Tony Burke

This article Oz Population Growth Lunacy is a nice example of the scrambled head-space of some journalists. Yes, Monica Attard (ex ABC, now working for the Hoopla website) can see David Attenborough's point that population growth can't go on for ever,and she can even see that "It’s hard to fathom how governments (all levels of them) can act fast and smart enough to ease the congestion we are seeing in the major cities across Australia, the spiraling cost of housing and an environment which looks stressed."

Yet if a government-appointed committee says it's all right then it must be. She can then go back to suggesting it's just as well not to think too much about these things because that might lead to encouraging people who . . .well . . . think too much about them. Or are "anti-immigration" ---a term which she seems to equate both with anti-very-high-immigration and with anti-immigrant.

I did learn one thing from this piece of hers (of May 28th) that has just come to my notice. It seems that one of the initiatives of the now half-forgotten Ministry for Sustainable Population (headed by Tony Burke, who never even met with anyone from Sustainable Population Australia, and whose Sustainability portfolio vanished under Rudd) was to set up last October a "National Sustainability Council" (whose members Burke chose). This Council, it seems, has put out a report that has been so largely ignored that till now I never heard about it. (However you can find a summary of it here. It's pretty anodyne.)

Yet it seems the Report contained all the re-assuring and distracting noises that Monica needed to calm her disquiet on this issue. As she reports: "Though the Sustainable Australia report itself steers well clear of taking a position on what’s best – big population or small population – it does give us a glimpse of what it might be thinking. One point it makes clearly is that there seems little point in setting population targets because there are too many factors which are always in a state of flux – like fertility rates, longevity and emigration, all of which are unpredictable".

Monica swallows this cop-out. Then, throwing in some caricature of her own, assures her readers that "Someone should tell Sir David, Australia is thinking about these issues. Specialists and bureaucrats are working on how to deal with what lies ahead without having to resort to a Chinese style one-child policy!"

She also claims that, "Migrants not only contribute to higher levels of productivity and to labour force participation and growth." [For a simple refutation of this PR stuff, see “More bills than skills from this migration”, The National Times, 19 July 2011. http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/more-bills-than-skills-from-this-migration-20110718-1hlgk.html ] Attard continues: "According to the Sustainable Australia report: “Migrants have also increasingly been contributing to growth and development in regional Australia. One in every six new permanent arrivals is now settling in a regional area.”
[ -- but not, it seems, necessarily staying there.]

She also meekly accepts the Tony Bourke line that it's not a matter of how many people we have but of where and how we put them. "As the report emphasizes, population change isn’t only about how many people Australia ends up housing at any particular point in time."

Oddly enough she doesn't accept the common line that we need a bigger population to stop our labour force aging, but somehow manages to twist the opposite view into yet another argument for population growth:

"But on the upside, being so healthy means “the proportion of working aged citizens is high compared to the number of non-working-aged people, resulting in high rates of productivity and economic growth” according to Sustainable Australia: a tick for the economy and the flow through effects which could make us better at getting bigger."

Heads I win, tails you lose! And by the end she has come round to the common innumerate belief that good management will enable Australia to take in the populations that the rest of the world can't accommodate, without any fall in our quality of life -- or presumably any important damage to the natural or the urban environments:

"Sir David Attenborough might think the debate isn’t worth having. But with such a large expanse of land and so many people the world over searching desperately for a new chance at the good life, it’s over to government to figure out how to make it work so we all get to live – sustainably – in the manner to which we have become accustomed."

So now it's David Attenborough, not Monica and not the government, that is refusing to think about population. Perhaps Monica failed to check who selected these experts [in fact a mixed group, who as Tony Burke well knew would produce a rather mixed message, which would leave the government free to do pretty much as it wished] and why their conclusions were so different from those of the Productivity Commission, or the Immigration Department's "Redbook" advice (which told incoming PM Gillard that there was no real prospect of preventing immigrants settling overwhelmingly in the already crowded capital cities).

This article was written by Mark O'Connor, who is running as a candidate for the Stable Population Party in the A.C.T. in the Federal Election. More information here.

