POSTPONED. Anyone in or around Brisbane might be interested in this event – please share with anyone you know who might be interested:  Doctors for the Environment Queensland is hosting the debate on the topic of Whether Moderating Population Growth is an Important Measure in the Climate Crisis: Monday 16 September 2024. 19.00h -21.00h.  UQ St Lucia, Gordon Greenwood Building, 32-207 Collaborative Room & online. See inside for bookings.

The following article has been adapted from a double-sided A4 leaflet which was handed out at a protest for Palestine, which commenced from Queen's Park in the Brisbane CBD at 2pm on Sunday 26 November. The 344K PDF file is attached here (earlier version here).

Avi Yemini from Rebel News spoke at a rally to support Israel against Palestine at King George Square in Brisbane today, 19 November 2023. He described how he usually stuck to reporting, but had not been able to resist this invitation to speak because of the loyal presence of Maori supporters from Brian Tamakis Destiny Church.

I am shocked at the number of cane toads in Brisbane and wonder why the residents of Brisbane have allowed this to happen. Two years ago, in Roma Street Parklands (an exotic garden with high-rises towering at one end) I saw a cane toad riding a water dragon. A small group of bystanders gasped in horror. The pink toad, with its robust thighs and humanoid arms, looked like a naked imp in an Hieronymous Bosh Judgement Day. Obviously it was attempting to copulate with the lizard, in an ecologically blasphemous act. But Brisbane is an ecologically blasphemous state in an ecologically insulted Australia. What does it tell us about the progress paradigm to have to live with a constant plague of ugly flesh-pink toads like helpless Biblical Egyptians?

Back in Brisbane for a while

We used to have a lot of articles from Queensland on candobetter.net. That is because the person who built candobetter.net, James Sinnamon, lived, networked and campaigned politically there. Due to a severe injury when his bicycle collided with a car, he now lives in Melbourne. However he still has to travel to Brisbane from time to time and we are down here on business again. The dogs are with us this time. They are becoming grey nomads.

From Melbourne to Brisbane we drove down or up or round (depending on your orientation) via the Newell Hwy and sadly saw nearly 50 kangaroo corpses and only two live kangaroos on the way. We also encountered a herd of cattle grazing the long paddock with only a temporary sign warning us 'Cattle on Road', yet no-one had skittled them. It was a long time since I had met cattle this way and I felt nostalgic to see the pleasant way they negotiated our passage. The Newell Hwy is old fashioned country compared to the coastal route to Brisbane. There was almost no traffic day or night Sunday and Monday until late afternoon of Monday, when trucks appeared. We entered Brisbane via the vast martian-like canals of the Ipswich Motorway, where everything natural vanished.

Scarce Brisbane parkland and waterways full of poisonous toads

Brisbane presents fewer opportunities for dogs than Melbourne still does. Despite the superficial leafy appearance of this overpopulated, overdeveloped city of once-was-beautiful-Queensland, parks are small and far between. Creek banks may be privately owned by householders and so, disastrously, Queensland lacks Victoria's saving grace of many paths along creeks and rivers. Lack of access to the privately owned banks of waterways cannot help in controlling this pest.

Cane toads in Woolcock Park, Ashgrove in Enoggera Creek Catchment

We took the dogs for a walk on Tuesday evening to diminutive Woolcock Park, Ashgrove, fifteen minutes away. Woolcock Park is on Ithaca Creek, part of the Enoggera catchment. The dogs were off their leashes for less than a minute when we realised that dusky pink cane toads dotted the lawn and pathway with the density and regularity of motifs on a green Axeminster carpet. Movement in any direction threatened a squelching collision with a motionless toad. They waited like chess pieces, staring into middle distance, apparently oblivious of other forms of life. They moved sluggishly away only if you jumped up and down right next to them.

Fortunately the dogs (from Victoria) entirely failed to react to the toads, maybe due to the lack of movement, or maybe because they are so far outside their concept of local ecology. They seem not to notice fruit bats either or the highly decorative and varied presence of lizards and geckos here. But then their eyesight and hearing is appalling. They are both 15 this year.

I've seen cane toads in Brisbane before. They were very visible in 2006-7 when I first started visiting the city frequently, but then the numbers seemed to die down. I was last here about a year ago and looked out for them but saw none. I have often walked in Woolcock Park before.

No accurate count of cane toads in Brisbane

On June 27, 2015, Natalie Bochenski reported that they might be on the decline, but cited Professor Rick Shine, who admitted that we are not collecting any useful statistics on their numbers.

"We don't really have good data to tell us just how much their numbers have dropped," he said. "But it is clear that in many of these areas where they were once very common, the numbers are much lower than they once were."

Seemingly hedging his bets, the professor also suggested that perhaps locals are simply becoming used to the multitude of cane toads and noticing them less.

This year, February 2016, however, it seemed to us, as regular visitors, that the population has jumped by an order of magnitude on the visible plague of 2006-7. This is alarming when you think of the harm to local wildlife, as well as to pets. What does it tell us about the progress paradigm to have to live with a constant plague of ugly flesh-pink toads like helpless Biblical Egyptians? Granted, we were reacting to the plague we saw at Woolcock Park Ashgrove, but Enoggera Creek flows from Brisbane's main tropical forest and wildlife park, on Mount Nebo through a variety of suburbs that include Ashgrove and then into the Brisbane River. What would you think?

It seems to me that in a functional, healthy society this ongoing plague could not occur because school children and elderly people would be out there with spiked sticks and lidded buckets, removing the toads fifty at a time, then five at a time, then one at a time, scooping up their egg-slime, and placing barriers to their movement, until they were all gone. As the numbers dropped the many natural predators on their eggs would assist their decline. But Australians are coached by their top-down governments into passivity with the expectation of industrial solutions to any crisis or epidemic like this.

