If I could tell my father what has happened in the years
Since he departed suddenly, extinguishing his fears
If I could tell my sister, so earnest and concerned
Now lying in her grave near those both ignorant and learned
If I could tell my mother, who confidently expected
That the wealth of generations would not be snatched by those elected...

Would I tell them truthfully that bad guys came and plundered?
They wrecked our streets, our landscape, as with bulldozers they thundered
They ripped through trees, they crashed through walls
Erased our past, it didn't last.
A cry of grief and all lay waste to metronomes, the wrecking balls -

What would I tell them now as I regard the transformation
What happened right in front of me was like a dislocation
"The Shock doctrine" or "Future Shock" was dispensed in spades
To the victims it was judiciously spun and cleverly explained
But lives now taken up with merely trying to stay afloat,
Swallowed it, repeated it, with not an ounce of doubt

A strange and constant war goes on, yes even in the sand belt
Where we walk our dogs, hear the birds, admire the trees that they inhabit
Opportunistically it strikes near my house, yours or others,
No care at all, no sympathy, for the poor folk who it bothers
What would I say to those passed away and don't know it fell apart?
Would I break it gently to let them know? At least it would be a start.

What would they think if I told them how our wildlife struggles gamely
Would they accept that timber trucks remove our forests daily?
Clear fell the dell where creatures charming,
Big eyes, that shine, endearing and alarming
Lose their homes and are left to die if they didn't die at first
No leaves to eat, no place to sleep, they will succumb to thirst

Relentless, it accelerates, leaves us, breathless and in shock,
What new surprise will meet our eyes next time we're taking stock?
Determined it continues and advances without care,
We live in hope that by some vain chance, our own home it will spare.
But inexorably, the monster has a job to do.
It's going there, it's coming here, and it will get you too.

Clifford Hayes, MP., of Sustainable Australia Party, asked Mr Jennings MP (Leader of the Government) to investigate selling public spaces to local governments at a nominal amount, given that population growth is driving ongoing decline in open space per capita in Melbourne. Mr Jennings' 'nothing to see here' response smacks disingenuously of avoiding the obvious context of the government's massive population growth-engineering and overdevelopment, which is driving an accelerated reduction in space and all kinds of ammenities, as well as democracy.

Question without notice - Public Land Use (Wednesday 17 October 2019)

Mr HAYES (Southern Metropolitan) (12:11): My question without notice is to the minister representing the minister for finance. I refer to the report in the Age on 9 October by Noel Towell that the government intends to sell off more than 2600 hectares of publicly owned land from over 150 sites in Melbourne and country Victoria. Given the dramatic ongoing decline in open space per capita in Melbourne as a result of population growth of well over 100 000 per annum and the alarming decline in Melbourne’s vegetation cover, will the government investigate offering these parcels to local councils for a nominal amount subject to an enforceable condition that they are turned into, maintained and retained as public open space?

Mr JENNINGS (South Eastern Metropolitan—Leader of the Government, Special Minister of State, Minister for Priority Precincts, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs) (12:12): For the benefit of the house I will just indicate that the Assistant Treasurer is the minister who is responsible, and I will take the question. There is not a minister for finance in the current government, although the function that Mr Hayes has referred to has been the domain of the minister for finance in previous administrations. So with that clarification, in terms of the issues for which Mr Hayes seeks a response, I am certain that the Assistant Treasurer will provide you with a written response.

But as an immediate response, can I indicate to you that there is absolutely nothing that is unusual about the identification of parcels of land across Victoria that may be sometimes considered by the government of the day in relation to what its appropriate public value may be and what alternative use it may be put to. There is absolutely nothing that is unusual with that circumstance. In fact every government does it. They continue to do it on the basis of being aware of the public land estate—there are millions of hectares of public land estate across the Victorian landscape now and there will be into the future—and of identifying small parcels of land that may be able to be put to a multitude of purposes. Some of them may be appropriate in the circumstances that Mr Hayes refers to. Some of them may be appropriate for some form of housing development, some of them may be appropriate for some degree of civic development and some of them may be appropriate for commercial development. It is incumbent upon the state to use its resources wisely in balancing the public interest. It does so on a continual basis and will continue to do so to assess the appropriate way in which we can maximise the value of public land to benefit the Victorian community.

So Mr Hayes may appreciate that. He is certainly a very clear and consistent advocate for appropriate public land values, environmental values and sustainability, and the government should respect that. I believe we do respect that. I look forward to the answer that the Assistant Treasurer will give you to provide you with overall confidence in that. I am not certain whether he will agree to the specific elements of either the terms of transfer or the ultimate use of any parcel of land prematurely, because that should be considered within the appropriate balance of what greater public benefit should be derived and maintained for the people of Victoria, but the Assistant Treasurer may augment my response to you.

Mr HAYES: I have no supplementary question, but I thank the minister and look forward to a written answer.

Australia's construction industry is corrupt, but protected by government. This has left building consumers in a terrible situation. A current scandal is that they are being forced to pay billions for builders' mistakes in a situation where no building over 3 stories is insured. This video is of an interview with Nerrida Pohl about the dangers of inflammable cladding on skyscrapers, using her own building as an example. The location affords views of similar problems on surrounding skyscrapers in South Yarra. It also illustrates the irony of having one's view built out, even when one lives in a skyscraper, as massive population growth an deregulation accelerate infilling and raise heights. Nerrida was a speaker at the Victorian Building Action Group AGM this year.

VIDEO UNPUBLISHED: Unfortunately the person interviewed in this video has asked me to unpublish it pending her dealing with some pressure she has received in response. Because this was a very educational video, I am regretfully unpublishing it for the time being.

Melbourne lacks open green spaces. Unfinancial golf-courses should be returned to nature, to provide scarce habitat to our native animals and contact with nature for humans. These golf-courses often got by on the pretext that they would preserve open land, as a trade-off for more development. Melbourne is not just overdeveloped, it is overpopulated. Furthermore, our building industry is so incompetent that all its activities should be halted. Below you can read the nonsense being proposed by your government, as an excuse to give more land and free kicks to developers. It's a criminal economy that takes nature and destroys it just for more dollars for Australia's rich and greedy class. Submissions opened on 2 September 2019. Submissions can be made until 5.00pm on 30 September 2019. See example of a submission from Sheila Newman here: "Save 110 golf-courses for birds, not high-rises - Sociologist".

/Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning

Golf Course Redevelopment Standing Advisory Committee

Introduction

Golf is one of Australia’s most popular organised
recreational activities. The sport is experiencing big changes in demand.
Overall, traditional golf club membership is in decline and clubs are facing
changing leisure patterns and increasing operating costs. Some golf clubs have
been forced to merge or close. This trend has drawn developer interest in golf
course land.

Recognising that golf course land, especially within
Melbourne’s Urban Growth Boundary may be considered for rezoning, the Victorian
Government seeks to ensure new proposals for redevelopment are assessed
according to consistent criteria outlined in a planning decision-making
framework.

Draft Golf Course Redevelopment Guidelines (PDF)

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"Your program and so many on the ABC ignore the real prospect of widespread social, economic and environmental breakdown consequent on a human population having exceeded the long term carrying capacity of Nature. The ABC in its general coverage assumes a continuation of Business as Usual. Climate change, if present trends continue leads to a world 3 – 4 degrees warmer at century’s end. (David Attenborough in his recent TV program on climate change used the figures 3 - 6 degrees.) Together with declines in soil quality, water availability, food shortages and massive biodiversity loss these things have many scientists foreshadowing an imminent reduction in the global human population and a world in chaos."

Dear Geraldine,

Your program re infrastructure on [16 August 2019] yesterday's 'Breakfast' program did a great disservice to your audience. It perpetuated myths not supported by facts and failed to mention the real alternative context in which matters like this must be considered.

As a former medical epidemiologist I am very familiar with statistical analysis. Among OECD industrialised countries there is no statistically significant correlation between rates of population growth and per capita growth of GDP. Among poor countries there is a significant and strong negative correlation between population growth and growth of per capita GDP. It is therefore misleading to claim that population growth is causing increases in per capita GDP, i.e. making the average Australian materially better off. This myth serves the interests of those who do benefit from population growth.

GDP and per capita GDP are themselves misleading indicators of real benefit. The costs, yes costs, borne by people as a consequence of growth of population and expenditure on infrastructure are added to GDP. Travel times are reported to have increased by 23% with increases in fuel costs, car maintenance, insurance etc. These are real costs but are added to GDP. The costs of a growing economy have exceeded the benefits for many years for ordinary people explaining why it is that so many feel worse off even while governments and programs like yours keep telling people they have never had it so good.

Your program and so many on the ABC ignore the real prospect of widespread social, economic and environmental breakdown consequent on a human population having exceeded the long term carrying capacity of Nature. The ABC in its general coverage assumes a continuation of Business as Usual. Climate change, if present trends continue leads to a world 3 – 4 degrees warmer at century’s end. (David Attenborough in his recent TV program on climate change used the figures 3 - 6 degrees.) Together with declines in soil quality, water availability, food shortages and massive biodiversity loss these things have many scientists foreshadowing an imminent reduction in the global human population and a world in chaos. Despite this evident danger every government in Australia and most around the world continue to make decisions based on an assumption of business as usual, that they can go on driving both population and economic growth, the two primary causes of our worsening situation. How do you reconcile that prospect with a continuation of unquestioned population growth in Australia. Climate change is likely to impact Australia's ability to grow food quite severely. We may have difficulty even feeding the present population let alone a much larger one before century's end.

Australia's ecological footprint has varied between 4 and 5.6 Earths over the last decade. Do you really think it morally right for us to go on increasing the total size of our demand on Nature by seeking both to increase our population and our per capita demand (growing GDP as our main goal)? I invite you to do the sums which show that we could achieve more human welfare by massively increasing our foreign aid and addressing that aid primarily toward education for girls, family planning and contraception than spend that some money on more infrastructure in Australia for the purpose of accommodating a much larger population.

Here is a much saner voice on the issue of infrastructure from a fellow journalist, Crispin Hull.

http://www.crispinhull.com.au/2019/08/16/treating-symptoms-no-help-to-australia/

John

"Not only is Geelong now effectively subsumed into the greater growth orbit of the Melbourne conurbation, but there are surprise population surges in some of the state’s remoter provincial cities and communities. I am so excited about this.” (Bernard Salt, "Victoria reimagined from basket case beginnings," The Australian 8 August 2019.)

In a News Limited piece whose title fails to take into account the original careful planning by Robert Hoddle for natural open space and avenues rather than choked alleys for Melbourne, Bernard Salt somewhat maniacally promotes the Federal and Victorian State Government's planned immigration innundation on disenfranchised Victorians.

“The previous set of state projections released in 2016 had Victoria rising to 7.7 million by 2031 whereas the latest iteration has upped this outlook to 8.1 million. That’s another 400,000 Victorians and another 200,000 houses or apartments that must be delivered during the 2020s. That’s important if you’re in the property game.”

Salt lists 15 local government areas with the biggest absolute increase in their 2021 populations according to the 2016 to 2019 projections, and says,

“This is important for big property players. It shows a significant shift in the demand for housing.”

Here’s the line I’d run: “Minister, we need to rezone more land to accommodate the population projections released by your own department.”

“The 2031 outlook for ¬Monash has been upped by 19,000 while for Whitehorse the upward revision is 14,000. More units, I would imagine. And maybe even a touch of high rise or perhaps a more vigorous application of the principles of suburban densification.”

The article also dooms Melton, Whittlesea and Hume to severe growth and Salt predicts that the ‘urban growth boundary’ will need to be pushed out: .

“I can only imagine that all this net additional growth is taking Melbourne’s footprint closer to the edge of the urban growth boundary.

He asks himself:

“I wonder if the really big property players are thinking about where this boundary might next be “adjusted” to accommodate a city not of the five million we have today, but of the eight million projected by mid-century?”

Of course Bernard Salt with KPMG has been a major driver and promoter of such population growth, frequently seen at the various confabs of the ‘big property players’, so this wondering seems very rhetorical.
He discloses the nature of population growth as a ‘burden’. Indeed, it is costing all of us more than money, although the “big property players” probably consider themselves adequately compensated and possibly above suffering from the destruction of community networks, natural spaces and freedom.

