservation zone, farming zone and rural activity zone amend clause 44.06 of the Victoria planning provisions to provide a comprehensive bushfire-prone overlay provision. The commission then goes on to talk about a number of other changing rules for various decision-makers and referral authorities, including the Country Fire Authority. It suggests some considerable changes being made to those, changes that cannot be seen in the document that is being considered here. It is possible that the government is working on this and it will bring forward another document, but there is no alacrity. There must have been some kind of momentum behind this particular document, which is a complete review, if you like, of the overarching state planning policy framework, but it seems to have overtaken the efforts that we are making in relation to bushfire, which I would have thought were urgent. I spoke about that at length in various responses to the bushfires royal commission, and I have spoken about it in relation to particular planning decisions that have been made since February 2009. I do not really need to speak to it much more but simply point out that the government has failed at that particular hurdle. In relation to the continuing chipping away of productive agricultural land, which is a problem at the urban fringe but also in those leapfrog growth areas such as the Macedon Ranges, again there is nothing in the amendment from the point of view of protecting productive agricultural land, which we can expect to shrink over time under the climate change scenario. Members of the coalition are looking very worried. On a matter of procedure I just want to tell people not to despair because there are two possibilities when we come back here in February. One is that the coalition parties are in government and Mr Guy is the planning minister, in which case they can rewrite this amendment however they want. The second possibility is that we are back here and where we started, at which point this amendment is still a disallowable instrument. The capacity to disallow this or any part of it, including the small part that Mr Guy is going after today, will still be disallowable when we get back here in February, and no doubt in our first sitting week in March, because the clock will not have run out on it. There is plenty of time; there is no shortage of time. I know that some members are looking at the clock. There is no shortage of time, firstly, for the coalition to put out an alternative vision to what is here and, secondly, for Mr Guy to become planning minister, if the planets line up. The worst-case scenario is that if the opposition is fair dinkum about what it is saying tonight, it can come back and make the same motion in February, and it will not have run out of time. It is policy neutral in relation to Aboriginal cultural heritage, but of most concern, I would have thought, to people thinking years down the track is the impact on our rural landscape, which has been under pressure ever since this new form of planning scheme has been in place. Having addressed Ms Mikakos’s issues I now want to pick up on what Mr Atkinson, the mover of the motion, said. He said he is worried that this provision is indiscriminate. Everything in the planning scheme is indiscriminate. ‘Nothing’ means ‘nothing’ under this planning scheme, and that is the way the Liberals, when last in government, designed it. That is the way that Labor, for 11 years, has kept it. It loves it. What we are really debating here is a by-law. There is the Planning and Environment Act, and then there is a by-law to the act, which this thing is. However, what we are told is that it is a wonderful form of law because it is performance-based; it is objective-based. The very things that Mr Atkinson is objecting to today, on behalf of Mr Guy, are in fact objectives; that is all they are. They are objectives to be achieved. We would never vote for an objective-based traffic law. Would we come in here and say, ‘We’re passing this new law and there will be some by-laws worked out later by the minister, but effectively what they will say is that the objective of the traffic law is “Don’t kill people”, and here is a table of preferred maximum speeds’. It would be like these preferred maximum heights that the Liberal-Labor coalition is so keen on when it comes to every other aspect, including the Windsor Hotel, which we could have had a crack at if we had had our chance. Preferred maximum speeds are designed to achieve more objectives. As a driver you can consider the different factors at play. There will be a list. There will be decision guidelines underneath that you have to check off. If someone says you are doing the wrong thing, you go to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, spin the wheel of fortune and argue about whether or not you were speeding. At VCAT you can bring in various kind of road consultants, perhaps physicists, mechanical engineers and so forth to prove that on balance — not as a matter of law, but on balance, when all the different parts of the decision-making guidelines are considered — that you were generally compliant with the preferred maximum speed on the Geelong Road. That is an extremely contrasting example, I have to say, but this is an extremely important issue. We are trying to do some really important things here — maybe not as immediately important as road safety, but important for the entire fate of all the people who live in Melbourne. It is sometimes their physical wellbeing, sometimes their access to buildings, if the question is accessibility and sometimes their ability to afford a house, if the question is affordability, which we can come back to when we debate this motion a bit further. It is very much their direct and daily welfare, but it is also our shared welfare. It is our social, economic and environmental future. It includes things such as biodiversity, which we want to pass on to generations to come and which in a way are not really ours to mess with. We might think we are the Parliament, that we are elected and that people gave us the job to make a lot of decisions, but there are certain decisions that I think should be virtually out of bounds because they are for future generations. We might pride ourselves on being in a liberal democracy, but it was a reasonably democratic liberal democracy that sat down and made the very considered decision to kill all the Tasmanian tigers. Unfortunately today’s Tasmanian Parliament does not get to vote them back into existence. When it comes to matters of biodiversity, environment and the future legacy we leave to our children and grandchildren for many generations to come we have to be extraordinarily careful in the way we exercise that power. Mr Atkinson said he was worried about consultation in relation to the way planning schemes were amended, if I understood him correctly. The mechanisms for consultation and having your say under amendments to the planning scheme I would say are fundamentally the same as they always were under the Kennett government that created this architecture. The bigger question, though — and there is no doubt that Mr Atkinson thinks very deeply about these things — is the proper planning of the city. He said it is the major issue. He said the opposition is not opposed to high density. He said it is not opposed to a number of other things as well. Unfortunately over the four years I have been here I have discovered to my cost that the opposition is not opposed to development assessment committees. It was opposed to them for a while. Then it got scared and decided they were all right. The opposition is not opposed to urban sprawl. It is not opposed to the growth areas infrastructure charge. It is not opposed to raking in the same sorts of donations from developers that the government of the day does, but the opposition thinks the donations are a bit cleaner in its hands simply because it is not the government writing these planning schemes at the moment. However, the opposition is writing them because ever since the Greens have been here we have been bringing these matters up for debate, and the opposition was never opposed to Mr Madden’s intervention on the Yarra River down there at Richmond or down there on the bay — — Mr P. Davis — Yes, we were, actually; some of us were opposed to that. Mr BARBER — No, you may have been opposed, but you did not vote that way, Mr Davis. And you were not opposed to Mr Madden’s intervention down there in Williamstown, despite the fact that the entire community, Joan Kirner, Steve Bracks and the local council were all opposed to that intervention.