The dead weight of 'authorities'

When no industrial solution occurs, because we have no local chains of cooperation between neighbours or more widely, between citizens, we simply retreat from the problem. Even where a local group does begin to fight back, it is very hard for them to persist, since all kinds of authorities will tell them that their efforts are useless. Such as:

"Myth 8: We can control cane toads by catching them and killing them.

I’m sure you’ve seen all the well-meaning toad control groups that go out in their numbers to catch the toads. Unfortunately, it is all to no avail. The only way to eradicate a species by this means is to remove them beyond a rate at which they can reproduce. This works well for species with a long gestation (e.g., horse, camel, etc), but not for toads. A female can produce 30,000 eggs in just one clutch, and a single one of those eggs can yield a mature toad in just a few months. Miss just a few toads and the number will bounce back just as quickly. In fact, as you have just removed all their competitors, it makes it that much easier for those left to survive. Despite all the hard work that goes into it, population surveys have revealed that the rate of expansion of the toads is just as fast as before any control measures were taken." http://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/sciencecommunication/2011/04/18/myth-busting-monday-cane-toads/

Government policy vs Government action

Conversely, a Commonwealth Government policy statement on the toads, tells us:

It is possible to control cane toad numbers humanely in a small area, such as a local creek or pond. This can be done by collecting the long jelly-like strings of cane toad eggs from the water or by humanely disposing of adult cane toads. Control is best at the egg or adult stages because cane toad tadpoles can easily be confused with some native tadpoles. Adult cane toads are also readily confused with some of the larger native frogs. Care should be taken to ensure you can correctly identify your local frog fauna before you become involved in projects to remove cane toads from the environment. This approach to cane toad control requires ongoing monitoring of the creek or pond. Fine-mesh fencing can also assist in keeping cane toads from ponds that are in need of special protection. http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/invasive-species/publications/factsheet-cane-toad-bufo-marinus

But, for all such policy statements, does any government continue to actively educate, support and promote local people to carry out these controls? No. A paltry couple of million was spent in 2009-10; some on research, a little on funding local eradication efforts. Maybe it actually worked and that is why the numbers seemed to some people to go down. How would we know if there is no careful monitoring? Although the impacts of the cane toad are listed as a key threatening process under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act), it is clear that Commonwealth, State and local governments remain effectively indifferent to this scourge.

Queenslanders thus appear to leave their parks, gardens and naturestrips to be overrun by cane toads, just as they have left their political system to being over run by Liberal, Labor and Green political parties representing developer-interests. It's easy to flog real-estate to overseas investors even if Brisbane itself is becoming unlivable due to its colonisation by cane toads and developers. Beautiful one day, built-over the next.

It is more likely that someone will find a way to sell cane toad hallucinogens and profit from the plague than that we will defend nature from the cane toad. Similarly, corporate profit from housing inflation is so much better organised than any democratic efforts to defend Australian civil society from the growth lobby by countering the engineering of human population numbers upwards. We are encouraged to believe we are helpless in the face of Australia's increasing numbers, as if it had always been so, as if immigration were a right to move anywhere that overwhelmed all civil rights once you got there. 'Industrial' solutions are proposed: negative gearing for new housing in order to meet the 'challenges'; more immigrants' rights in order to overwhelm the faint protests of squeezed out residents.

The link between these various plagues is not all that obvious, but it lies in a systemically induced passivity - a loss of self-detirmination on an ecological and a political level.

Brisbane Council relies on one small cane toad dog to defend Morton Island from the encroaching plague

Brisbane Council proudly announces that Morton Island is still free of cane toads and it apparently employs one small dog to keep it that way. Enough said. We obviously need a new government here.

Brisbane Council's policy on cane toads.

Cane toads

Python devours possum

As a result of this damage my ability to recall events has suffered. My father, Ian Sinnamon, tells me that, not long before my injury, I witnessed a python devouring a poor little possum (like those in the included images) beneath his house. I would have thought that is the sort of experience that very few people would forget., yet I have absolutely no recollection of the incident. Many other memories of my past life have also been lost. Whilst some have returned to me in the past three and a half years, I fear many others will not.

Most fortunately, I was not disfigured and, friends tell me, I have not lost my intellect. Most people who meet me in the street would not know that I am disabled.

As a result of my diffuse axonal brain damage, I am less coordinated and have less physical balance than before. My mental stamina has been reduced. The brain injury initially left me hemiplegic. I had to relearn how to walk, and the long-term effect has diminished my physical stamina and physical strength.

Three and a half years later, I have recovered to some degree, thanks to the care and support given to me by family and friends and most of all, Sheila Newman, my principle collaborator on candobetter since 2006.

I have spent much of the time since my injury in Victoria undergoing various kinds of rehabilitation. I spent nine months as a day patient at VicRehab's Glen Waverley premises. Sheila Newman, her parents, other friends, doctors, psychologists and other health professionals have also helped my recovery.

Various friends and acquaintances have lived in my Brisbane premises in the intervening period as house-minders and tenants. Sadly, not all have liked the local possums as much as I did.

Sheila and I are currently visiting my Brisbane premises. Whilst our present tenant is not hostile to the possums and has been feeding them carrots, he does not feel quite as much love for them as I do. Over the past 4 days I have tried to rebuild my relationships with the possums by leaving them pieces of banana, mango (donated by a local resident from his mango tree), and even the occasional piece of cake. Below are photos of my encounter with the possums last night. As I type this at 8:21PM (+10:00) on 11 January 2014, at least one of the possums is devouring pieces of banana on the balcony outside the door behind me.