“I do think it’s important that the population burden being added to Victoria needs to be fairly distributed, with the inner city taking a higher proportion. It’s a bit like the progressive tax system where the rich pay a higher tax rate. In demographic planning, greater growth should be attached to localities culturally aligned to higher density, and that offer access to jobs and public transport.”

He describes the metastasies of the ghastly tumour that Melbourne is becoming with a pathogist’s delight:

“It’s in rural Victoria where the demographers have done their most riveting work. Yes, riveting. Not only is Geelong now effectively subsumed into the greater growth orbit of the Melbourne conurbation, but there are surprise population surges in some of the state’s remoter provincial cities and communities. I am so excited about this.”

Excited at the loss of control by residents of their city and citizens of their democracy? Excited at the rising costs of living, at water shortages, at pollution, at wildlife extinction?

Excited?

I think that growthism is an addiction with consequences that cause enormous harm. Like war, which some also consider exciting, it needs to be recognized for the all consuming ill that it is, for the vast majority, with only a tiny few reaping the questionable benefits of cash and power over their increasingly beggared fellows.

Article by Sheila Newman, Demographer and Evolutionary Sociologist.

Here is further explantion of the huge significance of the judgement handed down against the US Democrats' attempt to charge Julian Assange with espionage and somehow prosecute a non-US citizen as if they were a US citizen. That successive Australian governments have allowed the US and the UK to go after Assange in absolute refusal of Assange's human rights is damning of our political class.

In a ruling published late Tuesday, Judge John Koeltl of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York delivered a devastating blow to the US-led conspiracy against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. In his ruling, Judge Koeltl, a Bill Clinton nominee and former assistant special prosecutor for the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, dismissed “with prejudice” a civil lawsuit filed in April 2018 by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) alleging WikiLeaks was civilly liable for conspiring with the Russian government to steal DNC emails and data and leak them to the public. Jennifer Robinson, a leading lawyer for Assange, and other WikiLeaks attorneys welcomed the ruling as “an important win for free speech.” Article by Eric London, first published on 31 July 2019 at https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/07/31/assa-j31.html. Illustrations by candobetter eds

Judge dismisses lawsuit

The decision exposes the Democratic Party in a conspiracy of its own to attack free speech and cover up the crimes of US imperialism and the corrupt activities of the two parties of Wall Street. Judge Koeltl stated:

If WikiLeaks could be held liable for publishing documents concerning the DNC’s political financial and voter-engagement strategies simply because the DNC labels them ‘secret’ and trade secrets, then so could any newspaper or other media outlet. But that would impermissibly elevate a purely private privacy interest to override the First Amendment interest in the publication of matters of the highest public concern. The DNC’s published internal communications allowed the American electorate to look behind the curtain of one of the two major political parties in the United States during a presidential election. This type of information is plainly of the type entitled to the strongest protection that the First Amendment offers.

The ruling exposes the illegality of the conspiracy by the US government, backed by the governments of Britain, Ecuador, Australia and Sweden and the entire corporate media and political establishment, to extradite Assange to the US, where he faces 175 years in federal prison on charges including espionage.

The plaintiff in the civil case—the Democratic Party—has also served as Assange’s chief prosecutor within the state apparatus for over a decade. During the Obama administration, Democratic Party Justice Department officials, as well as career Democratic holdovers under the Trump administration, prepared the criminal case against him.

The dismissal of the civil suit exposes massive unreported conflicts of interest and prosecutorial misconduct and criminal abuse of process by those involved. The criminal prosecution of Assange has nothing to do with facts and is instead aimed at punishing him for telling the truth about the war crimes committed by US imperialism and its allies.

The judge labeled WikiLeaks an “international news organization” and said Assange is a “publisher,” exposing the liars in the corporate press who declare that Assange is not subject to free speech protections. Judge Koeltl continued: “In New York Times Co. v. United States, the landmark ‘Pentagon Papers’ case, the Supreme Court upheld the press’s right to publish information of public concern obtained from documents stolen by a third party.”

As a legal matter, by granting WikiLeaks’ motion to dismiss, the court ruled that the DNC had not put forward a “factually plausible” claim. At the motion to dismiss stage, a judge is required to accept all the facts alleged by the plaintiff as true. Here, the judge ruled that even if all the facts alleged by the DNC were true, no fact-finder could “draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.”

Going a step further, the judge called the DNC’s arguments “threadbare,” adding: “At no point does the DNC allege any facts” showing that Assange or WikiLeaks “participated in the theft of the DNC’s information.”

Judge Koeltl said the DNC’s argument that Assange and WikiLeaks “conspired with the Russian Federation to steal and disseminate the DNC’s materials” is “entirely divorced from the facts.” The judge further ruled that the court “is not required to accept conclusory allegations asserted as facts.”

The judge further dismantled the DNC’s argument that WikiLeaks is guilty-by-association with Russia, calling the alleged connection between Assange and the Russian government “irrelevant,” because “a person is entitled to publish stolen documents that the publisher requested from a source so long as the publisher did not participate in the theft.”

Judge Koeltl also rejected the DNC’s claim “that WikiLeaks can be held liable for the theft as an after-the-fact coconspirator of the stolen documents.” Calling this argument “unpersuasive,” the judge wrote that it would “eviscerate” constitutional protections: “Such a rule would render any journalist who publishes an article based on stolen information a coconspirator in the theft.”

In its April 2018 complaint, the DNC put forward a series of claims that have now been exposed as brazen lies, including that Assange, Trump and Russia “undermined and distorted the DNC’s ability to communicate the party’s values and visions to the American electorate.”

The complaint also alleged: “Russian intelligence services then disseminated the stolen, confidential materials through GRU Operative #1, as well as WikiLeaks and Assange, who were actively supported by the Trump Campaign and Trump Associates as they released and disclosed the information to the American public at a time and in a manner that served their common goals.”

At the time the DNC filed its complaint, the New York Times wrote that the document relies on “publicly-known facts” as well as “information that has been disclosed in news reports and subsequent court proceedings.” The lawsuit “comes amid a swirl of intensifying scrutiny of Mr. Trump, his associates and their interactions with Russia,” the Times wrote.

It is deeply ironic that Judge Koeltl cited the Pentagon Papers case, New York Times Co. v. United States, in his ruling.

The DNC’s baseless complaint cited the New York Times eight times as “proof” of Assange and WikiLeaks’ ties to Russia, including articles by Times reporters Andrew Kramer, Michael Gordon, Niraj Chokshi, Sharon LaFraniere, K.K. Rebecca Lai, Eric Lichtblau, Noah Weiland, Alicia Parlapiano and Ashley Parker, as well as a July 26, 2016 article by Charlie Savage titled “Assange, avowed foe of Clinton, timed email release for Democratic Convention.”

The first of these articles was published just weeks after the New York Times hired James Bennet as its editorial page editor in March 2016. James Bennet’s brother, Michael Bennet, is a presidential candidate, a senator from Colorado and former chair of the DNC’s Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. In 2018, Bennet signed a letter to Vice President Mike Pence noting he was “extremely concerned” that Ecuador had not canceled asylum for Assange, who was then trapped in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

“It is imperative,” the letter read, “that you raise US concerns with [Ecuadorian] President [Lenin] Moreno about Ecuador’s continued support for Mr. Assange at a time when WikiLeaks continues its efforts to undermine democratic processes globally.”

In April 2019, after the Trump administration announced charges against Assange, the New York Times editorial board, under James Bennet’s direction, wrote: “The administration has begun well by charging Mr. Assange with an indisputable crime.” Two weeks later, Michael Bennet announced his presidential run and has since enjoyed favorable coverage in the Times editorial page.

Additionally, the father of James and Michael Bennet, Douglas Bennet, headed the CIA-linked United States Agency for International Development in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

On Wednesday, the Times published a brief, six-paragraph article on page 25 under the headline, “DNC lawsuit against election is dismissed.” In its online edition, the Times prominently featured a link to its special page for the Mueller Report, which is based on the same DNC-instigated threadbare lies that Judge Koeltl kicked out of federal court

Australia’s political economy has turned into one gigantic lie. Via AAP:

Pauline Hanson’s push to have a national vote on immigration levels has been crushed in the Senate.

The One Nation leader on Monday asked the Upper House to support a plebiscite, arguing the country’s roads and health system were buckling under the weight of new migrants.

But Senator Hanson and her partyroom colleague Malcolm Roberts were the only votes in favour of the Bill, which was thrashed 54 votes to two.

Pauline Hanson is 100% right. Australian standards of living are tumbling owing to the mass immigration economic model:

• wage growth is finished;
• infrastructure is crushloaded;
• house prices are pressured higher and quality control has collapsed.

These are simple statistical truths. They are not racist. Yet we can’t talk about them because Pauline Hanson does. Perhaps it’s the other way around, Pauline Hanson talks about them so we refuse.

Either or both ways, if Pauline Hanson said the world was round, the national discussion would declare it was flat.

This stranglehold of the imagination is gutting what was once great about Australia: fairness, classlessness, meritocracy and democracy. Replaced by exploitation, class war, corruption and oligarchy.

That this is led by the Left is one the great ironies of contemporary politics. The Right simply loves it. It is its natural tendency.

It’s insane.

Article originally published by Houses and Holes in Australian Economy, Australian Politics, at 11:45 am on July 30, 2019.

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) has commenced an inquiry into the impact of the exercise of law enforcement and intelligence powers on the freedom of the press. The inquiry was referred by the Attorney-General, The Hon Christian Porter MP, on 4 July 2019, for the PJCIS to inquire into the Terms of Reference. (Details inside.) This is a reaction to public and press reaction over the raid by the Australian federal police of the home of News Corp Australia journalist Annika Smethurst, to find out how she had come by a leaked plan to allow government spying on Australians. A warrant from an ACT magistrate gave police authority to search the home, computer and mobile phone of the journalist. News Corp Australia called this a "dangerous act of intimidation targeted at public interest reporting." Smethurst had authored an article about heads of defence and home affairs ministries in Australia having talked about "draconian new powers to allow the Australian Signals Directorate to spy on Australian citizens for the first time. Under the mooted plan, spies would be allowed to secretly access emails, bank accounts and text messages with approval from the defence and home affairs ministers." See inside for how you can contribute - by 26 July 2019. Consider how Australian governments have failed to protect Julian Assange in the name of a perceived right to conceal war crimes.

The Committee has been requested to report back to both Houses of Parliament by 17 October 2019.

The Chair, Mr Andrew Hastie MP, said ‘the government has referred this inquiry based on concerns raised in relation to recent search warrants executed on members of the press, and the issue of balancing national security with the freedom of the press’.

‘This inquiry will allow the Committee to hear from the media, government agencies and other interested stakeholders as to the direct impact of these powers on civil society and their importance to both national security and the public interest. We will consider these issues closely and carefully.’

The Committee invites written submissions to this inquiry, to be received by Friday, 26 July 2019.

Further information on the inquiry can be obtained from the Committee’s website.

Media inquiries:

Chair, Mr Andrew Hastie MP (Canning, WA)
08 9534 8044 (Electorate office)
(02) 6277 4223 (Parliament House)

For background information:

Committee Secretariat, Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security
(02) 6277 2360
[email protected]

For more information about this Committee, you can visit its website. On the site, you can make a submission to an inquiry, read other submissions, and get details for upcoming public hearings. You can also track the Committee and receive email updates by clicking on the blue ‘Track Committee’ button in the bottom right hand corner of the page.

Terms of Reference

The Committee is to inquire and report back to both Houses of Parliament on the following matters:

a) The experiences of journalists and media organisations that have, or could become, subject to the powers of law enforcement or intelligence agencies performing their functions, and the impact of the exercise of those powers on journalists' work, including informing the public.
b) The reasons for which journalists and media organisations have, or could become, subject to those powers in the performance of the functions of law enforcement or intelligence agencies.
c) Whether any and if so, what changes could be made to procedures and thresholds for the exercise of those powers in relation to journalists and media organisations to better balance the need for press freedom with the need for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to investigate serious offending and obtain intelligence on security threats.
d) Without limiting the other matters that the Committee may consider, two issues for specific inquiry are:

whether and in what circumstances there could be contested hearings in relation to warrants authorising investigative action in relation to journalists and media organisations.
the appropriateness of current thresholds for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to access electronic data on devices used by journalists and media organisations.
The Committee is to report back to both Houses of Parliament by 17 October 2019.