The Greens were opposed to it too. The coalition and the Labor Party were not. There is a certain point when you need to be opposed to a few things. It is a good start to say what you are against, what you are not for. If you can go on from that, you can start talking about what you are in favour of. I am in favour of all the things the government lists in its table here. That is what planning is for — it is to allow for changing things we want to change and protecting things we want to protect. Unfortunately Ms Mikakos’s policy-neutral document does not give those sorts of things the protection they need, and therefore I am against it. I am against the lack of protection in Ms Mikakos’s planning scheme, inherited from those guys. Mr Atkinson quite rightly pointed out that in established areas we need infrastructure. He was talking about drains and sewers, but there is a lot more to that when you are running an inner city or even middle suburban municipality. It is very important. That is why the Greens support enhanced developer contribution plans, not just out in the greenfield areas where you have the growth areas infrastructure contribution now but also in established areas where the question of infrastructure provision is a lot harder. The densification builds up very quickly. You cannot simply create new open space. You cannot always shoehorn in community infrastructure such as child-care centres; it is very expensive to do so. What you are really doing is site-by-site development. You are supposed to be giving the money to councils so they can provide something for all of the residents, both established and new, but the trigger is new. If you have ever tried to deal with one of these developer contribution plans, you know it is an absolute nightmare. The way it is structured under the planning scheme and under the Planning and Environment Act makes it not worth doing. It is hopeless. Some councils have looked at doing them. I know the City of Darebin did one and it has barely collected any money from it so far. It probably has not even paid back the cost of going through the exercise, which the government forced it to do.

Business interrupted pursuant to standing orders.

. . .

. . .

Environmentalists might expect Green MLC Greg Barber, to back another environmentalist, Kelvin Thomson, rather than supply quotes that could make him out unfairly to be racist. Wedge Politics we don't need from Mr Barber MLC who represents the Northern Metropolitan Region of Melbourne in the Legislative Council at State level, which Kelvin Thomson represents in the Lower House at the Federal level. What's going on? Are the Greens for real?