Aussies take action! Lock the gate!" Australians to gather in Brisbane to defend water and land from coal and coal-seam gas fracking, which has already been totally banned in France. (See comments.) On Sunday October 16, 11a.m. Queens Park Cnr George & Elizabeth Sts. Brisbane City. lockthegateqld[AT]gmail.com Facebook: Defend Our Water Qld Tel. 0404 677 781 www.lockthegate.org.au

More information on Fracking

For more information about gas-fracking, see "Fracking democracy - Gaslands- the movie, the industry and national responses." France completely banned all fracking a few months ago and last week it revoked licences given to some companies which tried to demonstrate a new, safer method. The French Government said that there is no safe method of fracking. It is environmentally destructive, socially destructive and dangerous to water catchments.

Contacts and details for Sunday 16 October protests in Brisbane.

Aussies take action! Lock the gate! Defend our water from coal and coal seam gas!
Coal Seam Gas and Coal represent the biggest threat to our precious underground water reserves in our history. On Sunday October 16, join with communities across the country to demand a moratorium until the full social and environmental impacts are known. Gather 11a.m. Queens Park, Cnr George & Elizabeth Sts., Brisbane City.
E-mail lockthegateqld[AT]gmail.com
Facebook: Defend Our Water Qld,
Tel. 0404 677 781
www.lockthegate.org.au

A Brisbane resident, who experienced the 1974 floods as a child and who works, part-time, as a volunteer, reading the Courier Mail daily newspaper to the sight-impaired on Brisbanes's Radio 4RPH (Radio for the Print Handicapped) describes her experiences of the recent Brisbane flash floods, how her mother's unstilted house in the river-side suburb of Oxley was almost completely submerged and of the kindness shown to her mother by other Brisbane residents.

On Tuesday 11th Jan we heard all the flood warnings.'"worse than '74' they were saying. I was in the '74 floods as a kid, I was just 11 years old. We had come to Australia for Christmas and could not go home to Madang in PNG as the airports were closed. I recalled it vividly, especially not being able to get food for weeks.

Just before the flood in the riverside suburb of Oxley

This Tuesday 11th Jan, My mother who lives in Oxley decided to move out to dry ground. As she has a heart condition my brother urged her to just leave, and he would move what ever he could to his house which is also in Oxley but on stilts. I visited at 3.pm and saw that mum had left in a great hurry, her and her dog and a few possessions. I spoke to my brother and checked he had enough food to last him a week in case he was inundated. I left and as I pulled onto Oxley Rd, the water was already lapping to the right of Cook St, so my way home was blocked already. I took an alternate route, and was stranded again and again. As I passed Rocklea Markets, the water was only a few inches under the bridge, I had just made it. Onto Annerley and could not continue as the roads were closed there near the Fairfield Rd RSPCA. Up I went and made it home to Coorparoo via back streets around Greenslopes.

Greed and panic

I went shopping and experienced the greed and panic of this type of event. The shelves were bare of bread, milk, flour, and much more. I got powdered milk and lots of tinned baked beans that were still there. I also found tinned vegetables. Mobile credit and cigarettes. Home I went and waited. The water rose and rose, and we saw constant footage as the Brisbane River became a moving missile launcher, taking everything in its path out to Moreton Bay.

Fears of being trapped in inundated inner city

Next day was Wednesday, the peak due at 3.pm. I had to do my shift as an announcer on radio 4RPH so I drove in using the freeway. As I passed the huge swollen river, I became worried I may get trapped in the city. I heard the evacuation sirens sounding all around the city. I continued on and my reader arrived and we did the radio show, from 9am - 12 pm. We read a lot of bulletins regarding the floods, including vital phone numbers for the SES and websites that show flood affected areas. Right on 12, we headed out the door. All buses were to stop at 1pm. No public transport would run at all. I drove home via the Story Bridge as it was still open, I made it home again.

That night

That night, at around 11pm my son and I went to the end of Oxford St, Bulimba to view the river. We saw the giant pontoon being escorted down the river by the water police. We also so much debris, including a yaght without a sailor or lights. It was like a ghost ship. Every 20 seconds something huge came down the river doing about 20 kms per hour (or 12 knots).

Every business was sandbagged, and many suburbs had no power, ready for the big peak. The peak happened at 4am. I woke up with a start and discovered the birds were singing again and the possums were about. It was as if the animals were warning us. Then the water just spread and spread, into Milton, Oxley, Jindalee, many many suburbs.

Mum's house in Oxley one of the worst affected; flood insurance hard to get and too expensive

My mother's house is in Oxley and was one of the worst. She had no flood insurance as most of us don't as it is unavailable through anyone but Suncorp[1] and is frightfully expensive. The water rose above her floor and over her windows. The water only stopped 30cm from my brothers floor boards, boy was he holding his breath. So mum has lost all her white goods, linen, knick knacks, her favourite t.v. and lots more. We have cleaned out the mud as the photos show, but there is the drying out of the house yet. Kind people have offered us a washing machine, t.v. and fridge, just like that.

Generosity

"I will bring it over, when do you want it?" When the house is dry.

People are just so good here in Brisbane.

NOTES

[1] Editor's note: Suncorp used to be the State Government owned insurance, but was sold off in 1996. It currently also provides home loans, as Suncorp Metway Ability Finance. One wonders if it has financed any homes in the floodpath? "At the time of the merger, SUNCORP was 100% Queensland Government owned and was operating as an allfinanz group with approximately $10 billion in assets. SUNCORP commenced business in 1916 as the State Accident Insurance Office. Not long after it changed its name to State Government Insurance Office (SGIO) and extended its operations into life insurance, general insurance and Compulsory Third Party. Over the years, superannuation, building society and finance operations were added. (Source: http://www.abilityfinance.com.au/suncorp_metway.htm

Please see nimby's comment. - Editor

See also: Forum discussion - Water policy after the flood, Crowded Flood-path: Lockyer-Valley, Wivenhoe Dam and Brisbane, Queensland, Australia 2011, Cost of Queensland floods made worse by government policy on land-use planning and population by Sheila Newman, Council rates system destroys urban rainforest and community in Brisbane by Geoffrey Taylor.