22nd September signs that Tony Burke is listening. WSCA had been lobbying Tony Burke for nearly two years to ensure guarantees in place that all of the promised $530 million conservation fund be spent within Western Sydney to protect bushland remnants promised as offsets.

Cautious optimism

On 22nd December, the Western Sydney Conservation Alliance (WSCA) cautiously welcomes the announcement today by Tony Burke that he will sign off on the Strategic Assessment of the Sydney Growth Centres. WSCA had been lobbying Tony Burke for nearly two years warning him not to rush in and sign off on the plan unless guarantees were in place to ensure that all of the promised $530 million conservation fund (the money promised to offset the destruction of 2000 ha of bushland within the growth centres) was spent entirely within Western Sydney protecting bushland remnants promised as offsets.

The NSW Government had been shifting towards raiding this $530 million conservation offset fund and spending up to 75% of it outside of Western Sydney in order to get more bang for its buck.

Tony Burke

"Tony Burke has listened to our concerns about this looming rip-off and has inserted new conditions into the plan guaranteeing that the entire $530 million fund would be spent in western Sydney. This may have saved thousands of hectares of rare bushland from the O'Farrell Government who intended to raid the $530 million conservation fund and spend it outside of western Sydney. The O'Farrell Government has a plan to increase urban sprawl in Western Sydney beyond development within the Growth Centres and that would have been made all the more easier if the majority of the $530 million fund disappeared from western Sydney.

Thanks to local Labor members

We specifically thank local Labor Members: Michelle Rowland, David Bradbury and Ed Husic for helping to stop this rip-off. They shared in our concerns about the inequity of the NSW Governments plans.

We believe the new conditions insisted upon by Tony Burke include that all the $530 million be spent in western Sydney and that only in exceptional circumstance could it be considered going off the Cumberland Plain to acquire offset lands. That exceptional circumstance would have to be approved by a new committee."

"That committee needs to be thoroughly transparent and it would be good if the community had a say in any decisions."

Growth Centers remain on-course for environmental disaster

"We must not lose sight though that the Sydney Growth Centres is an environmental disaster that will clear about 2000 ha of endangered woodland including about 9% of all remaining Cumberland Plain Woodland. So this announcement, whilst promising much in terms of a future conservation fund, also heralds the destruction of large areas of western Sydney's irreplaceable natural heritage"

Comments: Geoff Brown President WSCA - 0431 222602 www.wsca.org.au

Media Release
Western Sydney Conservation Alliance Inc

22nd December 2011

Growth Centres Plan go ahead by Tony Burke
Federal Government rescues bushland from O'Farrell Government

Tasmania's Tarkine rainforests are important for their flora which has links to the ancient continent of Gondwana, and for their lichens and fossils which help tell the story of Australia's ancient flora and its evolution.
Mining companies like Venture Minerals are desperate to exploit the minerals beneath Tasmania's environmentally significant Tarkine area. Demand for metals being placed above the value of the environment.

The Tarkine region is located in the north-west of Tasmania. The area encompasses 447,000 hectares of wilderness including the Southern Hemispheres largest single tract of temperate rain forest, a wild coastline with an extraordinary wealth of Aboriginal Cultural Heritage sites. It's the habitat for over 50 threatened species.

The extensive rainforests, beautiful river gorges, buttongrass mountain tops, flowering heathlands and long wild beaches combine to make the Tarkine one of the world's great treasures.

These rainforests are important for their flora which has links to the ancient continent of Gondwana, and for their lichens and fossils which help tell the story of Australia's ancient flora and its evolution.

The Tarkine is a  sensitive region rich in mega-diversity.  It's one of the world's last remaining temperate rain-forests, the home of the Tasmanian Devil and many other precious species.

National Heritage a must:

The Tarkine must be put on the National Heritage List.  The heritage assessment of The Tarkine will help ensure that the heritage values are considered in decision-making, so heritage protection is balanced with the social and economic aspirations of the Tasmanian community. Short-term economic benefits should not be at the expense of the un-quantifiable value of ancient woodlands, rugged coastlines, and forest habitat destruction.

Mining companies like Venture Minerals are desperate to exploit the minerals beneath Tasmania's environmentally significant Tarkine area.