Population and Environment and the Greens

Over the years I have had conversations with people about the riddles in the Greens' strangely contradictory environmental policies and their mysterious priorities. Yet there is something of the hearty gym mistress and the scout master about them that inspires us, Charlie-Brown-like, to trust them again and again at the polls. We think, they must mean well, or that they are better than the rest, or ...

Lassie come home

Recently someone said to me that maybe they are just out there to confuse us. Are they, he suggested, really working with the Libs and Labs and Big Media, as a kind of border collie, to keep us sheep from straying too far from the farm? The dog looks friendly and competent. It's cute. We tend to trust it because it doesn't actually own the farm. But it works for the farmer.

During the past two weeks my uncertainty has been overtaken by a feeling of déjà vu.

Wedge Politics we don't need; Mr Barber plays the race-card

Firstly, I read an article in the [growthist] Melbourne Times (Fairfax media), "Welcome to Australia - Now that's enough," by Bianca Hall, (Wed.3 Feb, 2010, p.4.).

The logic of this article is amazingly contrived and reads like an excuse to cite Greg Barber of the Greens apparently slurring the motives of Kelvin Thomson's 'Population Reform' as racist in a most unfair way:

'Mr Thomson argues net overseas migration should be dramatically cut from 2007-08 rate of 213, 461 to 70,000 migrants. To slow down the birth rate, Mr Thomson would cut family tax benefits to new recipients who had more than two children and redirect the money to education and workplace training.

Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows fertility rates are higher for Australian women born in largely Muslim countries, including Turkey and northern African countries. Almost 30 per cent of people in Mr Thomson' electorate were born in non-English-speaking countries.

State Greens MP Greg Barber said the plan threatened to target Muslim families.

"Whether Kelvin understands it or not his policy selectively targets predominantly Muslim people and punishes them for having that third child," Mr Barber said. "We know what gets birth rates down - the empowerment of women, with contraception, access to education and participation in the workforce."'

Frankly I was gobsmacked and furious. You might expect the developers to try something like this, or the Libs, but a Green? You never know, however, when there is a logical explanation, so I decided to write to Mr Barber himself and ask for it. I sent the following on 24-2-2010:

"#LetterToGregBarber" id="LetterToGregBarber">Dear Greg,

I must congratulate you on your statements in parliament about water reproduced here about bulk water entitlements as well as on your stand against disempowering councils.

I have been a little shocked however to read you as quoted in the article I have reproduced below from the Melbourne Times.
It looks like the worst kind of wedge politics.

1. I would like to know whether you were correctly cited in this article.
2. [name withheld] tells me that you may have been cited out of context - if so, could you explain a little please?

3. This is what the article makes you look as if you are doing, in my opinion:

- trying to knock out ALP competition
- or doing the ALP a favour by playing the race card against someone who is leading the battle for the environment and democracy against overdevelopment, overpopulation, by tagging them with an unfair race-card where the (extremely corrupt and unfair) ALP may not dare to do so itself
- playing to a voting sector which is identifyable as muslim
- stimatising muslims specifically as overly productive of children, uneducated etc
- playing wedge politics
- maybe preparing a seat in the Labor party for yourself

I hope to hear that none of this is true and that you are instead cooperating as much as possible with Mr Thomson, who has shown great courage and leadership.
By the same token, if there is something unfair going on between the two of you and you were reacting, I am sympathetic to an explanation there.
I am trying not to make judgements without full inquiry.
I know how fraught politics and environmental movements are with this kind of thing.

Yours for reform in democracy, environment, population, land use planning and energy policy,

Sheila Newman"

Strange silence from Mr Barber

I never received a reply from Mr Barber, although I spoke to a person at his office several times and exchanged emails with that person, and was led to assume I would at any moment receive a reply. (See #comment-4310">below for a very brief response to another voter.) I made it very clear that I was dead serious in seeking an explanation and also that I was absolutely furious that someone was apparently trying to pull the racist card to shut up Australia's perhaps single most courageous, ethical, effective and environmentally literate politician - an ALP long-stayer who was standing up for democracy, despite his party. I said that I would write an article on the subject and so it was important for him to defend himself.