The Lockyer-Valley, Queensland, was the site of February 11-1-2011's devastating floods, including the ferocious flash floods on Murphys Creek. It shapes the pathway of the waters heading down to Brisbane and overfilling the Wivenhoe Dam, which is poised above that city. These photos from Google-Earth showing the topography (the form of the land) give many clues to the severity of the flooding. This article also asks questions about the Wivenhoe Dam and Government responsibility for its overfilling. In the Murphy's Creek flash flood, it seems you had weeks of rain causing totally sodden land, which could absorb no more rain, so when there were 60 solid minutes of rain, the denuded floodplains must have been like a smooth bath-tub. If you look at the area, the Lockyer Valley is a patchwork of treeless crop-sown riverflats with very little absorptive capacity. All around the valley are hills, feeding the river system. You can see Forest Hill bang smack in a river junction on the right and Toowoomba far left. Running down by the center of the valley is a huge long tarmacked highway.

The Lockyer-Valley, Queensland, was the site of February 11-1-2011's devastating floods, including the ferocious flash floods on Murphy's Creek. It shapes the pathway of the waters heading down to Brisbane and overfilling the Wivenhoe Dam, which is poised above that city. These photos from Google-Earth showing the topography (the form of the land) give many clues to the severity of the flooding.

The principle landmarks indicated in the photos are the Lockyer Valley, with Forest Hill (from which most of the population was airlifted) on the right (East), and Toowoomba to the left (West).

The photos show river-flats almost completely denuded of trees except for a thin fringe close to the permanent creek-beds. The trees that once covered the river-flats have been replaced by shallow monoculture crops, which look like greenish patchwork quilting fabric. Around the valley are hills, feeding the rivers. In the Murphy's Creek flash flood you had weeks of rain causing totally sodden land, which could absorb no more rain, so when there were 60 solid minutes of rain, the denuded floodplains must have been like a smooth bath-tub. You can see Forest Hill bang smack in a river junction on the right and Galton to the left of it and Toowoomba further left. Running down by the center of the valley is a huge long tarmacked highway.

Role of trees in reducing flooding

Although flash floods can happen in treed areas, trees and undergrowth create physical barriers to water and the trees themselves keep the water table down, acting like pumps, sucking the water down or transpiring it out their leaves back into the air. Trees can vary the amount of water they transpire enormously.

A tree is like a hydrological pump and a forest is like a huge hydrological factory.

Se also: Our Rain Garden on US web site www.teamleaf.org of Ladue Environmental Action Force.

Lack of trees reduced capacity of soil to deal with soaking

The lack of trees on these river flats meant that the soils had a lesser capacity to deal with water. As more and more rain fell and flowed down from the hills, the land ceased to retain it and it ran off like water on porcelain. The presence of trees would certainly have mitigated the severity of the flash flooding and the overall level of flooding.

Complex energy gradients attract life, including humans, but human activity simplifies them

It is normal for humans and other forms of life to be attracted to life where there is a confluence of energy gradients (places where thermodynamic forces concentrate, such as estuaries at the base of hills, where plants and animals thrive on mineral-rich soils and waters replenished from higher altitude sources. Powerful forces are involved, but kept in check by responsive natural systems. For instance, geological and biological structures cause rivers to slow down by forming obstructions. We simplify these natural features at our risk. We can minimise that risk by residing in modest numbers on high ground and minimising our impact on the biological and landscape systems.

Hurricane Katrina (New Orleans) an example of oversimplified landscape

Simplification of these systems makes through-put of energy faster and natural events more rapid and powerful. Another example of this was what happened in New Orleans because of the gradual straightening of the Mississipi River and the lowering of its banks by removal of oil and gas. Although levees were built, these were not complementary to the natural system and, when the government of New Orleans began to avoid topping up the levees, the city's vulnerability increased. Then a cyclone occurred and this famous modern city was almost completely destroyed.

How global competition removes safety margins from agricultural system

In rural areas that depend on agriculture, global competition drives farmers into desperately using every square inch of land for crops, simplifying biological systems of windy rivers and trees by substituting crops, bare earth and tarmac. They have to do this to pay interest on loans now necessary to purchase complex machinery to run their farms, and to pay for the cost of living which overpopulation had driven up by increasing the cost of land - at the base of all inflation. If farmers were allowed to produce modest amounts, they could ask for higher prices and have more control over their fates. If the general population retained some land to supplement their food production the impact on the land of farming would be spread out and less intense, so natural systems would be less affected. If our governments in Australia did not force up our populations we would be able to remain in stable communities without being forced to live on flood-plains, and our demand on the land would be less. We would be able to maximise the presence of trees and of biodiversity - of other living things which keep thermodynamic systems healthy and complex.

Brisbane's grossly engineered and simplified riverscape

Our current land-use planning system - maximised for commercial profit rather than harmonious use - places us all in danger.
Brisbane is an example of a city which has housed its overpopulation on river-flats in a city where natural systems have been modified to an alarming degree. Whilst the engineering and construction feats along the river are impressive, and riding and walking along the concrete banks is convenient, it isn't sustainable or necessary. The river has been treated like a theme-park, but it is a living thing and a massive energy force, deserving of greater respect and less engineering.