An https://science.sciencemag.org/content/364/6443/881international study has revealed extensive removal of legal protection for conservation reserves, at a time when the preservation of these areas is more important than ever to biodiversity. The study, published today in Science, involving a global consortium of researchers led by Conservation International, documents how governments from 73 countries, including Australia, have removed more than 500,000 km2 from protected areas and downgraded protection for an additional 1.65 million km2 to allow greater human impacts.

The research examined losses occurring over a 125 year period. Alarmingly, more than three quarters of these losses occurred since 2000.

Dr Carly Cook, an ARC DECRA Fellow at Monash University’s School of Biological Sciences, led the assessment of changes to Australian protected areas.

She identified more than 1,500 changes, resulting in the removal of 13,000 km2 from conservation areas and undermining protection for an additional 400,000 km2.

“The losses we see in Australia reflect a shift towards the commercialisation and exploitation of conservation areas for human uses,” Dr Cook said.

“We’ve seen governments across the country open up protected areas to commercial developments, such as hotels and marinas, and introduce a string of changes to permit forestry, livestock grazing, hunting and fishing.”

“People think protected areas offer permanent protection for biodiversity, but this isn’t the case.

“The future for protected areas is increasingly uncertain at a time when natural systems face greater threats than ever.”

With an estimated 1 million species now at risk of extinction, what is the future for protected areas? The study shows that no conservation areas are immune to losses, with protection removed from important biodiversity hotspots, such as the Amazon Basin, and iconic areas, such as Yosemite National Park in the US.

Removing protected areas, or allowing activities that are not compatible with biodiversity conservation, will negatively impact the species these areas were designed to protect. Losing protection increases habitat loss and means natural areas become smaller and more fragmented.

The authors are calling for greater transparency to fully understand the scale of the problem and the impacts on biodiversity.

“A single change in legislation can have an alarming impacts,” said Dr Cook.

“For example, a legislative amendment to allow commercial development in NSW impacted 600 national parks and nature reserves.”

The study authors call for international conventions to establish systems to monitor and report on the loss of conservation areas that match current systems for tracking their establishment.

In the absence of systematic monitoring and reporting, studies such as this are critical for increasing awareness of the ways in which protected areas are being undermined.

A copy of the paper can be found here. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/364/6443/881

See inside a videoed discussion on the question of Did the French police use excessive force against the Yellow Vests? Criminologist, Xavier Raufer, one of the guests, describes a situation where the French government allows the same violent saboteurs, known to the police, to continually attend Yellow Vest demonstrations and cause havoc. The police response has caused injuries, maimings and deaths, mostly through the use of rubber bullets. President Macron has been criticised by Human Rights organisations and the United Nations, but he persists in allowing career sociopaths to break shop windows and assault people, using this as an excuse for his own extreme violence. The discussion was on the amazing Frédéric Taddeï's show, Interdit d'interdire [Forbidden to forbid] on RT France.

Jérôme Rodrigues, a Yellow Vest, who lost an eye to one of those rubber bullets, also in the discussion, talked about "15,000 rubber bullets. More than in the last five years. It's pretty enormous." He described the unpleasant faces Macron makes when he is criticised for shooting at his own people, whilst he fancies himself encouraging democracy in lesser countries.

Did the [French] police use excessive force [against the Yellow Vests]?

XAVIER RAUFER, Criminologist : [Translation from French]: "You have asked quite a serious question. Everyone knows that there are violent elements. In sum, 300 young men from the extreme left, called the “Black Block”[2] and about 50 extreme right nationalists. Although measures to stop them could easily have been taken – because they are the violent elements – that is, if ever these individuals were withdrawn from the demonstrations, 90% of the violence would disappear. But never, at any moment, in any of these demonstrations, has anything been done to stop them, as the law permits, to arrest them in their homes, before the demonstrations.

You know, once I spoke to some of the upper management police in Paris. They have the entire list of every Black Block. They know who they are. They come from rotten suburbs full of drug addicts and police informers. Furthermore, the police don’t only know who the French ones are. There is a European police network, and when wide boys come from the Holland Black Block or the German Black Block, a list of their vehicules, with the registration numbers, and the road they are travelling on, are communicated. As for the extreme right nationalists, [at the time of] one of the most violent of all the demonstrations in December, those people gathered in front of their meeting place – the conspirators – in front of their meeting place. From there video-cameras followed them, without interruption, right to Place de l’Etoile [Paris square], where they were able to begin their violence. No-one stopped them. They were followed minute by minute via the police’s urban video cameras. Why were they allowed to go ahead?" [1]

Here is the point where Criminologist, Xavier Raufer, begins to speak: https://youtu.be/wst5E6ejHUU?t=538

Sheila Newman on the Yellow Jackets

People may have wondered why I have had almost nothing to say on candobetter about the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) when I have otherwise often commented on and translated French political material. It is not because I am not interested in what is happening; it is because I am too interested. As some people know, I specialise in comparing French and British land-tenure and inheritance systems and the effect they have on political organisation. I was not surprised that France was able to produce a movement like the Yellow Vests (which has many activities besides public demonstrations), when no other European or Anglosphere country has been able to.

For the last two years I have been working on a book about why the French were able to sustain a democratic republican revolution (1789-1871) but the British could not. I began it in 2007, but it was interrupted by dramatic life events, and I am not sure when I will finish it - but I am working hard on it. To my mind, France is probably the only country where ordinary people are still able to self-organise a response to economic liberalism, mass immigration, and constant overseas warring. That is because their land-tenure and planning system means that they are still viscously organised in families and clans in place - at least outside Paris. President Sarkozy made some of the first changes to inheritance law that would break this organic system down. Macron is using a sledge hammer.

The British (Irish, Welsh, Scottish and English) made many attempts to revolt against the system at the time of the French Revolution, but they were so disorganised and divided by constant population movement, that it was easy for the viscous elites to corrupt them with paid spies. This is the system that Australia, Canada and the United States imported.

NOTES

[1] Original French, transcribed by Sheila Newman:
La Police fait-elle un usage excessif de la force?
XAVIER RAUFER, Criminologist : Vous posez une question qui est tout de même grave. Tout le monde sait qui sont les éléments violents. En gros, 300 garçons issue de l'extrême gauche, qu’on appelle les 'Black Blocs', et une cinquantaine issue de l'extrême droite identitaire. A aucun moment, les mesures qu'on pouvait aisément prendre - c'est eux les éléments violents - c'est à dire que si jamais ces individus sont retirés de l'ensemble des manifestations, 90% des violences disparaissent. Et jamais, a aucun moment, dans aucune des manifestations, rien n'a été entreprit, comme la loi de permettait, pour les arrêter le matin chez eux, avant les manifestations. Vous savez, une fois j'ai parlé à des grands patrons de la direction de renseignements de la préfecture de police de Paris. Ils ont la liste intégrale de tous les Black Blocs. Ils savent qui c'est. Ce sont des milieux qui sont pourris de toxicomanes, d'indicateurs de police. Et, non seulement, ils connaissent les français, mais l'Europe de la police existe, et quand des gaillards arrivent d'Hollande ou arrivent d'Allemagne Black Blocs, la liste des véhicules, avec les numéros des véhicules, l'autoroute par laquelle ils vont arriver, est communique. Quant à l'extrême droite identitaire, un des manifestations les plus violentes du mois de décembre, ces gens-là se sont réunis devant leur locale, - les conspirateurs - devant leur locale. De là les cameras les ont suivi, sans discontinuer, jusqu'à la place de l’Etoile, ou ils ont pu commencer à casser. Personne ne les a interrompus. Ils étaient suivis de minute en minute par les cameras urbaines a la préfecture de police. Pourquoi laisse-t-on faire?

[2] Black Block or Black Bloc refers to violent people who wear black and disguise themselves with scarves etc in political demonstrations.

It is important to hear policies from key MPs before the election. Thanks to Prof Michael Buxton, we have a large lecture hall in Swanston Street, on the west side, called RMIT Building 80, and we have room 7 on the ground floor. Take note - it is 3 weeks today - lets fill the hall. (Mary Drost, Planning Backlash).

State Election Forum

Several Ministers and Shadow Ministers have been invited to present their key policies. You can ask questions about what is important to you
SUNDAY, 28 OCTOBER 2018

2pm

RMIT Building 80

Room 7

445 Swanston Street, Melbourne

Australia is running an “investment” scam that relies on an ever-increasing number of punters to join in, writes Stephen Williams.

(This article was first published at https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/australias-population-ponzi-scheme-,11964 under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License.) In this republication tweets with links have been represented as pictures, to save time in reformatting.

IF YOU ARE LOOKING for discord between policies that the major parties offer and what most people actually want, it is hard to beat population policy.

Okay, okay, the major parties don’t actually have population policies, they have immigration policies that, as the Productivity Commission says in its 2016 Migrant intake into Australia report, work as de facto population policies.

But let’s start with what most people actually want.

Macro Business’s Leith van Onselen has been relentless in his coverage of the population issue in the past few years and he summarises the recent opinion surveys here.

Van Onselen misses the first Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) survey of 2015, which I spearheaded, although Adjunct Associate Professor Katharine Betts did most of the work. I also had a minor role in The Australian Population Research Institute survey of 2017 that built upon the 2015 SPA survey.

At the very least these surveys show a clear voter dissatisfaction with our high population trajectory as our major cities become crush-loaded.

Do we have “high” population growth?

The Australian Bureau of Statistics releases a quarterly report that summarises our population numbers.

As you can see, Australia is increasing its population by almost 400,000 a year — natural increase is about 38% of that and net overseas migration is about 62%.

The increase is 1.6% per year. To the non-statistician, that might not sound like much, but it means we would double our population every 44 years at that rate of increase. We are now at 25 million, so that would be 50 million in 2062.

To put that in context, the shit hit the fan in October 2009 when then Treasury head, Ken Henry, expressed concern over our projected population of 35 million people by 2050.

That led to prime minister Kevin Rudd’s baptism of fire when, like a boy scout enthusiastically collecting kindling at his first jamboree, he chortled his enthusiasm for a “big Australia”.

Yes, we could all get nice and cozy around Kev’s big bonfire and toast some marshmallows!

But the public backlash was fierce, with Julia Gillard eventually distinguishing herself from Rudd with the empty phrase “sustainable Australia” rather than big Australia.

Back to reality, comparable countries to Australia have much lower population increases. Japan even has a decrease.

The Federal Government largely determines our population numbers, both through spruiking pronatalism, as former treasurer Peter Costello did in 2004, or through adjusting net overseas migration, with former Prime Minister John Howard turbo-charging it in about 2006.

(Do not confuse our refugee intake with our overall migrant intake — the former tends to be between 3 and 5% of the latter.)

Such high-population increases, mostly through net migration, then allowed successive governments to smugly say the Australian economy was the envy of the world, with a record-breaking run of “economic growth”.

Translation: GDP keeps increasing because you keep adding lots of new people.

Growth sounds good, doesn’t it? It is the opposite of death, decay or stagnation. But growth can also be a cancer, or a “population Ponzi scheme”.

As I have argued elsewhere, there is good evidence that Australia has gone from economic growth up to the decade of the 1970s to uneconomic growth as the costs of expanding the economy become greater than the benefits.

Expanding the economy wouldn’t be so bad if it led to full employment in good jobs and equitable wealth distribution, with reasonable commute times in efficient public transport, but I could sell you a nice big harbour bridge if you believe we are heading in that direction.

Australian governments have conducted a number of inquiries that were largely, or partly, into our population numbers: The Menzies Government’s Vernon report (1965), the National Population Inquiry (Borrie report, 1975), FitzGerald report (1988), Withers report (1992), Jones report (1994), Sobels report (2010) and the already-mentioned Productivity Commission report on migration (2016).