Save the Bush Rally on 24 February

The same morning I wrote to Mr Barber, I travelled to the Save the Bush Rally which took place on the steps of Melbourne Parliament. It was here that I finally lost patience with the Greens.

Speakers included Sue Pennicuick, Greens MLC, Rosemary West, of the Green Wedges, Colin Long, Greens Upper House Candidate, Damon Anderson, of Coomoora Reserve, and Gillian Collins, of the Pines Flora and Fauna Reserve. (Were all of them prospective candidates?) All made speeches about how development was being pushed through by Mr Brumby's government and how this was threatening bushland and how the Greens would provide more public transport.

Complicit Silence on how Overdevelopment has been politically contrived

No scheduled speaker mentioned why more roads or public transport are necessary. The silence on how their necessity had been politically contrived was absolutely deafening. The Greens' failure to expose how the Government is driving the overpopulation it is using as an excuse to force undemocratic development only protects this gigantic dystopic rort.

Sadly, not one Green said anything to the effect of, "We will expose this dishonesty and try to stop the overpopulation of Melbourne."

I know that Gillian Collins and Rosemary West are fully aware of the population growth corporate connection. Yet only one woman, Mara from Banyule, even mentioned that the bush is threatened by population growth. All the honour of the day for honesty and relevance goes to her. She was not even on the written Agenda. She should have been writing it.

The 'green' silence from the rest of them on the government elephant-in-the-room push for overpopulation seemed nothing short of shameful cowardice or cynical complicity. The population cat is well out of the bag, yet it seems that the Greens, of all parties, want to stuff it back in again - at the peril of our wildlife and democracy.

Why? What have they got to gain by protecting the bad guys?

I was furious that I had travelled from an outer suburb and ruined my day for more profitable pursuits only to hear a line-up of wanna-be-politicians using a captive audience to monger motherhood statements which would mostly sit happily on the billboards of new estates and the websites of corporate water-speculators. Many of those assembled in support of the speakers were battle-scarred environmental fighters who remained quiet while the glorified clichés were trotted out for the television cameras. Some dedicated naturalists and ecologists held banners and filmed the event, all of them waiting for some leadership.

They got nothing.

A trial of patience; an abuse of supporters' time

When Sue Pennicuick self-congratulatingly asked the crowd who they were going to vote for (meaning the Greens), an angry spectator called out, "Kelvin Thomson!" There was a murmur of approval from the long-suffering audience.

When Sue Pennicuick self-congratulatingly asked the crowd who they were going to vote for (meaning the Greens), an angry spectator called out, "Kelvin Thomson!"

Another spectator handed round stickers with "Say No to Melbourne at 5 Million" and someone else was distributing leaflets exposing the identities of organisations that push population growth, which included numerous developers and the Victorian Government with its site, "www.liveinmelbourne.com.au". The audience gratefully accepted the leaflets.

There was no-one else there, apart from the speakers, who wanted to keep the lid on the scandal of the population-growth lobby and the government's role in it. A brilliant opportunity was lost to educate the press on the steps and the pedestrians watching from the other side of Spring Street about why the government is corrupt and how the government pushes population in cahoots with the developers, then makes laws to force Victorians to accommodate the interests of this group. (See the Brumby government's links with the Property Council of Australia and the Live in Victoria Government website to attract immigrants at "Living in a Destruction Zone" and Minister Justin Madden's increasingly barefaced attempts to overturn any democratic restraint on the government's development despotism.)

Political corruption in Australia

I rode home on the same train as one of the wildlife activists. On that train there was also a man who had just published a dictionary of Australian political terms. He was a born and bred ALP member and I asked him if he had ever heard of Labor Resources or Labor Holdings. He hadn't. I told him about them. It seemed to me that a faint glint of horror animated his misty eyes for a moment, but he quickly suppressed it.

"They all do it", he replied, like a long-suffering adult on the antics of teenagers. I half expected him to add, "But they will grow out of it."

Yes, all the parties do it. "It" is the use of holding companies for donations which are then declared as coming from the holding companies rather than from their many corporate donors. This is a problem but it is the amount and the kind of assets that the ALP holds at state and Federal level plus their political power and their demonstrated abuse of it which is frightening even to the Liberal-National Party.