A word about the Wivenhoe Dam Government responsibility

In the past few years Queensland, like much of Australia, has been in the grip of severe droughts. The Australian and Queensland governments encouraged high migration to Queensland despite the unreliability of water because they saw this as profitable to the property development industry with which they are entwined. It has been some time now since the drought broke in Queensland, yet water restrictions put in place during the drought have remained in force. This means that where Brisbane city dwellers could have taken long baths and showers and done heaps of washing, filled their swimming pools and watered their gardens liberally, they were discouraged from doing so. Meanwhile the Wivenhoe Dam filled up to 175 per cent (from memory thereabouts). The 100% refers to the water reservoir function of the dam and the 75 per cent refers to the flood prevention section.

The situation was becoming dangerously over-capacity, and so the government decided it needed to release large amounts of water into the river, despite the prospect of flooding, especially in the context of tidal inflow from the Bay. This has been done and the river is now flooding. People are asking why the Queensland State government failed at least to let people use the water before it got to such heights? That is only one of many questions being asked.

Responsibility for crazy Brisbane landscaping, land-use planning and building permit system

Brisbane mayor, Campbell Newman actually admitted on camera that he had realised that the Wyvenhoe Dam would not prevent another flood event like the 1974 one. He admitted this, yet he has presided over the creation of underground road-tunnel systems and the packing in of more and more dwellings in Brisbane, along the river and on low ground.

Another big question is a two-part one: Firstly, why did the government allow homes to be built on the river flats below the level of the 1974 high-mark or the higher one of the 19th century floods? The second part of that question is, can members of the government who had authority in this matter be held criminally responsible for the consequences?

The Australian land tax system creates hot treeless slums. In Queensland, for instance, the Brisbane City Council charges landowners according to the assessed market value of their land. If the Council land-zoning changes to allow medium or high density housing on land previously zoned only for detached homes, then the commercial value of that land goes up as each block will then be able to hold several dwellings instead of one. Although living conditions then become cramped and the quality of life for residents of higher density declines in comparison with that of residents of detached single dwellings, the total financial value of the medium density dwellings inevitably exceeds that of a single residence on the same land.

Rich aspire now to what working class had 40 years ago

The houses and gardens in this gentrified, expensive area of Brisbane, very close to the CBD, used to belong to working class families, who grew vegetables in their back yards and whose children played in the rainforest in the valley between the houses. Those were the 'bad' old days. Nowadays, of course, ordinary people cannot hope to purchase in this area, and many will never own a home, let alone a home with a garden and a rainforest out back, 20 minutes walk from the Brisbane GPO.

Greed or necessity

But apparently even the current residents of this last green valley in inner Brisbane are going to lose the rainforest out back too, because the opportunity to make a quid by developing every square inch causes neighbours to cave in to greed, or necessity, one by one. As the land values go up, so do rates. And down come the trees...

Holding out

One man has held out now since the late sixties to the three blocks of land adjacent to a fourth with the house where he raised his children, simply because, as an architect, he can see that the forest is of more intrinsic value than the cash-value of the land. He can no longer afford to pay the rates, however, and so is faced with the option of going into debt to build on the property or going into debt to keep the property for nature.

Land-taxes and overpopulation doom nature and raise costs

Has government-engineered population growth in Brisbane made every square inch of this area too expensive to leave unpaved or is there some way out?

In June 2010, it was "reported" on ninesn.com that Brisbane home owners were to be slugged with a 5.04% increase in their council rates (based upon the the fact that the increase would drive up the rates on average by $80 (presumably per year)).

This hike shows how ordinary Brisbane home-owners and mortgagees are being made to pay the price of the mismanagement of our economy by governments at the Federal state and local, particularly due the encouragement of population growth by those governments.

Land-tax system creates slums

The Brisbane City Council charges landowners according to the assessed market value of their land. If the Council land-zoning changes to allow medium or high density housing on land previously zoned only for detached homes, then the commercial value of that land goes up as each block will then be able to hold several dwellings instead of one. Although living conditions then become cramped and the quality of life for residents of higher density declines in comparison with that of residents of detached single dwellings, the total financial value of the medium density dwellings inevitably exceeds that of a single residence on the same land.

People don't like what is happening

In spite of the profits that can be made, many residents choose to forego such profits and continue to live in single detached dwellings. They may do so in order to preserve the suburban lifestyle to which they have become accustomed and to avoid the disruption to their own lives entailed in selling their own residence and moving further away from the centre of the city, work and amenities in order to find a house similar to the one they have sold.

What can be lost

The google-earth map (at least five years old, judging by the current landscape features not shown) of the suburb near the centre of Brisbane (alluded to at the beginning of this article) shows what else can be lost by the rezoning of inner city suburbs. In this photo is a precious patch of suburban rainforest, a thing of utmost rarity in Brisbane, which is currently being gnawed away by subdivision. As mentioned in the introduction, in the past, much of the rainforest at the back of these homes was an effective commons in which local children played. The rainforest also continues to perform a number of valuable ecological services, and to provide shelter and food for wildlife. Without this patch of forest, and other fragments, Brisbane would be a far less pleasant place to live.

Removal of trees causes flooding

Rain, which falls on suburban rainforest, is retained in the soils, bushes and trees. Rain which which falls on rooftops, driveways, concrete footpaths, roadways and mowed lawns, is quickly driven by gravity into lower parts of the city. Towns in which vegetated land has been replaced with housing - particularly high-density housing - are more prone to flooding. A very striking example is the town of Toowoomba, 140 km to the west of Brisbane. over decades, vegetated land on the higher ground surrounding Toowoomba's centre has been cleared and covered with housing. Now all but the lightest of showers cause the centre of Toowoomba to become flooded.

Removal of trees causes climate warming

Those sought-after timber Brisbaner houses with their ornate wooden trimmings and lattice-work verandahs now stand where vast forests once stood. People often don't realise that the wood for those houses came from the forests they replaced. As more and more of Brisbane has been changed from living green into a concrete jungle, it's local climate has become hotter and less pleasant. The vegetation in the photo almost certainly keeps the locals cooler and Brisbane as a whole more healthy. Forested suburban settings are immensely desirable and raise the value of the housing nearby as well as benefiting the wider environment.