Space does not permit an analysis here, other than to say that governments generally ignore those reports that tend to highlight a lack of objective or scientific justification for ever-increasing high population increase in a country with Australia’s limited water resources; limited arable land, unpredictable climate, exposure to natural disasters and sensitive biota with record extinction rates.

Indeed, the Australian Academy of Science has been concerned about our population numbers for decades, although you will rarely, if ever, hear population boosters mention this.

As the Academy said in 2010:

‘The Academy has consistently advocated that a large increase in Australia's population should not take place without a full analysis of the consequences for the environment, in terms of land, water, sustainable agriculture, pressure on native flora and fauna and social issues.’

People advocating business as usual – or even higher rates of population increase – almost never mention the natural environment, probably because they know next-to-nothing about it and its life-support systems.

On the other hand, people who express concern about our population trajectory often have scientific or environmental credentials, or are at least environmentally literate: contributors to the regular Fenner Conference for the Environment are good examples.

No, it is largely the business community, its think tanks and its big accounting firms that push for a big Australia, with the mainstream media being largely complicit in not challenging base assumptions that the growth agenda is built on.

For instance:

• What would be an ecologically sustainable population for Australia?
• What would be an optimal population for Australia?
• Does expanding the size of the economy always lead to increased well-being?
• Who are the winners and losers from the current Neoliberal growth strategy?
• What are the costs and benefits of increasing our population and what weight should we give to these costs and benefits?
• Why do many successful societies have relatively small populations?
• What can Australia realistically do to help an overpopulated planet that is still expanding by 80 million people a year?

The population boosters trot out questionable arguments about the dire consequences of an increase in the proportion of older Australians; alleged skills gaps in the native workforce and fatuous ideas to do with “dynamism”.

Meanwhile, we have almost 2 million people who want more work but can’t get it, full-time jobs are disappearing, wages have stagnated, private-sector debt has skyrocketed and wealth has concentrated at the big end of town.

What sticks in my craw is the seeming capitulation of both the once-great environmental movement in Australia and the progressive left in general, to the notion of demographic inevitability and Neoliberal orthodoxy.

In fact, we have a choice, if only we would exercise it.

Stephen Williams is a freelance journalist. He has done paid work for Sustainable Population Australia.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License

YaleGlobal announces: "Prepare for the 21st Century Exodus of Migrants ... Cross-border immigration accounts for much of the population growth in developed countries with low fertility rates. Such immigration has also become an election issue around the globe." Unfortunately open borders are being promoted in order to maintain constant population growth; the 'developed world' ideas managers are not really trying to avert this disaster. "If those taking steps necessary to migrate were to immigrate to desired destinations, the result would expand UN-projected annual numbers for major migrant-receiving Western countries by more than tenfold," writes Joseph Chamie, (this Yale article). That would mean immigration at about 2.5m every year in Australia, or about 10% of Australia's current population. This would have Australia's population initially doubling in 10 years, but of course it would then grow faster and faster, due to compounding natural increase and an increasing population base! 75% of Australia is rangelands and arid desert, similar to North Africa. Australia's politically engineered immigration-fed population growth rate is already overwhelming its infrastructure. The increased demand means money for developers, but increased prices for most people. Reading Chamie's article makes me again wonder whether modern economics has actually confused people with dollars.

Joseph Chamie first launched these ideas via the UN in 2000, “Replacement Migration: Is it a Solution to declining and Ageing Populations,” 6 January, 2000 and for the final report, released on 22 March 2000. At the time it was received with laughter from demographers in Europe, but taken seriously by absurdist economists in the Anglosphere. The absurd is now becoming reality, constantly promoted in the corporate press. The process promoted is more dangerous than Hitler, because demographic inertia has a life of its own and engineering population age-cohorts to balloon is nuts.

The idea is to constantly increase world population numbers in guise of maintaining youth cohorts at the same unusual proportional levels as they were at the time of the 'Baby-boomers' and cheap oil. This plan would lead to grotesque distortions in demand and individual survival that business people, naive about the numbers, imagine would keep them rich. Indeed, a small number of elites and corporates who control resources, would become even richer than today - for a short time - but at these rates of growth, the world's capacity to feed itself and remove waste would collapse - very quickly.

As French Demographer Henri Leridon wrote in 2000 [1] about Chamie's "Replacement Migration solution", the numbers would be “frankly extravagant”. They would involve 12.7 million immigrants per annum in Europe, amounting to a total of 700 million from 2000 to 2050, “for an initial population of 372 million inhabitants; 1.7 million per annum in France, that is to say, 94 million in 55 years – one and a half times the initial population...”. He added, “As for poor South Korea, which is included in these projections for reasons that remain a mystery, South Korea would have to take in more than five billion immigrants over the period, and the population density there would exceed 62,000 inhabitants per square kilometer in 2050.”

It is never clear to me whether Chamie is advocating this horror-scenario or trying to warn the world. Either way, he is failing, because most people simply have no idea of the numbers and those who suspect the numbers, cannot believe that their 'leaders' would do this to them. As an evolutionary sociologist who writes about human and other species population dynamics (Demography Territory Law: The Rules of animal and human populations), I find it remarkable that the economists and demographers most seen and heard in the mainstream media, think that disproportionate youth cohorts are a good thing. They seem to be operating as if the laws of nature had been entirely suspended by the laws of finance. If anyone wants to read more about Henri Leridon's analysis in English I have republished parts of his texts most recently in an article called, "The plan to flood Europe with migrants - UN 2000 report," at https://www.candobetter.net/node/5579.

With regard to the population growth in the 'developing world', the replacement of traditional economies with cities is the cause of overpopulation and this has been made possible by modern transport. It has brought greatly increased fertility opportunities to peoples and tribes that were previously limited by endogamous restraint in viscous populations. Everyone and every creature once lived in viscous populations. Immigration factors has been magnified by new transport technologies, all over the world. We need to preserve and promote viscosity everywhere we can, not more and more cities and population movement. If turbo-charged capitalism had not got control of world ideation, this might be possible.

NOTES

Henri Leridon, “Vieillissement démographique et migrations: quand les Nations unies veulent remplir le tonneau des Danaïdes...”, Population & Sociétés, No. 358, Juin 2000.

This disgraceful rebadged “Statement of Planning Policy” for Macedon Ranges (home of Hanging Rock) sets a damaging growth plan in concrete as State policy for Macedon Ranges for the next 50 years, perpetuating the direction of our previous council (and apparently the State government), not the new direction taken by the new councillors.

The fatally flawed “Statement of Planning Policy” for Macedon Ranges is now available as Attachment 5 to the Special Council meeting agenda for Thursday 13th September, available from Macedon Ranges Shire Council’s website. http://www.mrsc.vic.gov.au/About-Council/Our-Council/Meeting-Dates-Agendas-Minutes/Council-Meeting-Agendas-Minutes/Minutes-Agendas

The officer’s recommendation is that council receive (not endorse) the document; makes it clear the document is a creature of the State government; and makes suggestions for some changes. These include requesting Ministerial Guidelines to give direction on how the Statement is to be implemented, because despite recommendations and requirements that the document itself include this fundamental component, it doesn’t.

Minor changes since January simply reshuffle the deckchairs. The gross deficiencies of the original Localised Planning Statement (now re-badged as a Statement of Planning Policy) remain. It’s still a growth plan, it still doesn’t implement the recommendations of the Macedon Ranges Protection Advisory Committee, and – unbelievably – still doesn’t connect with or implement the Distinctive Areas and Landscapes legislation.

So, other than temporarily moving the settlement boundary back to the existing town boundary at Woodend, nothing you or apparently councillors or officers have said has made any difference.

The new (so-called) “Statement of Planning Policy”:

· Doesn’t make policy statements about how things will be done but a series of weak objectives and strategies about how it is hoped things might be done.

· Instead of being based on Statement of Planning Policy No. 8, condemns SPP8 to oblivion. With it goes justification for current planning controls, including protection of township character (which isn’t a “must” in the new Statement), and no further subdivision at Macedon and Mount Macedon.

Still ignores Macedon Ranges Protection Advisory Committee’s recommendations both for preparation of a statement, and policy e.g. “Landscape, biodiversity, cultural heritage and township protection must be a cornerstone of policy protection for the Macedon Ranges. The conservation of the Shire’s landscapes is of critical importance.” Not there.

· Where absolute clarity is demanded it nails nothing down, increasing uncertainty with “encourage”, “discourage”, “aim to”, “voluntary”, “should”, “consider”, “manage”, while “must” is confined to protection of extractive industries.

· Maintains separate policy domains, without saying how all of these work together.

· Is still not binding on public entities (including council), and only requires these bodies to have regard to the Statement, where relevant.

· Still singles out only “significant”, “State” “National” “high value” and “features” as important.

· Promotes extractive industries (making Macedon Ranges a target for them), and still promotes equine and intensive agriculture.

· Forgets to include almost half of the Shire’s drinking water catchments, and still makes biodiversity dependent on a website address.

Provides absolutely no guidance about dwellings or other development in rural areas, or in towns.

· Is still a growth plan that ignores the Distinctive Areas and Landscapes legislation and sets expanded settlement boundaries without parliament’s approval.

· Only provides Woodend with a temporary reprieve by excluding its investigation areas but continues to give a ‘free kick’ to development interests in other towns by including their investigation areas.

· Still doesn’t include settlement boundaries for Gisborne and Romsey.

· Elevates Kyneton to a “Regional Centre” (10,000+ population) and falsely attributes this to the Macedon Ranges Settlement Strategy when the State government is making it so.

Is based on the Loddon Mallee South Regional Growth Plan, current incomplete Macedon Ranges planning scheme and the appalling draft Visitor Economy document.

Includes the previous council’s deplorable In The Rural Living Zone document (the one based on advice from real estate interests) as a reference document AND requires its on-going implementation, including converting high quality agi soils at Romsey and Farming zone at Kyneton into 2ha blocks.

This disgraceful rebadged “Statement of Planning Policy” sets these weak, vague aspirations and a damaging growth plan in concrete as State policy for Macedon Ranges for the next 50 years, perpetuating the direction of our previous council (and apparently the State government), not the new direction taken by the new councillors.

It’s NOT protection in any guise. It takes Macedon Ranges in the opposite direction to protection and Statement of Planning Policy No. 8 (our existing Statement of Planning Policy), and will have a catastrophic effect on the Shire and its values. It could only be considered an “improvement” over the January Localised Planning Statement if going from bottom of the class to equal bottom is considered an improvement.

Please email your support and encouragement to Macedon Ranges Councillors to not endorse this Statement, and/or attend the special council meeting at Gisborne Shire Offices next Thursday, 7.00pm.

[email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected];

And let this be a lesson and warning to any other areas in Victoria that want to become ‘declared areas’.

These speeches moved to a different address on you tube. We have located them again, for the moment. See article above this one for the transcript of John Pilger's excellent speech.
RALLIES ON TUESDAY 19 JUNE IN AUSTRALIA: Melbourne - outside the British Consulate 12-2PM (British Consulate General Melbourne, 17th Floor, 90 Collins St Melbourne). Will be attended by Julian's father, John Shipton and another young member of Julian's family and Shirley Shackleton. Brisbane - Vigil 4-6PM at the Ann Street Shrine of Remembrance opposite Central Station; Perth - 12PM-2PM at Forrest Chase.

The Socialist Equity Party should be applauded for having organised and recorded the June 17th protest speeches. We should not however forget that Julian Assange's work goes wider than worker protest. It goes to preventing globalist media, corporations and governments from taking away our rights as citizens of nations. The issues go to the nation itself and to the need for solidarity and communication between citizens, always, plus the recognition that Julian is one of us. This cause should be embraced by other forces as well as the Socialist Equity Party. Anyone who supports free speech, human and civil rights, and opposes war, should attend these protests and get others to attend with leaflets, posts to social media, and calls to talk-back radio etc.