I tried to describe how the scale of the corrupt system was beyond any before and now grotesquely magnified by the ALP's dominance over every parliament in Australia. "They are nothing like the Labor Party is supposed to be anymore," I added.

"Oh, but they're better than the alternative," he intoned, reciting his true believer catechism, with a smug smile.

"It's like a religion," said the onlooking wildlife activist. "They are brainwashed from birth."

Politics as religion

She is right. For many people, politics is the same as a religion. You just don't question the church that you were born to: Labor or Liberal: each is better than the alternative.

Or, if you're a bit rebellious, there is the alternative alternative religion - The Greens.

But it seems to me now that they are all different brands selling the same thing. They are all selling overpopulation to the masses, but each of them is selling a different brand. The Labor Party is selling overpopulation as economic growth. The Liberals would be selling it this way but they cannot out-do the ALP at the moment. The Greens are selling overpopulation as Public Transport and the Socialist Alliance is selling it as bicycles. But they are all trying to sell it to us. Like Mr Madden and Mr Brumby and Mr Rudd, they aren't really interested in democracy and what we, the electorate think. They are all seeking niches within the territory defined by the corporate growth lobby.

Mainstream Media role in our loss of democracy

For many years now the extent of this collusion has been kept safely away from public knowledge by the commercial and the public media in Australia. Indeed it looks to me as if the commercial media - notably the Murdoch media, but including the Fairfax media - have been able to shape the policies and and promote the people who have come to form our useless political parties and the corrupt ideology of material progress.

The structure of print, television and radio media has permitted ownership in a few hands which have dominated public information and allowed the entrenchment of corporate interests over democratic rights. For me it is frankly impossible now to see the difference between the Government and the commercial Property, Banking and Media groups (all interchangeable themselves), especially with Stephen Mayne's uncovering of Labor Party investments cultivated with Wayne Swann and Kevin Rudd working for Wayne Goss whilst in opposition in Queensland. Yes, Mayne's investigations were published in the mainstream, but the mainstream doesn't connect the big dots and it won't effectively publicise any alternative parties or changes to the system which might combat the rot.

The situation is like the one in the 16th century, where the Holy Roman Empire had evolved from the Roman Empire and controlled kings, public ideology and institutions. The situation seemed utterly hopeless until the rise of a new technology - printing.

Who will fight the Evil Empire again?

In the 16th century Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses to the Church door at Wittenburg. Soon copies were printed and spread all over Germany.

Unfortunately, with the discovery of technologies for smelting iron directly with coal, new kinds of institutions arose - those of capitalist corporations. The corporations built towns and re-organised people as anonymous cogs, with loyalty to employers overwhelming loyalty to family and friends, isolated from any true community or personal independence. Gradually the corporations were able to dominate human institutions all over again, under the ideology of 'Progress', (See for instance, "Courier-Mail beats up on public for complaining about cost of 'progress'"), ironically taken from protestant values.

Things may be changing again, however. Today the 'common people' - as long as they can read and write and have access to computers - may be able to take back power from the Dark Towers (to use Tolkien's ever-useful terminology for the rise of corporate control) via a new technology - and that is the Internet.

It seems however that we should not rely on the Greens to challenge the dark commercial hegemony of the overpopulation and development lobby.

If Australians cannot place their faith in the Greens, recently some real dissidents have arrived and posted something new on the church doors of the Internet: Kelvin Thomson - a brave leader in waiting for the Labor Party or for a new party or a man who may lose ALP-preselection for his courage and hence could eventually run for the Senate on Mr Barber's turf; the Stable Population Party, the New Australia Party, and the Animal Justice Party.

I will be happy to be shown to be wrong and anyone who feels misrepresented by this article is very welcome to post an article in reply or to comment. I am happy to publish any response from Greg Barber. I will be more than happy to eat every word of criticism here of Greens and speakers at the rally if only I receive an explanation. Candobetter.org is a free press and we welcome true debate.

See also: Greens support Madden's Bad Law VC 71 in black week for Victoria, Australia of 11 Oct 10, "Tasmanian Greens and the terror of coalitions" of 24 Mar 10 on Online Opinion and related discussion forum.