Environmentally responsible penalised

Yet landowners who try to preserve vegetation, including rainforest, on their land have been penalised, rather than being rewarded for the service their decision provide to Brisbane. The City Council forces them to pay rates on assessed land values that those environmentally sensitive landholders could only possibly gain from if they were to choose to destroy the vegetation on their land with subdivision and to profit

from medium density housing construction.

The google-earth map photo is about five years old. A considerable amount of urban rainforest has been lost in that time as a result of medium density housing construction. Vegetation known to have been lost has been indicated by red lines on the map. In addition, the rainforest has been encroached upon by extensions of housing, often to construct sub-units down the valley.

If some residents are willing to profit from the destruction of their natural environment, at least those who won't should not be penalised for doing so. Rather than hitting environmentally generous landowners with rate increases, the City Council should discount their rates (and do so retrospectively) for the environmental services they have protected on their land which have benefited the other residents of Brisbane and the native possums, flying foxes, and many beautiful birds, which depend on such fragments of rainforest.

Hobson's choice?

I know personally that the landowner with the three forested unbuilt blocks now sees little choice but to sell his land because the rates are so high. If he reluctantly goes ahead and the remnant rainforest is destroyed it will be more than a loss of natural beauty for Brisbane residents. Almost certainly the loss of the ecological services will make Brisbane a hotter and uglier. It will certainly not improve it. Those who can afford to will most likely draw on more electrical power to make their homes cool at least on the inside.

NIMBYs needed now

The poorer classes who once lived unpretentiously but well in this very suburb with far more space than people now do, will swelter in miserable high-density subdivisions and in the treeless outer suburbs. Many will certainly not be able to afford the option of air-conditioning because, as human population has increased and the trees have been destroyed, the heat has increased and so has the cost of housing and of power.

This kind of thing is happening all over Australia.

Brisbane and Australia need more NIMBYs.

#frogs" id="frogs">

Appendix: the decline of amphibians in urban Australia

(This brief appendix has been extracted from nimby's comment Frogs on the decline too of 6 Jan 11.)

Dr Andrew Hamer, based at the University of Melbourne, stressing that reptile and frog habitats need be conserved in residential areas by keeping them as natural as possible, even if they are only small areas. "Our research suggests that many reptile and frog species have been negatively affected by urbanization,” says Dr Hamer. With

higher density living

, more concrete drains rather than rivers and creeks, and less back yards and green wedges, our amphibians and reptile have little chance of being protected.

Peter Garrett's decision to stop the building of the Traveston dam is to be heartily applauded. However, he did no more than what should be expected of a Federal Minister for the Environment when faced with such an environmentally reckless proposal.

This is the second significant occasion, that I can recall, on which Garrett has acted in favour of the environment, that is, in other words, treated his statutory obbligations seriously. The other occasion was when he blocked the Bligh Government's similarly environmentally reckless plan to build a coal loader in Shoalwater Bay..

Garrett's overall dismal environmental record

On every other significant issue that I can recall, he has acted against the environment.--- Uranium mining, the Dredging of Port Philip Bay the Tasmanian Pulp Mill, the Car Rally in the environmentally sensitive Tweed and Kyogle Shires, failure to act to protect the Murray Darling system, the building of a massive deslanation plant on Victoria's Bass Coast, the North South pipleline, the overall massive expansion of Australia's coal exports, not to mention his failure to take a visible stance against the Federal Governent's reckless plans to grow our populaiton, etc., etc.

If Garrett's decision is truly a sign of him changing heart back to become the environmentailst he once claimed to be, then we would explect to see him, from now on to act consistently in favour of the environment and to find ways to reverse previous decisions harmful to the environment.

I hope to be proven wrong, but I am not expecting that to occur.

If I am right, then it would be more accurate to conclude that Garrett's decision against the Traveston Dam was the result of a political calculation concerning how much he needs to do for the environment in order to retain any political credibility.

The Save the Mary River Group had no plan B

One alarming aspect of this controversy is that the Save the Mary River Group had no strategy for dealing with an adverse decision from Peter Garrett.

Environmentalists should never put themselves in a position where they have to virtually beg of our political representatives to do the right thing. If the Minister for the Environment does not fear environmental groups such as the Save the Mary Group and does not go out of his way to meet their reasonable demands, then they are not doing their job properly.

Prior to that Save the Mary River Group's principle strategy was to campaign for the Liberal National Party (LNP) and against the Labor Government at the 2009 state elections, thereby alienating many environmentalists who had good reason to be concerned about some of the LNP's poor environmental policies.

The Save the Mary Group explicitly damned the Greens in their election literature for their reluctance to give their preferences to the LNP when the Greens were (for all their considerable faults) at least as consistently agains the dam as the LNP.

With the re-election of the Bligh Government, and a cross-bench not holding the balance of power, that strategy got them nowhere.

In the 2008 local Government elections they failed to back the Integrity Gympie team, which was committed to fully utilising the resources of the Gympie council to fight the dam, and, instead allowed candidates who were prepared only to pay lip service to the fight against the dam, to win.

Astonishingly, in a referendum held in Toowoomba in 2006, anti-dam campaigners, together with the Queensland Greens, campaigned, ultimately unsuccessfully against community activists for the imposition of recycled water by the City Council. As a result, relations between them and a group of people in South East Queensland, who would naturally have been sympathetic towards them have been poisoned ever since, including during the critical 2009 Queensland State elections._#main-fn1">1

At the moment, the Save the Mary River Group can count themselves very lucky that, this time, Peter Garrett's political calculations came down on the side of the environment.