In case you haven’t heard, Canada has a border crisis on its hands. To all but the wilfully blind, the deceitful deniers and the dangerously delusional, it is blatantly evident that growing numbers of migrants are deliberately and flagrantly in contravention of Canadian border law and international treaties.

It is clear that where Roxham Road in Champlain, NY meets Quebec, our laws are not being enforced, our generosity is being abused and our border is wide open to anyone who wants to walk in and avail themselves of the friendly assistance of the Royal Canadian Mounted Bellhop Police. It is also obvious that the offending migrants knew the drill coming in.. They knew that if they crossed the border in defiance of explicit do-not-enter signs, they would be arrested and detained, but by mere virtue of declaring refugee status on Canadian soil, they would also be given a hearing, something that under the terms of the Safe Third Country agreement, they wouldn’t get had they chosen an official port of entry. Last year, most Roxham Road refugee claimants were Haitian residents who feared deportation after the protected status they enjoyed in the United States following the 2010 earthquake expired. But this year, most were Nigerians who had been granted a visa to enter the United States with the dishonest intention of using it to travel to an unguarded section of the Canadian border. For them, the United States was just a transit point, a stepping stone to the hospitable welfare state to the north.

Numbers and facts can tell the story concisely. Consider this:

• More asylum claims were made last year than at any time in modern Canadian history. The total number of RCMP-intercepted asylum claimants (i.e., “irregulars”) in 2017 was 20,593, and the total number through air, land, and marine ports of entry and inland offices was 22,185, so that total of irregular and “regular” entries was 42,778. https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/refugees/asylum-claims-2017.html
• The RCMP intercepted 1,890 illegal border crossers in the first three months of 2017. In the same period this year (2018), that number soared to 5,052, compared to the 4,475 people who filed claims at legal ports of entry.
• Since the beginning of 2017, more asylum-seekers have crossed the border than the 25,000 Syrian refugees who were accepted in 2016. There were 18,644 refugee claimants in the queue at the start of 2017, but as of the end of March this year, there some 48,974---more than a doubling in 15 months.
• Understandably, this has placed an unsustainable strain on the refugee system. When Canada rejects an immigrant, the decision is final. For refugee claimants in Canada, however, rejections are subject to lengthy appeals, removal orders, and in some cases, Canada-wide-arrest warrants. Since the Immigration and Refugee Board can only process 1,000 to 2,000 claims per month, they can’t keep pace with the flood. In March, the board was able to complete a record 2,587 claims, but 4,078 new refugee claims came through in the same month. The backlog is out of control.
• As the backlog grows, it is taking longer and longer to process claims. Last October the wait time was 16 months. If border crossings continue at the current rate, the wait time could be 11 years by 2021. Thus, a 19 year old illegal border crosser could be a 30 year old father with three kids in Canada by the time his case was heard. Time enough to put down roots that would be very hard to pull up. These delays will amount to de-facto amnesty, and serve as incentive for more potential claimants to make an illegal crossing. Not to worry. The Trudeau government has injected an extra $173 million on processing illegal immigration. But speeding up “processing” does not add up to border security.
• 96% of asylum-seekers have come via Quebec, which operates only four shelters for asylum-seekers, 1,850 spots in total. In Toronto in 2016, asylum-seekers accounted for 11.2% of the people using shelters. Today that number stands at 37%. The Mayor estimates that at current arrival rates the city will be housing 4,485 asylum seekers by November, occupying 53% of shelter beds when the system is already in an emergency state. Quebec and the City of Toronto are crying “uncle”. Quebec is demanding that federal government fork over $146 million, while Toronto is calling for $64.5 million.
• Each asylum seeker costs federal taxpayers between $10,000 and 20,000 per year in entitlements. In addition to the housing, social welfare, education and health care which they gain access to, under the Interim Federal Health Program asylum seekers are covered by dental and pharmaceutical care that provincial health care plans do not provide for Canadians. This in a country where “hallway medicine” and long surgery wait times are a fact of life in all jurisdictions.
• Both RCMP and Canadian Border Security Agency officials have been muzzled by the Trudeau government, and explicitly told not to speak to the media about the shocking surge in illegal migration. Oddly, Trudeau supporters who reacted with righteous rage against Conservative Prime Minister Harper’s muzzling of scientists are strangely silent about this gag order.

These facts and stats are by no means exhaustive, but I think you get the picture. We have a massive problem, and the Trudeau government shows no signs of solving it. Some cynics would argue that they have no intention of doing so. But that is not the case. Liberals are getting nervous, and even Trudeau has been moved to back pedal. There is now an understanding that the government risks alienating Liberal voters who couple their naivety about welcoming migrants with a sincere belief that there have to be rules and these rules must be preserved and respected. It’s all about optics and partisan positioning. Liberal strategists are playing catch-up, as they try to shift to the right to adjust to the changing public mood and thwart the Conservative surge registered by recent polls.

The outrageous spectacle of brazen law-breaking at the border is highly combustible fuel for a popular rebellion, which so far only manifests itself in relatively modest demonstrations at Roxham Road and the angry, bitter comments that follow pro-immigration online newspaper articles. One senses that there is a subterranean rage out there in search of a leader. Therein lies the danger for nationalists. So desperate is our need for a parliamentary voice that we are prone to vest unwarranted hope in the proven liars and opportunists of establishment parties, determined to ignore their past betrayals and globalist inclinations.

We don't seem to understand that astute conservative politicians like Australia's Malcolm Turnbull or John Howard before him, or our very own (Immigration critic) Michelle Rempel--- take a hard line position against lax border control precisely because they are rabidly pro-immigration. They rightly fear that the violation of borders undermines public support for their sky high immigration agenda. They realize that angry people often conflate refugees with immigrants. They notice that for some reason, voters are more exercised by a few hundred migrants who arrive by boat than the tens of thousands who arrive from camps. They observe that voters develop an intense hostility to "queue jumpers" (and “border jumpers”) and that this hostility often boils over to include animus toward migrant applicants who jump through all the proper hoops. That is exactly what they want to prevent. They want to appear "tough" on asylum seekers and illegal border crosses to appease public anger and lead it. By manipulating and exploiting popular anti-refugee sentiments, they can not only win elections, but out-flank opponents in their own parties. As noted in the Sydney Morning Herald (April 24/2018)

"Turnbull understands the necessity of tough border protection…. a firm and controlled process of entry selection acts as a declaration that the nation state is in charge of its destiny. Tough border protection boosts public confidence in a non-discriminatory migration program, which includes an orderly, humanitarian refugee intake. It benefits immigrants and asylum seekers who go to a nation fairly and legally. It helps avoid the kind of chaos that lax border controls deliver. And it helps dampen down anti-immigrant prejudice."

Smart Conservatives like Howard, Turnbull and Rempel make a clever calculation. If they fan the flames of public outrage against asylum-seekers---whose numbers are but a fraction of our total migrant intake---they can turn the illegal border crossings into a lightening rod, and thereby decoy the angry mob away from what is most important: continual hyper immigration. Refugee-bashing is a small price to pay to ensure that the real invasion continues on an epic scale. Burka bans and references to “barbaric practices” and unwillingness to “integrate” serve the same purpose: Make mass immigration palatable by pretending that everything will be hunky-dory if only migrants check their tribal values at the door and embrace ours. Population overshoot is fine if everyone is “assimilated” and English signage can co-exist with Chinese.

As is the case with Australia, the number of refugee claimants who enter Canada is peanuts compared to our annual immigration intake. So far, in 2018, the number of asylum-seekers who walk across our southern borders each day is but 10% of the number who stream through our airports. If, as informed sources fear, 400 illegals will be coming across the border every day during the summer, this would still constitute less than half the number of migrants than come through legally at official ports of entry. If reporter Faith Goldy’s worst case scenario of 219,000 illegal border crossers came to pass, it would still constitute only half of the roughly 400,000 immigrants and ‘temporary’ visa holders who arrive here legally. Perspective people. Put things into perspective.

We are running out of time. Our window of opportunity is closing. Changing demographics promise to erode our cultural and natural heritage beyond recovery if we don’t soon mount strong political opposition. Unabated mass immigration will bury us.

If we are to see an abrupt uprising against the government's bipartisan immigration agenda, we should hope that Canadians see the images of not 400 but 4000 Nigerians and Somalis streaming through Roxham Road each day. We should hope that TV viewers will be seized by panic, not by relative complacency--- as is the case now---- notwithstanding the still token number of brave, patriotic demonstrators that make their way to the border.

The very worst thing that could happen, at this point, would be for the Liberal government to yield to Rempel's crusade and do as she demands. Declare the entire border as an official port of entry. We shouldn't want the Liberal government to get a handle on things. We should pray that they completely loose the handle, as they show signs of doing.

According to Rempel, our refugee/immigration system is "broken", and that she wants to "fix it." We don't want to "fix" it, we want to demolish it. Notice as well that Rempel is positioning herself as a "Compassionate Conservative", so as to undercut the Trudeau Liberals self-depiction as 'caring', 'welcoming' governors. As she has clearly stated, it is not about volume but "processing". She does not want to cut back in-migration. On the contrary. She just wants to properly “manage” it. Managed national suicide. That pretty well sums up the Conservative project. A project fully embraced by Rempel, as evidenced by this bold confession:

“Most Canadians are like me. We want immigration. I want high levels of immigration. Our previous Conservative government had high levels of immigration. What we are seeing today is just a complete breakdown of immigration such that legal immigration is…. 7 ½ years to come to Canada as a privately sponsored refugee from Djiboute. That’s unconscionable. I want to go back to having a debate about how we process people. How we support them when they come to Canada. Plans for that. We shouldn’t be talking about whether we have a border along the Quebec-US side.” Michelle Rempel CTV News clip May 24/2018

In our desperation to look for champions, I fear that many of us are following her banner with the same enthusiasm that we rallied behind Conservative Party leadership candidate Kellie Leitch. We don't want to face the fact that these people have a different end game than ours. They want to re-capture office. That's it. And to do that, they will even throw some of their own under the bus just to get the liberal media hounds off their tail. Lynn Belak a case in point.
To Canadian nationalists I say this. Beware of the Pied Pipers of Fake Populism. Beware of tough talking Conservatives who mask their globalist goals with the rhetoric of patriotism. Take in the big picture. And make them understand that we don’t really have a border crisis as much as we have an immigration crisis. Tell them that ‘fixing’ illegal immigration doesn’t cut it. Tell them that if they won’t commit to substantial immigration reduction, we will not commit to them.
Don’t be played.
Tim Murray
June 7, 2018

Towards 2000 people rallied on the morning of June 9, 2018 at 11.00 a.m to protest against live animal exports. The rally, organised by The Animal Justice Party and Animals Australia, attracted a very united crowd of men women and children horrified by the inevitable and intense pain and suffering inflicted on the hapless cargo of these ships no matter where they are headed.

My feeling was that this industry represents a standard of treatment of other creatures that is so low that even though they are not physically hurt by it themselves , people will just not put up with it.

If it were not for the "whistle blowers" recording the awful suffering of sheep and cattle on the ships and at their destination we would be unaware. They have brought it into our living rooms where it cannot be ignored or denied.

Another person who attended this protest summed it up as "Live Export is like mass immigration - it is another thing that Australians do not want, but which is foisted upon us by our governments."

Another sign that we are not really a democracy.

The left has been hijacked by unwitting servants of the neo-liberal agenda.

I was talking to a friend the other day explaining how I always considered myself left wing, but now apparently I wasn’t. I explained why and she declared that the left has been hijacked.

And it struck me: she is right, it totally has. Remember when the left was about worker’s rights? It was about preventing the rich giving themselves privileges whilst denying ordinary people both rights and access to resources. It was, in large part, about protecting people and the environment from the rapacious appetites of the elite rich. In short, the left was about ensuring that everyone had a level of human dignity and the ability to raise a healthy, happy and educated family.