Demand for metals being placed above the environment:

Chinese demand for base metals such as gold, iron, tin, zinc, lead, copper is at an all time high,  and this would mean logging, pollution, roads, and heavy traffic destroying the landscape and pristine rivers.

Environment Minister Tony Burke was called on to immediately include the Tarkine on the emergency National Heritage Listing amid concerns about the impact on the Tasmanian devil population of a revised tourist road project.   He denied that he made a promise to do so.  His predecessor, Peter Garrett, first gave the Tarkine wilderness a one-year emergency listing, which Mr Burke let expire.  Since then he has let a British mining company test drill in the area.

Mr Burke says the new plan for a tourist road is not the same as the original 132-kilometre loop road plan that was subject to a now lapsed emergency listing. One road is not similarly destructive an another?

Mining and road proposals threaten to carve up Tasmania's unprotected the Tarkine wilderness area, local defenders say. 

Venture Mineral's Mt Lindsay tin, tungsten and iron mining proposal, coupled with the revival of the controversial Tarkine link road proposal, should have given Mr Burke grounds to reinstate Tarkine's emergency National Heritage listing.  Heritage listings would not stop mining, but developments would have to pass more rigorous and critical environmental tests.

The Mount Lindsay tin project is the largest of several mines planned around the Tarkine in an emerging new Tasmanian environmental battle. The Tarkine National Coalition said up to nine new open cut mines are in development there.  Venture Minerals predict $1 billion in revenue, with more than 500 jobs in construction and 200 in operation.

Surely the threats of mining are enough reasons for an emergency heritage listing for the Tarkine? 

Mr Burke says the principle that a heritage listing automatically locks out all development is wrong.  He says with or without a heritage listing, environmental protection remains.  "Developments" and "protection" are inherently contradictory.

Mr Jordan who heads the Tarkine National Coalition says Mr Burke's decision to lift the heritage listing means other mining companies will not be scrutinised as closely as Beacon Hill Resources.  The whole area should be protected as a national park.

The interests of miners are being placed above the Minister's obligations to the environment. All three proposed mining projects will have secured Commonwealth environmental permits during the 18 month period he had at his disposal, allowing them to avoid scrutiny against National Heritage criteria. They will also be allowed to continue exploration drilling and associated access roading without need for Commonwealth assessments.

The mining will cause havoc to the pristine condition of the area. There is nothing "sustainable" now. It's just window-dressing. What about the costs and long term damage of these industries and jobs? Mr Burke is supposed to represent the environment, not the mining industries. As with his population strategy, that come to nothing, he is now abrogating his duty to protect one of the last temperate rain-forest areas in the world.

It is wrong to destroy sacred and holy places to plunder their riches, and the same applies to Nature's sacred places.

Getup - Save the Tarkine

Save the Tarkine

Please email Minister Burke [email protected]

Comments yesterday from Tony Burke, Federal Minister with responsibility for water, appear to infringe upon the statutory independence of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, according to environmental and public water rights advocacy group, Fair Water Use.

Comments yesterday from Tony Burke, Federal Minister with responsibility for water, appear to infringe upon the statutory independence of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, according to environmental and public water rights advocacy group, Fair Water Use.

Commenting on the long-awaited Basin Plan being drafted by the Authority, Mr Burke indicated that he was worried that the Plan may not be considering the “knock-on” impacts, upon regional businesses, of reduced diversions from the Murray-Darling river system.

There can be little doubt that the Authority is all too well aware of the full, regional implications of an effective Basin Plan. However, as acknowledged by its Chair, the Authority is required to place the health of the river system above all other concerns – and for sound reasons.

The Authority knows that it cannot rely on unpredictable flooding rains to maintain the river system. Unless outflows from the Murray mouth are significantly increased year on year, the nation’s most vital rivers will continue to degrade as a result of salinisation and increased toxin load.

However, the Minister’s comments can only place extreme pressure on the Authority to dilute its recommendations and thereby compromise the future of the river system and all who depend upon it.

The Federal Government is to be lauded for moving to address the endemic mismanagement of the Murray-Darling. However, the long term interests of Basin communities will be best served by carefully designed regional development initiatives - not by a timid and ineffective Basin Plan.