James Sinnamon

Brisbane Independent candidate for
truth, democracy and economic justice,
Australian Federal elections, 2010

Footnotes

#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1. #main-fn1-txt">↑ For their part, anti-water-recycling and anti-fluoridation campaigners largely reciprocated the Save the Mary Group's counterproductive stance, and this appears to have also harmed, rather than helped them at the ballot box.

Brisbane's Courier Mail of Thursday 31 July reported that house values had dropped by 1.3% in the June quarter whilst the value of units had dropped by 3% over the same period.

As this fall has been largely brought on by higher interest rates and the lack of consumer confidence it is unlikely to provide any practical relief to ordinary Brisbanites who have seen housing prices rocket completely beyond their reach in recent years.

True to form the Courier Mail, an ardent promoter of the property 'industry', reported this threatened momentary pause in the upward movement of the cost of a basic human necessity as bad news:

And the worst was still to come, Australian Property Monitors' (APM) general manager Michael McNamara_#main-fn1">1 said.

Nationally, the market was at its weakest in four years.

...

He expects values will drop 10 per cent over the year, cutting almost $44,000 in value from the average priced home.

He said high borrowing rates, finance being harder to get and a big drop in consumer confidence were hitting hard.

And Mr McNamara warned that if banks continued to increase mortgage rates and the Reserve Bank lifted cash rates then price drops would be even more severe.

However, Mr MacNamara's pessimism was not shared by RPdata residential research director Tim Lawless, who predicted that Brisbane will have a 'softer landing'.

"Ten per cent sounds a bit pessimistic to me and ignores the strong population growth (my emphasis) and limited supply_#main-fn2">2 in Brisbane," Mr Lawless said.

He predicted price declines will be forgotten by this time next year with prices increasing late in the year and early in 2009.

Notwithstanding this Mr MacNamara maintained that strong migration patterns were not enough to attract either first home buyers or investors.

In other parts of Australia, the effects of the credit shortages and lack of consumer confidence have, so far, manifested themselves differently. The Sydney Morning Herald of reported that house prices had slumped by 2% in the past year whilst the ABC on 24 July reported that Perth rental prices have risen 17 per cent, while rents for units have increased 25 per cent. The Canberra Times of 25 July reported that "median weekly asking rents for houses and units up by 5 and 10 per cent respectively in the past year."

Whether Michael MacNamara or Tim Lawless are correct in their predictions of the property market, this story further confirms what critics of immigration have been arguing for years. The principle motivation behind immigration is not as a charitable act towards other people or even to serve any vital economic need, rather, it is nothing more than a crude device to drive up the demand for housing to facilitate the transfer of wealth from the broader Australian community and from other countries into the pockets of land speculators and property developers and related industries such as financial institutions and manufacturers of building products_#main-fn3">3.

#CourierMailCensorship" id="CourierMailCensorship">Postscript: Censorship by Courier Mail?

On Saturday 2 August, I posted a comment to the comments section attached to the abovementioned story in the Courier Mail and it has not, as of now, been published. As I did not keep a copy, I will reproduce it from memory as best as I can:

I agree with Lionel Theunissen of Brisbane (Comment 87 of 103)

Why does the Courier Mail always regard it as good when the price of house go up and bad when the price of houses go down?

As one for whom the cost of housing has gone completely out of my reach, I find it personally offensive when others rejoice in the price of housing going up.

Lionel Theunissen's comment referred to above follows:

Great news, but house prices in Brisbane could halve and they still wouldn't be cheap.

A 10 per cent drop is just the beginning. With the tightening of credit property will return to its intrinsic value, where potential rent can pay the interest on a 100 per cent mortgage. That means a property that might rent for 400 dollars a week is worth around 220,000 dollars, with prevailing interest rates at 9.5 per cent, not the 440,000 or so that might have been the market value up until recently.

For those saying "demand is still high, supply is low" in the hopes that somehow we will avoid the global trend, that is a naive, at best, interpretation of the laws of supply and demand: All demand can do is push buyers willingness to pay towards their capacity to pay, which is directly linked to their capacity to borrow. Willingness to pay has been maxed out for some time. With the tightening of credit and increases in interest rates the capacity to borrow has been greatly reduced and the market must come down to meet this.

The days of easy credit will not be returning any time soon, and the property market will not show any significant recovery until it does. The party is over folks!

My comment upon further reflection: Lionel Theunissen may not be taking into account the factor of high immigration referred to in the article above. Whether or not immigration will fulfil all the hopes of property speculators, if not dramatically reduced, will certainly serve to keep housing prices beyond the reach of most of us.

Footnotes

#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1. #main-fn1-txt">↑ Whilst, we at candobetter.org do not have a high regard for the property sector, we believer that credit should be given to those who, in a manner out of character with most in the industry, demonstrate compassion and decency. This appears to be the case recently with Michael McNamara. In Don't abuse rates excuse, landlords told of 25 July 2008, Sydney Morning Herald Sunanda Creagh Urban Affairs Reporter reported:

AS MANY as half of all landlords have paid off their mortgages and should not be using interest rates as an excuse to push up rents, one of Sydney's top property analysts says.

Michael McNamara, the general manager of Australian Property Monitors, said the principle of supply and demand influenced rents more than interest rates did.

"Let's face it: investors have a profit motive in mind and they don't necessarily need a reason like interest rates to put up rents.

They do so because they can," he said. "The question becomes: are they simply trying to achieve market rents or are they profiteering from the current shortage of housing?"

#main-fn2" id="main-fn2">2. #main-fn2-txt">↑ This does raise the measures now being demanded by property developers as the 'solution' to housing unaffordability, that is, for more land to be released for subdivision. Whilst this measure could serve to partially negate the inflationary effet of furhter high immigration, it would be at a cost to the environment, food security and our quality of life that many consider unacceptable. For further discussion of this, see my article Brisbane's housing unaffordability crisis spun by ABC to promote property lobby interests of 23 June 2008.