So what is the left now? – I tell you it is no longer about these things. I know this because I am being told that am I no longer left wing, but alt right wing. I tell you why I find this strange, for many years I have written, spoken publicly and protested against: TPP trade agreements; GMO’s; Fracking; homelessness; and the destruction of the environment. I am, and have been involved in environmental groups for over a decade. I have been a union branch committee member for nearly 10 years, I have gone on strike while colleagues kept working. I have gone on union marches. But I am informed, by other supposedly left wing people, that I am now right wing. Even though I continue to do all these things. It gets worse, not only am I being told I am right wing, but I have also recently been categorised with Incels. Why? To be honest, I don’t fully understand the logic, but it seems it has lot to do with not agreeing that there is a “Patriarchy”, and accepting the whole gamit of complaints and grievances based around this concept.

It seems now that you are not left wing if you fight for worker’s rights, you must largely forget that and fight now for trans-rights, for same-sex marriage rights, you must denounce the Patriarchy and acknowledge it as the source of all humanity's problems. This is NOT what the left wing used to be about.

Thus the left wing has been highjacked. And I argue that it has been highjacked by – perhaps unwitting – servants of everything the left wing used to stand against. The left has been highjacked by agents of the neo-liberal system.

We do not see in our papers headlines decrying the excesses of the rich, we do see headlines about global warming – but only because it can no longer be ignored. But where is people’s energy going? It is going into false battles about same-sex marriage, about supposed Patriarchy – which sets women against men - causing much damage and pain. Meanwhile – hidden behind this smoke screen - the rich get richer, the earth dies, common people bicker and argue about Patriarchy and marriage rights while everything burns around us. And all the while the press declares this as progress, and trumpets changes in laws about marriage, and discriminating for women (and against men) as signs of progress. The world is being destroyed, families are being destroyed, debt is growing, congestion is growing, the environment is being destroyed, and men are being pushed out of work, becoming more and more sidelined in society. Families are falling apart and people becoming more frustrated, more angry and more violent. Yet amongst all this discord it is declared that there are signs of social progress. What a bloody mess! And who can we turn to now? The union movement has almost been crushed by neo-liberal forces, or sold out to growth, and it too has been directing resources into the new ‘left’ agenda.

Where do we turn? It seems the neo-liberals have finally won at last. I guess we will all go down fighting and bickering about the various ways men have oppressed women though-out history, and still do today, as the rich appropriate the remaining resources on the planet then party as they watch it, and all us, die.

During the week commencing 12 March 2018 the Australian Broadcasting Corporation aired a number of programs on a Big Australia — the phrase used to encapsulate debates about the desirability of Australia’s rapid immigration-fuelled population growth. The specific programs included episodes of 4 Corners and QandA. Subsequently I submitted an official editorial complaint as per the ABC’s complaint-handling process. In the complaint I took care to refer in detail to the ABC’s own documented editorial standards. The ABC has acknowledged receipt of the complaint and will respond in writing in due course. As this response may take some time to provide, in the meantime I am publishing the text of my complaint here (PDF), for the interest of those who follow the population and immigration debate. I will also publish the text of the ABC’s response when received. The summary of the complaint is as follows (extracted from the conclusion of the document). [Article first published at http://www.peakdecisions.org/the-abc-population-growth-and-a-big-australia-official-complaint/]

Based on the arguments and evidence presented in this complaint, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the Programs do not meet Editorial Policy 4. Highly relevant principal perspectives were omitted or given very limited time. The Programs overwhelmingly favoured one perspective: that a Big Australia is inevitable and there is no room for debate about alternative scenarios. The Programs ignored opportunities to present alternative perspectives even when they were offered as low-hanging fruit (for example, the video questions on QandA). There was repeated reliance on the same narrow range of expert opinion, while other expert opinion was omitted, in defiance of the weight of evidence on these matters. Given that these same one-sided viewpoints and imbalances were repeated over several programs, it is very hard to argue that excesses in one particular program were re-balanced by the views expressed in other programs during the week that the Programs were aired or published. And it is hard to avoid the conclusion that in this instance, these outcomes expressed an implied editorial stance of the ABC towards the desirability of a Big Australia.

Newly re-elected Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has declared Open Society Foundations, organisations funded by billionaire international currency speculator, George Soros, unwelcome in Hungary. I think he is right. Soros funds, in tens of billions of dollars, lots of Non Government Organisations (NGOs) around the world, many of them through his Open Society Foundations (OSF). Although these NGOs usually identify as 'charities' or 'grass roots' movements, all have in common the political aims of open borders and identity politics, a form of balkanisation. Backed by billions, not millions of dollars, this is the opposite of democracy. In Australia GetUp, which has links to the Australian Greens and the Labor Party, is one of the best known of Soros-linked foundations. (See "Australian democracy swiss-cheesed by George Soros Open Societies Foundations.") GetUp collects your information and resells it or uses it for its own political ends, employing 'organisers' to find and interact with likely prospects for influencing Australian politics the GetUp way (and they don't like population restraint). GetUp has also been running very expensive campaigns to prevent their being obliged to declare themselves as political lobbyists, although they describe this as campaigning for democracy. (See GetUp vid about 'attack on democracy'.) Interesting problem, isn't it? See John Bentley here: "Diversionary tactics, smokescreens and the Electoral Funding and Disclosure Bill 2017.") Soros also funds the 350.org, which has empowered the Shoalhaven Greens to fight the Adani Coal Mine in Queensland, driving down its share prices. Sounds good to you? But, meanwhile, Mr Soros massively invested in coal and fossil fuels as the share price fell. You could say, well, Mr Soros is profiting from bad to fund good - except that he is funding coal, anyway. A number of writers in the Australian Independent Media Network (AIMN) defend Soros when people criticise him, which makes me think that AIMN isn't all that independent. The financial press, such as Bloomberg and investing.com defend Soros like some kind of white knight. See, for instance, https://m.investing.com/news/world-news/civil-organizations-in-hungary-brace-for-government-crackdown-on-ngos-1413683?ampMode=1.

The bigger picture

George Soros's influence has seen identity politics manifest through the calculated funding and training up of 'minorities' (or those who claim to represent them) so that they are able to skew national politics and real grassroots, always to the end of promoting high immigration and wedge politics. Open Society Foundations funded political support for the wave of mass immigration of refugees and others to Germany that began in 2015. Mr Soros's political manipulations seem sometimes to bring currencies down (see interview in video below, "60 Minutes: One Evil Man - The Exposé on George Soros.") Some believe that Soros backs wars, such as those in the Middle East, profiting in part from weapons investments and in part from reconstruction after disasters (known as 'disaster capitalism') and probably buying and selling currency as it goes up and down in response to wars. The Panama Papers recently revealed that Soros has invested private equity with the Carlyle Group, a private equity partnership that specializes in buying and selling weapons manufacturing and intelligence gathering companies with government and military contracts and it also uses secret offshore companies to conduct business. (See "Panama Papers reveal George Soros' deep money ties to secretive weapons, intel investment firm."

Soros' financial support for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign seemed obvious from the identity politics she pursued, but the film below shows Soros visiting Haiti after the 2014 earthquake with the Clintons on Clinton Foundation business. Read here for more about his investments. Soros's main game seems to be to buy a country's currency when it is going through tough times, and to sell it when the country is on the mend. He seems to be in the business of promoting mass population movements, including those caused by war. The economic effect of mass population movements is to drive up demand for and inflate the price of major infrastructure and resources, which benefits investors in these. This is known as 'disaster capitalism'. Although Soros is behind the 350.org organisation which militates against fossil fuel and has had a high profile in Greens politics against the Adani Coal Mine in Queensland, his is also investing in these fossil fuel resources. See, Richard Pollock, "George Soros Makes Massive Financial Investments On Fossil Fuels" and Thomas Landstreet 'Soros Doesn't Like Coal Stocks; He Likes Money'. How might we explain this? Well, if Soros puts money into making it politically difficult for the petroleum and coal mining industries, that means that he can buy their shares more cheaply. Today, in an article that Soros should have paid for if he didn't, Bloomberg has recently characterised him simply as a 'holocaust survivor' but Soros himself described how he survived by identifying as a Christian and pointing out jews to the Nazis. (See more below).

Bloomberg Soros's Foundation to Exit Hungary Amid Crackdown, Presse Says accuses Hungary of opting for an 'illiberal state' rather than what they call the EU's 'liberal democratic model' - which many in European countries think is wrecking their democracies. Bloomberg also promotes the heroic idea that Soros is a Holocaust survivor, but the story is not so straightforward.

Bloomberg goes on to say

"The move follows the re-election of Prime Minister Viktor Orban for a third consecutive term earlier this month, after a campaign demonizing Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor Soros and promising a crackdown against NGOs he supports. Orban has condemned the European Union’s liberal democratic model, based on checks and balances and a thriving civil society, and has pledged to create an “illiberal state” modeled on countries such as Russia or Turkey.

OSF, which is active globally, established its first office abroad in Budapest in 1984 to support the democratization of the then still communist country. The charity is the main conduit for aid to more than 60 Hungarian NGOs and has spent more than $1.6 billion on democratic development in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union in the past 30 years."

Man, this is big scale stuff, not 'grass roots'!

How Soros helped the Nazis and declares he has no regrets

Kroft (Interviewer):
When the Nazis occupied Budapest in 1944, George Soros’ father was a successful lawyer. He lived on an island in the Danube and liked to commute to work in a rowboat. But knowing there were problems ahead for the Jews, he decided to split his family up. He bought them forged papers and he bribed a government official to take 14-year-old George Soros in and swear that he was his Christian godson. But survival carried a heavy price tag. While hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were being shipped off to the death camps, George Soros accompanied his phony godfather on his appointed rounds, confiscating property from the Jews... And you [Soros] watched lots of people get shipped off to the death camps.

Soros: Right. I was 14 years old. And I would say that that’s when my character was made.

Full relevant Kroft-Soros dialogue on Soros helping Nazis

KROFT: You're a Hungarian Jew who escaped the Holocaust by posing as a Christian, right? And you watched lots of people get shipped off to the death camps, right?
SOROS: I was 14 years old and I would say that that's when my character was made.
KROFT: In what way?
SOROS: That one should think ahead, that one should understand and anticipate events and one, one is threatened - it was a tremendous threat of evil - I mean it was a very personal experience of evil.
KROFT: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson
SOROS: (nods) Yes, yes.
KROFT: Went out in fact and helped in the confiscation of property from the jews?
SOROS: That's right.
KROFT: That sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many many years. Was it difficult?
SOROS: No. Not at all. Not at all. Mabye as a child, you don't see the connection, but it created no problem at all.
KROFT: No feeling of guilt?
SOROS: No.
KROFT: For example that, "I'm Jewish and here I am watching these people go. I could just as easily be there. I should be there. None of that?
SOROS: Well, of course, I could be on the other side. I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I should[n't] be there, because that was, well actually, funny way, it's just like in markets, that if I weren't there, if I wasn't doing it, somebody else would be taking it away anyhow, and it was whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt."

Analysis

The way that Soros analogises the luck of the draw in Jews' fates under the Nazis to the stock market is particularly interesting. One wonders if that is how he justifies the way he behaves himself on the stock market and when speculating on currency: "If I don't do it, someone else will." The assumption here seems to be that in all systems personal advantage will always outplay tit for tat (social cooperation). This seems especially amoral and antisocial, a kind of doctrine that might find justification in Thatcher's 'There is no society' and in Ayn Rand's work, which glorifies businessmen and damns those who lack their 'courage'.

Another candobetter writer comments,

"There is an interesting rigidity of thought and passivity here. It is as though he were an actor in a play rather than a real person who can decide one way or the other or change anything. Maybe the fact that he was placed in that position as a fourteen year old has had an effect that he does not recognise. Had he been a bit older he may have felt more power in the situation and not seen himself as just acting in a pre-set role.

This seems to have set him on a path and give him an unchanging perspective. I think more normal people re-assess things from time to time.

He has adopted what one could call an amoral approach (and I'm only going on the dialogue above). Nothing has any value and we choose the role we want out of what is on offer. Does he act out of anything but self interest?

In Sartrian terms - he could be said to be acting in bad faith i.e he is in fact free to choose more than he admits to. He was not able to change what was going on in Europe when he was 14 but he could have made other riskier , more heroic choices.

Maybe he has difficulty discriminating between the world he inhabits as created by humans and the actual physical world. He perhaps sees them both as immutable."

Here is a sanitised history of George Soros, that portrays him heroically as a businessman with an economics degree and a philanthropist.

Why do I have it in for George Soros? Because I see him funding undeclared political movements to pretend they are representing democracy, when in fact they are perverting it. The huge sums of money behind these pseudo grass roots movements mean that real democracy has no chance at all. These movements draw people in and waste their time and energy, whilst they actually bolster mainstream politics in the sense that identity politics which (largely helped by Soros' money) have now taken over the Labor Party and the Greens. I am amazed that people fall for it, but find some explanation in the concept of 'slactivism'. Being able to click on a link to save the world is a comfort when you are time poor. So maybe it's just that Moveon.org and GetUp and all the other ones are as convenient as television or fast food, and we are so atomised that people just don't know what else to do.

We have noticed many more letters to the local newspapers raising the issue of high population growth mainly due to immigration. A recent survey conducted by The Australian Population Research Institute (TAPRIS) has reported that “74% of voters thought that Australia does not need more people”. The following points set out some of the reasons why we should be demanding better immigration controls by our governments:

· The reason why many people feel they haven’t benefited from Australia’s long stretch of economic expansion is because they haven’t.

· Our pay packets haven’t increased while many of our essential goods and services have gone through the roof

· High Migration makes it nearly impossible for Australia to fall into recession.

· It’s great for business because it keeps wages low and there are more people to buy their goods and services.

· It looks great for governments because it means that economic growth looks better than it really is.

· But it isn’t that good for our existing ordinary wage and salary workers.

· More people means more demand for scarce goods and services. When there’s tight supply it results in huge price rises (such as Housing).

· As the new Reserve Bank Governor, Phillip Lowe, has stated “the role of good economic policy should be to raise living standards – not make the population and therefore the economy bigger”.

· And why don’t the politicians do that? Political donations influence? Maybe too many have investments in property and development that require more and more customers.

0ur very high rate of population growth is twice the world average and three times that of UK, France, the US and similar western countries. Our governments over the last 20 years or so have claimed that this has driven our economic growth without us suffering from a recession like other countries. The reality is that our citizens have gained no real fiscal benefit from this population growth.

In 2016 our intake was reduced to around 200,000 p.a. from the 250,000 mark and just recently our Minister for Immigration was suggesting we should reduce our intake by a further 20,000. However our Prime Minister was not prepared to do so. Why not?

The reality is that, since the GFC, Australia has seen per capita income go backwards as evidenced by stagnant wages growth. The slight reduction in the long term arrivals to departure ratio presents a misleading picture because migration to Australia is still proceeding at a record pace with a massive lift in long term visa holders which are not included in our immigrant numbers. There are currently around 2 million long term visa holders in Australia right now all needing somewhere to live. Overall our rate of population growth has averaged 1.7% which compares with around 0.7% average for UK, France & the US.

Right now the rate of population growth for Melbourne is up around 2.4 %. That’s four times more than UK, France & the US and other OECD countries.

Time for action. There is an election coming so take advantage and confront your local member and vote for change. If we reduce our migrant intake to around 70,000 p.a. we would still be ahead of the pack and meeting our international obligations. That would give us breathing space to catch up with the infrastructure upgrades we desperately need for our existing population and, maybe in time, we could provide infrastructure to cope with our future migrant intake.

To continue as we are will result in further degradation of our environment, lifestyle and flat financial position and ultimately end up living in overcrowded high rise ghettos and no one wants that do they?

Jack Roach

Consultant to the Boroondara Residents’ Action Group. (BRAG)

http://www.brag.asn.au [email protected]

Incredibly, Heritage Victoria's second formal Permit refusal to allow a developer's plans to build within the tree lined avenue approach to the former Willsmere Hospital is set to be reviewed by Heritage Council Victoria. (See Herald Sun / Progress Leader 31 Oct 2017.) The Heritage Council will hold a Public Hearing commencing on the 18th June 2018 to review Heritage Victoria's rejection of Walker's application to build private apartments on the parkland.

Renewed threat to Kew Cottages Parkland

Sydney billionaire developer, Lang Walker, has lodged an appeal against Heritage Victoria's insistence that the whole of the avenue approach to Willsmere must be properly restored as parkland.

Brian Walsh, President, Kew Cottages Coalition, said today that, "Walker Corporation now appears to have spent over a decade trying to find ways to legally encroach upon this fabulous piece of public parkland."

This is the Sydney developer's fourth attempt to overcome the long standing Heritage permit conditions imposed on the Main Drive Kew housing estate development.

"It's now gone beyond a joke," Brian Walsh commented. "Nothing surprises me any more."

He added, "It appears to me that if developers have enough money, and access to Government bodies, then they can go on appealing against the umpire for ever ! One problem appears to be that although all of the land in question is still public land, Walker has been permitted to use a temporary site office on part of it."

"Now Walker appears to be acting as though that temporary site office gives them 'squatters rights' !"

"This is very strange, because I understand both the developer and the Government gave an undertaking to Heritage Victoria over a decade ago that they would remove the site office, and fully restore the parkland by 2012."

"Perhaps Walker are hoping that the Andrew's Government has quietly forgotten all about that promise made to the people of Victoria way back in 2005 ?"

Commenting further, Mr Walsh said, “This application is also frustrating because it directly stops the creation of the new Kew Arboretum that has been proposed by the Kew Cottages Coalition and mirrors the initial vision of Baron Sir Ferdinand von Mueller who designed this area (and the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria).”

The Heritage Council will hold a Public Hearing commencing on the 18th June 2018 to review Heritage Victoria's rejection of Walker's application to build private apartments on the parkland.

For more information:
Brian Walsh
President
Kew Cottages Coalition
M. 0414 979 300
W. https://www.kew.org.au

Australia's population growth has exceeded every other major developed nation over the last decade. Political & economic elites are flooding our country with immigrants for the purpose of lowering wages and increasing demand for real estate and headline GDP growth. Disgraceful. In Dick Smith’s words: We are conducting a risky experiment that has no parallel among developed nations, with a population growth rate that exceeds most developing countries. https://www.smh.com.au/national/a-risky-experiment-that-has-no-parallel-among-developed-nations-20180327-p4z6h7.html

Although extinctions are accelerating, our green spaces are disappearing, our housing is unaffordable, our traffic is choked, state governments continue to advertise for more and more immigrants. It is false advertising and it is subversive to democracy. The screenshot below is of the Victorian State Government's immigration portal, "LiveinMelbourne," where it advertises as if Victoria had no problems, as if Victorians had given it permission, for more and more people to come and live here. Do you think our government is fit to govern a democracy?

"There are three aspects of the draft Exposure Bill that are of real concern: the first relating to the role of a council albeit its relationship to its community, the second the role of mayor and deputy mayor in their relationship to other councillors, and the third the electoral system and its relationship to its electors. [...] A duly elected city council should not be subservient to the State or proscribed a role that undermines the capacity of a council to engage with its community on a broad range of issues that impact on our lives. [...] The view that what is good for other levels of government should be replicated at the local level. This reinforces that local government is ‘government’ and not an administrative arm of the State." [Candobetter.net Editor: The state government is obviously trying to remove the capacity of residents to affect what happens in their local environment and suburb. We already have almost no democratic power at state or federal level - just reduced to a risible function of voting for Tweedledum or Tweedledumber. But local government is where it all happens. This is the first line of population policy, because the councils say whether there can be subdivision or new housing, which is what dictates population growth. VCAT has been used and abused by the State government to overturn council judgment, as has the insertion of State-paid Council CEOs. This attempt to rewrite the Act risks annihilating local governments in all but name. See also 'Population and Development Battlefronts' at the end of the statement by Fitzroy Council.]

Local Government Act reviewed?

The Local Government Act is being reviewed and is in its last throes of consultation before being adopted in May this year. The Act proscribes the role of local government and thus we residents have a lot to gain and much to lose in how our City Council works and carries out the role of governing our City and building a sustainable and liveable city for all.

The Yarra City Council’s response was tabled at its 6 March meeting and should be of interest to many residents who wish to ensure that the role of local government and its relationship to our State Government is collaborative and not subservient and that its pre-eminent relationship is to the community.

There are three aspects of the draft Exposure Bill that are of real concern: the first relating to the role of a council albeit its relationship to its community, the second the role of mayor and deputy mayor in their relationship to other councillors, and the third the electoral system and its relationship to its electors.

A duly elected city council should not be subservient to the State or proscribed a role that undermines the capacity of a council to engage with its community on a broad range of issues that impact on our lives.

If we revert to the ‘roads, rates and rubbish’ mantra our City will be the poorer. The current 1989 Local Government Act sets out a high level statement that reflects a contemporary role for a council whilst the draft reduces this to a series of governance principles together with a requirement that councils ‘cooperate with other government bodies’.

This would result in our council being beholden to other governments and thus reduce their independence as a legitimate level of government. The result of not incorporating into the Act an advocacy role would limit the community’s voice through its elected representatives.

And finally the electoral system which defines local representation and the voting process underpins the value and credibility placed on a city council. As the Yarra City Council report states

“Elections in the City of Yarra have long been conducted by attendance voting, and the Yarra City Council is disappointed that the Exposure Draft makes this unlikely to continue”.

Attendance voting builds community and provides a window for residents into their local neighbourhood. State and Federal governments mandate attendance voting though increasingly pre-poll voting is becoming popular. The view that what is good for other levels of government should be replicated at the local level. This reinforces that local government is ‘government’ and not an administrative arm of the State.

[End of Fitzroy Council statement]

Population and Development Battlefronts

Here is a quick lesson in how populations are controlled when societies are governed democratically.

Population Policy Battlefronts for democracy and ecological sustainability
1. Local Government
2. State Government
3. National Government
4. Global

1. Local Government

* power of limiting building permits (and thus of limiting population growth) in line with water catchment capacities, aesthetics, civil hygiene, preservation of agricultural land and natural amenities, like green wedges, nature reserves and parkland
* promotion of energy efficient public and private buildings
* facilitation of householder independence from the State power and sewerage grid
* incorporation of local indigenous species' needs for space, food and water within the concept of local planning and as participants in the regional ecology.
* residents should have self government
* local elected officials and paid staff are servants of residents and should not implement plans without their agreement
* food and fiber production should be local where possible, minimising energy used to transport goods in and out of a community

2. State Government

Wherever States have the responsibility for and power of limiting impact on the bio-regions within their borders they should exercise this within the context of national and local population policy. In Australia the states have the power over land-use and water sources and the ability and responsibility to signal when infrastructure is close to capacity. They have a number of tools for limiting urban expansion. Among these are:

*taxes on second homes, taxes on windfalls gained by sellers when land is rezoned,
*redevelopment, not new development - of old buildings, insulation of old buildings - instead of land-clearing for new construction. These taxes are there to feedback order into the allocation of construction permits and should not be relied upon as something that can be grown to subsidise increases in government spending.
*housing as a citizen's right, a state's duty and a public cost
*land-development by the state to provide low-cost land to undercut speculative private development, which raises costs through unreasonable profits, thus driving up all other costs, and providing a motive for overpopulation

- Water should not be disaggregated from land because this removes valuable biofeedback that signals limits to growth.

- State governments must be entirely transparent in all their transactions and so must the political parties in and out of government. See "John-Paul Langbroek and why the Liberal National Party won't survive unless Labor Governments reform."

- Business can only be the servant of democracy and should not dictate population limits.
- Economy is a subset of the environment.
- State governments have no business making plans for local government to follow if these are not inspected and agreed to in detail by local residents.

3. National Government

* adoption of democratic and ecologically informed population policy
* separation of political and administrative responsibility for population and immigration
* chairing of a cabinet committee on population by Prime Minister adoption of a consumption strategy
* aim to stabilise population numbers by:
- promoting small families and a
- zero net migration program - gives around 70,000 person-spaces
* plan immigration program for the humanitarian longterm, staggering intake to cope with foreseeable ongoing demands and climate change
* Change the emphasis on immigration and population research funding from its longstanding almost exclusive focus on internal migration and ethnic group demographics, in order to give far greater attention to population numbers, per capita energy use and environmental impact.