#main-fn3" id="main-fn3">3. #main-fn3-txt">↑ This phenomenon was the subject of the 2002 Masters' thesis The Growth Lobby and its Absence : The Relationship between the Property Development and Housing Industries and Immigration Policy in Australia and Franceby population sociologist Sheila Newman It is available as a single 2.5MB PDF file here or as at Swinburne University.

See also: Brisbane's housing unaffordability crisis spun by ABC to promote property lobby interests of 23 June 2008.

This was originally published on www.notunnels.net on 5 Jun 08.

Local impacts of the car tunnel will include property resumptions, increases in air pollution, more traffic, a four year construction zone and loss of neighbourhood amenity. City-wide impacts include increased traffic on the road network, increased greenhouse emissions, massive outlay of public funds and accelerated depletion of scarce oil reserves.

Although it is important for residents to work for better outcomes in their own street, all residents must ensure they are not just pushing the problem into someone else's backyard. That is no solution at all.

Even if residents get better outcomes in their particular street (which does not seem likely, given the bulldozer approach used by government when dealing with similar groups in the Airport Link planning process) the broader impacts will still have major adverse impacts on them. For example, even if residents have the exhaust stack moved 100m away from them they will still be exposed to the pollution emitted from it, even if it is not next door.

If residents conclude that the tunnel is a foregone conclusion then this sends the message to government that it is acceptable to build road tunnels through residential areas at a time when reducing greenhouse emissions and usage of scarce oil resources are global priorities.

If communities show no opposition then Government will keep building car tunnels across Brisbane (e.g. next might be Toowong to Everton Park) and a whole new group of residents will be exposed to the same issues you might face and that residents of Wooloongabba, Windsor and Bowen Hills are already facing.

Yes, the No Tunnels fight is difficult, but this is partly due to the fact that thousands of people have decided to give up and accept their fate without even putting up a fight. Imagine if all the thousands of people who are thinking "We can't influence the government's decision on the tunnel, so we'll just keep quiet" worked together. We would start to see some major change.

It is important for residents to put forward alternatives to government such as improved commuter and freight rail, priority bus corridors, more frequent cross-city public transport and a convenient network of bicycle paths. Residents must send these messages to government and to other members of Brisbane to show that there are far superior alternatives to the Northern Link disaster.

PUBLIC TRANSPORT - NOT CAR TUNNELS is the best slogan for this campaign.

One of many reports about the ongoing and worsening rental crisis in Brisbane, is the article "Wanted: a Room to rent" on page 27 of Brisbane's Courier Mail newspaper of 29 April 2008. The article reports trends where both co-tenancy and room-by-room tenancy is increasing. In the latter case, the room is directly rented by each individual tenant from the landlord. This situation is predicted to grow here in the same way that it grew in the UK between 1996 and 2000.

It is hard to fathom whether the intention of the journalist Paddy Hintz is to objectively report this indicator of worsening quality of life for many Queenslanders or to promote acceptance of it. According to the article, "Rental experts are now predicting that &emdash; for good or for bad &emdash; room-by-room renting will continue its stellar rise," as if this trend could possibly be 'good' for anyone other than slumlords, real estate agents and property speculators.

Alex Poulsen, manager of the University of Queensland accommodation services, was quoted:

“I think what is really interesting is the number of professional people in their 20s and 30s who are now sharing.

“It’s that weird 10-year period where you can’t really afford to live in your own home but you don’t want to live at home either.

“People who live in share houses are getting older, people are getting married later and women are waiting longer to have babies.“

Alex Poulsen tried to portray shared accommodation in a somewhat positive light, when he pointed out that this kind of renting can be a great way to meet people, particularly if want to build a portfolio of contacts.

Of course, this is one of many reasons why people have chosen to live in shared accommodation in the past, but it was more a choice than a necessity, and those who did so could expect to save considerably on rental costs in return for having their personal space encroached upon by strangers with whom they may not necessarily have been compatible. These days it is no longer a choice for many, because of skyrocketing rents.

For those who do grasp the nettle of living with strangers under the same roof, the choices may still be limited. Between AU$155-AU$160 per week seems to be the average for shared accommodation which is proving to be a hurdle for many young people seeking shared accommodation in Brisbane according to Don Foster, accommodation manager of the Queensland University of Technology.

The high rents which are forcing many more than previously would have had to have lived together are the direct result of increased demand for rental properties, caused by population growth that has been directly lobbied for by land speculators. Indeed, in May 2004 whilst listening to an "Australia Talks Back" (now called "Australia Talks") talkback program on ABC's Radio National, I was astonished to hear an economist working for the Real Estate Institute of Australia (or possibly the Property Council of Australia) actually state that they were looking towards an increase in immigration to revive the slump in the property market. They have since got their wish of course, with the help of the Courier Mail newspaper, itself a relentless promoter of population growth_#main-fn1">1 and the rest of us are paying the price.

See also: "Rent gouging threatens Brisbane inner city retail community"

Footnotes:

#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1. See The Courier Mail beats the drum for more Queensland population growth. #main-txt1">[back]

Julian Kennedy's article, "Development stumped,"(<a href="http://www.community.newsmedianet.com.au/home/groups/group/title.jsp?titleid=66">Westside News</a>, 8 November) revealed a disappointing lack of civic leadership from both sides of the Brisbane City Council on the importance of planting trees.   Our city is growing rapidly in population and is increasing its density through infill and smaller blocks in greenfield areas “steadily reducing public space per person available for outdoor exercise and fitness activities and environmental amenity.