4. Global

Australia should support policies to help people to protect local controls over land-tenure, recognising that the population problems of Africa, India and the Pacific Islands, only started when colonisation dispossessed people from their local lands and stable economic traditions in homeostatic indigenous ecologies.

Australia should direct more money into foreign aid to combat the conditions that contribute to overpopulation by assisting initiatives for educating and enfranchising women, enhancing children's health, promoting family planning education and safe, non-coercive family planning methods and protecting local self-government and self-sufficiency.

Australia and other 'Developed' countries should cooperate with United Nations global initiatives in developing longsighted population policies which take into account our high environmental/energy consumption impact per capita.

As an ecologically impoverished commodity producer, Australia should lead other commodity producers by example and assist in the development and use of low energy consumption technology and lifestyle, being careful to keep its population low in conformity with the limiting characteristics of the continent's ecology and the nature of commodity dependent economies, which also do not require large volumes of workers, unless they are conducted as slave colonies to furnish cheap supply to other countries - a practice that is neither ethical, humane or sustainable.

Australia should not encourage high birth rates or high immigration without their constituents knowledge or agreement, based on useful and true information about optimal carrying capacity and the preservation of democratic rights and local empowerment.

To me the “Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Funding and Disclosure Reform) Bill 2017” is more of the same – putting out a spot fire/diversionary tactic. The bill may be aimed at so-called charities that provide political advocacy while at the same time accommodating such advocacy through the back door, the bill may claim some smaller fry that are, to the government, collateral damage. Instead of addressing political donations head-on, we pathetically tinker around at the edges. As the dust settles the sharks that were dominating the pond are still there while the sardines have been thinned out!

Understanding the political gravy train

My first glimpse of the political gravy train (game of mates) in Australia was back in 1992 prior to Jeff sacking Victoria’s councils. As a bastard from the bush in the State seat of Rodney I’d joined the National Party who at the time was doing some good work for the farming community. The local branch had called an open meeting for all members and prospective members to attend to hear from speakers Noel Maughan (MLA for Rodney) and Bill Baxter (MLC for North East Province) regarding the forthcoming election.

The spectre of Council Amalgamations was in the wind and at the meeting we were informed by Bill Baxter with great emphasis that the National Party would not tolerate Council Amalgamations in any shape or form whatsoever. Within 2 years Council Amalgamations were rammed through parliament with the National Party’s blessing. At a subsequent meeting of the local branch of the Nashos when it was put to Bill Baxter regarding the obvious about-face, flip, sell-out, he refuted (lied) that he had ever given the aforesaid commitment. The meeting degenerated into a farce with Bill being ushered out the back door and many members including yours truly resigning their membership in disgust!

Political parties and political baggage

I came to realise over the ensuing years that all of the major political parties carried political baggage similar to that of the National Party. The (once) Liberal Party had morphed into a conservative organisation taking the nashos with them (or Vicky Verca), the Labour Party sold out the workers, both parties adopted neoliberal principles and the Democrats were on a hiding to nothing trying to keep the bastards honest. The neoliberal mantra under the Hawke/Keating Federal Government and the Kennett State Government redefined the political landscape dramatically during this time.

Today the landscape has only changed in the fact that the Demos have gone and have been replaced by the “Greens” who are also neoliberal despite somewhat honourable beginnings. Politically Australia has become a backwater of neoliberalism similar to North America and most of Europe and is suffering under the yoke of American hegemony, Chinese influence, neo-classical economics, overpopulation driven climate change and political indecision on all facets of the home front.

Legislating against spot-fires

Much of what passes for legislation at federal level today is aimed at putting out spot fires or shoring-up community/electoral support for the Turnbull Government. Similar to the State Governments of both Baillieu and Napthine, the Abbott and Turnbull Federal Governments have been do nothing ministries. There has been no significant legislation that these Premiers/Prime Ministers could or can hang their hats on, nothing, nought, zip, zilch!!

They have gone from proposing the ludicrous to the unworkable, shoring-up their support as they go! As spot fires break out around them their time and energy is consumed putting them out. In an effort to achieve this, diversionary tactics or smoke screens are often employed to take the community’s/electorate’s eye off the ball. The classic here was the “Same Sex Marriage” bill which was always going to get up, being taken to a (“referendum”) postal vote. This took some of the heat off the Feds for 6 months wasting time and money. In the meantime, Australia, as a nation, just drifted along with the Yanks pulling us one direction and the Chinese the other.

I read with interest the excepts from Clive Hamilton’s book “Silent Invasion” in Saturday’s Age and am currently reading Robert Macklin’s “Dragon & Kangaroo” and I’m beginning to understand an aspect of Australia’s history they I hadn’t grasped previously. Unfortunately, there is not much to like in what I’ve read so far and combined with our colonial sycophancy and our current obsequiousness to the good old USofA, we are sadly lacking especially when it comes to leadership of the nation.

Electoral Funding and Disclosure Bill 2017

To me the “Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Funding and Disclosure Reform) Bill 2017” is more of the same – putting out a spot fire/diversionary tactic. The bill may be aimed at so-called charities that provide political advocacy while at the same time accommodating such advocacy through the back door, the bill may claim some smaller fry that are, to the government, collateral damage. Instead of addressing political donations head-on, we pathetically tinker around at the edges. As the dust settles the sharks that were dominating the pond are still there while the sardines have been thinned out!

However, I do believe that any bid to curb the right of individuals to collectively provide alms and benevolence or to protest by either the Federal or State Governments to be an infringement of our civil liberties. This where the Australian constitution is an absolute dodo. Similar to the constitution not recognising First Australians, it doesn’t recognise the civil liberties of all Australians. As the constitution continues to fail all Australians and it will increasingly do so in the future, the more ordinary Australians and groups of Ozzies including charities will come under the spotlight. These individuals and groups will then be put under the microscope while those with money, power and political clout will able to evade this bandaid legislation and carry on as if nothing has happened.

Meanwhile the yawning gap between the haves and the have nots widens appreciably. As the middle class become trapped by the zombie neo-classical economics, climate change tightens its noose, environmental degradation continues unabated, resources become depleted, civil unrest mounts as people go hungry, fresh water diminishes and spills over into war and mass migration. This is the leaderless society that is being thrust upon us. Overpopulation is a killer!!

John Bentley

“We are all an involuntary part of a social revolution, where political parties feel entitled to take ownership of our individual rights to real and personal property, and where our civil and political rights are abused and overridden by the many politically created entities within the Australian Government System.” (Larry Hannigan).

You can read more on Larry Hannigan's blog, where it seems he is doing Victorians a great service: https://larryhannigan.com/government-state/13-victorian-local-government-act-2018-submissions/.

DEMAND
We, the residents of Melbourne demand that the
Government stop its plan to damage St Kilda Road and that
they make alternative plans such as an alternative route via
Kings Way and linking it into South Yarra Station, or deep
tunnelling the entire length or stop work , re-focus and re-
plan, in meaningful consultation with the people of
Melbourne.

Voted on and approved unanimously by the attendees at the
Public Protest at The Domain Interchange on the 21 st
February 2018

Yesterday between 1 and 1.30pm a rally was held to save the trees in St. Kilda Road destined for removal to make way for the new underground metro. It was organised by the combined forces of Planning Backlash, Protectors of Public Lands and Walk in St. Kilda Road and environs Approximately 80 people attended including the 9 speakers listed below. The M.C of the event was Mary Drost , Convenor of Planning backlash.Prof. Michael Buxton was unable to attend and Dr. Ernest Healy , Vice President of Protectors of Public Lands Victoria deputised by reading Prof. Buxton's speech. Feelings for the impending loss of ancient trees and for those already lost ran high. The general consensus from the speakers was that the damage envisaged for avenue of trees in Melbourne's beautiful boulevard, St. Kilda Road was not necessary to accommodate the project and that a better way must be found. A statement to this effect will be sent to Shadow Minister for Planning, to be read out in both houses of Parliament.

Rally for St. Kilda Road trees February 21st 2018

Speakers at the event

1. Kristin Stegley OAM, Chairman, National Trust of Australia (Victoria)

2. Michael Buxton, Professor of Environment and Planning, RMIT University (in Prof. Buxton's absence speech read by Dr. Ernest Healy)

3. The Hon. Barry Jones: a statement by himself and Tom Harley, nominators of St Kilda Road and Environs for emergency National Heritage listing

4. Dr Greg Moore, OAM, president of the International Society of Arboriculture, Australian Chapter; member of the National Trust’s Register of Significant Trees from1988, Chair since 1996

5. Bea McNicholas, Director, Walk in St Kilda Road and Environs, Planet Ark National Tree Day

6. Senator Derryn Hinch

7. Dr Judith Buckrich, historian; author of “Melbourne’s Grand Boulevard: The Story of St Kilda Road”, 1996.

8. Jill Quirk, Protectors of Public Lands, Victoria

9. David Davis, MP, Shadow Planning Minister

The following speech was made by Hon. David Davis, Shadow Minister for Planning in the Victorian Parliament yesterday afternoon.

"Today I was pleased to join a very large crowd, a significant gathering, on the corner of Albert Road and St Kilda Road. Many people there were very concerned about the state government's approach to the construction of the Metro Tunnel. This is an important project, a project that is needed to deliver the additional capacity, but it should not be beyond the wit of government and community in Victoria to deliver projects without trashing our heritage. We see that large European cities are able to deliver major projects without the loss of their important heritage, and in this case the state government has, in my view, adopted an appalling process of trying to crunch through the legitimate concerns of local community and not listen at all.

The attendance there was significant and included not just myself but my colleagues Ms Fitzherbert and Ms Crozier. Also Barry Jones was there speaking as a former state MP and former federal Labor MP. He was highly critical of Jacinta Allan and her approach to a number of these major projects, particularly the tunnel. Barry Jones made some very clear points. A former Governor, Alex Chernov, was there as well, and he joined the group who were prepared to stand up and say, 'Enough is enough. This should've been constructed in a different way, a way that did not destroy the very important avenue of trees that is part of St Kilda Road'. Derryn Hinch was there as well, so we actually had a federal MP attend to make some very clear points about his disgust and concern as he sees trees being torn down in a way that is not necessary.

When I addressed the group I made the point very clearly that in fact there were alternate locations and alternate ways of doing the construction. I am aware of at least two worked-up alternatives, including one which the previous government looked at, which was further to the west. A group of local and experienced engineers also put together a proposal which would have seen a different alignment and different approach to the loss of trees. This proposal was a very thoughtful one, but instead of independently assessing it I was concerned that Jacinta Allan immediately gave this proposal to the Metro Tunnel authority, effectively asking it to check its own homework.

It is hardly surprising that the authority said, 'Oh, no. We're doing it the right way'. Unfortunately the state government would not, in an independent way, consider alternative approaches that could have delivered less destruction, less loss of trees and a more mature approach to this sort of construction.

I was proud to join that group today. I pay tribute to all the activists who are determined to protect our important heritage along that corridor. St Kilda Road has recently, as we know, been permanently listed, along with the Domain and Government House — that whole precinct through there — on the National Heritage List. This is an important step that I congratulate Josh Frydenberg for taking.

But you have to ask real questions about what was going on with Heritage Victoria. On the Monday, when the national heritage listing was gazetted formally, it became clear that in fact late on the Friday night the head of Heritage Victoria, Steven Avery, who has popped up from somewhere — I do not quite know where he has come from, but he is a recent appointment to the position — made the decision, seemingly in the knowledge that on the Monday there would be a national heritage listing. He gave the go-ahead. He said, 'Start your engines. Start your chainsaws. Start your crushers. Away you go and you try and beat the national heritage listing'. What a shameful and disgraceful approach. Daniel Andrews is a bully. He is bullying communities, and he is leaving a legacy that is not what Victorians expect."

Postscript:
The loss of the trees in st. Kilda Road causes deep distress to many people. I spoke to one local resident who was suffering very visibly from dust irritation form the earthworks in progress. She also reported to me that since work has started and trees have been removed, mice have entered her house and the sound of distressed displaced birds was deafening.